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Osprey - Weapon 18 - The Bazooka,Open Library

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Indeed, some photos of US flamethrowers from the later years of the war show jets of almost pencil-thin fuel and flame arcing out to distances of many metres. These jets were ideal for the more acute shooting required by flamethrower operators in the Pacific. com A soldier of the US Army Signal Corps, 95th Division at Fort Bullis, Texas, tests out the M1A1 flamethrower on a mock bunker in June NARA 37 But the process of mixing napalm to flamethrower fuel was at first something more of an art than a science. Such a problem was naturally acute in the humid tropics, and was exacerbated by the fact that the early napalm mixtures were packed in porous cardboard containers.

In some cases the mixture became so corrupted following pre-loading that by the time the weapon was actually used, the mixture was in fact little different in consistency to unmodified petrol. McKinney notes that both the CWS and the NDRC produced recommended proportions of napalm-to-fuel mix, but in practical terms the mix was often dictated by the experience and preference of the field units: The Abwehrflammenwerfer 42 was a German static defence flamethrower. With a fuel tank holding nearly 30 litres of fuel, the flamethrower was buried at key ambush locations and was typically triggered by tripwire, producing a 27m flame for about one-and-a-half seconds. US Govt A mixture of 8 percent napalm was recommended by the Chemical Warfare Service in In August the Corps of Engineers recommended 4. In October the Infantry Board approved the use of 4. McKinney 36 Although we cannot know the composition of the fuel used in the following — from the European Theatre of Operations ETO in — the accuracy implied suggests a thickened jet: While the 29th Infantry Division was fighting near Brest, the th Infantry ran into a pillbox and, after working on it for a half-hour with hand grenades and small arms without success, brought up a flame thrower.

The weapon had been partially spent. However, the operator crawled to within about twenty yards [18m] of the position and placed a burst of flame in one doorway, a second burst in another opening and the third burst back in the first doorway. The pillbox was covered with a camouflage net which caught fire and added to the flame. The five Germans inside immediately began to yell and scream, but could not come out because of the fire. It took about ten minutes for the flames to subside sufficiently to allow them to come out and surrender. They were only slightly burned but their nerves were shattered and they shook their heads dismally as they passed the flame thrower sitting outside on the ground. com Okinawa, May A flamethrowing Sherman tank sprays a thin jet of burning fuel onto a Japanese position; the infantryman on the right prepares to engage fleeing occupants with his rifle. Cody Images systems had failed. Here the operator, from a range of 18m, puts a jet of flame through two apertures, shooting through the door twice as if just to illustrate that it was no fluke.

We can also note the contributory effect of secondary fires, in the form of the burning camouflage net. Interestingly, none of the Germans was killed by the flames. Had the operator been close enough to fire in a burst of low-viscosity fuel, it is likely that the occupants would have been incinerated. One side-effect of thickening the fuel with napalm was often that the actual flame content of the jet was reduced; some wartime footage shows jets that are scarcely burning at all during the flight, igniting with a bit more vigour when they actually strike the outer surface of the enemy position. The problem was a difficult one to resolve, as to improve the range of the fuel it had to be of a thickness that could impede its effective burning. The Americans experienced problems with the napalm composition throughout the war. Sometimes it separated in the tanks, resulting in the tanks not emptying completely.

They developed alternatives, as did the British with their excellent thickener Fuel Research Aluminium Stearate FRAS , which did not quite give the range of napalm, but delivered a more intense flame. Whatever the composition, thickened flame gave engineers and assault teams more control over the fire effects of flamethrowers. A Flammenwerfer opens fire; for a German flamethrower, the flame jet is relatively slim, indicating the use of a high-viscosity agent such as pitch or heavy fuel oil. Popular Science Monthly 40 It was on the small scale, against tightly designated targets, that flamethrowers really came into their own. The Germans grasped this point early on, and their lead in flamethrower technology was also matched by a developing tactical organization of flamethrower units. At the beginning of the war, the Pioniere were the designated flamethrower operators.

