WWI flamthrowers

[Boone Vidricksen]

could anybody give me information on inplaced/portable flamethrowers of both allied and axis of WWI. In my WWI report for history I included a inplaced flamethrower with a m1917 browning in a trench.

[bob lembke]

Boone;

Your premise is shaky. Do you mean a Browning M1919? Or was the BAR a Browning M1917? (To date myself, I have fired both in my training.) The former was never used by the AEF, and the latter in limited numbers; having read about 30 AEF official histories and personal narratives, I have never read of it having actually been in use, although I understand it was. The AEF was largely equipped with the French Chauchat, which was a piece of junk, one writer calling it the worst MG ever made.

Your question seems to indicate that you mean US equipment, usage, etc. The US AEF almost certainly never used flame throwers in combat. The Yank Gas and Flame Regiment was trained by the Brit Special Brigade, and by the time they were given the task of training the Americans they had converted their one flame thrower (FW) company (Z Company) to other purposes, and put their large emplaced FW in storage out in the weather to rust to pieces. One was kept working for a while to impress visitors, such as the Royal Family.

There is a bit of evidence, quite unreliable, that some Yanks were trained in the use of FW by the French, who had a fairly large FW operation that they were extremely secretative about. The French supplied FW services to American units on occasion.

My father fought with Kompagnie 2., Garde=Reserve=Pionier=Regiment (Flammenwerfer) at Verdun from August to December 28, 1916, when he was severely wounded (2nd wound) on Dead Man's Hill. He then spent a year and a half in hospitals and back at Berlin training recruits in FW. He then tricked his way back to the front, at Reims with the 11. Kompagnie, where he managed to get wounded twice again in a month. (He had been medically rated as unfit for combat with FW.)

Bob Lembke

[trickcyclist]

German

Large flamethrowers:
grosse Flammenwerfer (Grof) M.1912
grosse Flammenwerfer (Grof) M.1916, also called the Leichtgrof or Light Grof

Small flamethrowers:
kleine Flammenwerfer (Kleif) M.1912, M.1914, M.1915, M.1916, and M.1917
Wechselapparat (Wex) M.1917

Austro-Hungarian

Large flamethrower:
grosse 200l M. 15 Flammenwerfer

Medium flamethrower:
mittlere 50l M. 15 Flammenwerfer

Small flamethrowers:
kleine 22l M. 15 Flammenwerfer
kleine 15l M. 16 Flammenwerfer

France

Large flamethrowers:
L1
L2
Schilt No. 1

Medium Flamethrowers:
Schilt No. 2

Small flamethrowers:
Schilt No. 3
Schilt No. 3 bis
P3
P4

Britain

Large flamethrowers:
Vincent
Livens "Large Gallery"

Medium flamethrowers:
Livens "Semi-portable"

Small flamethrower:
Hays
Lawrence

Italy

Large flamethrower:
Hersent-Thiriont

Small flamethrowers:
Schilt No. 3 bis
DLF
Apparato tipo italiano a due serbatoi accoppiati or Italian Twin-tank Apparatus

United States

Large flamethrower:
Flame Projector, Parapet Type

Small flamethrowers:
Knapsack Flame Projector, Mark I
Boyd No. 3
B-D No. 3

Mobile flamethrower:
Flame Projector, Tractor Type, Mark I

Flaming bayonet (small flamethrowers mounted on rifles):
Flaming Bayonet Liquid type, Mark I
Flaming Bayonet Cartridge Type, Mark I
Flaming Bayonet pistol, Mark II
Flaming Bayonet pistol, Mark III

[Landsturm]

allied and axis of WWI

No axis in WW1...

[cj]

does anyone have any photos of Austro-Hungarian flamethrowers?

This is all ive seen: a flammenwerfer at Cambrai


This is another one of a German flamenwerfer at Verdun in 1915


Heres a German fw at 1916 Verdun

[trickcyclist]

Here's the Austrian Kleine 22-Liter M.1915 Flammenwerfer, being modeled by an American soldier.

It had a two-piece rubber hose, one section of which has been removed for this photo. The two handles on the lance operate the fuse at the end of the nozzle and the spray of pressurized oil, respectively.

This flamethrower was operated by a two-man squad and had a range of "60 paces."

