Stuff You Should Know - How Flamethrowers Work

Episode Date: June 3, 2010

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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. That makes this Stuff You Should Know, right, Chuck? Yeah. Yeah. Terry, just I love it when like we get last second instructions. Yeah, and they don't make any sense. 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. It's by all rights Friday, but 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. Okay. Well, it's gonna be a surprise. 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 40. I

make my own decisions. Not 40. Yeah. So Chuck, you're George Carlin fan, right? Yeah, the late George Carlin. It's the late RIP. Always had the bummer, don't you? The late George Carlin couldn't be like, George Carlin is the greatest standup comedian ever. When he was alive, he was. The worm food George Carlin. The dearly departed. Yes, I like him. Why? I have an obscure standup bit that I'll bet you haven't heard of that is apropos of our topic today. Let's hear it. So George Carlin 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, you know, there's a bunch of people over there that I'd like

to set on fire, but they're too far away for 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, yeah, which is kind of crazy. When you think about it that way, it is pretty interesting. It is. And when 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 weaponry. I know my brother in law is in the Marines. He told me about this. I think it's called a flichette, some sort of bomb 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 I can't remember clearing jungle of enemy combat. Exactly. Yeah. So some sicko thought that up. Yeah, we're like one step away from the alien weapons in district nine, where people just blow up in an almost cartoonish fashion. Right. Yeah. It's coming 2015. Sure. The atomizer or something they'll call it. Yeah. What's odd is that that person, that first person that George Carlin envisions actually lived a lot longer ago than you would think. I was shocked. I was well. Fifth century BC. Fifth century BC, man. Right. It wasn't. Well, it was a flamethrower. It was a very crude vulgar, if you will, flamethrower. It was a long tube, sort of like a blow gun, and they filled it with solid stuff

like hot coal and sulfur. Yeah. Ideally, 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 to your mouth or you're in big trouble. Although that's the case with any blow gun, right? Sure. Yeah. Did you ever make those when you were a kid? No, I never did. I was too busy burning stuff. You could have done both, apparently. Yeah, true. So, yeah, they would shoot, I guess, hot coal or sulfur out at their enemy combatant instead of a flame, per se. Yeah. Which I guess, ultimately, it would bounce off of their arm and they'd be like, ah, it burns. Right. And then they'd just tussle and leg wrestle and shake hands afterwards and go eat a boar. That's how that went. Life in century BC with Josh.

But, leave it to the Greeks who were one of the brainiest, most thieving cultures of all time. Oh, yeah. They probably got this idea from the Chemites, frankly. But there's this stuff called Greek fire. Right. And actually, I can't say that the Greeks came up with it. It's called Greek fire, but the Byzantines, what we know as Turks, were most notorious for using this stuff. Yeah. And they think, they're not sure because it was a long time ago, it was a mixture of liquid petrol and sulfur and stuff like quick lime. Petrol. British for gas. Yes, it is. Yeah. And they would pump it out, actually, from a reservoir through little narrow tubes and anything that goes from a big reservoir type system to a small thin one, it would create pressure

to shoot it out. Right. 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 going to learn, anybody whose job it was to deal with any aspect of flamethrowing was the unlucky guy. Yeah, I would say so. It's one of the more dangerous weapons you can use. Yeah. But it was very effective. Number one, since it's oil based, this Greek fire could be used in naval battles because it would still burn even when it contacted the water. Sure. And so the Byzantines mounted it on their ships, these flamethrowers, on their ships, and on the city walls around Constantinople. Yeah. And basically just repelled people out

of fear as much as burning them alive. Yeah, their enemies were really freaked out, I imagine, when they first saw like fire shooting at them. Yes. Freaked out and intrigued, especially in the case of the Chinese. See, what the Byzantines had was a single action pump. You just did the foot pump with the flamethrower. Literally did the belly. Did you see that? Did you see that, Jerry? I'm following your command. With one of the best savings rates in America, banking with Capital One is the easiest decision in the history of decisions, even easier than deciding to listen to another episode of Stuff You Should Know. And with no fees or minimums on checking and savings accounts,

