Old Tracer Story
Late 1960s, Southern California (a lot nicer place then):
My older brother had just returned from his tour bombing the Ho Chi Minh Trail in B-26K/A-26A. He gave me about 40 rounds of G.I. .38 Special that he said had been around his waist in belt loops for most of his missions. I think he mentioned that some might be tracers but the bullet paint had worn off.
Some time later, a good friend and I went up north of Los Angeles in the Los Padres National Forest to do some shooting. I decided to fire off some of the G.I. ammo out of an Italian copy of the 1866 "Yellow Boy" lever action. By the way, this was right in the middle of "fire season" in the forest!
I am happily shooting away when my friend and I notice a 'funny red ball' going downrange!
In my youthfull brilliance, I commented that it must be one of 'those tracers'. I checked the headstamp and seperated out all the cartridges with the same headstamp. Then, in one of my far-from-smart decisions, I elected to fire another one to confirm that headstamp was a tracer round. Sure enough, it was another 'red ball'. My friend and I began to congratulate ourselves on our fine deductive reasoning when the 'funny smell' reached our noses.
There was a four foot circle of fire already burned in the dry grass (Thankfully NO wind that day!)! We covered the distance like sprinters and did the "fire dance" and managed to get it extinguished before it spread much more. Then we humbly waited for Smokey the Bear to descend on us. Well no one showed up so we put the suspect ammo away. Months later, out in a very sandy area of the desert, I expended the rest of the suspect tracers. About a quarter of them did not make it all the way out of the 18" lever gun barrel. They would sit about an inch from the muzzle and just sizzle. The bullet was easily removed with a G.I. cleaning rod and there was no apparent harm to the little "Yellow Boy" Winchester copy. When I asked my brother about it, he said they were issued the tracers as a signaling device only. Apparently it was a very weak load as I had noticed a very curved trajectory especially since I was shooting at about 50 feet.
OK, that is my tracer story. Of course, in the PDRK we can't have tracers for anything now
. It is a felony to possess tracer ammunition so all that I used to have was expended before the law took effect.