June 4, 2010 • 24 mins
Who first decided that it would be a great idea to shoot flame at other people from a distance? Josh and Chuck talk about the (very) early origins, history and technology of the flamethrower in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant
(00:20):
that makes this Stuff you Should Know, right, Chuck, Yeah, yeah,
Jerry just I love it when like we get last
second instructions. Yeah, and they don't make any sense. Just
save it for the show, guys, right, or show that
picture on the podcast the audio podcast. Oh goodness, how
are you sir? I'm fine by all rights Friday, but
(00:40):
it's actually Thursday, but it's almost Memorial Day. Yeah, and
we're not Are you coming in tomorrow at all? No,
I'm not comfortable saying either way. Well, it's all to
be surprised. I don't want to get in trouble. Well
I'm not. I'm still scared of the man. I know
you're not. But you're all like, hey, look at me.
I'm forty. I make my own decisions, not forty, So Chuck.
(01:04):
You're George Carlin fan right, Yeah, the late George Carlin.
Just the late alright. We always had the bummer, don't you.
The late George Carlin could be like George Carlin. He's
the greatest stand up comedian ever, the very the worm
food George Carlin, Yeah, the dearly departed. Yes, I like him.
(01:26):
I have an obscure stand up bit that I'll bet
you haven't heard of that is the appropub of our
topic today. So George Carlin um had a bit about flamethrowers.
I never heard that one. He said that the very
presence of flamethrowers, and I'm paraphrasing, the very presence of
flamethrowers means that at some point sometime someone said to himself,
(01:49):
you know, there's a bunch of people over there that
I'd like to set on fire, but they're too far
away from me to get the job done. I wish
there was something that I could use to throw flames
on them, And as a result, we now have the flamethrower,
which is kind of crazy when you think about it
that way. It is pretty interesting, it is, And when
(02:09):
you start to really look into flamethrowers, you realize just
how horrific the acts that humans inflict on other humans
can be. Yeah, it's pretty it's pretty awful stuff. Actually, Yeah,
when you, I mean, actually all kinds of modern weapon. Rhenno.
My brother in lawson the Marines, he told me about this.
I think it's called a flachette, some sort of bomb
(02:30):
that like explodes above people and sends thousands of like
razor blades shooting out what. I think it's mainly used
for clearing like jungle, but ya, jungle of enemy combatant exactly.
To some sick I thought that up, we're like, what
one step away from the alien weapons in District nine
(02:51):
where people just blow up in an almost cartoonish fashion. Yeah,
it's coming the atomizer or something they'll call it. Um.
What's what's odd is that that person, that first person
that George carlin Um envisions, actually lived a lot longer
ago than you would think. I was shocked. I was
(03:12):
well century BC, fifth century b C. Man right, it
wasn't well, it was a flamethrower. It was very crude, vulgar,
if you will, flamethrower. It was a long tube sort
of like a blowgun, and they filled it with solid
stuff like hot coal and sulfur and went, yeah, ideally
(03:33):
you don't suck in. That would be bad. No. I
was thinking that too, like you have to suck in
the breath before you put the tube. Deer mouth or us,
you're in big trouble. Oh that's the case with any
blow blowgun, right, Sure, did you ever make those in
your kid? No? I never did. That was too busy
burning stuff. You could have done both apparently. So Yeah,
they would shoot I guess um hot coal or sulfur
(03:55):
out at their enemy combatant instead of a flame per se,
which I guess ultimately it would bounce off of their
arm and they'd be like, ah, that burns, and then
they just tussle and leg wrestling, right, and shake hands
afterwards and go eat a bore. That's that's how that
went to Life CENTRYBC with Josh. But leave it to
(04:17):
the Greeks, who were one of the brainiest, most um
thieving cultures of all time. They probably got this idea
from the Chemites. Frankly, but there's this stuff called um
Greek fire, right, And actually I can't say that the
Greeks came up with it. It's called Greek fire, but
the Byzantines that what we know is turks um. We're uh,
(04:40):
we're most notorious for using this stuff. Yeah, and that
they think they're not sure because it was a long
time ago. It was a mixture of liquid petrol and
sulfur and like stuff like quicklime petrol British for gas. Yeah,
and UM. They would pump it out actually from a
reservoir through little narrow tubes and like anything that goes
(05:04):
from a big reservoir type system to a small, thin one,
it would create pressure to shoot it out and then
some unlucky guy would be the lighter at the end
of it, and that would be like a real flamethrower,
like dozens of feet. Yeah, as we're gonna learn, anybody
whose job it was to deal with any aspect of
flame throwing UM was the unlucky guy. It's one of
(05:24):
the more dangerous weapons you can use, UM, but it
was very effective. Number one, since it's oil based, Uh,
it could this this Greek fire could be used in
naval battles because it would still burn even when it
contacted the water. UM. And so the Byzantines mounted it
on their ships. These flamethrowers UM on their ships and
(05:45):
on the city walls around Constantinople and basically just repelled
people out of fear as much as you know, burning
them alive. Yeah, they were. Their enemies were really freaked out.