Platoon companies were specially selected for flamethrower duties, and issued with Kleif M. Note, however, that there was some effort at broader tactical integration, the Pionier commanders liaising with their infantry counterparts over the best applications of the new firepower. By the autumn flamethrower units were being distributed on the basis of corps-level requirements, principally in support of major offensive actions. The first actual battlefield combat application of the German flamethrowers came about on 4—5 October , during actions by 4. Kompagnie, Posensches Pionier-Bataillon Nr. The attack itself failed, but the flamethrowers showed enough promise that continued investment was made towards broadening their use on the battlefield. Note that there is some evidence that flamethrowers were used earlier, in a less valorous context — the burning of the Belgian city of Louvrain on 25 August.

A major change in the status of the German flamethrower units came about in January In this month the German War Ministry authorized the formation of the first large-scale unit to be entirely equipped with flamethrowers. F l a m m e n w e r f e r- A b t e i l u n g Reddemann Flamethrower Detachment Reddemann was set up under the command of the aforementioned Hauptmann Reddemann, and consisted at first of just 48 personnel. In a somewhat macabre career reversal, most of the personnel manning this detachment were actually former firefighters from the Posen Fire Brigade. com The battlefield testing of the German flamethrowers was continually moulding tactical awareness of the new weapon. It was quickly realized that leaving a flamethrower team lumbering around on its own was tantamount to murder, and that it needed proper infantry support to provide the necessary suppressive fire for flamethrower-range engagements and to secure positions that had just been torched.

Interestingly, the Germans also discovered that the flamethrower could have defensive applications as well. On 8 March, troops from the Kurhessisches PionierBataillon Nr. With the flamethrowers proven in concept and battle, it was therefore time for expansion. In March Reddemann had his command upscaled to full battalion strength — III. Garde-PionierBataillon, five companies strong: 9. and Versuchs Experimental Kompagnien. In terms of the company composition, each company had three platoons, and each platoon fielded 4—6 of the large Grof flamethrowers and six of the smaller Kleif flamethrowers, giving the company a range of flame attack possibilities. Prior to this, other forces within the German Army had experimented with using flamethrower troops as part of closely integrated assault squads known as Sturmtruppen.

It is important to note that the flamethrower is not the centrepiece of this tactical arrangement, being the weapon with the shortest range, the least accuracy and the most vulnerable operators. By early February, the composition of the assault teams had become more sophisticated. com In this photo we get a clear sense of the weapons composition of a World War I German assault team. com Verdun, February previous pages A two-man German flamethrower team, accompanied by assault troops from Sturm-Bataillon Nr. One man works the lance, directing the jet of flame along a French trench section, while his comrade carries the flamethrower bottle. Two other men, not visible here, would also serve the weapon — an assistant and a squad leader. The weapon is the Kleif M. Lance heads were also available in angled versions, to deliver fire over trench parapets or around corners. The battle of Verdun saw particularly intense use of flamethrowers by German troops. Indeed, between 21 February and 27 April , no fewer than 57 attacks were carried out by a force of ten flamethrower companies, who in total had some flamethrower weapons.

Tactical feedback from the actions led to the conclusion that 33 of the attacks had been successful. Good infantry support was critical to the outcome of the action; one of the assault troops is engaging fleeing French troops with his Gewehr 98 rifle, while the other prepares to throw a Stielhandgranate stick grenade. A demonstration of an AustroHungarian flamethrower c. Swiss Federal Archives 44 flamethrowers plus their own supply of grenades high-explosive and incendiary. What was certain was that the flamethrower had become, by the time the battle of Verdun began on 21 February , an integral rather than experimental component of the German arsenal. Indeed, III. GardePionier-Bataillon swelled in size in February , each field company expanding from men to men, and its allocation of flamethrowers rising from 18 to 54 Wictor On 20 April, III. and IV. GardePionier-Bataillone were then merged into the prodigious Garde-Reserve Pionier-Regiment, 11 companies strong plus the support units.