is it even a decision? Get started today. It only takes about five minutes to open an account with Capital One, and there's no minimum to open and keep your account. That's banking reimagined. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.com slash bank. Capital One in a member FDIC. Hey, everybody. We all know the stock market has been hard to stomach this year. And if you're like a lot of Americans, it's hard to look at your stock portfolio. Yeah, but you don't have to sit on the sidelines and watch your hard earned money disappear. You can diversify your portfolio, and RAD diversified can help. That's right. RAD diversified buys cash flowing real estate all over the country. And for a minimum of just $1,000, you can access their lucrative portfolio of

investments. They have thousands of clients. Yeah, only $1,000 to see how they've been delivering awesome results for their clients. You don't have to be a millionaire to access world-class investment opportunities. RAD diversified investor share price has doubled since 2019, and boasts an impressive 11 straight profitable quarters. So now you can be a real estate investor without doing any of the heavy lifting. Watch your money grow with RADdiversified.com. In economic times like these, it's a good reminder to explore all your options in a balanced portfolio. Make your money work for you. Just visit RADdiversified.com today. The Byzantines had a single-action bellows pump, where when you pressed down on the downstroke, it would push the liquid out, right?

Yes, you'd get like a burst of fire, and that's it. Right, because on the upstroke, nothing was happening, except the bellows were filling back up with air to press down, to compress, right? The Chinese said, hey, that's really funny, because we have a double-action bellows to where you are compressing air on the upstroke and the downstroke, so instead of your stupid little short burst of Greek fire, we have one long burst that just cuts you in half. Yeah, leave to the Chinese, you could all better. The wheelbarrow, the kite, the hang glider, the flamethrower, gunpowder, and actually gunpowder equaled the demise of flamethrowers for about a thousand years, right? Yeah, as soon as gunpowder came along, they were like,

eh, we're just chumps with fire when we can actually shoot a gun. That's the way of the future. Right. And it was, but so was the flamethrower, as it turns out. Yeah, because it laid dormant for about a thousand years, and then in World War I, actually right before World War I, the Germans, a very warlike state at the time, where they said, you know, what exactly can we add to our arsenal that is just totally scary and wildly destructive? Yes. Let's look back through the annals of historic weaponry and find something, and they looked through and they said, the flamethrower. Yeah, Richard Fielder is an engineer in 1901. They credit him with inventing it, but he clearly was using old technology as the initial idea, at least. Right. It's a clever

design, though, isn't it? Yeah. Because from this original design, there have been, you know, some polishing moments for the flamethrower over the years, but from that modern era, the design has remained relatively the same, right? It's like a three-tank design. Yeah, the Flamenverfer. Is that what it's called? Yeah. Nice. The Germans. That's what the Germans called it. The later Hosen. Yeah. And it was, well, let's, yeah, let's go ahead and explain how it works with the tanks. 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, and it's just right. Yeah. So you got two outer tanks, and those are filled

with the flammable fuel oil-based petrol, if you will, like Greek fire. Sure. And then there's a center smaller tank, which holds a compressed gas, like butane, and it was, it would feed the gas through a pressure regulator connected to the tubes. Right. And you can take it from here. Well, the, this is why I think it's very clever. The butane served a dual purpose. One, it 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. Yeah, the pressure regulator. Right. Is what they would butt switch on. There is another tube that came directly out of the third tank that held the compressed gas, like butane. Yes. And this tube went directly to the ignition valve. Right. Right.

So it served as the igniter later on. Right. Because it was the butane that was actually burning. Right. When you, when you open the ignition valve, the butane flows to the end, mixes with air. The end of the rifle. Right. Sure. And then there's like, there's two triggers. There's the fuel release trigger. Right. Yes. 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, ignites the butane. Now you have that little blue flame on the end. Yeah. That's what you've seen in movies. Like if you see them trailing around. Yeah. Exactly. You see the little like three inch flame coming out in the end. Right. That's actually butane

burning. Right. 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 release trigger? Yes. And then. Well, yeah. Then that pulls back a little valve plug because you obviously want it plugged or else you're going to have a big mess on your hands. You'll be on fire very quickly. Yeah. So when 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 in 1942, the Army Chemical Warfare Service, I think is what it was called. They came up with a little something called napalm. Yeah. Which is ultimately a gasoline or

petrol. In the case of Chuck and our British friends, a gasoline thickening agent. Right. So with a slightly thickened gas, you have a longer range. It carries further because it has more mass or girth or whatever. There's less friction from the ground coming up. And 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 less quickly. So it'll 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, PT boats for one. Have you ever seen the videos of those things like cruising