I imagine when they first saw like fire shooting at them. Yes,
freaked out and intrigue, especially in the case of the Chinese.
See what the Byzantines had was a single action pump.
(06:07):
You just did the foot pump with literally do you
see that? Jerry them following your command, um. The the
Byzantines had a single action bellows pump to where when
you press down on the down stroke, it would push
the liquid out. Right. Yes, you get like a burst
of fire. And that's it right because on the upstroke
(06:29):
nothing was happening except with the bellows were filling back
up with air to press down compressed right. Um. The
Chinese said, hey, that's that's really funny because we have
a double action bellows to where you are compressing air
um on the up stroke and the downstroke. So instead
of your stupid little short bursts of Greek fire, we
have one long burst that just cuts you in half.
(06:52):
Lead to the Chinese get better the wheelbarrow, the kite,
the hang glider, the flamethrower, gun pouter, and actually gunpowder
um equaled the demise of flamethrowers for about a thousand years, right, Yeah,
as soon as gunpowder came along, they were like, yeah,
we're just chumps with fire. When we can actually shoot
(07:13):
a gun, that's that's the way of the future. And
it was. But so is the flamethrower as it turns out. Yeah,
because it lay dormant for about a thousand years. And
then in World War One, actually right before World War One,
the Germans, a very warlike state at the time, were, um,
they said, you know what, exactly can we and our
(07:35):
arsenal that is just totally scary and wildly destructive. Yes,
let's look back through the annals of of you know,
historic weaponry and find something. And they look through and
they said the flamethrower. Yeah. Richard Fielder is an engineer
in nineteen o one. They credit him with inventing it,
but he clearly was using old technology as the initial idea.
(07:57):
At least. It's a clever design, though, isn't it. Yeah,
because this from this original design. Um, there have been
you know, some polishing moments for the flamethrower over the years,
but from that, from that modern era that the design
has remained relatively the same. Right, It's like a three
tank design. Yeah, the flamin furfur because what it's called
(08:19):
nice the Germans. That's what the German uh, and it was, um,
well let's yeah, let's go ahead and explain how it
works with thanks, all right. And this is the handheld flamethrower,
which is the one that's I guess was most readily
used in combat. Yeah, and it's the one you see
like a guy's wearing these tanks on his back and
he's got the rifle. It's just right. So you got
(08:42):
two outer tanks and those are filled with the flammable
fuel oil based petrol if you will, like Greek fire
and um. Then there's a center, smaller tank which holds
a compressed gas like butane and uh it was. It
would feed the gas through a pressure right you later
connected to the tubes and you can take it from here. Well,
(09:03):
the this is why I think it's very clever. The
bututane served a dual purpose. One that was compressed, so
when you open the valve, it would push the liquid
fuel out of the tanks into the tube and ultimately
in the reservoir and the gun. The pressure regulator, right,
that's what they would but switch on. There is another
tube that came directly out of the third tank that
(09:27):
held the compressed the gas like butuane, and this tube
went directly to the ignition valve right right, so it
served as the igniter later on. Right that it was
because it was the bututane that was actually burning when
you um. When you open the ignition valve, the bu
tane flows to the end. This is with air the
end of the rifle. UM and then there's like there's
(09:49):
two triggers. There's the fuel released trigger, right, and then
there's the ignition trigger. And the ignition trigger is basically
you're operating a battery that operates a spark plug, sends
a current, generates heat right nights the tane. Now you
have that little blue flame on the end. Yeah, that's
what you've seen in movies, like if you see them around. Yeah, exactly,
you see the little like three inch flame coming out
(10:10):
in the end, right, that's actually beautane burning. The fuel
hasn't been released, the hell fire has not been opened
yet or released yet. That's when you squeeze what's the
fuel released trigger and then well, yeah, then that pulls
back a little valve plug because you obviously want it
plugged or else you're gonna have a big mess on
your hands. You'll be on fire very quickly. So when
(10:32):
you pull the fuel release trigger, it pulls the little
valve plug back and then all the fuel supply suddenly
rushes through to the tip of the gun where the
flame is and boom, there you go. Yeah and um.
In nineteen forty two, the Army Chemical Warfare Service, I
(10:53):
think is what it was called. Um, they came up
with a little something called napalm, which is ultimately a
g asoline or petrol in the case of Chuck and
our British friends, UM, a gasoline thickening agent. So with
a slightly thickened gas you have a longer range, It
carries further because it has more mass or girth or whatever.
(11:16):
There's less there's less friction from the ground coming up right.
Um and uh. It also can be concentrated more easily.
Right right. So basically that was one of those real
big polishing moments. It went from just gas which sprays,
to thick gas which sticks and burns. It evaporates much
(11:37):
less quickly, so it will burn forever and it's really
difficult to put out, and if you get covered in it,
you're entirely in trouble. Yes, you're out of luck. And
they would mount these on well p t boats. For one,
have you ever seen the videos of those things, like
cruising down the river, shooting in napalm into the forest. Well,
I see there's a picture of it in the article.