The regiment provided company-strength flamethrower support to various German corps, although the levels of demand for such troops meant that the companies were attenuated by constant losses across the battlefronts. The flamethrowers of the Garde-Reserve Pionier-Regiment belched flame until the end of the war, finding just as much utility in the hands of assault squads during the offensives of as in those of Regimental records of the numbers of flame actions show that flamethrowers were used in actions in , rising to in then in The flamethrower had truly come of age. From mid it also acquired more of a body of officially written tactics, suited to the new battalion and regimental structures.

In essence, the tactics were separated into two types — stationary and moving. com stunned enemy out of his holes and bunkers. One interesting variation of this tactic was to dig tunnels to within firing range of the enemy trenches, and emplace Grof flamethrowers at the shaft face. When the moment of the attack came, the flamethrower operator would, apparently, emerge from the tunnel and blast the enemy by surprise. Other applications of the flamethrower included flanking and pincer attacks made by flamethrower teams, supported by grenade throwers and machine guns to provide a suppressive fire. In the indianermässigen Vorpirschen Indian-style forward stalking tactic, the teams attacked the objective as dispersed individuals, varying the angles of attack to confuse the defenders. An unusual tactic was the Messertaktik Knife Attack , here the flamethrowers attacked the enemy lines head on in sequence, punching through them with their flames while machine-gunners and riflemen followed up and fanned out, to guard the flame operators against flanking fire.

While Germany managed to forge a successful relationship with flamethrowers, such was not always the case with its allies. In the AustroHungarian Army, for example, the flamethrowers were principally operated by sappers, using German-provided weapons plus some homegrown variants. Like the Germans, the Austro-Hungarians recognized that the flamethrower operators were a breed unto their own, and concentrated such men early on into special sapper units, to be assigned to infantry regiments as required. However, the Austro-Hungarians, fighting primarily on the Isonzo Front, made some fundamental tactical errors in , made worse by the unwieldy nature of the litre M.

By sending in flamethrower troops unilaterally on the attack, without a protective infantry shield, the Austro-Hungarian commanders ensured their men took heavy casualties, so many surviving flamethrower teams found themselves moved into static position roles. Austrian troops in World War I prepare to fire a kleine 22l M. The man standing behind the flamethrower team has a trench periscope to help guide aiming. com During the Austro-Hungarians consolidated their flamethrowers into specialist flamethrower platoons, generally employed alongside infantry as complete platoons. At the end of the year, however, flamethrower squads, in groups of three teams, were also attached to the new Sturmpatrouillen Assault Patrols and, from February , the expanded Armeesturmbataillone Army Assault Battalions. Each assault battalion would include one flamethrower platoon with six man-portable flamethrowers, of the kleine 15l M.

Those troops not assigned to assault battalions were absorbed into four later six flamethrower companies. Then in September, all these units were formed into SpezialSappeur-Bataillon Nr. It appears clear that overall the Austro-Hungarians had a less than successful relationship with flamethrowers. Wictor comments: It was soon clear [in , during the battle of Caporetto] that infantry commanders did not know what to do with flamethrower platoons. Since flamethrower troops were sappers, they were often put to work in construction or improving trenches instead of engaging in combat, or they were marched to their assembly points with field tools, ordered to leave their flamethrowers in the rear. The few times that flamethrower platoons were used correctly, as at Rombon, the Brenta Dam, and Bonatto Ridge, they were most effective when paired with Assault Patrols of divisional assault battalions.

Wictor 45 Wictor illustrates the key point that the Austro-Hungarians often failed to treat the flamethrower teams as the specialist troops that they were. Indeed, one key lesson about flamethrower troops of all nations and periods was that they had to receive appropriate and intensive training as part of assault units, if they were to perform with conviction on the battlefield. The Entente Powers 46 As we saw in the previous chapter, the British were latecomers to the production of flame weapons. There were some large-scale applications of such weapons on the first day of the battle of the Somme, 1 July Four of the mighty Livens projectors were emplaced on the British front line ready for the attack, and at the attack hour on 1 July they each threw out mighty tongues of flame to ranges of nearly m over the German trenches. The projectors were traversed from left to right, to saturate long stretches of trench line, which were subsequently occupied relatively easily by the British troops.

