Flamethrower
Contemporary flamethrowers can incinerate a target some 50–100 metres (160–330 ft) from the operator; moreover, an unignited stream of flammable liquid can be fired and afterwards ignited, possibly by a lamp or other flame inside the bunker.
In the documentary Vietnam in HD, platoon sergeant Charles Brown tells of how one of his men was killed when his flamethrower was hit by grenade shrapnel during the battle for Hill 875.
[8][9] The flamethrower found its origins in a device consisting of a hand-held pump that shot bursts of Greek fire via a siphon-hose and a piston which ignited it with a match, similar to modern versions, as it was ejected.
The Pen Huo Qi ("fire spraying device") was a Chinese piston flamethrower that used a substance similar to petrol or naphtha, invented around 919 AD during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period.
The earliest reference to Greek fire in China was made in 917, written by Wu Renchen in his Spring and Autumn Annals of the Ten Kingdoms.
[18] The Chinese applied the use of double-piston bellows to pump petrol out of a single cylinder (with an upstroke and a downstroke), lit at the end by a slow-burning gunpowder match to fire a continuous stream of flame (as referred to in the Wujing Zongyao manuscript of 1044).
Southern Tang forces attempted to use flamethrowers against the Song navy, but were accidentally consumed by their own fire when violent winds swept in their direction.
Book of Ingenious Mechanical Device (Kitāb fī ma 'rifat al-ḥiyal al-handasiyya) of 1206 by Ibn al-Razzaz al-Jazari mentioned about ejectors of naphtha (zarāqāt al-naft).
[26] Although flamethrowers were never used in the American Civil War, "Greek Fire" shells were produced and used by Union troops during the Second Battle of Charleston Harbor.
The idea was abandoned due to technical issues[30] During the siege of Port Arthur, Japanese combat engineers used hand pumps to spray kerosene into Russian trenches.
[31] Before WW1 German pioneers used the Brandröhre M.95 a weapon consisting of a sheet metal tube (125 mm (4.9 in) wide and 1.2 m (3.9 ft) long) filled with an incendiary mixture, and a friction igniter activated by a lanyard.
[32][33] Bernhard Reddeman, a German military officer and former fireman, converted steam powered fire engines into flamethrowers; his design was demonstrated in 1907.
On depressing a lever the propellant gas forced the flammable oil into and through a rubber tube and over a simple igniting wick device in a steel nozzle.
In 1908 Fiedler started working with Reddeman and made some adjustments to the design; an experimental pioneer company was created to further test the weapon.
[32][34] It was not until 1911 that the German Army accepted their first real flamethrowing device, creating a specialist regiment of twelve companies equipped with Flammenwerfer Apparent.
[35] Despite this, use of fire in a World War I battle predated flamethrower use, with a petrol spray being ignited by an incendiary bomb in the Argonne-Meuse sector in October 1914.
[37] On 30 July 1915 it was first used in a concerted action, against British trenches at Hooge, where the lines were 4.5 m (4.9 yd) apart—even there, the casualties were caused mainly by soldiers being flushed into the open and then shot rather than from the fire itself.
The first vehicle to be incorporated was a tank built from a Caterpillar Twenty Two tractor, featuring a turret mounted flamethrower and four Hotchkiss machineguns on the hull.
[46] During the battle of Kilometer 7 to Saavedra, Major Walther Kohn rode in a flamethrower equipped tankette; due to heat he exited the tank to fight on foot and was killed in combat.
[48] This was essentially a disposable, single use flamethrower that was buried alongside conventional land mines at key defensive points and triggered by either a trip-wire or a command wire.
Starting in New Guinea, through the closing stages on Guadalcanal and during the approach to and reconquest of the Philippines and then through the Okinawa campaign, the Army deployed hand-held, man-portable units.
The November 1944 issue of the US War Department Intelligence Bulletin refers to these "Fougasse flame throwers" being used in the Soviet defense of Stalingrad.
[77] An IRA team riding on an improvised armoured truck used one of these flamethrowers, among other weapons, to storm a British Army permanent checkpoint in Derryard, near Rosslea, on 13 December 1989.
[79][80][81][82] Another IRA unit carried two attacks in less than a year with another improvised flamethrower towed by a tractor on a British Army watchtower, the Borucki sangar, in Crossmaglen, County Armagh, also in the early 1990s.
[106] Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, Inc. and owner of SpaceX, developed a "not a flamethrower" for public sale through his business, The Boring Company, selling 20,000 units.
This device uses liquid propane gas rather than a stream of gasoline, making it more akin to a torch, like those commonly available at home and garden centers.
For example, in the production of sugar cane, where canebrakes are burned to get rid of the dry dead leaves which clog harvesters, and incidentally kill any lurking venomous snakes.
[108] U.S. troops allegedly used flamethrowers on the streets of Washington, D.C. (mentioned in a December 1998 article in the San Francisco Flier), as one of several clearance methods used for the surprisingly large amount of snow that fell before the presidential inauguration of John F.
[109] A history article on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers notes, "In the end, the task force employed hundreds of dump trucks, front-end loaders, sanders, plows, rotaries, and allegedly flamethrowers to clear the way".
In April 2014 it was reported by South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper without confirmation that a North Korean government official, O Sang-Hon, Deputy Minister at the Ministry of Public Security, was executed by flamethrower.
