 Because the early Hotchkiss weapon was not designed for anti-aircraft use, it did not have purpose-designed ammunition, but the flares were thought to be dangerous to doped-fabric covered aircraft.It appears that the design of specialist ammunition took place in tandem with design of higher velocity automatic anti-aircraft weapons; which may explain why the standard heavy automatic AA gun used by the Germans in World War II was of 37 mm caliber.The name "flaming onion" was also used for a number of unrelated military topics.