Tracer ammunition in aerial weapons?

[Graham Boak]

I rather agree with the suggestions that the main values of tracer were found as a guide to running out of ammunition, and as a scare tactic for free gunners.

Gunners may not have had gyro sights, but then neither did anyone else before 1944! They did have gunsights, quite sophisticated pieces of machinery.

The suggestion of using tracer as an aiming guide seems a bit unrealistic. They might well show you where you were shooting at, but given the duration of flight and target movements (which would not static be for the benefit of the attacking fighter), there would remain the problem of where to aim NOW. It is certainly not a good idea to just hold the trigger down and hose the sky in the hope that the enemy might fly into it. Successful pilots used short bursts not all their ammunition in one string. Tracer might be a crutch for less skillful shots, but not a terribly reliable one.

There's the linked problem of mixed armaments - the trajectory of the two weapons were generally different. Unless ideally placed in range and position, if his mgs were hitting the target the cannon generally weren't. There remains the problem of delays as described above.