(11:58):
I've never seen video of It's pretty wicked. Yeah, And
they called them, they called them zippo flamethrowers, right, because
the ignition um system failed so frequently. It's just like
on a gas grill, they have to with a zippo
d And that's the other unlucky dude. I guess he'd
be like, don't get too close to it in his hand, right,
(12:20):
And so flamethrowers, it wasn't just some guy you know where.
It would be like a bunch of infantry guys and
then some guy on the end happened to grab the
flamethrower that morning when they went out, and it's just
you know, they were part of a tactical strategy. Yeah.
What would happened was rifleman would lay down cover fire.
Let's say you come to the mouth of a cave
(12:41):
and there's a bunch of enemy combatants in there, and
they're shooting you and they have snipers and you're in
big trouble. All your your rifleman lay down fire on
this case, so those guys can't move. Cover fire right
to allow your flamethrower man to get close. He was
highly susceptible at this point because of what he's wearing
on his back. Yes, all it takes is one good
(13:01):
shot to one of those tanks and that guy's gone,
or a bad shot, just a shot, yeah, if you
come in contact with it with the bullet. Yes, um.
But so the flamethrower guy gets close basically cooks everybody,
burns everyone to death in that cave, right, that's his job.
And then after that the munitions guys come in and
(13:22):
explode the cave so it can never be used again.
And that's sinora for cave dwellers. Yes. Uh, you know,
speaking of a quick death, I've always heard when I
was a kid, you know that. You know, if you
were a flamethrower in war, your average lifespan is like
thirty seconds in combat. Well, I always heard that, and
(13:42):
I'd scoured the internets and I could not find anything
to verify that, but um, that's what I always heard.
I thought that was an interesting tidbit. I did read
that most people who were flamethrower operators didn't survive. I
would imagine it's pretty dangerous thing to be toting around. Yeah,
and they also had assistant because the assistance would open
and close the valves on the pack form. That was
(14:03):
the whole job. It was always a two man team,
so both of them would usually not make it. I
would if I was the assistant, I would turn on
his little valve and then run for cover and then
run up and turn it off again. Right, And I'd
probably pretty unpopular with the flamethrower guy probably, And then
the flamethrower guy was well liked because if you can
take out an entire gun nest of people, then you
(14:24):
know everybody's going to applaud you and clap, and you know,
probably not get too close though, because you're going to
die eventually. Yeah, I'd rather be a sniper. I think
that'd be like I played Call of Duty. I got
a p S three now that I tell you that. No,
it was given to me by my step step step dad,
now father in law. You did tell me my stepfather
in law, And so I got just a couple of games.
(14:47):
I'm not like a huge gamer at all, Like I
think a nintendol, like the first Nintendo was the last
thing I actually owned. But um, I play Call of
Duty now. I like a shooter games too. It's pretty fun.
But you choose to be a sniper on that. Well,
now there are just certain levels where you can be
a sniper. Like you'll pick up a sniper gun if
you want. And I always usually kind of just hang
back and pick guys off, especially guys with flamethrowers. So
(15:10):
here we go again to liberal peace nicks like us
when it comes to like this war stuff, we just
get all giddy. Well it is this one. For some reason,
I was reading a passage about a flamethrower operator in
World War Two who you know, um received the Medal
of Honor for um invading a Japanese they think they're
called pillbox. It was a little gun nest and burning
(15:31):
them all and burning them all alive, and like the
the guy wrote um that there were some muffled screams
and then silence. It's like, you know, being burned alive.
It's pretty much everybody's worst death, I would think. So
it's up there. Well, we had worst way to die.
That's right up there, and I think if I remember correctly,
burning to death is consistently the number one, unlike informal polls. Right,
(15:52):
imagine is pretty painful and it happened a lot in
World War One to vietn M. Yeah, I imagined area.
This is a horrible weapon. But you can find uh,
civilian applications for can't you. Yeah. Well, before we move
on to that, we also need to say that they
were on tanks as well, so it wasn't just boats.
(16:13):
They used them on tanks, and uh, the design was
basically the same. You just had a lot more fuel
and you had like piston rotary pumps to get a
lot more length on your shot girth. And yeah, the
backpack mounted ones had a range of about fifty yards, right,
(16:33):
That's that's a long way though. Yeah, let's have a
football field. You don't have to get that close. Sure. Yeah,
I wonder if the first enemy that was like, he's
got a flamethrower, but we're way too far away. They
were within exactly. Uh yeah, civilian applications um, forced forced
(16:53):
fire fighters forest firefighters? Is that how you say it?
I don't know they actually use these when they do
like the prescribed burning, like sometimes they'll burn well not
just the firefighters, they do prescribe burns anyway. And then
sometimes the firefighters do that, they'll like burn a section
to cut it off right there. And that's what they
do it with flamethrowers, which actually kind of made me
(17:16):
want to go get a job with the forestry Service.
She could burn things on purpose. Well, yeah, did you
hear about this car thing in South Africa? Theft deterrent
system that burned you know? Yeah, I don't think it's
still around. This is like twelve years ago, and um,
a South African man invented it was called the blaster
(17:36):
and basically it would shoot a man high fireball that's
what they called it. What at you if you tried
to break into the car for a mere ran which
is uh and this that was like six or fifty bucks,
and um, it would squirt liquefied gas from a bottle
(17:57):
in the trunk through two nozzles located on the front door.
