Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: How Flamethrowers Work

Episode Date: June 13, 2020

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

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hi everybody, Chuck here on a Saturday with my Saturday selects pick from June 3rd, 2010. I think I picked this one because I just got done watching What's Upon a Time in Hollywood once again. Here is our episode, How Flamethrowers Work.

If you've seen that movie, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, I hope I didn't spoil it for you. So learn all about Flamethrowers right now. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. ["How Stuff Works"] 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? Jerry, 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 are you coming in tomorrow at all? No? I'm not comfortable saying either way. OK.

Well, I guess that'll 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. Yes, the late. RIP. Always add the bummer, don't you? The late George Carlin could be like, George Carlin's the greatest stand-up comedian ever. When he was alive, he was.

The worm food George Carlin, the, yeah. The dearly departed. Yes, I like him. Why? I have an obscure stand-up 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, 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.

It's pretty awful stuff, actually. Yeah, I mean, actually, all kinds of modern weaponry. I know my brother-in-law's in the Marines. He told me about this, I think it's called a flichette, some sort of bomb that explodes above people and sends thousands of razor blades shooting out. What? I think it's mainly used for clearing jungle, but I can't remember.

Clearing jungle of enemy combatants. Exactly. So some sicko thought that up. Yeah, we're like one step away from the alien weapons in District 9, 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, you want a 5th century BC? 5th century BC, man. Right, 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. And what? Yeah, ideally, you don't suck in. That would be bad. No, I was thinking that, too. You have to suck in the breath before you put the tube

to your mouth or else you're in big trouble. Although, that's the case with any blow gun, right? Sure. 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. 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 5th century BC with Josh.

But leave it to the Greeks, who were one of the brainiest, most thieving cultures of all time. They probably got this idea from the Chemites, frankly. But there's this stuff called Greek fire. 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. It's 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. 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. 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. And so the Byzantines mounted it on their ships, these flamethrowers, on their ships, and on the city walls around Constantinople, 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 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. I literally did the bellows. Did you see that, Jerry? I'm following your command.

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 bursts of Greek fire, we have one long burst that just cuts you in half. Yeah, leave it to the Chinese, you get all better. The wheelbarrow, the kite, the hang glider, the flamethrower, gunpowder.

And actually, gunpowder equaled the demise of flamethrowers for about 1,000 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 1,000 years, and then in World War I, actually right before World War I, the Germans, a very war-like state at the time, were, 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, you know, historic weaponry and find something, and they look 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, but it's a clever design, though, isn't it?

Yeah. Because from this original design, there've been, you know, some polishing moments for the flamethrower over the years, but from that modern era, that 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 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 would feed the gas through a pressure regulator

connected to the tubes. Right. And you can take it from here. Well, 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.

So it served as the igniter later on. Right, because it was the butane that was actually burning when you open the ignition valve. The butane flows to the end, mixes with air. The end of the rifle. Right. And then there's two triggers. So 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 see in movies, like if you see them trailing around.

Yeah, exactly. You see the little three inch flame coming out in the end. Right. That's actually butane burning. Right. The fuel hasn't been released. The hellfire has not been opened yet or released yet. That's when you squeeze what's the fuel release trigger?

Yes. And then a couple of big clicks. 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. 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. On the podcast, pay dude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the co-classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point,

but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help.

This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody,

about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. In 1942, the Army Chemical Warfare Service, I think, is what it was called. They came up with a little something called napalm, which is ultimately a gasoline or petrol

in the case of Chuck and our British friends, 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. There's less friction from the ground coming up, right? And it also can be concentrated more easily, 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. I've never seen video of it. It's pretty wicked.

Yeah. And 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 where 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. Oh, yeah. 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 for cave dwellers. Yes. You know, speaking of a quick death, I've always heard when I was a kid that if you were a flamethrower in 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. 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.

And I'd probably be pretty unpopular with the flamethrower guy. Probably. I mean, the flamethrower guy was well liked, because if you can take out an entire gun nest of people, then everybody's going to applaud you and clap. Sure. 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 PS3 now. Did I tell you that? No. Wow, Chuck.

It was given to me by my step-dad now, father-in-law. You did tell me. My step-father-in-law. OK. 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 was 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 are just certain levels where you can be a sniper. Like you'll pick up a sniper gun if you want. Got you.

And I always usually kind of just hang back and pick guys off. Yeah, especially guys with flamethrowers. No. Here we go again, two 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 II

who 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 the guy wrote that there were some muffled screams and then silence. Wow.

It's like being burned alive is 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

in informal polls, right? I imagine it's pretty painful. And it happened a lot in World War I, II, 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 piston rotary pumps to get a lot more length on your shot.

Girth. And girth. Yeah, the backpack-mounted ones had a range of about 50 yards, right, 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. I wonder if the first enemy that was like, he's got a flamethrower, but we're way too far away. They were within, like, 45. Exactly. Yeah. So we're all gone like. Yeah.

They were within over 5-4 yards. We're all gone. Those high- kings. They were within. That'sök On the podcast, heydude1990s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult-classics show of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to, hey dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast

Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids relationships life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the

story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. Civilian applications. Um, forced, uh, forced fire fighters. Forced fire fighters. Is that how you say it? I don't know. They, they actually use these, uh, when they do the, like the, 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 like burn a section to cut it off that right there. Right.

And they, that's what they do with flamethrowers. Yeah. 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. 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, um, a South African man invented, it was called the blaster. And basically it would shoot a man high fireball. That's what they called it. What? At you, if you tried to break in to the car for a mere 3,900 ran, which was, uh, about $7. And this was $19.98. Now it's like 650 bucks. Okay. And, um, it would squirt liquefied gas from a bottle in the trunk through two nozzles

located under the front door. And the, the, the rub is you couldn't, um, 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 of the passenger side to whomever might be walking by. Unluckily on that side. Yeah. That's, 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, um, he said it's non-lethal and, 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. Um, lastly, Chuck fire breathers. They're a form of, they follow the basic principles of flame throwing by drinking kerosene.

Yeah. There you go. If you want to learn about, uh, 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. Yeah. Um, you can type any word you want to into the handy search bar at howstuffworks.com. It'll yield something interesting. I guarantee you that. Uh, so Chuck listener mail. I'm going to call this, I love this dude and his name is Guy. Okay. And not as in, Hey guy, his real name is Guy. I got you. Uh, 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. Uh, very intriguing for future monetary incentive,

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 have never stolen art knowingly. However, I do frequently and I'm subjected to, uh, 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. Uh, it makes me chuckle to think that maybe one day someone will be staring in 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. Vandalism. Yeah, but it's, it's vandalism with like an eye toward coolness. It's vandalism. 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 stuffpodcasts

at howstuffworks.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. On the podcast, hey dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.