 The American "balloon-buster" ace, Frank Luke, was a prominent victim of later versions of this device, and it was mentioned in Eddie Rickenbacker's book "Fighting the Flying Circus" and in many "Biggles" stories.Later in the war the term was also applied to any sort of anti-aircraft fire that used a visible tracer, appearing in reports of combat from the Battle of Taranto, for instance.The first "flaming onion" weapon was a 37mm Hotchkiss type, smooth bore, short barreled Gatling-type revolving cannon called a "lichtspucker" (light spitter) that was designed to fire flares at low velocity in rapid sequence across a battle area.