Yet how much the success of this advance was due to the flamethrowers, as opposed to the bludgeoning of shells and machine-gun bullets, is hard to say. com The large machines were fired on one or two occasions within the next few weeks, but it had become evident that their local effect did not justify the great labour and difficulty of bringing them within range of their objectives. Quoted in McKinney 10 On one level, the Livens weapons do seem to have had some influence, in the sense that they helped suppress or evacuate German front-line opposition.

Yet we must remember that the Germans practised defence in depth, with the front lines often being weakly occupied in comparison with the lines further back, from which an enemy offensive would be stopped and a counter-attack launched. In fact, we find very few examples that convince us of the British ability to understand the applications of flamethrowers in assault. Furthermore, the weapons that were designed often seemed to be as hazardous to their users as they were to the enemy they were fired at. During a test of a battery flamethrower at Wembley on 8 November , for example, the device exploded, resulting in the deaths of two men and four wounded. Such destructive malfunctions were not uncommon, and at the front lines flamethrowers were often deposited in storage owing to the rusting and deterioration of their parts. This being said, some of the Livens projector oil-bomb barrages could be locally influential. On 1 October , 36 drums of flammable liquid were fired at the German lines at Flers, 30 of them detonating on the German position, which was subsequently captured by an attack from New Zealand troops.

A later official history described the effect: An image of flamethrowers spraying across a Western Front battlefield in World War I. Flamethrowers could cause major land fires if used in an uncontrolled way. com 47 When the trench was captured several groups, one of 20 and one of 15, of enemy dead were found badly scorched and charred by the oil flames. Some of the prisoners, as might have been expected, complained bitterly of the use of burning oil, and told of the terror excited by the fear of being caught in the flames. One British tactical experiment that should be noted was, in , the rather outlandish fitment of two Vincent battery flamethrowers to the Arrogant-class cruiser HMS Vindictive. The devices were fitted to 18 and 12 oil tanks respectively, with the jet nozzles placed in fore and aft armoured turrets. This fearsome naval system was tried out in earnest when Vindictive participated in the British raid on the port of Zeebrugge on 24 April Yet when both weapons were deployed, the only result was that uncontrolled gas pressure actually blew the flamethrower nozzles clean off, showering both fore and aft decks with gallons of flammable liquid.

Thankfully, this liquid did not ignite. Like the British, the Russians really only got into their stride with flame weapons in , but they better understood their value as tools of assault. Under the War Chemical Committee, formed in February , then the Chemical Committee in the Main Artillery Administration, Russian flamethrower troops were equipped, trained and assigned in support of infantry operations. In April , a Flame-Chemical Training Battalion was created, nearly men strong, purely for the instruction in flamethrower tactics and weaponry, the product of this training assigned to 13 Chemical Detachments that were in turn assigned to armylevel commands. Each detachment had three officers, 12 NCOs and sappers, not only instructed in flamethrowers but also in gas warfare.

Not until July were dedicated flamethrower detachments formed, each of one officer and 29 men, and armed with 12 portable flamethrowers, with one detachment being assigned per division. There were some differences of opinion among the Russian high command about the best way to apply flamethrower troops to combat. Some advocated their role mainly as defensive troops, doubtless influenced by the Russian purchase of British gallery flame projectors and associated training, while others felt that the offensive model was better. Eventually, both tactics were adopted, but the Russian Revolution in meant that there was little time to see whether the tactical decisions bore fruit. There were some combat outings for the Russian flamethrower detachments during the battles of June and July , but the collapse in Russian organization and morale meant that these battles in general were failures for the Russians, and it is difficult to define the tactical lessons learned from such engagements.

com The French were another matter entirely. In May they began establishing flamethrower companies among the sapper community, known as Schilt companies after the French flamethrower inventor, Capitaine Schilt. The companies were attached to engineer battalions as required, and each consisted of three officers and other ranks. A section hors rang non-combatant section provided engineer, replacement and motor transport support, while three sections de feu combatant sections offered the active fighting component. Each of the three combat sections had a total of 12 flamethrowers. The tactical possibilities of flamethrowers expanded in with the introduction of the P weapons — no fewer than 40 of these highly portable devices could be put into action by a flamethrower company, with 30 more held in reserve. As with other flamethrower forces, the French units had a fluid relationship with the rest of the army, being attached to infantry divisions as and when required. In terms of tactical deployment, the French were more focused on the integrations of flamethrowers into their wider assault tactics.

