Were FAE bombs used in WWII?

[Andreas]

Originally posted by kevsharr:

Quote: Lucas (another of those grain of salt types)

Not to belabor the point but how does one get on this grain of salt list?

I sort of like his 'War on the Eastern Front' - I despise his approach in 'Kampfgruppe', and I dislike his lack of corroborating evidence in general. His books are a Curate's egg type story as far as I am concerned. Then again, I am picky. YMMV.

Carrell/Schmidt: I emailed a few people a long time ago, amongst them Steve, an English summary of the German page. Suffice to say Carrell/Schmidt lied about his military background as a war correspondent, and instead was Chief Editor of Signal and Chief Propagandist at the Nazi Foreign Office.

[manchildstein (ii)]

i fink it was a vril manipulation weapon (vmw)...

[Tarquelne]

Originally posted by manchildstein II:

i fink it was a vril manipulation weapon (vmw)...

Where are you right now? Be specific.

[Tarquelne]

FAE's work by dispersing the fuel AS AN AEROSOL.

You city-slickers might not know this, but you can get a demonstration of the basic principle if you go into a large grain storage facility and start striking sparks. IIRC, soybeans work best for some reason.

[offtaskagain]

Flour works for a good aerosol explosive too. Back in the 1800s a couple of flour mills here in Minneapolis exploded pretty spectacularly from the dust igniting.

[ December 03, 2002, 04:54 PM: Message edited by: panzerwerfer42 ]

[busboy]

I remember reading all of this guy's account when someone posted a link a long time ago. He was a tanker in the German army in active duty since Barbarrossa. So he saw bodies.

It seems to me that the guy is describing a scene where all the enemy soldiers look like they just dropped dead.

He says "what could have caused such damage to life but not equipment." He also says specifically that their lungs burst, though he does not explain how he knows this.

Now if overpressure was the cause, would not the scene look like a mess? Would there not be craters, things blown out of place, ect?

The guesses that I saw put forth on this issue is that perhaps a projectile contained liquid oxygen or something similar that got into the lungs of the men and caused their lungs to burst when it expanded back into a gas.

[Robert Isenberg]

Mike

Propane goes into vapor at normal air pressure and any tempature that humans could normally survive at(I believe we are talking liquid nitrogen levels when propane is in a fluid state and not under very high pressure)

TNT,c-4,b-2,torpex,gunpowder,gasoline etc.. all burn making a flame just some faster than others which is how we get explosions

Get the right mixture of oxygen and fuel and things will go BOOM

heck even grain silo explosions are a form of FAE's

Which is why they have the precautions on them now

Originally posted by Mike

Again that is not a FAE.

That's a flame weapon.

FAE's work by dispersing the fuel AS AN AEROSOL. The resulting explosion causes very high overpresure over all portions of any target within the aerosol, destroying it.

Spraying around as droplets doesn't have teh same effect, while pouring it into sewers or droping it onto the ground doesn't even come close.

Instead the relatively large drops burn, causing damage by heat.

For teh grogs out there, yes I know the terms burn and explosion are not exact and they are both essentialy the same thing but happening at different speeds, but I hope you get the picture.[/QB]

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Mike:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Robert Isenberg:

I believe FAE weapons where used during WW2,but in a different form than a bomb

Propane was pumped into the sewers during the Warsaw uprisings and detonated to kill those using the sewers as a safe passage lanes

Again that is not a FAE.

That's a flame weapon.

FAE's work by dispersing the fuel AS AN AEROSOL. The resulting explosion causes very high overpresure over all portions of any target within the aerosol, destroying it.

Spraying around as droplets doesn't have teh same effect, while pouring it into sewers or droping it onto the ground doesn't even come close.

Instead the relatively large drops burn, causing damage by heat.

For teh grogs out there, yes I know the terms burn and explosion are not exact and they are both essentialy the same thing but happening at different speeds, but I hope you get the picture.</font>

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by panzerwerfer42:

Flour works for a good aerosol explosive too. Back in the 1800s a couple of flour mills here in Minneapolis exploded pretty spectacularly from the dust igniting.

I heard once of an interesting case, whether true or apocryphal it has a lesson to teach. Seems that a fuel tank holding gasoline on a tank farm was found to be leaking. So it was drained and a welder was sent for to put a patch on it. The welder arrived and climbed down into it and set up his equipment. He lit his torch...and promptly blew himself, the tank, and everything sky high. Seems that he had arrived unannounced and unnoticed before anyone had gotten around to washing out the tank and venting the fumes. One FAE par excellent.

Michael

[Grisha]

Originally posted by Mike:

I don't believe this qualifies as an FAE as such.

The descriptions around on the various Il-2 game sites (the only place it gets a mention on the web) are of spherical containers of petrol also containing phosphorous. . . .

I wanted to make sure about this, so I emailed my friend, Oleg Maddox (he's an aeronautical engineer in Russia), and asked him to explain VAP-250 system to me. Here was his reply:

Yes its like napalm. Russians was the first nation in the world that use such devices in a active service.

The supension was burned at the time of contact with fresh air. Chemical burning. Its why it was possible to use only from low altitude.

For the first time it was tested from I-15 in halhin gol against japanese troops with the great result. I have a complete schemes of different such devices VAP-50, VAP-100,

VAP-250, VAP-500 (last one used even on Pe-8)

The [liquid] was almost similar to the cocktail of molotov (don't mix it with simple bottles with gasoline that was produced by partizanes and in troops) - damaged bottle over the tank armor was ignited(burned) due to the contact with the fresh air.

