Speaker 1: Hi, everybody. Chuck here on a Saturday with my Saturday Selects.
Speaker 1: Pick from June three, two ten. I think I picked
Speaker 1: this one because I just got done watching What's Upon
Speaker 1: a Time in Hollywood once again. Here is our episode
Speaker 1: how Flamethrowers Work. Have you seen that movie? You know
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. If you haven't, I hope they
Speaker 1: didn't spoil it for you. So learn all about flamethrowers
Speaker 1: right now. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production
Speaker 1: of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck
Speaker 1: Bryant that makes this Stuff you should Know, right, Chuck? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Terry just I love it when like we get last
Speaker 1: second instructions. Yeah, and they don't make any sense. Save
Speaker 1: it for the show, guys, right, or show that picture
Speaker 1: on the podcast the audio podcast. Oh goodness, how are
Speaker 1: you sir? I'm fine by all rights Friday, but it's
Speaker 1: actually Thursday, but it's almost Memorial Day. Yeah, and we're
Speaker 1: not Are you coming in tomorrow at all? No? I'm
Speaker 1: not comfortable saying either way. Well, that'll be surprised. I
Speaker 1: don't want to get in trouble. Well, I'm not. I'm
Speaker 1: still scared of the man. I know you're not, but
Speaker 1: you're all like, hey, look at me. I'm forty. I
Speaker 1: make my own decisions, not forty. So Chuck, you're George
Speaker 1: Carlin fan, right, Yeah, the late George Carlin. Just the
Speaker 1: late Alright, we always had the bummer, don't you. The
Speaker 1: late George Carlin could be like George Carlin. He's the
Speaker 1: greatest stand up comedian ever. When the very the worm
Speaker 1: food George Carlin, Yeah, the dearly departed. Yes, I like him. Why,
Speaker 1: I have an obscure stand up bit that I'll bet
Speaker 1: you haven't heard of that is apropope of our topic today.
Speaker 1: So George Carlin um had a bit about flamethrowers. I
Speaker 1: never heard that one. He said that the very presence
Speaker 1: of flamethrowers, and I'm paraphrasing, the very presence of flamethrowers
Speaker 1: means that at some point sometime someone said to himself,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a bunch of people over there that
Speaker 1: I'd like to set on fire, but they're too far
Speaker 1: away from me to get the job done. I wish
Speaker 1: there was something that I could use to throw flames
Speaker 1: on them, and as a result, we now have the flamethrower,
Speaker 1: which is kind of crazy when you think about it
Speaker 1: that way. It is pretty interesting, it is, And when
Speaker 1: you start to really look into flamethrowers, you realize just
Speaker 1: how horrific the acts that humans inflict on other humans
Speaker 1: can be. Yeah, it's pretty it's pretty awful stuff. Actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: when you I mean actually all kinds of modern weaponry.
Speaker 1: And know, my brother in lawson the Marines, he told
Speaker 1: me about this. I think it's called a flachette, some
Speaker 1: sort of bomb that like explodes above people and sends
Speaker 1: thousands of like razor blades shooting out. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: it's mainly of used for clearing like jungle, but um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't remember jungle of enemy combatants exactly. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: some sick I thought that up were like what one
Speaker 1: step away from the alien weapons in District nine where
Speaker 1: people just blow up in an almost cartoonish fashion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's coming the atomizer or something they'll call it. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: What's what's odd is that that person, that first person
Speaker 1: that George carlin Um envisions actually lived a lot longer
Speaker 1: ago than you would think. I was shocked. I was
Speaker 1: well a century BC, fifth century b C. Man, Right,
Speaker 1: it wasn't well, it was a flamethrower. It was a
Speaker 1: very crude, vulgar if you will, flamethrower. It was a
Speaker 1: long tube sort of like a blowgun, and they filled
Speaker 1: it with solid stuff like hot coal and sulfur. And yeah,
Speaker 1: ideally you don't suck in that would be bad. No,
Speaker 1: I was thinking that too, Like you have to suck
Speaker 1: in the breath before you put the tube deer and
Speaker 1: out through us. You're in big trouble. Oh, that's the
Speaker 1: case with any blow blowgun, right, sure, Yeah, did you
Speaker 1: ever make those when your kid? No? I never did.
