In actual combat, fire can be as deadly a threat as it is a protector. He said that the flamethrower "strikes people as the ultimate zombie eliminator" because it "can turn an undead crowd into a wailing funeral pyre.
We're no longer maintaining this page. Personal Finance. CNNMoney Sponsors. SmartAsset Paid Partner. These are your 3 financial advisors near you This site finds and compares 3 financial advisors in your area Check this off your list before retirement: talk to an advisor Answer these questions to find the right financial advisor for you Find CFPs in your area in 5 minutes. In any case, it was a highly-flammable, oil-based fluid. In combat, Byzantine forces would pump this substance from a large reservoir, through narrow brass tubes.
These tubes concentrated the pressurized liquid into a powerful stream, the same way a hose and nozzle concentrate water into a narrow jet. The soldiers lit a fuse at the end of the brass tubes to ignite the fluid stream as it shot out. The fluid stream carried fire dozens of feet through the air. The Byzantines mounted these weapons along the walls of Constantinople, as well as the bows of their ships.
Since the flammable substance was oil-based, it would still burn even when it hit the water , making it a particularly effective weapon in naval battles. Initially, the Byzantines' enemies were mystified by this horrific weapon, but before long, others were copying the technology. The Chinese applied their advanced technology to take the idea to the next level.
The Byzantines used a very basic pump, like the sort used to drive water out of an underground well. This kind of pump only pushes out fluid on the downstroke, so the Byzantine flamethrower could only shoot fire in short bursts. The Chinese had developed a more advanced pump, the double-acting bellows. Double-acting bellows consist of a pivoting pedal that drives two pumping chambers.
When the pedal is pushing down on one chamber the downstroke , it's lifting up on the other the upstroke. In this way, the pump is constantly pushing out fluid, allowing a continuous stream of fuel and therefore a constant blast of fire. Soon after this sort of weaponry came into use, it was eclipsed by another pyrotechnic technology: gunpowder. Over the next thousand years, gunpowder revolutionized the world of warfare, and flamethrowers more or less fell by the wayside.
But as we'll see in the next section, flamethrowers were eventually reintroduced into the world's combat arsenal, in a modified form. In World War I, the German army rediscovered the flamethrower and added it to their arsenal in a new and improved form. By World War II , forces on both sides used a range of flamethrower weapons on the battlefield. The most impressive innovation was the handheld flamethrower. This long, gun -type weapon has an attached fuel tank that soldiers can carry on their back.
The backpack contains three cylinder tanks. The two outside tanks hold a flammable, oil-based liquid fuel, similar to the material used to make Greek fire. The tanks have screw-on caps, so they can be refilled easily. It was used to extreme success by Marines on Guadalcanal. By burning up the oxygen in the area, the flamethrower quickly knocked the enemy out of the fight.
It was designed primarily to incapacitate, not kill. As the technology advanced, militarized flamethrowers went from spraying gasoline to using a flammable gel. An experimental investigation of the physiological mechanisms concerned in the production of casualties by flame thrower attack.
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Oxford: Osprey Publishing; Huard P. The horrific effectiveness of flamethrowers. Accessed 20 Dec Download references. The author wishes to express appreciation to Mr. Charles S. Hobson for providing practical experience on WWII flamethrower operation as well as hours of technical and analytical discussion on flamethrower functioning and effects. The author would also like to acknowledge Ms. Alicia Jurney for offering her grammatical expertise during the editing of the manuscript.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.
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