Flamethrowers vs. Armor

[realest]

Originally posted by JasonC:

I've done some further searching for FT vs tank real world stuff. First thing to point out is that 99 out of 100 things you find are from games, not reality. And easily 90 percent of the remainder are theoretical or technical description, not anything about actual experience in real combat.

I've found two mentions beyond those categories. One comes from WW II use lessons and tactics pamphlets, where the subject is dealing with Tigers. It says that while the flame will not penetrate the vehicle, it is possible to soot up the sights and vision ports (!) Would they be talking about that if it routinely just KOed the vehicle? Nooo.

The second source is from Korea not WW II, and addresses air dropped napalm not man packed FT. It is communist side - a Russian advisor telling lessons learned, passed on by the NK and Chinese etc. Here are the relevant bits -

"When it struck the road wheels of the T-34 tanks and SU-76 SP guns, napalm burned off the rubber tires. Tanks and SP guns deployed in place and lacking an ability to combat the fire in place were found stuck where their rubber was burned away. During dry weather, when moving a tank that had its rubber tire burned off but had the next wheel remaining intact tended to throw that track. But at the same time, a small number of vehicles suffered no major damage to their road wheels due to the short duration of the burning time of napalm or the fact that its flames soaked into the ground and were run over by the tracks."

"When it fell inside the tank, and when no timely counteraction was taken, the napalm started fires inside the tank, and on occasion caused the ammunition load to detonate."

"When napalm struck a tank, frequently the engine shut down due to oxygen starvation, but on the other hand once the fire was put out it usually restarted."

"Trucks and simpler unarmored transport means struck by napalm simply burned up."

"For protection of tank crews and armored vehicles, it was recommended that they cover all openings in the hull of the combat vehicle with fire-resistant material and exit the area covered by the flames."

"The clay soil upon which the burning napalm splattered was a good basis for storing weapons components and reliably isolated the flames from air to feed upon. By covering things with a layer of clay it prevented the napalm from burning them. When napalm struck the road wheels, track run and other parts of the tank, the crew could throw clay (earth) from the rice fields on it with their hands, using it to cover the burning napalm and for that reason snuff out the flames."

"It was more difficult to extinguish a napalm fire with sand, as the sand dissipated and would not always cover the surface; therefore, it was not a reliable way to isolate the napalm from the surrounding air."

"Each tank in a combat assignment was fitted with two 5-kilogram buckets of clay for extinguishing fires inside and outside of the vehicle."

This is a real world behavior for a real world effective threat. But that threat came from *a third* of all USAF munitions expended in Korea being napalm, dropped in 150 gallon drop tanks or 100 lb bombs, with splash areas of 20 meters for the smallest and more like 30 by 60 meters for the largest types. Not from 4-5 gallons for 8-10 second - half or more of it burning in the air long before it reached the target - from a manpack FT brought within 50m.

Thanks for this, and no to say that i think a FT will slice through tanks is untrue. You are failing to understand my concerns of the heat issue with connections. However, if the burn times will not exceed a minute then i doubt it is likely to have the time to sufficiently heat the material. If the burn time exceeds 5 minutes and can keep a 600 degree or so heat going it's going to have the potential to soften the steel or have adverse affect on "Small" pieces. I'm curious about pins, links, etc.

Design of those tread links in my eyes is where the potential for heat related damage would help failure to occur.

I'm not a proponent of Flame Throwers tank busting. But on a poor design or one that has inferior steel then flame can adversely effect connections causing or aiding in the breaking of the track thus immobilizing. But this would only be possible if the fuel mix will burn for a prolonged period of time. Preferably in excess of 5 or 10 minutes.

These connections would need to be made of things such as 1/4" rods and flats or less, anything made of 10 gage or less would be sure to fail as that material starts coming in at around a tenth of an inch and less in thinkness. I don't know how the track connections were made though.

[JasonC]

Try solid steel rods half an inch to an inch in diameter. I've done my share of maintenance on a M109 and M110 SP howitzers (closer to 1 inch), and the idea they would use thin gauge wire is just laughable. You need crowbars and several men to move the things.

(Only thing vulnerable to lighting on those might be the rubber road shoes - 2 inch thick, 4 inch wide, foot long blocks of hard rubber seated firmly in each metal "cleat" along the tread, with about 3/4 of an inch extending past the cleat to act as a "horseshoe" hitting the ground).

