After the Spitfire was beaten, he only begged his teammates to shoot himself
The domestic film "Chosin Lake Water gate Bridge" released this year takes the Battle of Chosin Lake in the second campaign of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea as the background, and tells us the heroic deeds of the Seventh Interspersed Company of the Volunteer Army after the battles of Xinxing-ri and Hagaru-ri, and the lone army of the Seventh Interspersed Company of the Volunteer Army went deep into the Ninth Company to bomb the Watergate Bridge. Among them, the flamethrowers of the US military that have appeared several times are particularly eye-catching, and the brutal flames are in stark contrast to the cold and freezing combat environment at that time. So, do you know how cruel a flamethrower really is?
When he first appeared on the battlefield, he performed extraordinary
In 1915, the year after the outbreak of World War I, the german and British armies in Ypres, Belgium, reached a stalemate in which soldiers from both sides hid in trenches not far apart and were given a moment's respite. After several days of silence, the Germans quietly attacked in the early morning of February 26, aiming the flamethrowers at the British positions, and in a flash countless fire dragons sneaked into the opponent's trenches, and finally the frightened British troops scattered and fled, and the positions were lost.
The flamethrower performed extraordinary on the battlefield for the first time, and the German army saw this as a treasure, and used the flamethrower to suppress the opponent many times in the follow-up battle, which deeply shocked the british, French, Russian and other militaries. Five months later, Russia's trial production of flamethrowers was put into actual combat, and flame weapons have been widely developed since then....
A nightmare for Japanese soldiers during World War II
In the early 1940s, napalm developed by Harvard University in the United States boosted the range of flamethrowers to achieve leapfrog growth. During World War II, the production of flamethrowers in the United States reached an unprecedented level, and the number of equipment was as high as more than 40,000 pieces. It is reported that in the Pacific island scramble, the new flamethrower of the US military has made countless Japanese soldiers hiding in bunkers, tunnels and caves feel frightened. As a result, the flamethrower shooter is also a rather dangerous post, often becoming a priority target for enemies.
During World War II, the M2 flamethrower, which was heavily used by the U.S. military in Europe and the Pacific, was very effective against closed positions such as enemy trenches or pillboxes. The U.S. army destroyed 8 Japanese bunkers in 90 seconds, and all the Japanese soldiers in the bunkers were burned to charcoal, and not even a complete body could be found. Japanese soldiers, after being attacked by American flamethrowers, usually could not hold on, and most of them would throw away their weapons and try to jump out of the bunker to escape, or pull a grenade and die with the Americans.
In the 1950s, the M2A1-7 flamethrower developed by the United States shocked the world, and the whole consisted of 1 compressed gas cylinder, 2 oil cylinders of different lengths plus hoses and spray guns, etc. After ignition, a column of fire was sprayed towards the target. In the 1960s, the U.S. military began to study the combustion mechanism and introduced a new design concept, and in the 1970s, with the inspiration from anti-tank weapons, it successfully built the M202 4-tube portable multi-incendiary rocket launcher.
The triethyl aluminum fuel used in the American M202 flamethrower is difficult to extinguish in the face of spontaneous combustion in the air and explosion in the face of water. During the Vietnam War, it dealt a huge blow to the Vietnamese army.
Why weren't the volunteers afraid of flamethrowers
On the battlefield of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, the M2A1-2 flamethrower, which was widely used by the US military, was a derivative of the M2, with a maximum range of 50 meters, and was often used to attack the unbreakable tunnel fortifications of the volunteer army. But what surprised the US military was that the originally outstanding flamethrower was greatly weakened when it encountered the destruction of the volunteer army.
Originally, in response to the attack of the American flamethrower, the Volunteer Army made a large number of improvements to the trench tunnels, such as increasing the depth of the tunnels and building a ring system.
In addition, in the case of the Pacific island scramble, flamethrowers were only useful until they were sprayed into the mouth of the tunnel, and the Japanese were suppressed on the island by large-caliber naval guns and had completely abandoned the ground. In the later period of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, thanks to the reinforcement of the artillery of the Chinese army, it was possible to cover the tunnels on the mountain.
In addition, most of the Japanese fortifications were fixed forts with firing ports, and the bunker space was small, and the Japanese troops inside could not survive as soon as the temperature was high. Due to the difficulty of material transportation, the volunteer army relies more on temporary trenches or craters for defense, the tunnel space is large, unless all the exits are blocked at the same time, otherwise the US flamethrower can not stop the volunteer army's attack at all....
To this day, the power of the flamethrower has long been inferior to that of the past, but the bloody strokes it has left in past wars are still palpitating.