Speaker 1: That's too busy burning stuff. You could have done both apparently.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they would shoot I guess, um hot coal
Speaker 1: or sulfur out at their enemy combatant instead of a
Speaker 1: flame per se, Yeah, which I guess Ultimately it would
Speaker 1: bounce off of their arm and they'd be like, ah,
Speaker 1: that burns, and then they just tussle and leg wrestling, right,
Speaker 1: and shake hands afterwards and go eat a bore. That's
Speaker 1: that's how that went to enter BC with Josh. But
Speaker 1: leave it to the Greeks, who were one of the brainiest,
Speaker 1: most um thieving cultures of all time. They probably got
Speaker 1: this idea from the Chemites. Frankly, but there's this stuff
Speaker 1: called um Greek fire, And actually I can't say that
Speaker 1: the Greeks came up with it. It's called Greek fire,
Speaker 1: but the Byzantines that what we know is turks um.
Speaker 1: We're uh, we're most notorious for using this stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that they think they're not sure because it was
Speaker 1: a long time ago. It was a mixture of liquid
Speaker 1: petrol and sulfur and like stuff like quicklime. Petrol's British
Speaker 1: for gas, Yeah, and UM. They would pump it out
Speaker 1: actually from a reservoir through little narrow tubes and like
Speaker 1: anything that goes from a big reservoir type system to
Speaker 1: a small, thin one, it would create pressure to shoot
Speaker 1: it out and then some unlucky guy would be the
Speaker 1: lighter at the end of it, and that would be
Speaker 1: like a real flamethrower, like dozens of feet. Yeah, as
Speaker 1: we're gonna learn, anybody whose job it was to deal
Speaker 1: with any aspect of flamethrowing UM was the unlucky guy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the more dangerous weapons you can use, UM,
Speaker 1: but it was very effective. Number One, since it's oil based. Uh,
Speaker 1: it could this, this Greek fire could be used in
Speaker 1: naval battles because it would still burn even when it
Speaker 1: contacted the water. Um. And so the Byzantines mounted it
Speaker 1: on their ships. These flamethrowers um on their ships and
Speaker 1: on the city walls around Constantinople and basically just repelled
Speaker 1: people out of fear as much as you know, burning
Speaker 1: them alive. Yeah, they were. Their enemies were really freaked out.
Speaker 1: I imagine when they first saw like fire shooting at them. Yes,
Speaker 1: freaked out and intrigued, especially in the case of the Chinese.
Speaker 1: See what the Byzantines had was a single action pump.
Speaker 1: You just did the foot pump with literally did you
Speaker 1: see that? Do you see that? Jerry? Them following your command? Um,
Speaker 1: the the Byzantines had a single action bellows pump where
Speaker 1: when you pressed down on the down stroke, it would
Speaker 1: push the liquid out. Right. Yes, you get like a
Speaker 1: burst of fire. And that's it right, because on the
Speaker 1: up stroke nothing was happening except with the bellows were
Speaker 1: filling back up with air to press down compressed right. Um.
