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. The middle tank holds a flammable, compressed gas such as butane. This tank feeds gas through a pressure regulator to two connected tubes. One tube leads to the ignition system in the gun, which we'll discuss later on.
The other tube leads to the two side fuel tanks, letting the compressed gas into the open area above the flammable liquid. The compressed gas applies a great deal of downward pressure on the fuel, driving it out of the tanks, through a connected hose, into a reservoir in the gun. The gun housing has a long rod running through it, with a valve plug on the end.
A spring at the back of the gun pushes the rod forward, pressing the plug into a valve seat. This keeps the fuel from flowing out through the gun nozzle when the trigger lever is released. When the operator squeezes the trigger lever, it pulls the rod and the attached plug backward. With the valve open, the pressurized fuel can flow through the nozzle.
In retrospect, it is fair to say that Lt. Experts generally agreed, for example, that mortality among burn victims was variable and related to the extent and degree of burns, the age and physical condition of the victim, and whether comprehensive and rapid medical care was available.
Many also believed that burn wounds were more complicated and painful than mechanical wounds considering the repeated medical and surgical interventions often required to treat severe burns. Likewise, most agreed that asphyxiation and CO poisoning were possible when burning occurred in enclosed spaces and that both were more likely with napalm considering the large amount of oxygen consumed and CO and carbon dioxide produced by burning napalm.
In the end, a number of experts at the conference concluded that incendiary weapons, including flamethrowers, cause extreme and unnecessary suffering when compared to other weapons [ 29 ]. Fire is popularly and quite logically held as one of the worst ways to die. It is not quick, the victim taking long seconds or even minutes to succumb, as the flesh, nerve, muscle and eventually organs are charred to destruction. That intelligent human beings have turned their minds to developing instruments specifically to achieve this goal represents another tragic failure in society [ 30 ].
These evolving views on flame warfare were ultimately factors considered in the U. Nevertheless, a number of other nations still stock flamethrowers in their military inventories, and there is no international law specifically banning their use in war [ 31 ].
The gross misunderstandings and mischaracterizations of flamethrowers were likely the result of a number of factors, with one possibly being an effort by the military to assuage the horror young soldiers must have felt upon hearing the screams and seeing the charred remains of enemy soldiers following flame attacks.
However, another reason was quite clear from the lack of scientific data detailing exactly how flamethrower casualties were affected by the weapon. CWS studies flame deaths. Chem Warfare Bull. Terry WK. Japs in a hole: marines mop up with flame thrower.
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International Committee of the Red Cross. Quite aside from the worries of handling the device - it was entirely feasible that the cylinder carrying the fuel might unexpectedly explode - they were marked men; the British and French poured rifle-fire into the area of attack where Flammenwerfers were used, and their operators could expect no mercy should they be taken prisoner.
Their life expectancy was therefore short. The British, intrigued by the possibilities offered by flamethrowers, experimented with their own models. In readiness for the Somme offensive they constructed four sizeable models weighing two tons each , built directly into a forward trench constructed in No Man's Land a mere 60 yards from the German line.
Each was painstakingly constructed piece by piece, although two were destroyed by shellfire prior to 1 July the start of the Somme offensive. The remaining two, each with a range of 90 yards, were put to use as planned on 1 July.
Again highly effective at clearing trenches at a local level, they were of practically no wider benefit. Their use was consequently abandoned. Similarly the French developed their own portable one-man Schilt flamethrower, of a superior build to the German model. It was used in trench attacks during The Germans produced a lightweight modified version of their Flammenwerfer, the Wex , in , which had the benefit of self-igniting.
During the war the Germans launched in excess of flamethrower attacks; no numbers exist for British or French attacks. By the close of the war flamethrower use had been extended to use on tanks , a policy carried forward to World War Two.
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