For example, during an attack on 25 September the first outing for the new Schilt No. The caves were impervious to shellfire, so the flamethrowers wiped out the German machine-gun nests protecting its approach and then torched the interior. The assault troops advanced closely behind the flamethrowers and successfully attacked the caves under the suppression provided by the flame weapons. Taking into account other French actions, it is clear that the French Army had a far more modern and rational relationship to flamethrower tactics than the British.

They were employed primarily against positions that were difficult to destroy by other means — deep trenches, dug-outs, pillboxes and bunkers, underground structures. com The Schilt No. It remained a powerful weapon, with a range of 35m and a burn duration of 20 seconds. Courtesy of Thomas Wictor 49 A French P3 flamethrower team at Cantigny, May The P3 was one of the smaller and lighter varieties of French man-portable flamethrowers used during the war. Courtesy of Thomas Wictor The United States is an interesting counterpoint to the French, despite only joining World War I in In that year, there seem to have been two rather contradictory movements.

On the one hand, the US Army was making investment in flamethrower troops — on 15 August, the War Office authorized the formation of the 30th Engineer Regiment Gas and Flame , devoted entirely to gas and incendiary warfare. Yet the officer appointed to lead flame and gas operations in France, Lieutenant Colonel Amos A. The negative sentiments regarding flamethrowers expressed by Fries were reflected at many levels in the American Expeditionary Force AEF in and The US engineers intensively tested both French and British flamethrower types, rejecting many in the process, and tested some home-grown varieties.

Yet flamethrowers underwent very limited combat testing, which is interesting given the heavy US utilization of flamethrowers in World War II. If anything, we see the Americans lean more towards French tactical models, which one day would have relevance to battles a long way away, on sunbleached Pacific islands. But although all combatants in World War II used flamethrowers, by far the most sophisticated operator was the United States, principally because of its unique experience fighting in the Pacific. World War II in some ways presented a far more dangerous environment for the flamethrower operator.

Not only had armies absorbed the lessons learned from World War I, but manoeuvre warfare had become the norm, the days of static defensive combat starting to recede with many exceptions, of course. For this reason alone, a major trend of World War II was to see flamethrowers mounted in armoured vehicles. Not only did these vehicles enable far more powerful flamethrowers to be mounted, capable of engaging targets at reasonable stand-off distances of up to m, they also provided the protective armoured shell to shrug off the crackling clouds of bullets that now engulfed the battlefield. Nevertheless, World War II also presented many new tactical environments for the man-portable flamethrower. Urban combat became far more common throughout almost all the theatres of war, and in the Pacific the jungle, mountain and island environments meant that much of the combat was conducted in close-range settings that required weapons to blast out emplaced defenders or cut through thick foliage.

While, as we have seen, some authorities at the end of World War I were predicting the decline of the flamethrower in use, the demands of these environments kept the man-portable flamethrower very much alive. A clear image of assault team co-operation. The two US infantrymen watch the flamethrower operator as he engages a target with his M2. Note the close proximity of the men to the target, which probably explains why the man on the right has his bayonet fixed. com The Axis Powers We have already seen how the Wehrmacht took into action a new wave of flamethrower types into World War II.