And the rub is you couldn't turn one on and
turn one off, so if a guy was breaking into
like the driver's side door, it would still shoot fire
out as a passenger side to whomever might be walking
by unluckily on that. So let's say, yeah, that's that's
an invention that wasn't fully thought through. I would think so.
(18:20):
But apparently he sold a bunch of him at the
time and he said it's non lethal, but it would
definitely blind a person, is what he said, and keep
them from stealing your car. Yeah, because they can't see
cars any longer. That's terrible. Yeah, way to go South Africa. Um. Lastly, Chuck.
Fire breathers their form of They follow the basic principles
(18:41):
of flamethrowing by drinking kerostene. There you go. If you
want to learn about fire breathers, we have an article
on them. If you want to learn more about flame throwers.
And before you send us a listener mail, we are
aware of flamethrower exhaust systems. We've both seen Greece before. Um,
you can type any word you want to into the
(19:04):
handy search bar how stuff works dot Com. It'll yield
something interesting. I guarantee you that. Uh So, Chuck listening
not quite okay, Well, we got to do our quick plugs.
We're gonna do a little quicker this time though, because
we take like ten minutes to do our New York
plugs and everything New York. We're gonna be at the
Knitting Factory in Brooklyn on June seven from five thirty
to seven thirty. We're having a happy hour for stuf
(19:26):
of you should know fans. Come with your elbows prepared
to be rubbed. Stay Wednesday, June ninth for a trivia
night to be determined not t b D my friend.
We have a location at a time and is at
the Bell House in Brooklyn, New York, and show up
at about six thirty and trivia will start at seven.
And this one is eighteen and older eighteen to get
(19:46):
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up alone, that's fine to just join up with some
people when you're there and form a team and make
some new friends. Come to one or both yes, uh.
And then lastly co ED and Kiva Man, Yeah, Coed
Cooperative for Education who we went to Guatemala with. If
you like their bag, which is a pretty cool bag,
(20:08):
you can donate and easily five bucks with your little
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(20:28):
Five bucks to help out UM Guatemalan kids learn to
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you know, as everyone knows, we hit the hundred thousand
dollar mark right, I like nothing in March, I believe
March nineteenth, UM and since then, our moderators on our
(20:51):
Kiva team, Glenn and Sonja Um threw down the gauntlet
pretty much immediately and said, let's get to a quarter
of a million dollars. Yeah, man, that'd I'm awesome. We
are on track right now, by Glenn and Sonya's estimate,
uh to hit the two thousand dollar mark around August. Well, actually,
we want to hit a quarter of a million dollars
around August. Is that the deal? Yeah, so we need
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And remember this is micro lending, so the money actually
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But it's more fun to read loan it totally. It
really is, all right, So there you have it. Alright,
So listener, mail my friend I'm gonna call this I
love this dude. And his name is Guy and not
as in hey guy, his real name is Guy. I
(21:59):
got Guy from San Francisco, says, guys, just listen to
the Art Theft podcast. And by the way, we do
know about the Paris heist that just went down. Pretty cool, uh,
very intriguing for future monetarians. And of neither here nor there. However,
I have a little bit a little habit that I
thought I might like to share that loosely pertains I
(22:21):
have never stolen art knowingly. However, I do frequently and
I'm subjected to I travel frequently, and I'm subjected to
much distasteful art guilty of being a budget traveler. So
there's the rub. But to amuse myself, I like to
take the horrible art off the wall, take it out
of the glass and frame, and add the ever so
(22:41):
slightest detail. This guy is wonderful. He does this in
Adele's a chicken in the corner by the barn, a
seagull flying over the crest of a wave, a beer
bottle and fishing pole by the babbling brook. I do
it in every hotel, motel, hotel, hostel, bungalow, you name it.
I will stay there and I will change into the art.
They have art and hostels now, yeah, probably not. It
(23:03):
makes me chuckle to think that maybe one day someone
will be staring at an awful hotel painting and look
closely and notice one of the gallant cowboys has a
tin of skull by his left boot heel. So if
you stay in cheap hotels, keep your eyes out people
you may have stayed where a guy from San Francisco
has stayed. Just don't turn on the black line. That's
all I have to say. That's awesome. That is awesome. Man.
(23:27):
I love to hear people doing cool stuff. Vandalism, Yeah,
but it's it's vandalism with like an eye towards it's fundalism. Well,
If you're a starving artist who shows your work at
the Airport Hilton conference room, we want to hear from you.
Just send us an email to Stuff podcast at how
(23:48):
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(24:09):
are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant
(00:20):
that makes this Stuff you Should Know, right, Chuck, Yeah, yeah,
Jerry just I love it when like we get last
second instructions. Yeah, and they don't make any sense. Just
save it for the show, guys, right, or show that
picture on the podcast the audio podcast. Oh goodness, how
are you sir? I'm fine by all rights Friday, but
(00:40):
it's actually Thursday, but it's almost Memorial Day. Yeah, and
we're not Are you coming in tomorrow at all? No,
I'm not comfortable saying either way. Well, it's all to
be surprised. I don't want to get in trouble. Well
I'm not. I'm still scared of the man. I know
you're not. But you're all like, hey, look at me.
