M18 Smoke

Factions	Weapon	Icon	Classes	Stats
				Smoke Radius	Duration	Color
US	M18 Smoke		Assault Medic Gunner Sniper	500	10 seconds	Red, green, yellow, violet

Designation	Weapon Type	Place of Origin	Weapon Script Name
M18 Colored Smoke Grenade	Smoke Grenade	United States of America	weapon_m18r

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M18 Smoke is a U.S. colored smoke grenade. It fills the same basic role as AN-M8 Smoke, but uses colored smoke for marking positions, signaling, or making a location stand out.

In-Game Function

M18 Smoke is thrown like a grenade and produces colored smoke after a short fuse. It has a smoke radius of 500 and lasts 10 seconds. The available smoke colors are red, green, yellow, and violet. It is available to the U.S. Assault, Medic, Gunner, and Sniper classes.

HISTORY

The real M18 colored smoke grenade was a U.S. hand-thrown smoke grenade built for signaling. Instead of making only a white smoke screen, it could be filled for red, green, yellow, or violet smoke. That made it useful for marking friendly positions, landing zones, extraction points, and targets that needed to be recognized from the air or at a distance.

Like the AN-M8, the M18 was a burning-type smoke grenade rather than a bursting explosive grenade. U.S. ordnance references describe it as a thin sheet-metal grenade using a pyrotechnic delay-igniting fuze and colored smoke mixture, with real smoke output lasting about 50 to 90 seconds.

Colored smoke was especially useful in the Vietnam War, where aircraft and ground units often had to coordinate through jungle cover, uneven terrain, and confusing contact. The M18 was not the best choice when a unit simply needed a thick white screen, but it was valuable when the color itself carried the message.

Sources

• Grenade, Hand, Smoke, M18 | Bulletpicker
• Ordnance Technical Data Sheet | U.S. Army
• TC 3-23.30 Grenades and Pyrotechnic Signals | U.S. Army
• M18 Colored Smoke Grenade | Wikimedia Commons

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Real-Life Photos

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  A Yellow M18 colored smoke grenade with it's carboard container tube.
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  A member of the 11th Civil Engineer Squadron Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit prepares M18 smoke grenades for training here, April 17. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Robert Cloys) Image cropped to focus on M18 grenade.
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  Operation “Cook”, was a search and destroy mission conducted in the mountains of Quang Ngai Province, RVN about 320 miles NE of Saigon.
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  Members of the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry, 101st Airborne Division, "pop" a smoke grenade to guide in a CH-47 Chinook helicopter which is bringing supplies to Fire Support Base Ripcord. NARA 111-CCV-626-CC70183
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  Members of an aerorifle platoon from Troop D, 1st Squadron, 10th Cavalry, 4th Inf Div, use a smoke grenade to guide in helicopters to the landing zone after completing a search and clear operation in the mountains south of Fire Support Base "Action." NARA 1...
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  SP5 Thomas Smith, Company C, 2nd Battalion, 27th Infantry, 25th Division, carries an AN/PRC-25 radio (rear view) and smoke grenades on his back during a sweep near the village of Xuan To Troung, Gia Dinh Province, approximately 7 kilometers southwest of Sai...
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  Drawing of an American M18 smoke grenade.

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