Even the splash from a 250 gallon napalm canister burns itself out in a few minutes - only leaving whatever it ignited still burning.

The first and primary target of napalm weapons are structures - they are descendents of small incendiaries packed 36 to a 500 lb case used to burn down cities in strategic bombing raids.

The tac air version instead used 100 lb bomb cases, or drop tanks with incidendiary grenades strapped to each end, with the idea being to splash an area about 30m on a side, igniting flammable ground cover, soft vehicles, or structures as well as frying exposed personnel.

[Michael Dorosh]

I've worked with Universal Carrier steel track, and as I recall the track pins were substantial even on such a small AFV.

[realest]

I'm curious, i'm going to have to find some close up pictures of the tread ware. 1" material or better i have no problem believing. I wonder about the PZ 1's and those early smaller vehicles? However, a 1/2 inch pin can be affected, but the burn time would need to be more than 2 minutes or so. The pin itself if it's 12" or so..... hmmmmm, if it softens then it's big enough to hold and would slowly chew itself up over time, as it would likely take a few months to show. Replaced i'm sure between operations.

How do those tread pieces link?? Are they sort of like door hinges where you have "fingers" interlocking to spit the pin through?

Not thin wire, i would doubt the strain of traversing on those connections is substantial. However, a smaller vehicle and not a main battle vehicle perhaps??

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by realest:

How do those tread pieces link?? Are they sort of like door hinges where you have "fingers" interlocking to spit the pin through?

Yep, if I'm picturing what you're describing correctly.

[John Kettler]

JasonC,

Not only did I very carefully avoid citing any of the hundreds of entries dealing with wargame rules, but I'm the guy who found the written in 2000 Russian history of the Korean War, for which I gave a link. That's where your quote is from. The quote indicates that an unbuttoned tank could be and was destroyed outright by the entry of napalm, thus, for the U.S. FT case at least, we know it's possible. The vehicle immobilization by oxygen starvation is interesting, and I've previously described the physiology of flame attack, with more at the Russian history of the Korean War chapter.

Andreas,

Regarding the fate of that Marine engineer battalion(?) which was destroyed before it could even land, presumably by shellfire, I'd think that direct hits in densely packed craft would tend to overwhelm secondary effects such as exploding explosives and flamethrowers. Somewhere in the Corps archives there may exist a report with greater detail, but the main narrative indicates the entire unit was basically wiped out. It is clear from D-Day accounts of Normandy that even the primer cord could and did explode, as happened to one guy in the Special Landing Parties almost ready to pull fuzes to breach landing obstacles.

The same fragment took out his primer cord and sliced off two of his fingers, completely nullifying the planned demolition at the last second.

As for the Marine's assignment of cause of death to the repeatedly mentioned platoon, men killed by HE and small arms are readily distinguishable from flame victims unless also themselves flamed during or after. If you've watched any island hopping documentaries with contemporary close combat footage you know exactly what I'm talking about. If by chance you haven't then look at the Highway of Death immolated from Desert Storm.

JasonC,

I certainly take your point about Tiger I flamethrower vulnerability, and I definitely don't subscribe to either the Kelly's heroes or SPR model of Tiger I design in which vision blocks aren't fitted to the driver's position! BTW, I previously provided a link to a Military Info. com Intel Bulletin repro which addressed Mark IV flamethrower vulnerability. Unfortunately, it's not up at Lone Sentry.com for free perusal.

John D Salt,

Great Home guard stuff! Back in my high school days, one of my classmates had a facsimilie edition of the Home Guard manual "WE SHALL FIGHT IN THE STREETS" published by Panther Press. At the time, the Black Panthers were making a big splash, and I had already figured my work would require clearances, so didn't want to blackball myself by doing something stupid. I thought Panther Press might be the Black Panthers' publication arm, so called the FBI office to inquire. Half an hour of runarounds later while trying to do the right thing, I gave up. Never did order the book. It was very groggy, full of practical information on urban warfare in the 1940s, including how much of what stops which kinds of weapons. Brother Ed did a report, too, on planned British defensive measures in the event of invasion, like the ones you describe.

Regards,

Johhn Kettler

[ November 13, 2006, 03:24 AM: Message edited by: John Kettler ]

[Andreas]

Originally posted by John Kettler:

As for the Marine's assignment of cause of death to the repeatedly mentioned platoon, men killed by HE and small arms are readily distinguishable from flame victims unless also themselves flamed during or after.