For one of the most comprehensive photographic round-ups of Austrian flamethrowers, check out M. Christian Ortner's astonishing and incredibly expensive book Storm Troops: Austro-Hungarian Assault Units and Commandos in the First World War.

http://tinyurl.com/fahal

TC

[Tosun Saral]

According to Turkish official History book written by Ret. Col. Cihat Akcakayalioglu " 1nci Dunya Harbi VII cilt, Avrupa Cepheleri 1.Kisim, Galicya Cephesi" p.57 (WW1 vol.VII, Earupian Fronts: Galizia)
"In an order which came from the Army HQs it is said that the Rusians have ordered many flamethrowers, those throwers might probably will be used by them. any information will be valued" (p.57)

page: 84 "In August 1916 2 flamethrowers were given to the 15th Turkish Army Corps by Southern German Army."

this is the only sentences that I found in the book.

[Trenchgun]

German

Large flamethrowers:
grosse Flammenwerfer (Grof) M.1912
grosse Flammenwerfer (Grof) M.1916, also called the Leichtgrof or Light Grof

Small flamethrowers:
kleine Flammenwerfer (Kleif) M.1912, M.1914, M.1915, M.1916, and M.1917
Wechselapparat (Wex) M.1917

Austro-Hungarian

Large flamethrower:
grosse 200l M. 15 Flammenwerfer

Medium flamethrower:
mittlere 50l M. 15 Flammenwerfer

Small flamethrowers:
kleine 22l M. 15 Flammenwerfer
kleine 15l M. 16 Flammenwerfer

France

Large flamethrowers:
L1
L2
Schilt No. 1

Medium Flamethrowers:
Schilt No. 2

Small flamethrowers:
Schilt No. 3
Schilt No. 3 bis
P3
P4

Britain

Large flamethrowers:
Vincent
Livens "Large Gallery"

Medium flamethrowers:
Livens "Semi-portable"

Small flamethrower:
Hays
Lawrence

Italy

Large flamethrower:
Hersent-Thiriont

Small flamethrowers:
Schilt No. 3 bis
DLF
Apparato tipo italiano a due serbatoi accoppiati or Italian Twin-tank Apparatus

United States

Large flamethrower:
Flame Projector, Parapet Type

Small flamethrowers:
Knapsack Flame Projector, Mark I
Boyd No. 3
B-D No. 3

Mobile flamethrower:
Flame Projector, Tractor Type, Mark I

Flaming bayonet (small flamethrowers mounted on rifles):
Flaming Bayonet Liquid type, Mark I
Flaming Bayonet Cartridge Type, Mark I
Flaming Bayonet pistol, Mark II
Flaming Bayonet pistol, Mark III

That's incredible. I've never been able to find even a fraction of that list through my research.
Is there anything more you can tell me about the American flame weapons?
Their operation, their deployment, their concept, their numbers produced?

[Ironmachine]

Some information and photographs of an Italian flamethrower:

landships.freeservers.com/italian_big_flamethrower.htm

[trickcyclist]

trenchgun:

The reason it's almost impossible to find information about American flame weapons in World War One is because after the war, the head of the Chemical Warfare Service--one Brigadier-General Amos A. Fries--essentially rewrote history in order to reflect his opinion that flamethrowers were utterly useless. In 1928 Fries corresponded with the former commander of the German flamethrower regiment and insisted that the Germans had not attacked Americans with flamethrowers during the war. This despite countless newspaper articles about flamethrower attacks on Americans, including the very famous assault on the Lost Battalion on October 6, 1918, which Fries surely would've known about. Fries said in his book Chemical Warfare, co-authored with Clarence J. West, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1921), that after the war the men of the Chemical Warfare Serice never mentioned flamethrowers unless an outsider asked about them. Weird.

The history of flamethrowers in the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) is very confusing. Here is what I've been able to work out: On August 15, 1917, the 30th Engineer (Gas and Flame) Regiment was established, based at American University in Washington, D.C. On September 3, 1917, the AEF Gas Service, a separate entity, was formed under the command of Colonel Amos A. Fries. The Chemical Warfare Service was in turn created on June 28, 1918, as the umbrella organization that combined the activities of all the military and governmental agencies connected to chemical warfare, including the Gas Service, the Gas and Flame Regiment, the Medical Corps, the Ordnance Department, the Signal Corps, the Bureau of Mines, and the Chemical Service Section.