Speaker 1: The Chinese said, hey, that's that's really funny because we
Speaker 1: have a double simbelows to where you are compressing air
Speaker 1: um on the upstroke and the downstroke. So instead of
Speaker 1: your stupid little short bursts of Greek fire, we have
Speaker 1: one long burst that just cuts you in half. Lead
Speaker 1: to the Chinese get all better, the wheelbarrow, the kite,
Speaker 1: the hang glider, the flamethrower, gunpowder and actually gunpowder um
Speaker 1: equaled the demise of flamethrowers for about a thousand years, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: as soon as gunpowder came along, they were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're just chumps with fire when we can actually shoot
Speaker 1: a gun, That's that's the way of the future, right
Speaker 1: And it was, But so is the flamethrower, as it
Speaker 1: turns out, yeah, because it lay dormant for about a
Speaker 1: thousand years. And then in World War One, actually right
Speaker 1: before World War One, the Germans, a very warlike state
Speaker 1: at the time, were um, they said, you know what,
Speaker 1: exactly can we and our arsenal that is just totally
Speaker 1: scary and wildly to instructive. Yes, let's look back through
Speaker 1: the annals of of you know, historic weaponry and find something.
Speaker 1: And they look through and they said the flamethrower. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Richard Fielder is an engineer in nineteen o one. They
Speaker 1: credit him with inventing it, but he clearly was using
Speaker 1: old technology as the initial idea. At least. It's a
Speaker 1: clever design, though, isn't it. Yeah, because this from this
Speaker 1: original design. Um, there have been you know, some polishing
Speaker 1: moments for the flamethrower over the years, but from that,
Speaker 1: from that modern era that the design has remained relatively
Speaker 1: the same. Right, it's like a three tank design. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The flamin furf is what it's called nice the Germans.
Speaker 1: That's what the German uh, and it was, um, well
Speaker 1: let's yeah, let's go ahead and explain how it works
Speaker 1: with thanks, all right, And this is the handheld flamethrower,
Speaker 1: which is the one that's I guess was most readily
Speaker 1: used in combat. Yeah, and it's the one you see
Speaker 1: like a guy's wearing these tanks on his back and
Speaker 1: he's got the rifle. Is just right. So you got
Speaker 1: two outer tanks and those are filled with the flammable
Speaker 1: fuel oil based petrol if you will, like Greek fire
Speaker 1: and um, then there's a center smaller tank which holds
Speaker 1: a compressed gas like butane and uh it was. It
Speaker 1: would feed the gas through a pressure regulator connected to
Speaker 1: the tubes, right, and you can take it from here. Well,
Speaker 1: the this is why I think it's very clever. The
Speaker 1: butuane served a dual purpose. One that was compressed, so
Speaker 1: when you open the valve, it would push the liquid
Speaker 1: fuel out of the tanks into the tube and into
Speaker 1: ultimately in the reservoir and the gun the pressure regulator. Right,
Speaker 1: that is what they would but switch on. There is
Speaker 1: another tube that came directly out of the third tank
Speaker 1: that held the compressed gas like butane, and this tube
Speaker 1: went directly to the ignition valve right right, so it
Speaker 1: served as the igniter later on. Right that it was
Speaker 1: because it was the but that was actually burning when
Speaker 1: you um. When you open the ignition valve, the butu
Speaker 1: tane flows to the end, mixes with air the end
Speaker 1: of the rifle. Um and then there's like there's two triggers.
Speaker 1: There's the fuel released trigger right, yes, and then there's
Speaker 1: the ignition trigger. And the ignition trigger is basically you're
Speaker 1: operating a battery that operates a spark plug sends the current,
Speaker 1: generates heat right nights the but tane. Now you have
Speaker 1: that little blue flame on the end. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: you've seen in movies like if you see them around that, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: You see the little like three inch flame coming out
Speaker 1: in the end, right, that's actually but tane burning. The
Speaker 1: fuel hasn't been released, the hell fire has not been
Speaker 1: opened yet or released yet. That's when you squeeze what's
Speaker 1: the fuel released trigger and then well, yeah, then that
Speaker 1: pulls back a little valve plug because you obviously want
Speaker 1: it plugged or else you're going to have a big
Speaker 1: mess on your hands. You'll be on fire very quickly.
