Soddball Posted April 14, 2003 Share Posted April 14, 2003 For my birthday a chum bought me a book to get me in the mood for the Afrika Korps game - Rick Atkinson's "An Army at Dawn". I've read about half of it in five days and it's jolly good fun. One thing that caught my eye was the following paragraph about an ambush by German "anti-tank" guns against American tanks. "The velocity of the enemy shells was so great that the suction created by the passing shells pulled the dirt, sand and dust from the desert floor and formed a wall that traced the course of each shell," Lieutenant Laurence Robertson later recalled. Shells zipped through the American formation, trailed by thick coils of dust tinted bright green by the tracer magneisum burning on the German rounds. Firstly, the dust walls from low-flying shells would be cool, and by cool I mean totally sweet. Secondly, and more importantly, green tracer? Is that correct? Would you have seen 'green fireballs' (quote from later in the book) from anti-tank guns? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flamingknives Posted April 14, 2003 Share Posted April 14, 2003 Green tracer is perfectly feasible, provided that you've got something that burns green. I think copper sulphate does, but with all metal salts you've got to have something fairly hot to get them going that doesn't have any detectable colour of its own when burning. Last time I checked, Magnesium burned white (very, very bright). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shadow 1st Hussars Posted April 14, 2003 Share Posted April 14, 2003 Magnesium does indeed burn white without any additives, and very very very bright at that. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeyD Posted April 14, 2003 Share Posted April 14, 2003 Matt had checked out this question back in the Beta days, and concluded that several different color tracers were used by the Germans and no one color was more 'correct' than the other. If you want bright green tracers check out Captain Wacky's excellent "High Visibility Tracers" at: http://www.cmmods.com/ 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikelas Posted April 14, 2003 Share Posted April 14, 2003 Soddball.... I REALLY enjoyed reading that book, and am looking forward to designing some scenarios based on some of the actions described. I also enjoyed the "no holds barred" coverage of Ike and Patton, and also the politics of English/American and Allied/french relations. Mike 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rleete Posted April 14, 2003 Share Posted April 14, 2003 Soddball, did you ever get my email? Are you still getting blocked? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meach Posted April 15, 2003 Share Posted April 15, 2003 What might have been burning green could have been fragments of the copper shell casings being burned up in the wake of the shell? The explosion of the detonation to fire the shell in the first place must have generated a tremendous amount of heat? Just that someone mentioned copper and as far as I know the shell casings were copper. Just a guess here, folks..any other ideas? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flamingknives Posted April 15, 2003 Share Posted April 15, 2003 I mentioned copper sulphate, but that's a salt, in a similar manner that table salt is a salt of sodium (sodium chloride). What's true for a salt isn't necessarily true for the metal, or vice versa. That being said, my chemistry days aren't all that recent. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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