down the river, shooting napalm into the forest? Well, I see there's a picture of it in the article. Yeah. I've never seen video of it. It's pretty wicked. Yeah. And they called them, they called them Zippo flamethrowers, right? Oh, really? Because the ignition system failed so frequently. It's just like on a gas grill. Would they have to light it with a Zippo? With a Zippo. You're kidding. No. And that's the other unlucky dude, I guess. Yeah. He'd be like, don't get too close to it with his hand. Right. And so flamethrowers, it wasn't just some guy, you know, who were, it'd 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 happen was riflemen would lay down cover fire. Right. Let's say you come to the mouth of a cave 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 riflemen lay down fire on this cave 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 shot to one of those tanks and that guy's gone. Right. Or a bad shot, just a shot. Sure. Yeah. If you come in contact with it with the bullet. Yes. But so the flamethrower guy gets close, basically cooks everybody, burns everyone to death in that cave. Yeah. Right.

That's his job. Right. And then after that, the munitions guys come in and explode the cave so it can never be used again. And that's cyanora. Yeah. For cave dwellers. Yes. 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 and war, your average lifespan is like 30 seconds in combat. Is that right? Well, I always heard that and I'd scour the internet and I could not find anything to verify that, but 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 a pretty dangerous thing to be toting around. Yeah. And they also had assistants because the assistants would open

and close the valves in the pack for them. That was their 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 it'd probably be 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 know, everybody's going to applaud you and clap and sure, 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 play call of duty. I got a PS three now. Did I tell you that? No, well, it was given to me by

my step step dad dad. No father-in-law. You didn't tell me my step father-in-law. Okay. And so I got just a couple of games. I'm not like a huge gamer at all. Like, I think a Nintendo. Like, the first Nintendo is the last thing I actually owned. But I play call of duty now. I like shooter games too. It's pretty fun. But you choose to be a sniper on that? Well, no, there's just certain levels where you can be a sniper. Like, you'll pick up a sniper gun if you want. Gotcha. And I Now he's usually kind of just hang back and pick guys off. Yeah, especially guys with flamethrowers. No, here we go again to liberal peaceniks 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, received the Medal of Honor for invading a Japanese. I think they're called pillbox. It was a little gun nest and burning them all and burning them all alive. And like the guy wrote that there were some muffled screams and then silence. Wow. It's like, you know, being burned alive is pretty much everybody's worst death.

I would think so. It's up there. Well, we had the worst way to die. That's right up there. And I think if I remember correctly, burning the death is consistently the number one on like informal polls, right? I imagine it's pretty painful. And it happened a lot in World War One, two, Vietnam, I imagine Korea.

This is a horrible weapon, you know? Absolutely. But you can find civilian applications for it, 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, they used them on tanks. And 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. Gerth. And Gerth. And the backpack-mounted ones had a range of about 50 yards, right? Yeah. Or 46 meters. 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. Right? Oops.

They were within like 45 yards. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. They had a million applications, forced fire fighters. Forced fire fighters? Is that how you say it? I don't know. They actually use these when they do the prescribed burning, like sometimes they'll burn, well,

not just the firefighters. They do prescribed burns anyway. Sure. And then sometimes the firefighters do that, they'll burn a section to cut it off right there. Right. And that's what they do with flamethrowers. Which actually kind of made me want to go get a job with the forestry service.

So you could burn things on purpose? Well, with the flamethrower, yeah. With one of the best savings rates in America, banking with Capital One is the easiest decision in the history of decisions, even easier than deciding to listen to another episode of Stuff You Should Know. And with no fees or minimums on checking and savings accounts, is it even a decision? Get started today. It only takes about five minutes to open an account with Capital One, and there's no

minimum to open and keep your account. That's banking reimagined. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.com slash bank. Capital One NA member FDIC. Hey, everybody, we all know the stock market has been hard to stomach this year, and if you're like a lot of Americans, it's hard to look at your stock portfolio.

Yeah, but you don't have to sit on the sidelines and watch your hard earned money disappear. You can diversify your portfolio, and Rad Diversified can help. That's right. Rad Diversified buys cash flowing real estate all over the country, and for a minimum of just $1,000, you can access their lucrative portfolio of investments. They have thousands of clients. Yeah, only $1,000 to see how they've been delivering awesome results for their clients. You don't have to be a millionaire to access world-class investment opportunities.