I'm forty. I make my own decisions, not forty, So Chuck.
(01:04):
You're George Carlin fan right, Yeah, the late George Carlin.
Just the late alright. We always had the bummer, don't you.
The late George Carlin could be like George Carlin. He's
the greatest stand up comedian ever, the very the worm
food George Carlin, Yeah, the dearly departed. Yes, I like him.
(01:26):
I have an obscure stand up bit that I'll bet
you haven't heard of that is the appropub of our
topic today. So George Carlin um had a bit about flamethrowers.
I never heard that one. He said that the very
presence of flamethrowers, and I'm paraphrasing, the very presence of
flamethrowers means that at some point sometime someone said to himself,
(01:49):
you know, there's a bunch of people over there that
I'd like to set on fire, but they're too far
away from me to get the job done. I wish
there was something that I could use to throw flames
on them, And as a result, we now have the flamethrower,
which is kind of crazy when you think about it
that way. It is pretty interesting, it is, And when
(02:09):
you start to really look into flamethrowers, you realize just
how horrific the acts that humans inflict on other humans
can be. Yeah, it's pretty it's pretty awful stuff. Actually, Yeah,
when you, I mean, actually all kinds of modern weapon. Rhenno.
My brother in lawson the Marines, he told me about this.
I think it's called a flachette, some sort of bomb
(02:30):
that like explodes above people and sends thousands of like
razor blades shooting out what. I think it's mainly used
for clearing like jungle, but ya, jungle of enemy combatant exactly.
To some sick I thought that up, we're like, what
one step away from the alien weapons in District nine
(02:51):
where people just blow up in an almost cartoonish fashion. Yeah,
it's coming the atomizer or something they'll call it. Um.
What's what's odd is that that person, that first person
that George carlin Um envisions, actually lived a lot longer
ago than you would think. I was shocked. I was
(03:12):
well century BC, fifth century b C. Man right, it
wasn't well, it was a flamethrower. It was very crude, vulgar,
if you will, flamethrower. It was a long tube sort
of like a blowgun, and they filled it with solid
stuff like hot coal and sulfur and went, yeah, ideally
(03:33):
you don't suck in. That would be bad. No. I
was thinking that too, like you have to suck in
the breath before you put the tube. Deer mouth or us,
you're in big trouble. Oh that's the case with any
blow blowgun, right, Sure, did you ever make those in
your kid? No? I never did. That was too busy
burning stuff. You could have done both apparently. So Yeah,
they would shoot I guess um hot coal or sulfur
(03:55):
out at their enemy combatant instead of a flame per se,
which I guess ultimately it would bounce off of their
arm and they'd be like, ah, that burns, and then
they just tussle and leg wrestling, right, and shake hands
afterwards and go eat a bore. That's that's how that
went to Life CENTRYBC with Josh. But leave it to
(04:17):
the Greeks, who were one of the brainiest, most um
thieving cultures of all time. They probably got this idea
from the Chemites. Frankly, but there's this stuff called um
Greek fire, right, And actually I can't say that the
Greeks came up with it. It's called Greek fire, but
the Byzantines that what we know is turks um. We're uh,
(04:40):
we're most notorious for using this stuff. Yeah, and that
they think they're not sure because it was a long
time ago. It was a mixture of liquid petrol and
sulfur and like stuff like quicklime petrol British for gas. Yeah,
and UM. They would pump it out actually from a
reservoir through little narrow tubes and like anything that goes
(05:04):
from a big reservoir type system to a small, thin one,
it would create pressure to shoot it out and then
some unlucky guy would be the lighter at the end
of it, and that would be like a real flamethrower,
like dozens of feet. Yeah, as we're gonna learn, anybody
whose job it was to deal with any aspect of
flame throwing UM was the unlucky guy. It's one of
(05:24):
the more dangerous weapons you can use, UM, but it
was very effective. Number one, since it's oil based, Uh,
it could this this Greek fire could be used in
naval battles because it would still burn even when it
contacted the water. UM. And so the Byzantines mounted it
on their ships. These flamethrowers UM on their ships and
(05:45):
on the city walls around Constantinople and basically just repelled
people out of fear as much as you know, burning
them alive. Yeah, they were. Their enemies were really freaked out.
I imagine when they first saw like fire shooting at them. Yes,
freaked out and intrigue, especially in the case of the Chinese.
See what the Byzantines had was a single action pump.
(06:07):
You just did the foot pump with literally do you
see that? Jerry them following your command, um. The the
Byzantines had a single action bellows pump to where when
you press down on the down stroke, it would push
the liquid out. Right. Yes, you get like a burst
of fire. And that's it right because on the upstroke
(06:29):
nothing was happening except with the bellows were filling back
up with air to press down compressed right. Um. The
Chinese said, hey, that's that's really funny because we have
a double action bellows to where you are compressing air
um on the up stroke and the downstroke. So instead
of your stupid little short bursts of Greek fire, we
have one long burst that just cuts you in half.
