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tank tracer rounds


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Tank main guns didn't have specific tracer rounds. It'd be such a waste.

Many of them DID have tracer markings etc on the base of the shell though.

hell I think the Brits came up with a 2 pounder AP shell with a little tear gas in it IIRC smile.gif so screwball ideas were common.

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Fionn Kelly

Manager of Historical Research,

The Gamers Net - Gaming for Gamers

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I'll give the explanation here...

Basically what you send me is a picture of a normal AP round ( actually an APCBC round) with "tracer material" painted on the base.

I believe they used iridium back then but amn't 1005 sure.. In any case what you sent me was NOT a tracer shell.. You sent me a pic of an AP shell with tracer material on the base.

This isn't like airplanes etc where a lot of tracer ammo didn't contain explosives in the nose... For a tank the fountain of earth from a miss is the BEST tracer and that can be created by a normal AP round so it would be a total waste to make special tracer rounds.

For the record ammo designations (using the nomenclature I use which I think it pretty generally accepted can go)

APCBC (Armour Piercing Ballistic Capped).

APCBC/T (Armour Piercing Ballistic Capped, Tracer) (an APCBC shell with tracer material on the base).

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Fionn Kelly

Manager of Historical Research,

The Gamers Net - Gaming for Gamers

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A slight addition to what Fionn just wrote.

The first 'C' of APCBC also stands for Capped.

The shell has both a piercing cap and a ballistic cap. For the Germans, the piercing cap was added to shells of 50mm and larger to increase penetration performance. In shells of 75mm and higher the piercing cap was blunt. This is where the ballistic cap comes in. It was added to decrease air resistance and thus increase velocity.

Jason

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