Rad Diversified investor share price has doubled since 2019 and boasts an impressive 11 straight profitable quarters. So now you can be a real estate investor without doing any of the heavy lifting. Watch your money grow with raddiversified.com. In economic times like these, it's a good reminder to explore all your options in a balanced portfolio. Make your money work for you. Just visit raddiversified.com today.

Did you hear about this car thing in South Africa? Theft deterrent system that burned you? No. Yeah, I don't think it's still around. This is like 12 years ago, and a South African man invented, it was called the blaster, and basically it would shoot a man-high fireball, is what they called it. What? At you if you tried to break in to the car for a mere $3,900 ran, which was about $650.

And this was $1,998. No, it was like $650. And it would squirt liquefied gas from a bottle in the trunk through two nozzles located under the front door, and the rub is you couldn't turn one on and turn one off, so if a guy was breaking in to the driver's side door, it would still shoot fire out of the passenger side to whomever might be walking by, unluckily on that side. That's an invention that wasn't fully thought through. I would think so, but apparently he sold a bunch of them 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. It's terrible. Yeah. Way to go, South Africa. Lastly, Chuck, fire breathers, they follow the basic principles of flame throwing, by drinking kerosene, there you go.

If you want to learn about fire breathers, we have an article on them. If you want to learn more about flamethrowers, and before you send us a listener mail, we are aware of flamethrower exhaust systems, we've both seen grease before. You can type any word you want into the handysearchbar at howstuffworks.com, it'll yield something interesting, I guarantee you that. So Chuck, listener mail? Not quite. Oh, okay.

Well, we got to do our quick plugs. A little quicker this time though, because we take like 10 minutes to do our New York plugs and everything. New York. We're going to be at the knitting factory in Brooklyn on June 7th from 5.30 to 7.30. We're having a happy hour for stuff you should know, fans. Come with your elbows prepared to be rubbed. Stay Wednesday, June 9th, for a trivia night to be determined.

Not TBD, my friend. We have a location and a time, and is at the Bell House in Brooklyn, New York, and show up at about 6.30, and trivia will start at 7. And this one is 18 and older, 18 to get in, 21 to drink, and if you're showing up alone, that's fine too. 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.

And then lastly, Coed 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, you can donate a measly five bucks with your little cell phone there. Text the word stuff, S-T-U-F-F, to two, zero, two, two, two, and text and data rates may apply, and it's going to be added, little five dollar donations going to be 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, five bucks to help out Guatemalan kids learn to read. And Kiva. Kiva, Kiva, Kiva. We haven't shown much love to our Kiva team lately, but we should, because, you know, because everyone knows we hit the $100,000 mark, right? Oh, like nothing.

In March, I believe March 19th. And since then, our moderators on our Kiva team, Glenn and Sonya, threw down the gauntlet pretty much immediately and said, let's get to a quarter of a million dollars. Yeah, man. That'd be awesome. We are on track right now by Glenn and Sonya's estimate to hit the $200,000 mark around August 26th. Well, actually, we want to hit a quarter of a million dollars around August 26th.

Is that the deal? Yeah. Okay. So we need to step it up a little bit. You want to join the stuff you should know, Kiva.org team. You can go to www.Kiva.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 that money actually comes back to you as repaid.

Yeah. And if you have a cold heart, you can actually even pull your money back out and get it back if you want. Yes. But it's more fun to re-loan. It totally is. It really is. All right.

So there you have it. All right. So listener mail, my friend. I'm going to call this, I love this dude and his name is Guy. And not as in, hey guy, his real name is Guy. I got you. 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.

Yeah. Pretty cool. Very intriguing for future monetary incentive, neither here nor there. However, I have a little habit that I thought I might like to share that loosely pertains. I 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 slightest detail. This guy's wonderful. He does this in hotels. 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 the art.

They have art in hostels now? Yeah, probably not. It makes me chuckle to think that maybe one day some 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 light is all I have to say.

That's awesome. That is awesome, man. I love to hear people doing cool stuff. Fandalism? Yeah. It makes fandalism with like an eye toward coolness. It's fandalism. Right.

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 StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Want more HowStuffWorks? Check out our blogs on the HowStuffWorks.com homepage. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you?

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