Speaker 1: So when you pull the fuel release trigger, it pulls
Speaker 1: the little valve plug back, and then all the fuel
Speaker 1: supply suddenly rushes through to the tip of the gun
Speaker 1: where the flame is in. Boom, there you go. In
Speaker 1: nineteen forty two, the Army Chemical Warfare Service, I think
Speaker 1: is what it was called. UM, they came up with
Speaker 1: a little something called napalm, which is ultimately a gasoline
Speaker 1: or petrol in the case of Chuck and our British friends, UM,
Speaker 1: a gasoline thickening agent. So with a slightly thickened gas
Speaker 1: you have a longer range. It carries further because it
Speaker 1: has more mass or girth or whatever. There's less there's
Speaker 1: less friction from the ground comeing up right um, and uh,
Speaker 1: it also can be concentrated more easily right right. So
Speaker 1: basically that was one of those real big polishing moments.
Speaker 1: It went from just gas which sprays too thick gas
Speaker 1: which sticks burns. It evaporates much less quickly, so it
Speaker 1: will burn forever and it's really difficult to put out.
Speaker 1: And if you get covered in it, you're entirely in trouble. Yes,
Speaker 1: you're out of luck. And they would mount these on
Speaker 1: well p t boats for one. Have you ever seen
Speaker 1: the videos of those things like cruising down the river
Speaker 1: shooting napalm into the forest. Well, I see there's a
Speaker 1: picture of it in the article. I've never seen video
Speaker 1: of It's pretty wicked. Yeah. And they called them, they
Speaker 1: called them zippo flamethrowers, right, because the ignition um system
Speaker 1: failed so frequently. It's just like on a gas grill,
Speaker 1: what they have to light it with a zippo? With
Speaker 1: a zippo, you're kidding? And that's the other unlucky dude,
Speaker 1: I guess. Yeah, he'd be like, don't get too close
Speaker 1: to it with his hand, right, And so flamethrowers. It
Speaker 1: wasn't just some guy you know where. It would be
Speaker 1: like a bunch of infantry guys and then some guy
Speaker 1: on the end happened to grab the flamethrower that morning
Speaker 1: when they went out, and it's just you know, they
Speaker 1: were part of a tactical strategy. Yeah, what would happen
Speaker 1: was rifleman would lay down cover fire. Let's say you
Speaker 1: come to the mouth of a cave and there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of enemy combatants in there and they're shooting you,
Speaker 1: and they have snipers and you're in big trouble. All
Speaker 1: your your rifleman lay down fire on this cave so
Speaker 1: those guys can't move, cover fire to allow your flamethrower
Speaker 1: man to get close. He was highly susceptible at this
Speaker 1: point because of what he's wearing on his back. Yes,
Speaker 1: all it takes is one good shot to one of
Speaker 1: those tanks and that guy's gone, or a bad shot,
Speaker 1: just a shot. Sure, yeah, if you come in contact
Speaker 1: with it with the bullet um. But so the flamethrower
Speaker 1: guy gets close basically cooks everybody, burns everyone to death
Speaker 1: in that cave, right, that's his job. And then after
Speaker 1: that the munitions guys come in and explode the cave
Speaker 1: so it can never be used again. And that's Sianora
Speaker 1: for the cave dwellers. Yes, uh, you know, speaking of
Speaker 1: a quick death, I've always heard when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: you know that. You know, if you were a flamethrower
Speaker 1: in war, your average lifespan is like thirty seconds in combat. Well,
Speaker 1: I always heard that, and I'd scoured the internets and
Speaker 1: I could not find anything to verify that, but um,
Speaker 1: that's what I always heard. I thought that was an
Speaker 1: interesting tidbit. I did read that most people who were
Speaker 1: flamethrower operators didn't survive. I would imagine it's pretty dangerous
Speaker 1: thing to be toting around. Yeah, and they also had assistance,
Speaker 1: because the assistance would open and close the valves on
Speaker 1: the pack form. That was the whole job. It was
Speaker 1: always a two man team, so both of them would
Speaker 1: usually not make it. I would if I was the assistant,
Speaker 1: I would turn on his little valve and then run
Speaker 1: for cover and then run up and turn it off again, right,
Speaker 1: And I'd probably pretty unpopular with the flamethrower guy. Probably
Speaker 1: then the flamethrower guy was well like because if you
Speaker 1: can take out an entire gun nest of people, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Then you know everybody's going to applaud you and clap,
Speaker 1: and you know, probably not get too close though, because
Speaker 1: you're going to die eventually. Yeah, I'd rather be a sniper.