Yes. That would indicate it may have been a flamethrower attack to anyone who is not hell-bent on wanting to believe that it was an accidental ignition of an FT pack hit by bullets.

On one occasion, as we fought inch by inch through that rugged terrain, we crossed a little knob and came upon the remains of a bunch of Seventh Marine bodies, blackened and swollen from flame throwers cooking them. The flies and the birds and maggots were working on them. It looked to be what was left of a platoon of good, young Marine Corps riflemen and machine gunners.

It does not even say anything about Marine FTs being present, let alone suggest that those FTs which may or may not have been present ignited.

All the best

Andreas

[JasonC]

I didn't find it from any of your links, it was prominent enough in google I noticed it independently. And not from anything to do with contemporary Russian ops, just from inquiring about Korean war experiences.

It also does not remotely help your case, if you are in fact still making one - that is hard to tell. Obviously 500 gallons of napalm splashed from an air strike (multiple containers etc) onto an open topped SU-76 or unbuttoned tank can destroy them. This does not mean 5 gallons half burned in the air on the way to the target from an manpacked FT will do anything like it. Clearly CE personnel can be hurt by a flamethrower - they can be hurt by a pistol, it isn't saying anything.

As for the question - I don't even seriously regard it as a real question - you and Andreas are addressing, I doubt very much the men who happened upon the scene had any idea what its real cause was. And overwhelmingly the most likely cause of the only physical evidence described is a platoon shot up or shelled quite independently and beforehand, happening to be at the location of a later napalm strike by US air. Next most likely would be friendly fire in a misplaced napalm strike, and next most likely a Japanese use of FTs in a counterattack.

[John Kettler]

JasonC,

Since a napalm strike is anything but localized, burning up anything combustible over a wide area and blackening the ground with hydrocarbon soot, I think it would be obvious to anyone but the blind

that such a strike had occurred in a given area, as opposed to the, barring a grass fire, say, highly circumscribed area hit by a flamethrower. I suspect a combat Marine would notice something like that and report accordingly. Could it have happened this way? I suppose, but at low probability. I did an enormous amount of digging, but was unable to find any other late war incident

involving Japanese use of flamethrowers other than Dakeshi Ridge, or whatever it was. If the Japanese had managed to butcher most of a platoon in a late war flamethrower attack, you'd think that would rate a mention, but I can't find any such event.

JasonC and realest,

According to Wiki, burn time for WW II type napalm, which fueled our flamethrowers once we got serious, had a burn time of 10-15 seconds and a 1200 degree C (2192 degeees Fahrenheit) burn temperature. And did you know that the flamethrower jet can be ricocheted to get at otherwise inaccessable places?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napalm

Regards,

John Kettler

[realest]

If you could maintain that heat for about 5 minutes, you could likely weld up or otherwise cause failure of a connecting member. 10 seconds, just simply not enough time.

I am shocked that the burn time is so low, but i should have realized i guess. I'd have thought that the fuel mix would have added a solid for longer burn times. Likely tried, probably to many problems with gumming up the hoses or firing mechinism. Or if fuel gets to thick you might not be able to get distance i suppose.

Thanks for the info...

[John Kettler]

realest,

The time given was from the napalm site, but even cursory exploration of, say, Pacific flamethrower footage indicates that the fire burns much longer than that, even if simply sprayed into a cave opening. I think the burn time is simply for the primary whuff when the napalm first hits. It's pretty clingy stuff and will set almost anything combustible ablaze, to include vehicle paint. The North Korean field expedient firefighting method speaks volumes for how clingy it is and how long it burns, relying on clay to deprive the flame of oxygen. I note also that vehicle immobilization lasts until the fire is "put out," rather than burning itself out in mere seconds. Yesterday, the History Channel ran the Color of War episode "Tankers" in which there are not only several Pacific flame tank sequences, but you can see the mechanics making the napalm gel, which they called "goop" and playing with it, neatly revealing its viscosity in the process. Hope you get to see it some time, since I think it'll help your understanding of napalm's dynamics when burning.

Regards,

John Kettler

[ramagel]

Toast!

[jBrereton]

Indeed, the vehicle is utterly toasted, but this happens much more in wargames than in real life, which I think is the genuine issue at the moment on this thread.

By the way - what possessed you to get an even uglier grass texture?

[ramagel]

Yes, I know. Sorry, but I couldn't resist. I should try harder, I know.

Oh, the grass texture is a result of reducing the image size by half, I think.