“All weapons are, by their very nature, ghastly in purpose but there is something uniquely awful and inhumane about the flamethrower.
It is not quick since the victim took long seconds and even minutes to succumb, as flesh, nerve muscle and eventually organs were charred to destruction. Those who have observed such deaths give chilling accounts of the animal-like howls of the dying.
Flamethrower crews needed nerves of steel to approach to within pistol range of the enemy positions. In a single day, 15 January 1943, USMC engineers managed to wipe out three tough enemy bunkers in just 20 minutes using flamethrowers.
Flamethrowers were ideal devices for trench and emplacement assault, incinerating entire trench sections or bunker structures in intense blasts of oily flame. The ravenous fire would suck the oxygen from enclosed spaces, potentially suffocating occupants who don’t fry to death.
In one incident, it was noted that two Japanese troops dropped dead outside a 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 10 minutes after the attack, killing enemy soldiers even when they thought they were safe.
So gruesome were the flamethrower’s effects that troops on both sides of 20th-century conflicts treated any flame operators as dishonorable and below contempt. Captors often summarily executed surrendering flamethrower crews.
Regardless of the technology or tactics, it still took a brave man to strap heavy, bulky tanks of fuel and gas onto his back and step out into the line of fire." #litparty #smokebreak #stayzero #zerofoxtrot