Speaker 1: I think that'd be. Like I play Call of Duty.
Speaker 1: I got a p S three now, But I tell
Speaker 1: you that no, wow, Chuck, it was given to me
Speaker 1: by my step step step dad, now father in law.
Speaker 1: You did tell me my stepfather in law. And so
Speaker 1: I got just a couple of games. I'm not like
Speaker 1: a huge gamer at all, Like I think a Nintendo,
Speaker 1: like the first Nintendo was the last thing I actually owned.
Speaker 1: But um, I play Call of Duty now. I like
Speaker 1: a shooter games too. It's pretty fun. But you choose
Speaker 1: to be a sniper on that. Well, now there are
Speaker 1: just certain levels where you can be a sniper. Like
Speaker 1: you'll pick up a sniper gun if you want. And
Speaker 1: I was usually kind of just hang back and pick
Speaker 1: guys off, especially guys with flamethrowers. Here we go again
Speaker 1: to liberal peacenicks like us when it comes to like
Speaker 1: this war stuff, we just get all giddy. Well it
Speaker 1: is this one. For some reason, I was reading a
Speaker 1: message about a flamethrower operator in World War two, who
Speaker 1: you know, UM received the Medal of Honor for UM
Speaker 1: invading a Japanese they think they're called pillbox. It was
Speaker 1: a little gun nest and burning them all and burning
Speaker 1: them all alive, and like the the guy wrote UM
Speaker 1: that there were some muffled screams and then silence. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, being burned alive is pretty much everybody's worst death,
Speaker 1: I would think. So it's up there. Well we had
Speaker 1: worst way to die, that's right up there. And I think,
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, burning to death is consistently the
Speaker 1: number one and like informal polls, right, imagine it is
Speaker 1: pretty painful and it happened a lot in World War
Speaker 1: One to Vietnam. Yeah, I imagined Korea. This is a
Speaker 1: horrible weapon, absolutely, but you can find uh, civilian applications
Speaker 1: for can't you. Yeah, Well, before we move on to that,
Speaker 1: we also need to say that they were on tanks
Speaker 1: as well, so it wasn't just boats. They used them
Speaker 1: on tanks, and uh, the design was basically the same.
Speaker 1: You just had a lot more fuel and you had
Speaker 1: like piston rotary pumps to get a lot more length
Speaker 1: on your shot. And yeah, the backpack mounted ones had
Speaker 1: a range of about fifty yards, right, Uh, that's that's
Speaker 1: a long way though. Yeah, let's have a football field.
Speaker 1: You don't have to get that close. Sure, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: wonder the first enemy that was like, he's got a flamethrower,
Speaker 1: but we're way too far away. They were within like
Speaker 1: forty five exactly. Civilian applications, Um, forced forced fire fighters
Speaker 1: forest firefighters? Is that how you say it? I don't know.
Speaker 1: They actually use these when they do like the prescribed burning,
Speaker 1: like sometimes they'll burn, well, not just the firefighters, they
Speaker 1: do prescribe burns anyway, and then sometimes the firefighters do that,
Speaker 1: they'll like burn a section to cut it off right there,
Speaker 1: and they that's what they do it with flamethrowers, which
Speaker 1: actually kind of made me want to go get a
Speaker 1: job with the forestry Service so you could burn things
Speaker 1: on purpose well with the flamethrower. Yeah. Did you hear
Speaker 1: about this car thing in South Africa? Theft deterrent system
Speaker 1: that burned you know? Yeah, I don't think it's still around.