One company--possibly F Company--of the 30th Engineers was initially assigned French and British flamethrowers, but the unit’s name change to the 1st Gas Regiment in August of 1918 seems to mark the date that incendiary weapons were dropped from the inventory. Postwar histories of the regiment make no mention of flamethrowers or their use by American troops in combat. As a colorful side note, the men of the 1st Gas Regiment were nicknamed the “Hellfire Boys.”

Although the Americans experimented with several models of portable flamethrower during the war, none were accepted for production, and data and nomenclature are wildly contradictory. The portable or "knapsack" type appeared in either twin-tank or single-tank configurations; beyond this general description, details are extremely vague. One model of flamethrower was known as the Boyd No. 3, which weighed anywhere from 50 to 80 pounds. The only concrete snippet of information is that two were shipped overseas for testing in March of 1918. Most photos show the Boyd No. 3 as a twin-tank model that used hydrogen and a Bunson burner as the ignition system, but other sources identify it as a copy of the British Lawrence, a single-tank model ignited by a spark from a dry-cell battery.

Good sources for information are:

History of Trench Warfare Material 1917-1919. Washington, D. C.: Army Ordnance, Government Printing Office, 1920.

Mountcastle, John W. Flame On! U. S. Incendiary Weapons, 1918-1945. Shippensburg, Pennsylvania: White Mane Publishing, 1999.

Records of the Chief, Chemical Warfare Service. Record Group 175, U. S. National Archives.

I also joined http://www.newspaperarchive.com, which allows you to browse PDFs of old newspapers for a fee. It has a search engine, which I've used to find a lot of info on American flamethrowers in World War One. The Bureau of Mines did most of the research into and development of flamethrowers, beginning in 1916.

Here are some images of an experimental knapsack flame projector, an unknown single-tank model used after the war, and the flaming bayonet.

It's possible that the first image shows the "Knapsack Flame Projector, Mark I,” the design for which was completed on December 9, 1918. If so, it had a range of 100ft (30.4m), weighed 50lbs (22.6kg) and was said to incorporate the best features of American and French types. Note the center-mounted propellant tank with pressure gauge, the two different types of lance, and the perforated nozzle attachment. This flamethrower apparently used hydrogen and a “pilot light” as the automatic-ignition system.

[trickcyclist]

And here's the Boyd No. 3.

[Trenchgun]

Thanks for the info!

Do you believe that the Americans ever actually used flamethrowers in combat, be them French/British designs or their own, on even a limited scale?
As I've read, the Americans did make use of flamethrowers in some attacks but they were being handled by French crews who were attached to the Americans for the assault.

And this flaming bayonet is an interesting device... It reminds me of those one shot disposable flamethrowers that the Germans used late in WW2, intended for use with fallschirmjagers.

Was this flaming bayonet ever actually fielded, during or after the war?
What do you think it's purpose was?
Given the relatively small flame, and it's one shot nature, it seems like it might not be that useful as a tool for clearing out bunkers or caves...Maybe it was intended to simply be a deadly close combat weapon?
Nothing would put a man down faster at close range than having flame spewed all over him.

[Tosun Saral]

some images from the following pages:
http://www.gittigidiyor.com/php/urun.php?id=1021494
http://www.gittigidiyor.com/php/urun.php?id=1021321
http://www.gittigidiyor.com/php/urun.php?id=1021325

[Tosun Saral]

fire thrower

[trickcyclist]

trenchgun:

Most references say that the Americans never used flamethrowers in combat during World War One. I've never found an indisputable account of such an action.

As you say, when the Americans took part in flame assaults, the flamethrower engineers were always French, as at the Battle of Cantigny.

http://www.firstworldwar.com/battles/cantigny.htm

As far as I know, the flaming bayonet was never used in combat. It was an assault weapon, much like the Pederson Device that converted the .30-06 Springfield rifle into a submachine gun. I suppose the user leapt into the enemy trench and fired a gout of flame into the faces of his terrified opponents. Here's a Web site that sells info on the flaming bayonet.

http://www.usmilitaryknives.com/documents.htm

Scroll down to number 96:

The Flaming Bayonet: Designing Tactical Surprise. By Dr. James W. Williams Historian U.S. Army Chemical School 19 March 1987. A 10 page Journal article written on the little known topic of the Flaming Bayonet. Great research article. Contains three pictures and blueprint drawing of one of the prototypes. The only known photo of the Flaming Bayonet actually working in a demonstration. $3.50

Here are two photos of French flamethrower teams working with the Americans at Cantigny. The first image shows a P3 flamethrower, and the second a P4.