Eli5: How effective were flamethrowers when they were still in use in the military and what were the dangers of operating one?
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Flamethrowers were highly effective and were one of the scariest weapons to go up against.
Being burned alive by flaming fuel is not a pleasant way to go, and flame throwers had a strong psychological effect as a result.
Every injury from a flame thrower is a severe and very painful injury.
Being a flamethrower operator had it’s problems though, as they would be deliberately targeted by the enemy and if the pressurized fuel tank were hit it would explode killing the operator and everyone around them in a ball of flame.
People today don’t truly appreciate how nasty Flame Throwers were. We think of them like what we see in movies, or shooting flame like out of a propane cylinder but that’s not how they work at all. They squirt a mix of pressurized flaming fuel over 100 ft away, and when soldiers are feeling nasty they’ll mix the fuel with soap to prevent the flames from being put easily out with water. Go check out Youtube videos of people testing Vietnam era flamethrowers and they are almost always shocked and appalled at just how insane they are as weapons.
Although flame throwers aren’t explicitly banned by the Geneva convention, there are lines in there that argue that Flamethrowers should be considered a banned weapon.
Despite this the US military continued to use them throughout Vietnam.
Flamethrowers have not been in the U.S. arsenal since 1978, when the Department of Defense unilaterally stopped using them — the last American infantry flamethrower was the Vietnam-era M9-7. They have been deemed of questionable effectiveness in modern combat.
But given their effectiveness we haven’t seen the last of them, and they will re-appear on the battlefield at some point.
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