The sheer numbers of flamethrowers produced also increased significantly throughout the war, indicative of the significance they accrued. Take the Flammenwerfer 41 as a typical example. In , the German armaments industry produced 4, of these weapons, but just the next year this figure jumped to 11, Then, in , a total of 44, of the flamethrowers were manufactured. As the war closed around the Reich, the Wehrmacht needed weapons that could have devastating effects against the legions of Allied armoured vehicles, and which could dominate in the urban warfare of heavily populated Western Europe. Production of this weapon went from 3, in November to 7, the next month. Turning back to the Heer the regular German Army in World War II, however, how were its flamethrower units composed, and what was their tactical remit?

As was typical, the flamethrowers were the province of the Pioniere. At the very beginning of the war, on 1 September , the Heer had a total of Pionier-Abteilungen, each providing divisional support. Within each battalion, the fourth company featured a flamethrower platoon, equipped with nine portable flamethrowers and manned by one officer, five NCOs and 12 soldiers who acted as flamethrower operators. The number of personnel available changed throughout the war, both officially and more significantly through the effects of manpower losses, but in general the actual divisional quota increased to around 20 flamethrowers.

The flamethrower design seems to hark back to the Kleif M. com In April , the US armed services published another of its Intelligence Bulletin works, which included an evaluation of German portable flamethrowers. It made the following observations: Only the engineers carry and employ flame throwers. However, the engineers in the German army are regarded as combat troops, and engineer elements are frequently attached to small infantry units, down to the smallest assault detachments. These elements may be anything from an engineer platoon attached to an advance guard1 to two engineers with a flame thrower supporting a raiding party. Flame throwers are used only against static targets, preferably in inclosed [sic] spaces. They are used most of all against pillboxes. In such instances the flame-throwing detachment begins the final assault on the pillbox itself by engaging the embrasures at close range after infantry detachments have cut any communication wire.

The flame throwers usually advance to within effective range under cover of smoke or of fire from machine guns, antitank guns, or single tanks. The effect of the flame thrower is chiefly psychological. Moreover, the men carrying the equipment are good targets, once they have been spotted. Experience has shown that casualties in German flame thrower detachments are high. This was indeed true, but the article was only partly correct in stating that Pioniere alone might be trained and equipped with flamethrowers. As the war went on, and became more threatening for the German homeland, regular infantrymen might also be trained up in the Pionier flamethrower roles.

For example, a late-war Panzergrenadier-Regiment armoured infantry regiment might have no fewer than of its personnel retrained as a Pionier-Kompanie, with a complement of 24 flamethrowers. Meanwhile, a VolksgrenadierRegiment in would often have a Pionier-Zug combat-engineer platoon of 63 personnel and six flamethrowers. The German flamethrower operator here has a Flammenwerfer 41 model, easily recognized by its horizontal fuel and propellant tanks. com 53 The rest of the extract makes some useful tactical observations about German flamethrower usage. Certainly, the Germans utilized mixed-arms assault groups to reduce static positions, as was seen on the Western Front in —40, most daringly during the attack on the Belgian fortress complex of Eben Emael on 10—11 May The US military made a more detailed study of how such attacks worked in its Handbook of German Military Forces, issued on 15 March It evaluated the composition and tactics of German assault detachments: Assault detachments normally are composed of infantry with engineers attached.

A typical assault detachment consists of the following: one officer; obstacle clearing party, consisting of two to six men for each lane to be cleared, equipped with small arms, wire-cutters, and bangalore torpedoes and other explosives; embrasure-blasting party consisting of three or four men equipped with grenades and demolition or pole charges. This party may also include, though it may work independently, a flame-thrower party, consisting normally of two men; covering parties, normally two or three parties of varying size from three men with one light machine gun to full platoons; smoke party consisting of two or three men equipped with smoke candles or grenades; supply party, carrying reserves of equipment and ammunition, their strength depending on the size of the assault detachment.

Attacks most often are made at dawn, and are preceded normally by heavy artillery preparation, one purpose of which is to make shell holes which afford cover for the advancing assault detachments as they move forward. When the latter reach the wire obstacles surrounding the enemy position, Very signals are fired, calling for available artillery fire to be brought on the position to seal it off from flanking positions. The obstacle-clearing party then cuts one or more lanes through the wire, using wire cutters or bangalore torpedoes. The embrasure-blasting party passes through and attacks the embrasures. Flame throwers, if employed, are not intended by themselves to cause the surrender of the position, but to cover the advance of the embrasureblasting party with its explosive charges which are considered the decisive weapon.