(06:52):
Lead to the Chinese get better the wheelbarrow, the kite,
the hang glider, the flamethrower, gun pouter, and actually gunpowder
um equaled the demise of flamethrowers for about a thousand years, right, Yeah,
as soon as gunpowder came along, they were like, yeah,
we're just chumps with fire. When we can actually shoot
(07:13):
a gun, that's that's the way of the future. And
it was. But so is the flamethrower as it turns out. Yeah,
because it lay dormant for about a thousand years. And
then in World War One, actually right before World War One,
the Germans, a very warlike state at the time, were, um,
they said, you know what, exactly can we and our
(07:35):
arsenal that is just totally scary and wildly destructive. Yes,
let's look back through the annals of of you know,
historic weaponry and find something. And they look through and
they said the flamethrower. Yeah. Richard Fielder is an engineer
in nineteen o one. They credit him with inventing it,
but he clearly was using old technology as the initial idea.
(07:57):
At least. It's a clever design, though, isn't it. Yeah,
because this from this original design. Um, there have been
you know, some polishing moments for the flamethrower over the years,
but from that, from that modern era that the design
has remained relatively the same. Right, It's like a three
tank design. Yeah, the flamin furfur because what it's called
(08:19):
nice the Germans. That's what the German uh, and it was, um,
well let's yeah, let's go ahead and explain how it
works with thanks, all right. And this is the handheld flamethrower,
which is the one that's I guess was most readily
used in combat. Yeah, and it's the one you see
like a guy's wearing these tanks on his back and
he's got the rifle. It's just right. So you got
(08:42):
two outer tanks and those are filled with the flammable
fuel oil based petrol if you will, like Greek fire
and um. Then there's a center, smaller tank which holds
a compressed gas like butane and uh it was. It
would feed the gas through a pressure right you later
connected to the tubes and you can take it from here. Well,
(09:03):
the this is why I think it's very clever. The
bututane served a dual purpose. One that was compressed, so
when you open the valve, it would push the liquid
fuel out of the tanks into the tube and ultimately
in the reservoir and the gun. The pressure regulator, right,
that's what they would but switch on. There is another
tube that came directly out of the third tank that
(09:27):
held the compressed the gas like butuane, and this tube
went directly to the ignition valve right right, so it
served as the igniter later on. Right that it was
because it was the bututane that was actually burning when
you um. When you open the ignition valve, the bu
tane flows to the end. This is with air the
end of the rifle. UM and then there's like there's
(09:49):
two triggers. There's the fuel released trigger, right, and then
there's the ignition trigger. And the ignition trigger is basically
you're operating a battery that operates a spark plug, sends
a current, generates heat right nights the tane. Now you
have that little blue flame on the end. Yeah, that's
what you've seen in movies, like if you see them around. Yeah, exactly,
you see the little like three inch flame coming out
(10:10):
in the end, right, that's actually beautane burning. The fuel
hasn't been released, the hell fire has not been opened
yet or released yet. That's when you squeeze what's the
fuel released trigger and then well, yeah, then that pulls
back a little valve plug because you obviously want it
plugged or else you're gonna have a big mess on
your hands. You'll be on fire very quickly. So when
(10:32):
you pull the fuel release trigger, it pulls the little
valve plug back and then all the fuel supply suddenly
rushes through to the tip of the gun where the
flame is and boom, there you go. Yeah and um.
In nineteen forty two, the Army Chemical Warfare Service, I
(10:53):
think is what it was called. Um, they came up
with a little something called napalm, which is ultimately a
g asoline or petrol in the case of Chuck and
our British friends, UM, a gasoline thickening agent. So with
a slightly thickened gas you have a longer range, It
carries further because it has more mass or girth or whatever.
(11:16):
There's less there's less friction from the ground coming up right.
Um and uh. It also can be concentrated more easily.
Right right. So basically that was one of those real
big polishing moments. It went from just gas which sprays,
to thick gas which sticks and burns. It evaporates much
(11:37):
less quickly, so it will burn forever and it's really
difficult to put out, and if you get covered in it,
you're entirely in trouble. Yes, you're out of luck. And
they would mount these on well p t boats. For one,
have you ever seen the videos of those things, like
cruising down the river, shooting in napalm into the forest. Well,
I see there's a picture of it in the article.
(11:58):
I've never seen video of It's pretty wicked. Yeah, And
they called them, they called them zippo flamethrowers, right, because
the ignition um system failed so frequently. It's just like
on a gas grill, they have to with a zippo
d And that's the other unlucky dude. I guess he'd
be like, don't get too close to it in his hand, right,
(12:20):
And so flamethrowers, it wasn't just some guy you know where.
It would be like a bunch of infantry guys and
then some guy on the end happened to grab the
flamethrower that morning when they went out, and it's just
you know, they were part of a tactical strategy. Yeah.
What would happened was rifleman would lay down cover fire.
