Trying this again, and PLEASE NOTE the words “quoted” and “quotations” in the following discussion. The author of the book reported what veterans of combat against the Japanese in World War II claimed about their experiences.

THE AUTHOR OF THE BOOK DID NOT CLAIM TO HAVE WITNESSED THE PHENOMENON HIMSELF. He is NOT a WWII combat veteran who fought Japanese snipers in tropical jungles.

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I have an idea about the answer to this question, but I’ve been wrong before and I’m curious what the authorities say.

I just finished rereading the (great!) book World War II Snipers by Gary Yee. There is more than one comment by soldiers or Marines who are quoted as saying that it was difficult to spot where hidden Japanese snipers were shooting from because their rifles fired “smokeless” powder and didn’t produce a visible signature.

Those quotations strike me as odd because of course by WWII all military forces were using what would commonly be called smokeless powder—i.e., not black powder that produces distinctive clouds of heavy white smoke. The modern rifles I’ve seen fired don’t produce what I would call much smoke, but was it any different in tropical fighting 80+ years ago?

Did American Garands and carbines produce smoke signatures that were significantly more obvious than those produced by Japanese rifles?

I think you answered your own question. If not check out why the Lebel was so ground breaking.

Vince

Waiting on RogueJSK's response

I’m familiar with how the development of smokeless powder affected military combat in general. As I recall it was mentioned about Spanish Mauser rifle fire during the Spanish American War. My question is whether there were any differences in the signatures—however minimal—produced by different weapons and ammunition during World War II.

Something that’s been discussed at some length in another thread here are the vapor/gas plumes produced when firing rifles with suppressors, and especially in cold or humid weather. Was something similar possibly noted by US military members about their own weapons due to the characteristics of the ammunition or environmental conditions when fighting the Japanese?

And although the relevance to the question is somewhat far-fetched, some witnesses reported seeing a “puff of smoke” from the “grassy knoll” when Kennedy was assassinated. I have always discounted those claims because any visual signatures from the countless guns I’ve seen fired have been extremely faint if visible at all, but are there exceptions?

quote:

Originally posted by P250UA5:
Waiting on RogueJSK's response

Indeed.

This is the first that I've ever encountered such a claim.

I'm not aware of any significant difference in the powder formulations used by Japanese ammunition. (Everyone was using "smokeless powder" - as opposed to black powder - by that time.)

I'm inclined to chalk this up to superstition/hyperbole... "Watch out, boys! Those sneaky Jap snipers use special bullets that don't have any flash or smoke!"

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
I'm inclined to chalk this up to superstition/hyperbole... "Watch out, boys! Those sneaky Jap snipers use special bullets that don't have any flash or smoke!"

We agree, but It's good to get your opinion. I am reminded of the claims/beliefs that the quilted winter clothing worn by the Chinese soldiers in Korea would stop M1 Carbine bullets.

Thank you.

Japanese pilots have to wear glasses.
OUR pilots eat carrots which improves their night vision.

Back in the olden days I had two types of powder in the magazines of my Navy destroyer. Both were "smokeless", but one was formulated for reduced smoke and used during daylight fire missions, while the other was formulated for reduced flash and used for nighttime fire missions.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
Trying this again...

Next time you don't like the responses you get, don't just edit out all content of your post and subject line.

I fail to see the point of doing that if you're going to simply re-post it after I deleted what you left up, which was nothing but wasted space.

Either edit your original post with what you want to say in order to clarify, or don't bother.

I can't think of any other member off the top of my head who does this.

The one response to my original post of the topic demonstrated such little understanding of the background information I provided and of the question that it seemed very likely that the discussion would go off at an extreme tangent and not focus on what I was interested in. I appreciated your deleting the thread and I took that as an opportunity to repost the question but with a new introduction to try to prevent what had happened the first time.

When things like that happen, my recommendation is for you to contact me via email. You will find me most accommodating and agreeable, certainly more so than with the way you went about it today. Deleting unwanted posts in a thread is preferable to having to discover on my own a neutered thread and nuking it.

Long repeated nonsense.

There's lots of it, some things last longer than others.

Thank you, and I understand.

The intent of my post was to point out that for many years militaries used smokelkess powder formlations to minimize either smoke or flash. Entirely possible that snipers might use ammunition that does the same.

quote:

Originally posted by Ranger41:
The intent of my post was to point out that for many years militaries used smokelkess powder formlations to minimize either smoke or flash.

Your post was the first time I’d ever heard about different powder formulations for those purposes; very interesting to learn.

Modern premium handgun ammunition such as Gold Dots reportedly have flash suppressants, and that makes sense. Typical training loads without it make difficult to see the target for follow up shots when shooting under low light conditions. When I queried the AI Copilot it indicated that flash suppressants are used in modern military ammunition, which again would make sense.

As for smoke, though, I’ve never seen any reference to trying to suppress that in small arms. Now that I’ve become attuned to the question, today I was watching several handgun shooters and I was somewhat surprised by the smoke signatures they produced. I was too far away to know what cartridges and loads were being fired, but as they were autoloading handguns I suspect they were 9mm guns, and based on the volumes of fire, I imagine they were shooting some sort of bulk training ammo.

To get back to Japanese snipers, I would be very surprised to learn that their ammunition had any sort of ingredients to suppress the smoke in any way, or even flash. Some rifles produce flash that’s visible in the daytime (such as the short barreled ARs which I also saw being fired today), but not many. The literature pertaining to Japanese wartime snipers is pretty sparce as compared with information about the snipers of all the other major combatants, but from what I have read their program was more primitive than the others’. For example, some (most, all?) of the telescopic sights issued to shooters couldn’t even be adjusted for elevation or windage by the shooter.

I get the impression that Japanese “snipers” were more of what we would call marksmen or sharpshooters who were expected to engage targets from relatively close ranges. They were evidently well trained in concealment and equipped with camouflage to operate effectively in jungle conditions, but I’ve never seen any discussion that they were trained or equipped to regularly operate the same way as snipers of the other forces did, to include long range engagements. (I could be wrong about all that, so if anyone can direct me to contrary sources, please do).

In any event, I strongly doubt that Japan would have gone to the trouble of producing special sniper ammunition whose smoke signature was reduced, and especially if normal loads didn’t reveal a shooter’s location. Another thing to consider is that I know of no other force’s snipers being located by smoke signatures. Sniper training in WWII emphasized avoiding other location give-aways such as dust from loose dirt or vegetation movement from the muzzle blast. In fact, there are many accounts of how difficult it often was to determine where snipers were firing from; that wouldn’t have been true if each shot belched out a plume of gun smoke.

Anyway, another thing to puzzle over, and I appreciate all the responses.

You may find this page of interest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6.5%C3%9750mmSR_Arisaka

Thanks for that. The details about the development of the weapons and ammunition were informative.

I got the impression that the article might have repeated some of the “lore” that grew up earlier about Japanese sniper operations. In any event, I’ll repeat my belief that under daylight conditions muzzle flash wasn’t a significant issue for snipers to be concerned about—at least it’s not something I’ve ever seen mentioned in my extensive reading on the subject. As for smoke, I can see how the longer barrels of the full length Type 38 rifles would have tended to minimize that, but my question remains: As compared to what?