US War Department March IV. com The description of this attack usefully shows how the German forces, like the Americans, integrated the flamethrower into a broader spectrum of weapons, to improve both survivability of all parties but also to offer a range of options for cracking open a dogged position. The presentation of flamethrowers as primarily cover weapons for the blasting team is not entirely accurate; flamethrowers could be position-destroying in themselves, but only if the flamethrower team was given the support to close right up to the position and inject flame through apertures see the points made above about fuel consistency. But the Germans also merged flamethrowers fully into their streetfighting tactics. Special assault teams of around ten men, armed with light automatic weapons, demolitions and one flamethrower squad, would be tasked with clearing particular buildings or underground structures, such as sections of sewer.

For flushing out an enclosed space, the flamethrower could actually be more efficient than explosives — in many ways it was easier to take cover from a grenade than it was from an oxygen-eating sheet of flame. The main problem was keeping the flamethrower operator alive. In urban battles such as Stalingrad, for example, Soviet snipers were specifically tasked with targeting flamethrower soldiers. com Russian flamethrower operator Sergeant Manakov, of the th Rifle Regiment, was reputed to have killed 50 Germans and destroyed seven gun emplacements with his weapon. Courtesy of the Central Museum of the Armed Forces, Moscow via Stavka The Allied Powers The Soviet soldier in the foreground here is armed with the ROKS-3, an uncamouflaged version of the ROKS-2 weapon.

Courtesy of the Central Museum of the Armed Forces, Moscow via Stavka 56 The Soviets and the British both employed flamethrowers during World War II, albeit in rather different ways. The Soviets invested heavily in flamethrower technologies — static, man-portable and vehicle-mounted. Its man-portable varieties were put to robust use in street fighting, assaults on Axis positions and also for anti-tank applications. In street fighting, Soviet flamethrower teams would establish interlocking fire over open areas and streets through which the Germans would have to pass. Like the Germans, the flamethrower crews would also work within small assault teams in urban combat, using small arms to suppress the enemy long enough to close with the flamethrowers.

The flame weapons would then blast a room, building or position, and demolitions teams would complete the job with satchel charges or grenades. com transportation of all the heavy equipment , plus one man armed with a PPSh or similar submachine gun to provide localized suppressive fire. Within the British Army, manportable flamethrowers had a less pervasive existence. The open spaces here meaning little cover for the flamethrower teams and the relative lack of fixed positions to assault meant that the rationale for flamethrowers was weak, although they could be applied to anti-tank tactics. During the build-up to D-Day, however, it was recognized that flamethrowers, both man-portable and armoured, would have direct applications against German coastal and inland defences, so production and distribution was increased. The principal armoured flamethrower was the Churchill Crocodile, which could deliver 80 1-second flamethrower bursts to distances of m.

At battalion level, the British forces also used the Wasp, a Universal Carrier equipped with a flamethrower. In the ETO, the British flamethrowers found their métier in the ways we have already encountered in this book — position assaults, urban combat and anti-armour actions. Secret recordings of German POWs captured in Normandy in June record a special fear of the British flamethrowers. One officer, a Hauptmann Gundlach of InfanterieDivision, spoke of defending a bunker near Ouistreham with tenacity until blasts from British flamethrowers resulted in many of his men passing out from heat exhaustion and oxygen depletion — he was quickly forced to surrender the position.

com A museum view of the ROKS-2 flamethrower. MKFI This Polish freedom fighter in Warsaw in has a K-pattern flamethrower, which was specifically produced for the Home Army in Poland from It had a litre fuel tank and separate compressed air bottle, and several hundred were produced. Jerzy Beeger 57 flamethrower teams were used to send protective arcs of flame across rivers while amphibious troops made crossings in small boats. Across the world in the jungles of Burma, the British also found the flamethrower useful, although here the terrain meant that armoured flamethrowers were rarely available, and the man-portable versions were paramount. Chindit columns, for example, featured a heavy-weapons platoon that incorporated a flamethrower. Several flamethrowers acting in unison were found to have a devastating effect on Japanese jungle positions and could also turn a Japanese-held village into a sea of flame if required. The most intensive use of flamethrowers in World War II has to be in the hands of US soldiers in the Pacific, where flamethrowers became utterly integral to the tactics employed by both the US Army and the US Marine Corps.