Let's say you come to the mouth of a cave
(12:41):
and there's a bunch of enemy combatants in there, and
they're shooting you and they have snipers and you're in
big trouble. All your your rifleman lay down fire on
this case, so those guys can't move. Cover fire right
to allow your flamethrower man to get close. He was
highly susceptible at this point because of what he's wearing
on his back. Yes, all it takes is one good
(13:01):
shot to one of those tanks and that guy's gone,
or a bad shot, just a shot, yeah, if you
come in contact with it with the bullet. Yes, um.
But so the flamethrower guy gets close basically cooks everybody,
burns everyone to death in that cave, right, that's his job.
And then after that the munitions guys come in and
(13:22):
explode the cave so it can never be used again.
And that's sinora for cave dwellers. Yes. Uh, you know,
speaking of a quick death, I've always heard when I
was a kid, you know that. You know, if you
were a flamethrower in war, your average lifespan is like
thirty seconds in combat. Well, I always heard that, and
(13:42):
I'd scoured the internets and I could not find anything
to verify that, but um, that's what I always heard.
I thought that was an interesting tidbit. I did read
that most people who were flamethrower operators didn't survive. I
would imagine it's pretty dangerous thing to be toting around. Yeah,
and they also had assistant because the assistance would open
and close the valves on the pack form. That was
(14:03):
the whole job. It was always a two man team,
so both of them would usually not make it. I
would if I was the assistant, I would turn on
his little valve and then run for cover and then
run up and turn it off again. Right, And I'd
probably pretty unpopular with the flamethrower guy probably, And then
the flamethrower guy was well liked because if you can
take out an entire gun nest of people, then you
(14:24):
know everybody's going to applaud you and clap, and you know,
probably not get too close though, because you're going to
die eventually. Yeah, I'd rather be a sniper. I think
that'd be like I played Call of Duty. I got
a p S three now that I tell you that. No,
it was given to me by my step step step dad,
now father in law. You did tell me my stepfather
in law, And so I got just a couple of games.
(14:47):
I'm not like a huge gamer at all, Like I
think a nintendol, like the first Nintendo was the last
thing I actually owned. But um, I play Call of
Duty now. I like a shooter games too. It's pretty fun.
But you choose to be a sniper on that. Well,
now there are just certain levels where you can be
a sniper. Like you'll pick up a sniper gun if
you want. And I always usually kind of just hang
back and pick guys off, especially guys with flamethrowers. So
(15:10):
here we go again to liberal peace nicks like us
when it comes to like this war stuff, we just
get all giddy. Well it is this one. For some reason,
I was reading a passage about a flamethrower operator in
World War Two who you know, um received the Medal
of Honor for um invading a Japanese they think they're
called pillbox. It was a little gun nest and burning
(15:31):
them all and burning them all alive, and like the
the guy wrote um that there were some muffled screams
and then silence. It's like, you know, being burned alive.
It's pretty much everybody's worst death, I would think. So
it's up there. Well, we had worst way to die.
That's right up there, and I think if I remember correctly,
burning to death is consistently the number one, unlike informal polls. Right,
(15:52):
imagine is pretty painful and it happened a lot in
World War One to vietn M. Yeah, I imagined area.
This is a horrible weapon. But you can find uh,
civilian applications for can't you. Yeah. Well, before we move
on to that, we also need to say that they
were on tanks as well, so it wasn't just boats.
(16:13):
They used them on tanks, and uh, the design was
basically the same. You just had a lot more fuel
and you had like piston rotary pumps to get a
lot more length on your shot girth. And yeah, the
backpack mounted ones had a range of about fifty yards, right,
(16:33):
That's that's a long way though. Yeah, let's have a
football field. You don't have to get that close. Sure. Yeah,
I wonder if the first enemy that was like, he's
got a flamethrower, but we're way too far away. They
were within exactly. Uh yeah, civilian applications um, forced forced
(16:53):
fire fighters forest firefighters? Is that how you say it?
I don't know they actually use these when they do
like the prescribed burning, like sometimes they'll burn well not
just the firefighters, they do prescribe burns anyway. And then
sometimes the firefighters do that, they'll like burn a section
to cut it off right there. And that's what they
do it with flamethrowers, which actually kind of made me
(17:16):
want to go get a job with the forestry Service.
She could burn things on purpose. Well, yeah, did you
hear about this car thing in South Africa? Theft deterrent
system that burned you know? Yeah, I don't think it's
still around. This is like twelve years ago, and um,
a South African man invented it was called the blaster
(17:36):
and basically it would shoot a man high fireball that's
what they called it. What at you if you tried
to break into the car for a mere ran which
is uh and this that was like six or fifty bucks,
and um, it would squirt liquefied gas from a bottle
(17:57):
in the trunk through two nozzles located on the front door.
And the rub is you couldn't turn one on and
turn one off, so if a guy was breaking into
like the driver's side door, it would still shoot fire
out as a passenger side to whomever might be walking
by unluckily on that. So let's say, yeah, that's that's
an invention that wasn't fully thought through. I would think so.
