How do plane deployed smoke curtains work?

Question

I’ve seen videos from the early 1900s of smoke curtains deployed by planes to hide ships or places, how does these work? How does the smoke spread downwards but stay in one consistent ‘curtain’?

Appreciate any info! 😀

In: Engineering

Answer 1

Basically you need something that becomes a very fine particle that is only slightly heavier than air so floats slowly down to the ground and isn’t dispersed by the wind. On the particular day in the video the wind was virtually nil.