Flaming Onions?

[Michael Skeet]

I've always assumed that the legendary German "flaming onions" of WWI were an unknown quantity, like the Greek fire of the Byzantine Roman Empire.

Last night, though, while re-reading a book called "Aces and Aircraft of the First World War," I came across Billy Bishop's reference to flaming onions, after which the author (Christopher something; I've just forgotten his last name) says something to the effect of "Of course, everybody knows that there was no mystery to flaming onions."

According to this guy, flaming onions were tracer shells being fired by the German 3.7cm maschinen flak, which he describes as a 37mm autocannon with a ROF of 300 rpm, originally developed as a rapid-fire weapon for torpedo boats. This almost makes sense to me. The distortion to the tracer shells caused by the rapidly burning phosphorus would account for the peculiar trajectory pilots reported seeing these onions taking; and a 37mm tracer shell would certainly appear large enough, especially when it was coming more or less right at you. The author doesn't state the ratio of tracer to ordinary rounds, but I'd be willing to bet it was a lot less than the usual 1-in-5.

Have any of you come across this suggestion before? Or is this guy talking through his hat? (The book is otherwise fairly well researched, though like most pop-history books there are no footnotes or bibliographic citations, and the index sucks.)

According to "Up and At 'Em" by Harold Hartney, the Flaming Onion "was an archie missile of most peculiar habits. It burst with about the same sound as a high explosive but let loose a ball of fire which corkscrewed through the air in ever widening circles . . . A terrifying beastie to meet in the air!"

[Stephanie]

Excellent! I posed this "flaming onion" question, some of you might or might not remember, about eight months ago and we could not come up with anything. Now we not only have specifications, but cited references as well! I am inclined to believe that this term was not as widely used as others, or perhaps the munition itself was not encountered very often?

[Vin]

I recall reading, as a boy, about "flaming onions" in one of the Biggles books - Biggles of the Camel Squadron W E Johns - from memory. It was explained in a glossery. I recall only that it was anti aircraft fire.