(18:20):
But apparently he sold a bunch of him at the
time and he said it's non lethal, but it would
definitely blind a person, is what he said, and keep
them from stealing your car. Yeah, because they can't see
cars any longer. That's terrible. Yeah, way to go South Africa. Um. Lastly, Chuck.
Fire breathers their form of They follow the basic principles
(18:41):
of flamethrowing by drinking kerostene. There you go. If you
want to learn about fire breathers, we have an article
on them. If you want to learn more about flame throwers.
And before you send us a listener mail, we are
aware of flamethrower exhaust systems. We've both seen Greece before. Um,
you can type any word you want to into the
(19:04):
handy search bar how stuff works dot Com. It'll yield
something interesting. I guarantee you that. Uh So, Chuck listening
not quite okay, Well, we got to do our quick plugs.
We're gonna do a little quicker this time though, because
we take like ten minutes to do our New York
plugs and everything New York. We're gonna be at the
Knitting Factory in Brooklyn on June seven from five thirty
to seven thirty. We're having a happy hour for stuf
(19:26):
of you should know fans. Come with your elbows prepared
to be rubbed. Stay Wednesday, June ninth for a trivia
night to be determined not t b D my friend.
We have a location at a time and is at
the Bell House in Brooklyn, New York, and show up
at about six thirty and trivia will start at seven.
And this one is eighteen and older eighteen to get
(19:46):
in twenty one to drink and uh. If you're showing
up alone, that's fine to just join up with some
people when you're there and form a team and make
some new friends. Come to one or both yes, uh.
And then lastly co ED and Kiva Man, Yeah, Coed
Cooperative for Education who we went to Guatemala with. If
you like their bag, which is a pretty cool bag,
(20:08):
you can donate and easily five bucks with your little
cell phone there. Uh, text the words stuff STUF to
two zero to two two and um texting data rates
may apply and it's gonna be added a little five
dollar donations gonna added to your bill. Right when you
text stuff, you'll get a reply text saying are you sure,
and you just text back yes, and there you go.
(20:28):
Five bucks to help out UM Guatemalan kids learn to
read and Kiva Kiva, Kiva, Kiva. We haven't thrown much
love to our Kiva team lately, but we should because
you know, as everyone knows, we hit the hundred thousand
dollar mark right, I like nothing in March, I believe
March nineteenth, UM and since then, our moderators on our
(20:51):
Kiva team, Glenn and Sonja Um threw down the gauntlet
pretty much immediately and said, let's get to a quarter
of a million dollars. Yeah, man, that'd I'm awesome. We
are on track right now, by Glenn and Sonya's estimate,
uh to hit the two thousand dollar mark around August. Well, actually,
we want to hit a quarter of a million dollars
around August. Is that the deal? Yeah, so we need
(21:15):
to step it up a little bit. If you want
to join the stuff you should know Kiva dot org team,
you can go to www dot kiva dot org slash
team Slash Stuff you should know and sign up and
get a warm feeling in your heart when you donate.
And remember this is micro lending, so the money actually
comes back to it's repaid. Yeah, and if if you
(21:38):
have a cold heart, you can actually even pull your
money back out and get it back if you want.
But it's more fun to read loan it totally. It
really is, all right, So there you have it. Alright,
So listener, mail my friend I'm gonna call this I
love this dude. And his name is Guy and not
as in hey guy, his real name is Guy. I
(21:59):
got Guy from San Francisco, says, guys, just listen to
the Art Theft podcast. And by the way, we do
know about the Paris heist that just went down. Pretty cool, uh,
very intriguing for future monetarians. And of neither here nor there. However,
I have a little bit a little habit that I
thought I might like to share that loosely pertains I
(22:21):
have never stolen art knowingly. However, I do frequently and
I'm subjected to I travel frequently, and I'm subjected to
much distasteful art guilty of being a budget traveler. So
there's the rub. But to amuse myself, I like to
take the horrible art off the wall, take it out
of the glass and frame, and add the ever so
(22:41):
slightest detail. This guy is wonderful. He does this in
Adele's a chicken in the corner by the barn, a
seagull flying over the crest of a wave, a beer
bottle and fishing pole by the babbling brook. I do
it in every hotel, motel, hotel, hostel, bungalow, you name it.
I will stay there and I will change into the art.
They have art and hostels now, yeah, probably not. It
(23:03):
makes me chuckle to think that maybe one day someone
will be staring at an awful hotel painting and look
closely and notice one of the gallant cowboys has a
tin of skull by his left boot heel. So if
you stay in cheap hotels, keep your eyes out people
you may have stayed where a guy from San Francisco
has stayed. Just don't turn on the black line. That's
all I have to say. That's awesome. That is awesome. Man.
(23:27):
I love to hear people doing cool stuff. Vandalism, Yeah,
but it's it's vandalism with like an eye towards it's fundalism. Well,
If you're a starving artist who shows your work at
the Airport Hilton conference room, we want to hear from you.
Just send us an email to Stuff podcast at how
(23:48):
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, is that how stuff works dot com.
Want more House stuff Works, check out our blogs on
the House of works dot com home page. Brought to
you by the re invented two thousand twelve Camri. It's ready,
(24:09):
are you
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