Incendiary weapons

Incendiary bombs

Incendiary bombs are best used to destroy open-topped vehicles (literally to burn them down) where the incendiary mixture will make sure exposed crews will be knocked out and possibly light up the engine of vehicles due to its extreme temperature. While some players consider it has more aesthetic use than in practical use, it can also block Night Vision Devices and serve as a makeshift "smoke grenade" for tanks and help them hide from enemy eyesight for a while. Alternatively, this could be used like general purpose bombs and burn down enemy bases/airfield if needed, though with a lower effectiveness per payload mass then the general-purpose bombs.

Flamethrowers

The Flamethrower is a fire-based weapon added in Update "Fire and Ice" with rewards in the Battle Pass: Season IX, "Smell of Victory". These usually have a relatively short range with the ability to damage open-topped vehicles.

 Vehicles equipped with this weapon 

Ground Vehicles

• TO-55

The flamethrower on the USSR TO-55 has a onboard fuel supply and the coaxial flamethrower is on the turret. The TO-55 was introduced in Sons of Attila update.

• Churchill Crocodile

The flamethrower on the Churchill Crocodile consists of a fuel trailer towed behind the tank and a flame projector in the bow gun position.

Naval Vehicles

• LCM(6) Zippo

The LCM(6)(F) Zippo has two flamethrowers on the port and starboard sides behind the 40 mm gun turret. This weapon system has fuel tanks located in the hull and projectors in small combined turrets paired with 7.62 mm M73 machine guns.

Ammunition

Flamethrowers use ignited liquid fuel as ammunition, usually consisting of a mixture of napalm similar to that used in incendiary bombs such as the BLU-1. The Churchill Crocodile uses a mixture called Fuel K, or FTF, Heavy No.1. There is currently no alternative fuel choices for the flamethowers in-game.

As an unconventional ammunition type, burning fuel has no armor penetration values and will not damage the internal modules of a vehicle if it is fully armored or CBRN-secured. If a vehicle is open-topped or very lightly armored with gaps, the flamethrower can output a devastating amount of damage.

Flamethrowers can output a type of damage that no other weapon system in the game can do, called Damage over Time. Ground areas, items, and enemy targets will continue to burn for a brief period after being hit. This can cause damage to the enemy even after the flamethrower has stopped firing.

History

Background

The First World War saw the introduction of many horrifying new weapons of war. The tank, armed planes, submarines, poison gas shells, and more turned what was assumed to be a swift conflict into a four-year-long bloodbath. The Flamethrower was another weapon that made the War to End All Wars so costly. The modern flamethrower made its debut in World War I, but it is the perfection of a tactic that has existed for centuries.

Thermal weapons have existed for a very long time because of their recognized use against fortifications and enemy equipment. The earliest recorded example of what could be considered a flamethrower comes from the Ancient Greeks. During the Peloponnesian Wars, a wheeled siege weapon that shot fire was used by the Boeotians against the Athenians during the Battle of Delium in 424 B.C. This is the earliest recorded instance of a flamethrower-like weapon used in battle. Another early flamethrower is recorded in use by the Romans against the Dacians in 107 A.D. in a similar capacity to the Greek design centuries before. More early flamethrowers would emerge when the Byzantine Empire invented Greek fire. The invention is credited to an architect and chemist named Kallinkinos of Heliopolis c.673. Greek fire was primarily used as a naval weapon, but land forces were recording what was dubbed a cheirosiphona (hand-held siphons) which resembled a modern flamethrower in form and function. The weapon was a hand-held pump that shot Greek fire from a tube in short bursts. Ignition was handled by a piston lighting a match as the fire was ejected. Another early example worth noting is the Chinese Pen Huo Qi (fire spraying device) another piston flamethrower invented in 919 A.D. two years after the first documented example of Greek fire in China. This device used what was called Meong Hou You (lit. fierce fire oil, an early Chinese name for petroleum) as its flamethrowing agent. Ignition was achieved by gunpowder, the first time it was used in warfare by the Chinese. This application is shown by the first documented use of this weapon during the 919 Battle of Langshan Jiang where a slow-burning gunpowder match was used to ignite a continuous string of flame by Wuyue to burn their fleet, defeated the Kingdom of Wu in the process.

The modern flamethrower was invented in Germany before World War I. The name is a loanword from the German ‘Flamenwerfer’ coined during WWI. The original design came from Richard Fiedler, who showcased several designs to the Deutsches Heer (Imperial German Army) in 1901 with the most notable being a single-shot design that used a two-part cylinder that carried pressurized nitrogen and flammable oil that mixed when fired. Ignition was done with a simple wick and the weapon had a range of 20 yards. While not adopted, Fiedler improved on the design, and in 1908, he collaborated with German officer Bernard Redderman who demonstrated flamethrowers made from converted steam-powered fire engines the year before. The two men got the Deutsches Heer to test their new joint design with an experimental pioneer company for testing and the flamethrower was adopted in 1911. Despite being adopted before the outbreak of the war the Germans didn’t use it in combat initially. It was issued in limited numbers and first by German soldiers outside Verdun on February 26^th, 1915. It was on July 30^th however, that the Germans recognized the true value of the flamethrower. That day saw a concentrated flamethrower attack on British trenches at Hooges, Belgium. The British suffered significant casualties with 31 officers and 751 other soldiers after two days thanks in part to the flamethrower flushing soldiers out and forcing them into the gunfire of supporting units. The flamethrower was adopted on all fronts, and the Germans used it in more than 650 attacks. The design was also gradually copied by the Entente. The first use of a flamethrower on a vehicle came from the Royal Navy mounting two Morris flamethrowers in static positions on their Arrogant-class cruiser HMS Vindictive for the Zeebrugge Raid in 1916.

