I spent yesterday evening playing Team Fortress 2 (after a long break from it) as my favorite class; the Pyro (jarate’s really ruined things for me, bloody snipers :mad:).
This got me thinking about that most sadistic and terrifying (but exceptionally cool ;)) of weapons; the flamethrower. I’m aware that the general design essentially consists of a pneumatic, portable hose which squirts a thickened petroleum fuel (as opposed to the gas that tends to be portrayed in most works of fiction) with a gas powered torch to light it as necessary. I’m also aware of some of the other common mistakes that are made; the fuel tank won’t explode when shot (although the pressure of the escaping fuel would probably knock the wearer to the ground) as the fuel is (understandably) mixed to be hard to ignite without a sufficiently hot flame and it has a much greater range than most people give them credit for.
The thing is, what’s the point of them? I recall hearing that very few flamethrowers (as in the soldiers carrying them) were ever captured alive; they were executed on the spot. What could be worth the trade-off of being marked for certain death (and probably not to popular with your colleagues)?
They’re useful for clearing out enclosed spaces, like bunkers or caves. You just have to shoot into the entrance. Even if nobody is directly hit by the flames, all of the oxygen will be consumed in short order. They were used a lot in the Pacific by US Marines during WW2 for exactly that purpose.
Other than that, I think their effect is mostly psychological.
Well, it’s not like you were picked for carrying the flamethrower out of popularity. And a few other troops would also be the object of special-attention targetting (the other side’s snipers; visibly-identified superior officers, etc.). what I recall about the FT-carriers is not so much that they were “executed on the spot” but that they had a high casualty rate because they would necessarily have to stand quite up front and had a harder time running for cover.
The point of a flamethrower? As lazybratsche says, to “flush out” enemies who may be holed down in a bunker, pillbox, cave, covered trench, whatever, where you cannot easily just spray them with bullets and shrapnel from a safe distance and it would not be risk-effective to try to make it the last few feet to throw grenades in through the nearest opening. Instead you shoot a stream of flaming fluid from a few yards away into their position, and either survivors run out the back door, if there’s a back door, or everyone dies where they stand.
The “hose” flamethrower has become largely obsolete with the development and improvements in precision of other forms of ordnance for use against fortified positions.
Like the Bazooka team, the flamethrower man doesn’t get as much “work” as a rifleman, but when he’s needed, he’s appreciated. Being able to flush out otherwise impregnable targets, often just by the threat of being used, can be invaluable at times.
Note that your secondary fire button can reflect sniper arrows and put out teammates that are on fire. The fundamental tactic hasn’t changed much - sneak around and pop up when no one is expecting you.
Flamethrowers are good for urban environments damaged by heavy shelling to the point where tanks can no longer get through like the Brest fortress, Stalingrad and many other places in WW2. Todays armies fight from further away or amongst civilians so they are not as popular anymore.
P.S. Nothing like relaxing in your favorite chair with a nice warm cup of jararte after a long day at work
Because youre the guy who can burn a bunker down thus saving your squad from having to fight 10 angry men pouring out the front door. Well, they still have to fight them, but they dont have much fight left in them when theyre screaming and on fire.
I dont see how you make this role out to be so dramatic. A hand grenade does similar area damage.
Although the flamethrower is a big target, it also has a great deal of suppression capability. Tactically, a FT would be kept out of the immediate firefight until needed. Likewise, he isn’t going in screaming and spraying flame every which way. He sneaks up under cover and carefully hits an already identified target. Think about the british FT team in A Bridge Too Far.
In the Pacific island hopping, the FT was usually the final act in an oft-repeated play where riflemen supported by tanks, MGs and mortars gradually closed in on japanese fortified positions until the way was clear for the FT man to approach and reduce the position from a (relatively) safe location. At that point the danger to the FT was if the troops inside sortied or if reinforcements managed to bring flanking fire onto the FT.
Well, the Flamethrower usually has a pilot flame on it’s business end. If the tank is under any kind of pressure it could spray fuel when hit. There’s a good chance of that fuel being ignited by the operators own pilot. And there are often other ignition sources such as stuff already burning from the FTs previous shots. This seems to be what happens in the beach scene in Private Ryan. The unlucky FT man and his buddy get sprayed with fuel which almost immediately ignites rather than the tank actually exploding.
It’s also possible that the tank could get hit by a burning tracer round.
As Hypno-Toad said, it can ignite, but it’s not as likely as you’d expect. But the fuel itself is a bit like high explosives; it’s been mixed so it won’t ignite unless properly promoted. Early flamethrowers may not have used the same mix, so they may well have exploded. However, if you shot the tank with a normal bullet, it would only be punctured and spray the fuel everywhere. The weapon’s pilot flame (or the flame or pilot flame from another nearby flamethrower, of course) could ignite it and as noted above, a tracer round (which is essentially a bullet with a built in flare) or another round designed to ignite something could also set it off. Even in this case it may well just cause the tank to spew out a stream of burning fuel (as you would get from the muzzle of the weapon) which the wearer might be able to avoid if they’re lucky.
There may also be a tank of butane (or similar fuel) to power the pilot light which could explode (although this wouldn’t be too easy either, considering how heavily built they would need to be in the first place).
Not to mention their mature forms, which are always at risk of overheating.
The thing is, a tank of gasoline can’t explode. It can burn, but it needs oxygen from the air to burn. So only gasoline that is exposed to air can burn, and when it’s inside a tank there isn’t much air, certainly not enough for complete combustion of the gasoline. Remember the fire triangle.
Explosives are different because they don’t require air, they already contain oxidizer. And so gunpowder and dynamite can explode just from exposure to heat.
When you see gasoline explosions in the movies you aren’t exactly seeing gasoline explosions. You’re seeing a gasoline vapor + air explosion, which is a different thing.
However, if the fuel from a flamethrower gets sprayed everywhere and then ignited it could create a very rapid and energetic fire that would look a lot like an explosion. But hitting the tank itself wouldn’t explode the tank, just rupture the tank and potentially expose the fuel to air, which when exposed to heat completes the fire triangle and whhhhooooosh, up it goes.
Napalm and WP(*) are restricted but not banned by the UN, but flamethrowers per se are not (very reasonable: it’s the stuff being thrown that’s nasty, not what throws it). The convention in question limits use of incendiaries only against valid military point-targets (i.e. specific vehicles, bunkers, etc.) and forbids broad-area “firestorming”. So the classic flamethrower would be kosher under it.
(* and strictly speaking, many modern incendiaries are NOT actual napalm or WP, but use other technologies)
