Flaming Onions

jado · 27 October 2001, 04:57 PM

Could someone explain to me the exact makeup of "Flaming Onions"? I keep reading about them as AA fire in most books involving air-raids.

Appreciate the help!

Joe Doyle

27 October 2001, 05:34 PM

AFAIK, "Flaming Onions" were simply incendiary rounds that gun crews mixed in with the standard ammunition fired from AA guns like the German 75mm. The large fireballs they generated seem to have been intended as more of a distraction than an actual threat to aircraft.

Graeme · 27 October 2001, 10:45 PM

The following (paraphrased) description of flaming onions comes, I think, from the book "Memoirs of an old balloonatic" by Goderic Hodges:

One of the more novel forms of defence was the famous flaming onions, a string of eight shells, each of 35mm diameter, fired from a mortar. At 200 feet each shell vented green flame through a 15mm hole in its base (phosphorus burning in the air) and the whole thing snaked to about 7,000 feet and was supposed to wrap itself around an aeroplane and set it alight. This seldom happened.

As far as I know, flaming onion batteries were mostly sited to defend observation balloons.

Graeme

Boom · 28 October 2001, 03:15 AM

Gotta find the reference, but remember reading flaming onions used by the PBI (Poor Bloody Infantry) as well. Apparently a large shell with lots of pyro-technics.

jado · 28 October 2001, 02:52 PM

Thanks for the information gentlemen. They sound like they were very ineffective.

Joe Doyle

28 October 2001, 11:37 PM

With all due respect to my friends above what they say is at odds to my understanding.

I believe a 'Flaming Onion' to be a 37mm 'gatling' style multi-barrelled AA gun. *The photo I saw showed a hand cranked thing like a normal gatling on steroids. It was mounted on some roughly welded steel structure attached to a 'permanent' concrete base and seemed to have a big pole with which a second guy would traverse the thing. (Buggered if I can remember where I saw the picture tho').

As to the theory that they were linked - I don't think so! *I think they had clips of shells that went out in groups of 8 or so close together.

IIRC 4AFC lost 1 or 2 pilots to the things in the whole of 1918.

Vin · 29 October 2001, 12:12 AM

Whenever I see the words "With all due respects to..." I know there is either a "but" or a barb on the way. Get stuck into 'em, Gordon !

Vin

Michael Skeet · 29 October 2001, 03:01 AM

I'm with Gordon on this one. I don't recall ever reading that the 37mm cannon was multi-barreled, but it was definitely an auto-cannon, and the "green balls" were tracer rounds fired by it. The wobbly trajectory was caused by deformation of the round as the phosphorus burned.

rammjaeger · 29 October 2001, 04:43 AM

Michael,

Gordon is correct concerning the multi-barrelled AA gun!

The Germans used at first the 3.7 cm Revolverkanone with a bundle of five barrells! But later the German M-Flak (Maschinen-Flak) became the horror of many Allied aviators.

Boom · 29 October 2001, 05:37 AM

1. Didn't know Immelman was a Saxon. Did he really say that about his air? What a way to be remembered in the history books.

2. Ref to flaming onionsin the trenches may be in Yeates' Winged Victory, but because it's fiction there's no index. I'll keep looking.