New Gun Shop Myth, tracer ammo?

[Cesiumsponge]

i would really like to see a copper jacket rust

Rust is just another word for oxidation. Copper oxidizes, it turns into that familiar greenish patina you've probably seen on old statues. Copper in bullets are some alloy that won't corrode as easily. I've never recalled seeing a bullet with oxidation on it.

Most metals oxidize in an oxygen environment (check out the alkali and alkaline earth metals for an extreme example of this). Iron and steels form what people commonly call rust. Aluminum forms aluminum oxide, the same stuff you do when you anodize aluminum...you force it to grow an artificially thick layer of "rust".

 

[target1911]

Imagin that...........I try to be a smart a$$ and someone has to come along and tell me I am right.......LOL>>> joking......
However... that is very interesting...I have never heard of those rounds

 

[FIFTYGUY]

target1911 wrote:

However... that is very interesting...I have never heard of those rounds

Some say the US M21 .50 BMG tracer was developed in WWII specifically for the B-25 Mitchell (the one with *eight* forward-firing .50 AN-M3's in the nose for ground strafing). Supposedly there was a cultural inclination among the Japanese to be terrified of fireballs from the air.

*I* say *anybody* is inclined to be terrified of .50 BMG headlight tracers headed straight towards them at 130 bullets per second!

The concept was being tried in the field before the Govt arsenals started making their own. Air Corps personnel were drilling several small holes (six 3/16" diameter) sideways into the case neck and bullet in live M1 tracer rounds to allow the trace to be visible to the enemy. Anecdotal evidence was that these were demoralizing to enemy pilots!

When they were being developed officially, it was found that they worked very well against Japanese hydrogen-filled balloons (much like the 11mm Gras incendiary worked well against the Zeppelins in WWI !).

The M21 had ~710 grain bullet with a red painted tip. Trace to 550 yards. Only authorized for airplane use. They look like "flaming basketballs" going downrange (from my perspective as a shooter! Somebody else can tell us how they look on the receiving end! ).

The US made probably 10 million+ rounds of .50 BMG Headlight Tracer in WWII, both experimental and adopted types.

And BTW another blow to the "paint makes it trace" theory. If that were the case, they would have added more paint to the tip to make brighter tracers, not drill holes into loaded rounds...

 

[SDC]

The "bible" for US service ammo (History of Modern US Small Arms Ammo, by Hackley, Woodin, and Scranton) says that the M21 "headlight tracer" grew out of experiments as you describe by a Col. Beatty in Ft. Worth, Texas in 1942; they were drilling holes through the necks of M1 Tracer, and found that you could see it from all angles. Naturally, they thought that seeing these things coming at you if you were flying a FW190 would be somewhat "off-putting", to say the least, and Ordnance carried the idea from there. They ended up loading the standard M1 Tracer with a higher percentage of brighter-burning igniter compound to produce the M21.

 

[cheygriz]

The dealer knows better. This is used to jack up the price and steal from customers that don't know any better.