halloa,

i'm planning a nam dio.
there is a thing i don't know.
which colers where used for the smoke grenades and were was it used for?

dio idee is a m113 who's running over a mine, an medevac huey comes for the wounded. and a secend huey(slick) gives it fire support and comes for the rest of the m113 crew. all in 1:35

greets Sander

Sander,
Smoke grenades were olive drab. They were used to mark one's own position when calling in gunships, marking locations for incoming choppers, etc.

Shaun

Ok, let me see if I can remeber, but i now i am probably wrong, so we will let the more combat guys answer this.

I at least know the colors:
Red
Yellow
Green
Violet
I believe Red is for emergencies/EVAC type, but I may be wrong. The reason why I say this is because I just came back from my two week training and we had to save our RED smokes for just that purpose. I think it also depends on what the radio man tells the piolet what color they are using. Its a safety thing, that way the piolet does come up to enemy using a different color.

The top of the smoke grenade is painted the same color as the smoke it emmits too, as in the photo below. Also, the smoke comes out of a hole in the bottom end of the cylinder, opposite the fuze end.


Epi has pretty much got it. The colors were usually standardized by the unit who used them, The only one that was pretty much universal was red, Hot LZ. Red is still used for this purpose today. The other colors would be used as seen fit by the one using them. There was/is also a White HC (HydroChloric) Smoke grenade as well that is simmilar to tear gas, nasty stuff.

Thanks Gino for confirming this for me. As you can tell, we dont use much of the Smoke Grenades in a Forward Support Unit.

By the way, how is Ft. Irwin. A bunch of guys from my Dision will be heading out that way for training inroute to Iraq. Be on the look out for anybody from th 36th Infantry Division.

In Nam we used the red for a hot LZ or danger areas. On convoys we used the red if we came under attack or to mark the bad guys for air support. The other colors were used for identifiers.

I thought the colors rotated and were designated for specific operations. That way the enemy didn't know what the smoke was supposed to designate friendly position, enemy postion or land here or attack here, etc. If you always used the same colors then the enemy could figure it out and start popping off smoke at their positions to avoid fire or lure in unsuspecting troops.

Shermansam: that sounds like it's going to be one helluva huge dio with two M113s and two Hueys.

We carried a couple colors on missions SOP was:

1. Pop smoke, and notify air unit.
2. Air unit would respond with "I see your (color) smoke"
3. Verify color of smoke with air unit.

This was because those "other people" had smoke grenades too.

The color smoke used does vary by operation. That way the enemy won't know what green, yellow, red, etc. are being used for. This is normally spelled out in the Command and Signal paragraph of an operations order (OPORD).

In peacetime, we reserve the use of red smoke, flares and star clusters to signal a real world emergency, but the actual color used in combat to evacuate wounded would vary.

White smoke is often used for masking your movement (like they did during Band of Brothers).

hmm, that are very clear answers.
so it doesn't matter with coler i use

but for the scene drama i use the coler red, everybody know the coler red as a bad signal.
i will place a note why i used red instead a different coler.

thanks everybody and if i need more info i know where i can find it

any progress will be shown here, but it can be later.
because im now in the 6th week of my militair career

greets Sander

Epi,
I will keep a lookout for your buddies. We will train them up and get them over there and hopefully get them back safely. When are they scheduled to come out this way?

And if I am not mistaken, Willie Peter (Whie Phosphorus) grenades were off-white...just to keep them from getting confused with the regular smoke or CS grenades...

Aloha,

Johnny B

You are correct about the Willy Pete, we didn't like that stuff too much it is just flat dangerous. It burns and water actually makes it burn more fiercely. Get some of that on you and you could kiss that part of your body goodbye.