The process of finding a tactical role for the flamethrower, and assigning that role and carrying out the associated training throughout a huge and complex multiservice force, was a complex and frequently bloody one, of which a thorough summary is only possible here. Typical allocations of flamethrowers were 24 or 27 weapons per battalion the higher figure was issued to parachute companies in airborne battalions. The first combat outing for the US flamethrowers was made in New Guinea in December The results were not promising. Not only had most engineers received inadequate tactical training for the new weapons, the adverse environmental conditions of the tropics caused numerous malfunctions in the flamethrower components. Better results, however, were obtained during combat on Guadalcanal, where it was found that flamethrowers were the ideal tool for the destruction of enemy bunkers and strongpoints, and the soldiers could receive more focused training.

In a single day, 15 January , USMC engineers managed to wipe out three tough enemy bunkers in just 20 minutes using flamethrowers. In one incident, it was noted that two Japanese troops dropped dead outside the torched bunker, without obvious major injury. This effect, it was discovered, was because the lethal effects of carbon monoxide poisoning could endure in the bloodstream for up to ten minutes after the attack, felling the enemy soldiers even when they thought they were safe. As the war progressed, the Soviets found the flamethrower especially useful for anti-armour actions. com Gradually, the US authorities of the CWS woke up to the fact that infantry troops, not just engineers, needed to be trained in the flamethrowers to gain full benefit of the weapons system. By the end of , the War Department took a mature decision in deleting portable flamethrowers from Tables of Basic Allowances for the Corps of Engineers, and instead allowing theatre commanders to decide on the levels of distribution and their tactical employment.

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Tell us about a book you would like to see published by Osprey. At the beginning of every month we will post the 5 best suggestions and give you the chance to vote for your favourite. View Download Osprey Publishing - Military History Books - New Vanguard - Free epub, mobi, pdf ebooks download, ebook torrents download Osprey - Weapon 41 - The Flamethrower - PDF Free Download Osprey - Weapon 41 - The Flamethrower Home Osprey - Weapon 41 - The Flamethrower © Osprey Publishing • Osprey Publishing Publisher - works / 1, ebooks Published between & Publishing History This is a chart to show the when this publisher published books. Along downloads Views 4MB Size Download PDF THE BAZOOKA GORDON L. ROTTMAN © Osprey Publishing • blogger.com THE BAZOOKA GORDON L. ROTTMAN Osprey publishing: free download. Ebooks library. On-line books store on Z-Library | Z-Library. Download books for free. Find books. 11,, books books; PDF, MB. 0 / 2. ... read more

Frostgrave - Download the Rules for Free! Board and Card Games. Turner provided suppressing fire from the machine gun, firing from the hip, so the halted US tank crews could escape. Axis forces in North Africa surrendered in May , and the Sicily landing was to launch the following month. com rear end of the front barrel and the front end of the rear barrel.

While there were initial problems — some serious, with the first bazookas — the weapon proved to be extremely useful and deadly. If the rocket impacted on the ground at ranges under yd it usually ricocheted rather than detonated. The M1A1 lance did not have the degree barrel bend of its predecessor. Backed by artillery, Marine Sherman tanks, 37mm antitank guns, and bazookas opened fire, knocking out 24 tanks and killing infantry. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. BATTLE OF MALTA: —42 On the blog today, author Anthony Rogers gives us an insight into researching photographs for his new book Battle of Malta, osprey publishing pdf free download. Indeed, III.