Do tracers cause any actual damage.
 

I was wondering whether tracers cause any actual damage, either in real life or in the game.

I assume they don't do damage, but might be wrong. If they don't then removing them would obviously give you quite a lot more fire-power.

Would an ammo belt consisting entirely of tracers cause any damage?

In reality, tracer rounds are only about 5%-15% lighter than a normal round and just as solid. The lead that is lost in the tracer is very soft anyway and the harder jacket remains very similar.

So yes, tracer rounds have very similar characteristics to standard rounds. In fact, tracer rounds are designed to be as similar to ball rounds as possible in order to match their flight path as closely as they can.
There are differences of course, but they are negligible for most purposes,

I agree with letum.

However, the chemical compound that makes up the burning light you see from the bullets does in fact burn and has a limited incendiary effect. It has been known to light dry grass on fire and should as such be able to ignite fuel vapour. However, I don't have any research test results at hand to prove it. It just makes sense.

I used that stuff in the military, and I can tell you with no uncertainty that tracers will do damage. Perhaps ever so slightly less damage than a ball round, but anything traveling at 2,525–2,900 ft/s (muzzle velocity of the wartime Mk. 8 ammo) is going to do nasty things to humans and light machinery. I have also experienced tracers setting fire to vegetation. I would imagine petrol vapor and tracers would be an interesting combination.

regarding in-game damage, i once loaded a spit only with tracers, and 109's still went down.

I've done an extensive study of the in-game RAF ammo and I can tell you my results show that using white tracer ammunition has the greatest affect on aircraft targets of ALL the ammunition available. Bar none. Others' results may vary.

(Now watch this thread go "Banana's) :)

my test simply consisted in placing every weapon with a different color and shot a rainbow spitfire.

the most notable side effect is that the other players didnt see tracers, apparently if overwhelmed they dont render. i see an exploit incoming :rolleyes:

hey maybe you can get cool effects combining tracers colours :)

like look at those fireworks that are coming towards

Oh dear....

Several times I saw these Disco-tracers on ATAG. Made me thinking what the dude i nthe 109 must have thought. "Soemthing wrong with my monitor? how many people are shooting at me ?

But to throw a serious question into the arena: Does anybody notice a difference in the incendiary ability between the white phosporus tracers and DeWilde rounds concerning the ignition potential?

Ah, I got a question to the ammo-savvy people, to maybe answer my ever-nagging question:
If I, as a "soft target" get hit with a tracer round
a) in a clean shot through
b) where the round gets buried in my body

, I suppose that has additional, nasty effects when compared to normal rounds, right?
Maybe the in-and-out shot should not be too bad because it has only limited contact time with skin and flesh, but I imagine the tracer round that gets stuck in the body being very, very bad. I mean, as far as I remember, Phosphorus is not the coolest-burning substance and probably, a significant volume of tissue gets burned outright (i.e. within myself, then getting gangrenous etc. pp.). That's a vision I'm not too eager to make it reality, to be honest...
Is that true? I mean, the whole thingy with tracer rounds doing additional damage on soft tissue?

It would depend.

In the MK7 .303 Ball round the projectile is designed with an alluminium insert in the tip to make it base heavy. When hitting a soft target like a person (which it was intended to be fired at) on impact the round tumbles through the body making wounds that have been compared to a chainsaw. It was designed this way because the round lacked the velocity (only ~2440fps) for effective hydrostatic shock. A conventional round would pass straight through the sofdt target.

The tracer round would not have this weight distribution so as the compound burnt out I would expect that it would become progressively nose heavy and probably over penetrate the target.

So who knows?

Yes, I tested this.
The DeWilde in the SIM has been rendered pretty much useless in the final version. It does no where near the damage that the white tracers do. Tested many times and on many targets to confirm this.

Cheers

I've been told that German light/medium Flak would often incorporate multi-coloured tracer. Presumably this was designed to appear more intimidating to the poor bastards required to fly through it.

I've hunted for years and at one point I used military surplus .303 ball ammo (just ball, not tracer) on Red deer (not something I'd recommend to anyone). Based on that experience I'd say if you were hit by one of those things, and the projectile remained inside the torso, you probably wouldn't give a monkey's if it was tracer or not. Pretty much you'd be dead or so far gone you may as well be. ( FMJ ammo usually holds together well, however, there is no telling what it will do once it encounters flesh and bone - go sideways, backwards, tumble end-on-end - anything can happen). The damage caused by one of these rounds passing straight through the body will depend on the impact point and what the projectile engaged on its journey. Projectiles that strike bone typically create secondary splinter wounds that can be horribly destructive to surrounding tissues. Organ damage can also be very significant. If you aren't already dead by the time the projectile is exiting the body you probably soon will be. Gut shot wounds will typically allow game to escape and in these instances death may take some days. I see no reason why people who are hit in the lower abdomen would fair any differently. In my experience, people seriously underestimate the destructive/wounding power of your average high powered rifle.

I think I've been misunderstood. Tumbling etc., is all well and I understand that - but what I really wanted to know about is the burn damage by a tracer round. I can imagine the burn effects being pretty severe in their own right if the shot gets stuck in the body.

I remember some story from the Ubi-Zoo about an American fighter group that removed tracers from their belts and found they scored much better as the tracer had a different ballistic behaviour to the ball and was causing them to miss with the bulk of their fire. I know this is .50 cal, and the difference with .303 would be substantial. Anyone remember the details of this?

The burning substances of a tracer is pretty much the same as in fireworks, so yes, it burns rather hot. However, as Lonewulf explained, the round would spend a very short time inside the body. A burn is proportional to temperature x area exposed x duration of exposure. Considering the area creating the burn is very small, and the time it contact with flesh is typically in tenths of seconds or less, the burn, while painful, would not in itself likely be lethal. The effect of the bullet itself on the other hand...

In the unlikely case a bullet ended up expending all two seconds worth of tracer flame inside you, the damage would be considerable. Another effect is that the residue would likely be rather unhealthy stuff. Still, the bullet would have to end up inside you in the first place, so chances are you'd still die from the bullet wound rather than the tracer burn.

Actually, it was very common for many, if not all, American groups in Europe to use Armor Piercing, Incendiary M8 exclusively (except for the last several seconds of the belt when Tracers M20 were often mixed in to warn of low ammo). This allowed the shooter to begin firing without visually warning the target he was being fired at (it was fine if he took the dynamic clues, apparently) and the API would flash fairly brightly when it struck something, so the shooter could see that he was hitting the target. By the end of the war tracers weren't even being delivered to some groups anymore. There is a minor ballistic difference between the two types but the statements that this could "throw one's aim off" is a bit of an overstatement. --- It might be a fairer statement if M1 Tracer were mixed with M8 API, though, as M1 was intended to work with M2 Ball. So M1 Tracer was to be used with M2 Ball and M20 APIT with M8 API. ---

M21 Headlight tracers (much brighter and designed to be visible from the target area) were sometimes (not clear on how much) used by bomber gunners because it was believed that enemy pilots could be intimidated or distracted by seeing tracers coming towards them.

T48 rounds are the ones I want, it was a lighter projectile with a higher velocity and much hotter incendiary to ignite lower grade fuel (as in jet). Used only by the 56th at end of the war but would be a great 1946 round.
:grin:

oh, I forgot about that... thanks for the answers anyway, now I've got it I believe :)