Liquid Fire.

This excellent article from the “Great War in a Different Light” and is on the German use of the Fame Thrower.

Originally published in ‘the War Budget’ January 27th, l916 as 'Liquid Fire as a German Arm' 'Terrors of the ‘Flame Projector’' by Ignatius Phayre.

It is a brilliant article of its time; I especially like the paragraph on the wild bees of Tanga used a German secret weapon. Wonderful evocative writing worthy of a Victorian melodrama.


"It would be folly to deny military genius to the Germans. No nation since the world began was so formidably equipped for offence nor so entirely given to Odinism and aggressive intent. Luckily the cure of it inheres in its own violence. Never again will Prussia prance over all the German States, with her mad Hohenzollem tocsin of "Weltmacht oder Neidergang" — Dominion or Downfall! Reviewing the whole colossal clash we see surprise after surprise sprung upon the unready Allies. Automatic rifles and monstrous guns; aerial mines, suffocating clouds, and whole corps of professional incendiaries, armed with bags of nitro-cellulose "confetti" for blazing the trail of "Frightfulness" through terrified civilian populations. On land, at sea, and in the air, the German was full of wicked wiles. In the East African bush he stretched ropes- across the sand and brushwood tracks. Trodden on by our troops these ropes brought down flags hoisted in the trees. These flags marked the range to a yard; the whole field of fire being commanded by machine-guns in other trees farther back. No wonder the East African campaign called for a General of Smith-Dorrien's calibre.

The Flammenwerfer

It is a fact that the Germans enlisted hives of wild bees against us in these jungle wastes. As with the range-finding flags, wires or cords lifted lids from the hives, whereupon infuriated swarms assailed our advancing men. Partly smoked into stupor at first, but now thoroughly roused, the winged Huns made fierce practice, quite spoiling that of our men and bringing their gallant attack to nought. Of the Loyal North Lancashires many were horribly stung by this unexpected foe. Some were blinded for a time, or rendered incapable of holding weapons. From one of our lads a R.A.M.C. captain extracted over a hundred stings. Such tricks and guiles as these are not to be despised. I could fill a column with them, ranging as they do from wireless mendacity to the now famous "Flammenwerfer." This is a truly devilish engine for spraying liquid fire in vast sheets and jets, accompanied by palls of smoke that screen the supporting infantry. I often wonder where Germany tried the awful tools she was preparing for. Certainly not at the great "Kaisermanoevers" — those pompous reviews of all arms led by the Emperor himself and watched by all the foreign attaches. No fire-squirts were seen there, but decorous academic drill, with a cavalry charge to wind up the day — an affair magnificent indeed, but not war at all.

Flames at Hooge

Where did the Prussian General Staff experiment with Satan's own gear like the flame-projector, before whose coal-tar sheets of fire our men recoiled at Hooge? We lost 500 yards of trenches that day — a position we had held in the face of all other attacks by mortar and battery and bomb. But the aerial-blaze was too much for flesh and blood to bear; this inextinguishable Greek fire from the sky, with its withering heat and hideous slithering roar. Another surprise — each cloud of fire covering an area of 110 feet, beneath which no living thing could survive. The Flammenwerfer, a thing like a portable fire-extinguisher and made by the Fiedler Company of Berlin, was one of the Krupp secrets for blasting a road to. Calais through the best armies of the Allied Powers. So long ago as October 16th, 1914, Note 32 of the 2nd German Army fell into our hands, and gave all instructions about "Arms at the Disposal of Pioneers for Fighting at Close Quarters.

Trained Incendiaries.

The flre-squirts, troops were told, were to be in charge of specially-trained men; and the nozzle threw a liquid that flamed spontaneously as it met the air. The jet had a range of 100 ft. "The effect is immediate and deadly" the novice was assured." And the enormous heat developed forces the enemy a long way back. As jets burn from one and a-half to two minutes, and can be stopped at will, short isolated spurts of flame are advisable, so that one charge may spray several objectives. The Flammenwerfer will therefore be mainly employed in street and house to house fighting."

Beyond all doubt this instrument of Kultur was used to destroy whole towns in the early German line of march. In a reservoir cylinder is stored the nitrogen which gives the necessary pressure that forces out the oil fuel from the main body of this new arm. This cylinder, about 3ft. 6in. high, holds 14 quarts of benzine, and strapped on a man's back it supplies four or five lengths of hose and nozzles, each directed by a pioneer well trained in the devil's own war. .

Fire Among the Snows

Even the Italian Bersaglieri were sprayed with flame on dizzy rock walls South of Plezzo. Like hounds scenting their prey the famous Alpini tracked the Austrians into snowy caves, which, without a moment's warning, spouted vast sheets of fire, generating intolerable heat. Yet the Alpini prevailed. The first ranks emptied their magazines in a last agony, burning alive before their comrades' eyes. But meanwhile the great Italian howitzers plastered the caves with monstrous shell. till the foe was buried by the very rocks he'd rolled up to hide his treacherous lair. Here vast hoards of munitions were found, among them flre-squirts of German make, each weighing 2701b. when fully charged. Under a pressure of 125 atmopheres, a highly inflammable mixture of tar and benzine was forced into an ignition-tube and then expelled in hissing tongues of flame 200ft. long. A murderous arm, indeed, at the short ranges of trench warfare. As the mixture issues from the nozzle in fine diffusive sprays it takes fire with extraordinary effect, blighting all below it.

Fighting the Flames

On the French front entire trenches .were set ablaze — especially those floored with boards and "wattled” at the sides with pit-props and hurdles to hold up the oozy winter clay. There was no arguing with the Flammenwerfer — at first. Men simply melted before its blazing blast; their clothes alight, the very stocks of their rifles charred with the killing heat that came pouring out of the very sky.

"I was on patrol one morning," a badly-burned victim told me in a Boulogne hospital, "when I heard a new sort of explosion on my right. I thought the world was coming to an end when I beheld an enormous aerial fire-sheet, 20ft. long and 100ft. high. I was gaping at this when the flames swooped down. I don't think seas of water would have put out that conflagration. The whole earth appeared in flames. I screamed aloud, as a man might who fell into an ocean of vitriol. Then I ran for it with tunic and trousers uncannily ablaze. But no man has any idea what it's like to face these new blowpipes of Kultur. It's not war, sir. It's scientific flaying and withering — as one day the Germans themselves will admit, and condemn such murder as our own Field Marshal condemned it in his Hooge dispatch."