In War Thunder, there are currently vehicles that mount flamethrowers. While each model is different, they will be discussed collectively for the sake of this article.

Churchill Crocodile

The first vehicle chronologically is the Churchill Crocodile, the product of a conversion kit by the REME (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers) and years of development by the Petroleum Warfare Department. Tasked with weaponizing Britain’s reserves of gasoline against a potential German invasion, this department produced the Heavy Cockatrice which mounted a Lagoda flamethrower on the armoured body of an AEC Matador truck. The concept was subsequently refined with flamethrower variants of the Universal Carrier and Valentine tank being produced. In 1942, as preparation for the Dieppe Raid, three Churchill tanks were modified to carry the Ronson flamethrower on the outside of the tank allowing it to operate without sacrificing the hull machine gun. While the Dieppe Raid was a failure, it showed the need for more dedicated vehicles to support the Royal Engineers, and the Churchill Crocodile was developed as part of a new wave of ‘Hobart’s Funnies’.

This name comes from Major General Percy C.S. Hobart. The Crocodile was a very secretive development of the venerable Churchill with great lengths taken to keep them out of enemy hands. The flamethrower used on the Churchill Crocodile, unlike the earlier Ronson model, replaced the hull-mounted BESA machine gun on the Churchill with the nozzle. This nozzle was connected to ‘The Link’, a pipe with 3 articulated joints that connect the nozzle to the 6.5-ton trailer. This trailer carried 400 gallons of flamethrowing agent and 5 compressed nitrogen bottles that could jettisoned from inside the tank. The General Staff’s specifications called for the trailer to be jettisonable and also required the flame tank retain the main armament while the flamethrower itself be able to fire one minute of continuous flame to a range of 80 yards. The final flamethrower had a maximum range of 150 yards, though 80 yards was its optimal range. Nitrogen gas propelled the flammable liquid (fine petrol) at 4 gallons a second towards an electric spark igniter at the top of the nozzle. The projector was pressured for 80 single-second long bursts though longer bursts were also possible.

In service, the Churchill Crocodile was used in Italy and North-West Europe. The weapon was an effective anti-bunker weapon when used in concert with the Churchill AVRE. Many German bunker crews surrendered after seeing a warning burst from the Crocodile’s flame projector and captured crews of these flame tanks were executed on the spot. The Churchill Crocodile was used in Normandy’s bocages along with the Battle of Brest and Operation Clipper, the Anglo-American assault on Geilenkirchen, Germany along with the British attack on s’Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands in October 1944.

After the war, the British Army tested the Churchill Crocodile in India to see how effective it would have been had it been deployed against the Japanese. The tests concluded that the mountainous terrain of the CBI (China-India-Burma) made the Crocodile modification impractical, though Churchill itself worked fine. The Churchill Crocodile was briefly used in the Korean War until it was withdrawn from service in 1951. The flame projector on this vehicle was later adapted to M4 Sherman to make the Sherman Crocodile used by the US Army. Its only use in combat was against a 13-century citadel at Julich, Germany during Operation Grenade. The flame projector was also tested on the Comet, but the project ended when the coupler for the trailer broke during trials.

TO-55

To turn the T-55 into the TO-55 (also sometimes identified as the OT-55), the Soviets mounted the ATO-200 flame projector. Like the Churchill Crocodile, this flame projector replaces a machine gun, but it is mounted co-axially to the 100 mm D-10T gun on the T-55. Development work on the project began in 1958 and the OT-55 and the ATO-200 were officially adopted in 1961. However serial production only began in 1968 and lasted until 1973. The ATO-200 is ignited by pyrotechnic charges with 12 charges preloaded. The stowage tank, replacing the hull ammo rack next to the driver on the T-55, carries 460 litres of fuel allowing for on average, a burst of 36 litres. The maximum range of the ATO-200 is 200 meters or 656 feet.

LCM(6) Zippo

The ‘Zippo’ gets its name from a popular brand of reusable cigarette lighters in America. This nickname was applied to every flamethrower vehicle used in the Vietnam War of which the LCM(6) 'Zippo' is notably the boat-borne version. The flamethrower used on this converted landing craft is the M10-8, a model first designed for the M132 Armored Flamethrower used by the U.S. Army. The M132 was a conversion of the venerable M113 APC. This vehicle was also called the ‘Zippo’ allegedly because the brand of lighter was used if the electrical igniters failed. Designated the E36R1 in its prototype form, the M10-8 flamethrower is mounted on the M113 through a couple built for the M48 Patton tank. The flame gun, called the M8, has a sausage-shaped aperture and it is connected to the M10 fuel and pressure unit which takes up the space of the troop hold. The tanks consist of 50-gallon fuel tanks pressurized at 325 psi with compressed air tanks on top pressurized at 3,000 psi. The M10-8 flamethrower carried 200 gallons of napalm overall and had a range of 12 to 218 yards on the M132.

The LCM(6) Zippo came about when RIVFLOT 1 of the Mobile Riverine Force attempted to carry an M132 on the LCM(6) Monitor for countering Viet Cong bunkers which were getting stronger to resist 40 mm rounds from a Monitor’s Bofors L/60 cannon. While the vehicle was too heavy, the M10-8 flamethrower was adapted to the Monitor. Two flamethrowers were added and connected with the M10 system to larger 1,325-gallon fuel tanks allowing for 225 seconds of continuous fire. A gasoline lighter would act as the trigger.

External links

• [Devblog] Napalm comes to War Thunder!

References

Bibliography