In the mesmerizing ‘The Master’, one scene shows a character unscrewing a plate from the surface of a (WWII era) bomb. Doing so allows him to drain a liquid from inside the bomb which he then proceeds to drink - to get stoned. I have a few questions:
What was the liquid? Alcohol? Some other organic substance? If so, what?
And, the Wiki link is clearly talking about what I was referring to. It’s interesting that just five days ago a reference was added to the article about what was depicted in The Master.
Not seeing the movie i’m guessing like the others that it was alcohol. I believe the Germans at one point devoted over half the production of potatoes to the conversion of alcohol.
The alcohol was fuel. There was also a type of hydrogen peroxide in these things. A catalyst converted the hydrogen peroxide into oxygen. This mixed with the alcohol for combustion and therefore propulsion.
This was used for torpedoes, the V2 rockets and a prototype sub that could go very fast. If I recall the show it was featured on, it could go over 30 knots but wasn’t put into production due to lack of the vital alcohol that was diverted to the V2 program.
I believe this type of set up for torpedoes was used by the British until maybe the 50s and a fatal accident (fire) was one reason why it was discontinued. If you’ll remember a few years ago there was a Russian sub in the Bering sea that had a fire in the torpedo compartment which resulted in I believe loss of all on board.
When I read “The Master” I thought for a second you were referring to *Our *Master, Cybil.
No, wait, Cecil! Yeah, that’s it!
BTW where *is *the ruler of this board? Any Cecil sightings lately?
Note that they switched the denaturing agent to croton oil later because of that. An interesting point which doesn’t seem to be mentioned there is that the addition of the red warning dye to the methanol in the original formulation quite possibly hurt rather than helped. The filtering techniques that sailors came up with to attempt to remove the wood alcohol didn’t work. But they DID remove the dye, making them think the stuff was now safe.
On a similar note, I recall reading that the Russian soldiers based in Berlin actually drank the fuel for the nuclear missiles located there and the stuff they replaced it with was significantly weaker and would’ve had a hard time flying past their blast radius.
Not true. Methanol or wood alcohol was added for denaturing the grain alcohol - it was only like 5%. It was removed by soaking in bread. Read more here : Torpedo juice - Wikipedia
And then there was the account of Yuri Belenkov (the Mig-25 pilot.) Their m-25’s systems kept freezing up because ground crews kept filching the alcohol-based anti-freeze to drink, and replacing it with water.
Only somewhat off-topic: What about aircraft? Can you crack open your “whiskey compass” and get a quick fix if you’re on a long flight and start to see pink elephants?
That seems unlikely. The only nuclear-equipped liquid propellant theater ballistic missiles that the the Soviet Union deployed in Europe during the Cold War were the R-14 (NATO reporting name SS-5 “Skean”) and the R-11/-17 (SS-1B/C “Scud A/B”), which used caustic storable propellants; that is, unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) for the fuel and some combination of red fuming nitric acid (RFNA) and nitrogen tetroxide (N[SUB]2[/SUB]O[SUB]4[/SUB]). Of these, the latter is the least harmful, as it will just make your tissues highly permeable to any environmental toxins and (in high concentrations) and cause pulmonary hemorrhage. UDMH will spontaneously combust in the presence of strong oxidizers, and RFNA can literally cause the flesh to melt off of your skeleton.
Never underestimate the ingenuity of a soldier looking to tie one on. I remember my grandfather telling me about how, while he was stationed in the Amazon Jungle during WWII, there was a large surplus of Aqua Velva in his camp for some reason, and they would pour it on slices of bread (with the bread acting as a filter of sorts, retaining the alcohol) and then eat the bread in order to get drunk.