Speaker 1: This is like twelve years ago, and um, a South
Speaker 1: African man invented it was called the blaster and basically
Speaker 1: it would shoot a man high fireball, that is what
Speaker 1: they called it. What at you if you tried to
Speaker 1: break into the car for a mere ran which is
Speaker 1: uh and this and that was like six or fifty
Speaker 1: bucks and um, it would squirt liquefied gas from a
Speaker 1: bottle in the trunk through two nozzles located on the
Speaker 1: front door. And the rub is you couldn't turn one
Speaker 1: on and turn one off. So if a guy was
Speaker 1: breaking into like the driver's side door, it would still
Speaker 1: shoot fire out of the passenger side to whomever might
Speaker 1: be walking by unluckily on that side. I'd say, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's an invention that wasn't fully thought through. I
Speaker 1: would think so. But apparently he sold a bunch of
Speaker 1: him at the time and he said it's non lethal,
Speaker 1: but it would definitely blind a person, is what he said,
Speaker 1: and keep them from stealing your car. Yeah, because they
Speaker 1: can't see cars any longer. That's terrible. Yeah, way to
Speaker 1: go South Africa. Um. Lastly, chuck fire breathers their form
Speaker 1: of They follow the basic principles of flamethrowing by drinking kerosene. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there you go. If you want to learn about fire breathers,
Speaker 1: we have an article on them if you want to
Speaker 1: learn more about flame throwers, and before you send us
Speaker 1: a listener mail, we are aware of flamethrower exhaust systems.
Speaker 1: We've both seen Greece before. Um, you can type any
Speaker 1: word you want to into the handy search bar how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot Com. It'll yield something interesting. I guarantee
Speaker 1: you that. Uh so, chuck listener man, I'm gonna call this.
Speaker 1: I love this dude. And his name is Guy and
Speaker 1: not as in hey guy, his real name is Guy.
Speaker 1: Guy from San Francisco says, guys, just listen to the
Speaker 1: Art Theft podcast. And by the way, we do know
Speaker 1: about the Paris heist that just went down. Pretty cool,
Speaker 1: uh very intriguing for future monetary and sent of neither
Speaker 1: here nor there. However, I have a little bit a
Speaker 1: little habit that I thought I might like to share
Speaker 1: that loosely pertains. I have never stolen art knowingly. However,
Speaker 1: I do frequently and I'm subjected to I travel frequently,
Speaker 1: and I'm subjected to much distasteful art guilty of being
Speaker 1: a budget traveler. So there's the rub. But to amuse myself,
Speaker 1: I like to take the horrible art off the wall,
Speaker 1: take it out of the glass and frame and add
Speaker 1: the ever so slightest detail. This guy is wonderful. He
Speaker 1: does this in hotels. A chicken in the corner by
Speaker 1: the barn, a seagull flying over the crest of a wave,
Speaker 1: a beer bottle and fishing pole by the babbling brook.
Speaker 1: I do it in every hotel, motel, hotel, hostel, bungalow,
Speaker 1: you name it. I will stay there and I will
Speaker 1: change the art they have. Art and hostels. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: probably not. It makes me chuckle to think that maybe
Speaker 1: one day someone will be staring at an awful hotel
Speaker 1: painting and look closely and notice one of the gallant
Speaker 1: cowboys has a tin of skull by his left boot heel.
Speaker 1: So if you stay in cheap hotels, keep your eyes out.
Speaker 1: People you may have stayed where a guy from San
Speaker 1: Francisco has stayed. Just don't turn on the black light.
Speaker 1: That's all I have to say. That's awesome. That is awesome, man.
Speaker 1: I love to hear people doing cool stuff. Vandalism, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's it's vandalism with like an eye towards it's fundalism. Well,
Speaker 1: if you're a starving artist who shows your work at
Speaker 1: the Airport Hilton conference Room. We want to hear from you.
Speaker 1: Just send us an email to Stuff podcast at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
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