Yeah, I’m with you on the possibility of shooting the windows before using the hammer. Makes sense. That’s the one thing he couldn’t rehearse. Swing too hard and you might injure one of those precious shooting hands.
As for the tracers, if he only fired them at the tanks, it’s quite likely no one noticed that. And that’s where I thought he might use them as it was long distance and maybe he hoped a tracer could ignite the fuel.
He did try and fail once to buy tracers in late Sept.
When he owned an apartment project, they did all their own maintenance. He was no dummy.
Apparently he didn't know that the fuel was almost impossible to ignite and if it did, it would go straight up.