Liquid Fire

[PhilB]

Can anyone expand on this? (Sgt Observer F Archer, Voices in Flight)

[truthergw]

Intended to be filled with fuel and fitted with an igniter of some sort? I would not fancy sharing an aircraft with it.

[PhilB]

I suppose that when you`re already sitting on the petrol tank it makes little difference.

[Max Poilu]

Never heard of this in the Great War - there were of course hundreds of 'interesting' weapons ideas that never saw the light of day. The Livens Projector was probably the nearest thing to spreading liquid fire from the air next to the flamethrower of course.

However, there was this of course in another conflict:

http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/webprojects2001/.../napalmbomb.htm

[birchp]

QUOTE (Phil_B @ Oct 19 2007, 10:34 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Can anyone expand on this? (Sgt Observer F Archer, Voices in Flight)

Liquid fire is a term commonly used to refer to liquid incendiary substances. The term probably first referred to boiling oil used as a siege defense. In the Hellenistic through Byzantine periods of Western civilization, it commonly referred to Greek fire. In ancient China there were also the practice of petroleum Meng Huo You. In World War I and World War II, flamethrowers were used to project flaming liquids. Today, the term is most commonly applied to napalm.

Paul

[mastermindmichel]

What would a small chap be doing inside that bomb though?

[centurion]

I think there is some confusion here The RE7 was developed specifically to lift the Royal Aircraft Factory 336lb Explosive bomb and was used in action (including during the Somme) but its slow speed and observer in the front cockpit made it vunerable to fighter attack. The article I think refers to experiments with a large jettisonable petrol tank designed to allow the aircraft to undertake long range recce flights (and with a third, rear, cockpit bomber escort duties). Photos of the jettisonable tank show it to look exactly like a large bomb, fins and all.

Commander Samson in the med. did carry out operational bombing sorties with large petrol filled bombs - at one time dropping one on a Turkish barracks. He was not, however, flying an RE7

[Steven Broomfield]

I don't think a small chap would be inside: just that the bomb was of a size that a small chap could have got in it.

Might have needed extra space for the asbestos underwear!

[PhilB]

Unless it was an early experimental guided bomb!

[centurion]

There was no bomb - the jettisonable fuel tank was big enough for someone small to have crawled inside (if it was empty) and was fitted with impact fuses that could be activated by the pilot before dropping so that it would explode on impact. Its prime purpose however was to provide fuel for long flights.

[PhilB]

There would be little point in blowing up, on impact, an empty fuel tank. Maybe they thought of dropping them with fuel in and to explode them on impact? That would act as he describes?

[SiegeGunner]

QUOTE (Phil_B @ Oct 19 2007, 12:57 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Unless it was an early experimental guided bomb!

Perhaps not — but it does sound like an early concept for a fuel-air bomb.

[centurion]

It was definitely intended as a fuel tank - some other long range designs had the same shaped tank fixed on the top wing (minus fins and, presumably, detonators).

Even an empty tank would go bang on dropping as it would be full of vapour, however I think that the idea was that it gave the pilot something to drop if he spotted a target of opportunity that was worth aborting his original mission for (Hindenberg taking a nap on a deck chair outside his HQ )

The tank was only fitted to the prototype

The RE7 went through a lot of guises. A 3 seat version that saw action had a scarf ring fitted on the top wing so that the front observer could stand up, on top of the fuselage, withhis arms and shouldersthrough a hole in the top wing and operate the Lewis. Apparently it was not unkown for him to loose his footing when traversing the ring and slide into the pilot's cockpit. In this case he would have to extracate himself from the (unwilling) embrace of the pilot and try and crawl forward across the fuselage to his own cockpit.

[squirrel]

That sounds like a war winner then - I take it that it was from the the Royal Aircraft Factory?

[truthergw]

Early jets could be fitted with drop tanks. If these were jettisoned full, they generally exploded on impact without the benefit of a fuse. Presumably there was enough heat and sparks to set fire to the fuel.

[centurion]

Drop tanks (other than the RE7) were being designed in WW1, Fokker produced a DVII version with a tank replacing the fairing between the undercarriage wheels. This could be dropped (leaving a bare axle). However poor quality workmanship (a bugbear in the later Fokker plant) meant that they leaked very badly and before this could be sorted the war was over. There were other designs around. In WW2 they were in extensive use - long before the jets (neither the original Me 262, Meteor or Shooting Star designs had drop tanks although the latter two acquired them in later varients). In many cases these were paper mache and did not explode on impact. The metal drop tanks could not be guaranteed to explode either (unless used in Hollywood)