flame thrower tanks

they were used in ww2 against the germans iby the russians
and were based on T-26 and so on with some having the tanks fitted on to them and others pulling a tank behind them holding the flamible liquid.

anyone got any info on them?
what the bennifits were and so on

[edit on 13-4-2006 by bodrul]

My majoe experience involves seeing use of them in games of warhammer 40,000. So minature wargames : ) But I have read some books, and seen something on the history channel.

Anyway, they would be effective charging inftentry positions and clearing out bunkers/trenches. The flames would flow right into a opening and incinerate anything inside.

The problem with them is that they, well have no range with their primary gun. Other tanks could shot junk miles away, something like that could olny fight something ten to 50 feet away depending on how the stream of fuel gets thrown. Has more range then a regular infentry flamethrower (and more flame), but all in all it is mostly a sized up version of the weapon.

Nobody uses it anymore, last time US used it was veitnam. Check out napalm. To date no real army uses any flamethrower stuff.

The M67 Patton had a flamethrower aparently, and flamethrowers were used up until the Vietnam war I believe...



Here is a pretty good article on the Patton series of tanks.

Patton Wikipedia entry.

edit: fixed pic

[edit on 4/13/2006 by GrOuNd_ZeRo]

Flametanks are cool. The only problem is when you start a forest fire and your army gets trapped inside an inferno. I don't think it will have too much effectiveness in present time if it is recreated.

I guess with modern city fights the flame might cause a lot of colateral damage.... and might hit civilians.

But yet....... considering the alternative is to use highpowered shells (or general artilerty) that explodes and break though walls sending shrapnel flying everywhere at who knows how much miles per hour.

So the flame might be more ethical, no shrapnel just whatever is under the flame gets hot hot hot. Also for clorateral damage it will not distroy walls (just flow past them, like water/wind of fire).

Though with a flamethrower any interior decorating crap would go to hell.

Its range sucks, so in that respect it might not be too bad shoting down something in a city on the street. Unlike bullets the flame won't go though who knows how many buildings, the flame will just flow to its very limited range. (but not limited 'area of effect')


Back to its sucky range, in a world where tanks can quire targets miles away, its a junkcan.

A flamethrower tank would be highly useful in an urban situation if it were total war. The kind in which it doesn't matter if the target is a civilian. Although that sort of war hasn't been seen in quite a long time, so the modern usefulness of a flamethrower tank is quite limited at best.

In todays environment of OOW (operations other than war) the flamethrower is of minimal use. However in conventional warfare (if there is such a thing) the flamethrower has a number of uses. The most obvious of these is bunker-busting. Nothing is guarateed to clear a bunker faster than a load of burning fuel/jelly screaming towards you.

There are too many disadvantages for my liking. They make the operator very vulnerable (not so much with tanks though), they have minimal range, and they are devistating to the human body. This last point is very important in todays 'media'wars. Pictures of burning/burnt flesh does not do anything for the public support of our troops. While this may not be at the front of the troops minds, it is very much in the minds of the commanders/politicians.


[edit on 15-4-2006 by PaddyInf]

like paddy says the real problem is it's not a media friendly weapon.

In essence it's more PC to drop a million dollar smart bomb that kills everyone in a quarter of a square block than it is to spend 5,000 dollars turning them into human torches.

In addition in the age Of IED's and semi random RPG attacks pressurized jellied fuel mixture is an extreme liabillity to your own forces. In other words the only thing worse than hosing a school with flammable gelatin petrochemicals is the recorded and aired on al jazeera death screams of american tank crews.

All in all it's a weapon that is politically untennable but still useful perse.

The Russians have few interesting Rocket propelled "flame throwers" any actual data on their efectiveness in modern ops?


And they do have a dedicated Flame Rocket Tank:



It uses a Fuel air explosive rockets.... and it has been quite a success in chezenya

The Americans used PBRs with flamethrowers on it in the Vietnam war . But no that much.

Link



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[edit on 19-4-2006 by UK Wizard]

Originally posted by northwolf
The Russians have few interesting Rocket propelled "flame throwers" any actual data on their efectiveness in modern ops?


And they do have a dedicated Flame Rocket Tank:



It uses a Fuel air explosive rockets.... and it has been quite a success in chezenya

From what I have read the USMC has used SMAW's in Iraq with the NE thermobaric round with great success

"In July 2005, an article in the Marine Corps Gazette concluded that it had been highly effective in the November 2004 battle for Fallujah. , edition: "Marines could employ blast weapons prior to entering houses that had become pillboxes, not homes. The economic cost of house replacement is not comparable to American lives... all battalions adopted blast techniques appropriate to entering a bunker, assuming you did not know if the bunker was manned. ... SMAW gunners became expert at determining which wall to shoot to cause the roof to collapse and crush the insurgents fortified inside interior rooms. ... Due to the lack of penetrating power of the NE round, we found that our assaultmen had to first fire a dual-purpose rocket in order to create a hole in the wall or building. This blast was immediately followed by an NE round that would incinerate the target or literally level the structure."

Source


Newest SMAW round big hit in Iraq

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[edit on 19-4-2006 by UK Wizard]

reply to post by jazz_psyker

The M67 had an effective range with the main gun (flamethrower) of about 100 yards even though most often never used for targets at more than 200 feet away. Just like a water hose the wind could easily limit or help distance. And, if the wind was coming from the left the flame could obscure the target from the gunner. The sighting system is to the right of the barrel which was made to look like the 90MM gun used by the M48 main battle tank to discourage attacks by making an enemy think this tank could hit them from as much as 4400 yards. It, like the M48, also had a 50 caliber cupola mounted machine gun and a 30 caliber coax mounted machine gun. It had a range of about 300 miles without refueling, a 750 HP diesel with what is known as a cross drive transmission by Allison.

I know that the flamethrowers were rightly hated by the enemy - and given there 'less than covert' operation (you could see em miles away) the operators were always targeted as a priory, the backpack ones were cumbersome and of course had limited fuel... not my idea of fun lugging that into a fire fight - wonder how many operators went up from a well placed rifle round?

On a modern battlefield a flamethrower tank would be the equivellant of comitting suicide. Even basic infantry have access to things that can crack open some part of a tank to a point that would rupture a flame tank's fuel store.