The were [various methods] used for such liquid on aircraft. One is direct spray of liquid. Another - it was in glass ampules that was flying up to the ground and ignited only on the ground. But the second one was dangerous also

for the plane itself, because of cases when ampules were sometime damaged

insided the device....

So, Mike, you are right in that there was a bomblet version with glass ampules, but it was pretty dangerous. However, there was an aerosol version as well.

[Stalin's Organ]

Thanks for all the info about aerosol explosions - you'll find the same stuff about grain silos, etc at one of those sites linked earlier on.

In an earlier life I was an aircraft mechanic, and one of the things we were cautioned about was suspensions of solids in air - even iron or aluminium dust can spontaneously combust and we were given a demonstration with flour.

I'm not sure why Propane comes into the discussion - AFAIK while propane and other natural gases will certainly explode the Rusians didn't use many of them that I know of at the time, they tend to disperse very quickly in normal atmospheric conditions (a bit of wind helps especially), and you'd require a HUGE release to cover the area of an artillery battery which is what the original post was about.

Also they'd probably leave a lot of burning damage.

[Bastables]

Originally posted by Grisha:

]I wanted to make sure about this, so I emailed my friend, Oleg Maddox (he's an aeronautical engineer in Russia), and asked him to explain VAP-250 system to me. Here was his reply:

Teehee, this reminds me of the time when Sgt Vanderzanden brought Andy McNab to the garrison bar and said "This is my friend Andy McNab."

[Stalin's Organ]

Originally posted by Grisha:

So, Mike, you are right in that there was a bomblet version with glass ampules, but it was pretty dangerous. However, there was an aerosol version as well.

So what was the aerosol version?

IIRC molotov cocktails used somethign to thicken up the fuel a a bit and help it stick to surfaces - apparently soap/detergent, palm oil and styrofoam are all pretty good.

Napalm is an abreviation from NAPtha (the flammable bits of petroleum) and PALM oil - used to thicken it.

According to this site (which is where the above info comes from) it was called the Molotov cocktail after a Russian revolutoinary from about 1906 - not the more famous foreign minister!!

[ December 04, 2002, 03:56 AM: Message edited by: Stalin's Organ ]

[Grisha]

Originally posted by Bastables:

Teehee, this reminds me of the time when Sgt Vanderzanden brought Andy McNab to the garrison bar and said "This is my friend Andy McNab."

Yeah, sorry about the cheeky statement, but there isn't much data out there on this stuff (even the Bovington material makes no mention of it), and I didn't want to sound like I was talking out of my arse.

[ December 04, 2002, 02:57 PM: Message edited by: Grisha ]

[Grisha]

Originally posted by Stalin's Organ:

So what was the aerosol version?

It was two canisters attached to the wings that would literally spray the chemical compound out into the air. The canisters stayed on the wings with the ejector openings facing to the rear and downwards. Think of its application in the sense of an agricultural airplane, spraying chemicals on a field of crops.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Stalin's Organ:

I'm not sure why Propane comes into the discussion - AFAIK while propane and other natural gases will certainly explode the Rusians didn't use many of them that I know of at the time, they tend to disperse very quickly in normal atmospheric conditions (a bit of wind helps especially), and you'd require a HUGE release to cover the area of an artillery battery which is what the original post was about.

I believe it entered the discussion via this from a post by Robert Isenberg:

Propane was pumped into the sewers during the Warsaw uprisings and detonated to kill those using the sewers as a safe passage lanes

In that instance, the propane would be confined and probably not disperse at a faster rate than it could be introduced. My understanding from the post was that it was being used by the Germans and not the Soviets.

Michael

[PJungnitsch]

A description of what it was like to be on the receiving end of a Nebelwerfer attack here, Nebelwerfer Rocket Artillery

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by Paul Jungnitsch:

A description of what it was like to be on the receiving end of a Nebelwerfer attack here, Nebelwerfer Rocket Artillery

That is exactly the same passage as the one already cited from Lucas' "War on the Eastern Front", and it seems to have been quoted without attribution by the owner of the site.

All the best,

John.

[Robert Isenberg]

The original question was where FAE's used in WWII

this was one that I knew about from the Warsaw Getto uprings

so far I haven't seen anyone else discribe a weapon similar to this effect

1. weapon disperses a heavier than air fuel over a target

2.a short delay igniter to detonate the fuel

3.damage to target is by overpressure not burns were friendly soilder may move into the target area very soon after detoonation with little to no worries about after effect of fire(it is burning really quick so most combustibles aren't ignited except the really volitale ones) and target gets very little use of fox holes and trenches because the area of explosion is a much larger point than any bomb short of a nuclear one

think in 10's to 100's of yards the explosion is radiating out from as opposed 14" quick fuse detonation that can be blockedby the shadows caused by a trench or fox hole(time fused does help alot in comparision but is still no match for an FAE bomb)

Hope it helps some

Originally posted by Stalin's Organ:

I'm not sure why Propane comes into the discussion - AFAIK while propane and other natural gases will certainly explode the Rusians didn't use many of them that I know of at the time, they tend to disperse very quickly in normal atmospheric conditions (a bit of wind helps especially), and you'd require a HUGE release to cover the area of an artillery battery which is what the original post was about.

Also they'd probably leave a lot of burning damage.