A flamethrower is a ranged incendiary device designed to project a controllable jet of fire. First deployed by the Byzantine Empire in the 7th century AD, flamethrowers saw use in modern times during World War I, and more widely in World War II as a tactical weapon against fortifications.
Trench warfare is the type of land warfare using occupied lines largely comprising military trenches, in which troops are well-protected from the enemy's small arms fire and are substantially sheltered from artillery. It became archetypically associated with World War I (1914–1918), when the Race to the Sea rapidly expanded trench use on the Western Front starting in September 1914.
Arditi was the name adopted by a Royal Italian Army elite special force of World War I. They and the opposing German Stormtroopers were the first modern shock troops, and they have been called "the most feared corps by opposing armies".
A flame tank is a type of tank equipped with a flamethrower, most commonly used to supplement combined arms attacks against fortifications, confined spaces, or other obstacles. The type only reached significant use in the Second World War, during which the United States, Soviet Union, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom all produced flamethrower-equipped tanks.
Tank classification is a taxonomy of identifying either the intended role or weight class of tanks. The classification by role was used primarily during the developmental stage of the national armoured forces, and referred to the doctrinal and force structure utility of the tanks based on design emphasis. The weight classification is used in the same way truck classification is used, and is intended to accommodate logistic requirements of the tanks.
Richard Fiedler was a German scientist who invented the modern flamethrower. This is a weapon that projects a stream of nitrogen. He submitted evaluation models of his Flammenwerfer to the German Army in 1901. The most significant model submitted was a man-portable device, consisting of a vertical single cylinder 4 feet long, horizontally divided in two, with pressurized gas in the lower section and flammable oil in the upper section. On depressing a lever the propellant gas forced the flammable oil into and through a rubber tube and over a simple igniting wick device in a steel nozzle. The weapon projected a jet of fire and enormous clouds of smoke some 20 yards. It was a single-shot weapon - for burst firing, a new igniter section was attached each time it was used for battle or other uses of any sorts. It was first used on the western front both by the Central Powers and the Entente.
A heavy machine gun (HMG) is significantly larger than light, medium or general-purpose machine guns. HMGs are typically too heavy to be man-portable and require mounting onto a weapons platform to be operably stable or tactically mobile, have more formidable firepower, and generally require a team of personnel for operation and maintenance.
The Type 93 and Type 100 flamethrowers were flamethrowers used by the Imperial Japanese Army and Imperial Japanese Navy's SNLF during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II.
The Churchill Crocodile was a British flame-throwing tank of late Second World War. It was a variant of the Tank, Infantry, Mk IV (A22) Churchill Mark VII, although the Churchill Mark IV was initially chosen to be the base vehicle.
The Panzerkampfwagen I was a light tank produced in Germany in the 1930s. The Panzer I was built in several variants and was the basis for a number of variants listed below.
The history of firearms begins in 10th-century China, when bamboo tubes containing gunpowder and pellet projectiles were mounted on spears to make portable fire lances, operable by one person. This was later used effectively as a shock weapon in the Siege of De'an in 1132. In the 13th century, fire lance barrels were replaced with metal tubes and transformed into metal-barreled hand cannons. The technology gradually spread throughout Eurasia during the 14th century and evolved into flintlocks, blunderbusses, and other variants. The 19th and 20th centuries saw an acceleration in this evolution, with the introduction of the magazine, belt-fed weapons, metal cartridges, and the automatic firearm. Older firearms typically used black powder as a propellant, but modern firearms use smokeless powder or other propellants. Most modern firearms have rifled barrels.
The M202 FLASH is an American rocket launcher manufactured by Northrop Corporation, designed to replace the World War II–vintage flamethrowers that remained the military's standard incendiary devices well into the 1980s. The XM202 prototype launcher was tested in the Vietnam War, as part of the XM191 system.
The Einstossflammenwerfer 46 was a handheld single shot flamethrower designed in Germany during the second half of World War II and introduced in 1944; it was engineered to be both cheap and easily mass-produced, falling into the category of throwaway flamethrower. The disposable weapon fired a half-second burst of flame of up to 27 metres (89 ft). It was issued to the Volkssturm or the Werwolf movement, but also used by the Fallschirmjäger . It was inspired by the Italian "Lanciafiamme Mod. 41 d'assalto".
The ROKS-2 and ROKS-3 were man-portable flamethrowers used by the USSR in the Second World War.
The first German man-portable flamethrower was called the Kleinflammenwerfer or Kleif. Fuel was stored in a large vertical, cylindrical backpack container. High-pressure propellant was stored in another, smaller container attached to the fuel tank. A long hose connected the fuel tank to a lance tube with an igniting device at the nozzle. The propellant forced the fuel through the hose and out of the nozzle at high speed when a valve was opened. The igniting device at the nozzle set fire to the fuel as it sprayed out. The flamethrower was operated by two soldiers, one carrying the fuel and propellant tanks, another wielding the lance. Wex, a replacement for the Kleif, was introduced in 1917 after the third battle of Ypres.
The Flammenwerfer M.16. literally meaning it "throws flames" in German was a German man-portable backpack flamethrower that was used in World War I in trench warfare by the Germans. It was the first flamethrower ever used in combat, in 1916 at Verdun by the Germans. It was also used in 1918 in the battle of Argonne Forest in France against Allied forces by Germans, as featured in the 2001 film The Lost Battalion where the main character fights German, although an account in a 1917 issue of The Living Age suggests eye witness accounts of it being used at the Battle of the Somme in 1916 by Germans.
The M1 and M1A1 were portable flamethrowers developed by the United States during World War II. The M1 weighed 72 lb, had a range of 15 meters, and had a fuel tank capacity of five gallons. The improved M1A1 weighed less, at 65 lb, had a much longer range of 45 meters, had the same fuel tank capacity, and fired thickened fuel (napalm).
Livens Large Gallery Flame Projectors were large experimental flamethrowers used by the British Army in World War I, named after their inventor, Royal Engineers officer William Howard Livens.
The Flammenwerfer 41, or FmW 41 was the standard German flamethrower beginning in 1941 and an upgraded version of the earlier Flammenwerfer 35, whose main issue was its excessive weight of 36kg, with the Flammenwerfer 41 being only 18. It performed a similar role of other flamethrowers of the time, namely clearing enemy trenches and buildings in highly fortified areas. From 1942 to April 1945, 64,284 examples were produced. After 1945, flamethrowers gradually saw less usage, and the Bundeswehr does not use any.
The LPO-50 is a Soviet flamethrower.
