Flame Throwers
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
or FLAMMEN- WERFER, were used by the Germans in the World War as a weapon attack. They consisted of a cylindrical vessel of steel, approximately two feet inches in diameter, into compartment tained nitrogen under a pressure of twenty-three atmospheres, while the lower was filled with inflammable oil. The cylinder was strapped to the back of the operator, and toward the base was affixed a valve to which was attached a short length of flexible hose ending in a nozzle. On opening the valve the oil was forced out under pressure and moved an automatic friction lighter which ignited the oil, thus producing a spray of "liquid Keystone View Company A SEAL ROOKERY ON ST. PAUL, ONE OF THE PRIBILOF ISLANDS, WHICH BELONG TO ALASKA Enc. Vol. 4-p. 148 Ewing Galloway Colonial Press Service HOISTING A TUNA FISH FROM A SPILLER TRAP INTO A FISHERMAN'S SMACK Colonial Press Service PURSING THE SEINE NET FOR "SARDINE" FISHING IN THE Colonial Press Service A CATCH OF HERRING, NEW BRUNSWICK FISHING GROUNDS Photo by Ewing Galloway A FLEET OF OYSTER SCHOONERS LEAVING BIVALVE, N. J., TO FISH IN THE DELAWARE RIVER FLAMMENWERFER OR FLAME-THROWER IN USE BY GERMANS ON THE WESTERN FRONT OF THE WORLD WAR British and Colonial Press Underwood & 'nderwood A VIEW ON THE TOMOKA RIVER, FLORIDA, SHOWING TYPICAL VEGETATION American Photo Service THE CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE DAME AT RHEIMS, AT THE CLOSE OF THE WORLD WAR fire," which was directed toward the enemy. The oil was a carefully compounded mixture of light and heavy components, the lighter portion being either gasoline or ether, and the heavier portion higher boiling petroleum oils.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's described the German Flammenwerfer of 1915-18 as a novelty: a back-pack of nitrogen at twenty-three atmospheres pushing a blend of gasoline and heavy petroleum through a hand nozzle. The weapon then grew far beyond that. In the Second World War every major army carried backpack models such as the American M1 and M2, and mounted much larger ones on vehicles like the British Churchill Crocodile; the fuel changed too, once napalm, a thickening agent developed by a Harvard team under Louis Fieser in 1942, gave a jet that flew further and clung to its target. After Korea and Vietnam the tide turned against them: the US Army withdrew flamethrowers from service in 1978, and Protocol III of the 1980 UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons restricts incendiary weapons, above all against civilians, though it does not ban their use on combatants outright.
Written for this edition, 2026.