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It doesn't really work. The dispersion problem is just too much of a hurdle. You end up with such a low-density cloud of fuel that it either won't ignite or doesn't do much if it does, the wind and the turbulence of the aircraft make it go in unpredictable directions, and you have to fly way too low and slow for it to have any hope of being effective. The only effective way found so far to get enough fuel in one area is to drop a canister that falls intact, then breaks apart just above the target. Or that breaks apart on the target. Or that just breaks the target.
With a helicopter it can be made to work . . . it's called either a flying drip torch (the name I knew) or a helitorch or aerial torch. (driptorch)
The gelled fuel is key, though, and it's not much use in a military/attack scenario.
FreeFlier wrote:With a helicopter it can be made to work . . . it's called either a flying drip torch (the name I knew) or a helitorch or aerial torch. (driptorch)
The gelled fuel is key, though, and it's not much use in a military/attack scenario.
Yeah, I have some pilot friends who do that sort of work. It's basically just a big leaky can of petrol dangling well below a slow-flying low-flying helicopter, though, leaving a narrow trail of scattered burning drops of fuel. Not really anything such as the idea that was mentioned earlier. It is to flamethrowers what the sparkler wand is to fireworks.
Willy Pete: David Drake did the script for a comic version of Harold Coyle's "Team Alpha". He did a few text pages for each issue talking about events or concepts in that issue.
In one of those he talked abou white phosporus.
The last sentence of that section was " Everybody I know - or would CARE to know - is afraid of white phosphorus."
Proof Positive the world is not flat: If it were, cats would have pushed everything off the edge by now.
Yeeeaaah, um already worked out the thing this thread is leading itself to. Wasn't really going to talk about it, but I'm in the further stage of working out prevention, suppression, negation...
Its generally how I work; 1st the "Gee, what if somebody tossed a satchel-charge over this fence?..." to "OK, what should we do about that?"
AnotherFairportfan wrote:Arrgh! Make that Team Yankee
IIRC, Team Yankee was a decent read . . . though it's a little bit dated right now, since the CCCP (Soviet Union) doesn't exist at the moment.
I've not read the graphic novel, though.
--FreeFlier
At a convention somewhere - Knoxville, i think - i wound up talking to Drake (we have mutual friends), and, after his ecstatic reaction when i mentioned the surge of rage that Chapter Thirteen of his "Hammer's Slammers" novel Rolling Hot {"YES! That was exactly what I was going for!"}, he mentioned that until he was adapting the book, he hadn't noticed that, at one point, the seen tanks split into two elements, two of one and one of the other are destroyed ... and when they come back together, there are five tanks...
TazManiac wrote:Yeeeaaah, um already worked out the thing this thread is leading itself to. Wasn't really going to talk about it, but I'm in the further stage of working out prevention, suppression, negation...
Its generally how I work; 1st the "Gee, what if somebody tossed a satchel-charge over this fence?..." to "OK, what should we do about that?"
Not be there when it goes off.
In one of my stories, nobody recognizes that our heroes are hardening their building against bombs . . . and doing it so that almost nobody will notice!
Granted, both of the heroes have . . . unusual . . . families . . .
You guys are overthinking the setting stuff on fire from airplanes. It was solved decades ago and was banned as a weapon of war IIRC.
Drop tanks of napalm on the target with small explosive charges to set them on fire. Simple, relatively easy to target, and reliable as the explosive used to ignite it.
I ride my bike to ride my bike, and sometimes it takes me where I need to go.
Opus the Poet wrote:You guys are overthinking the setting stuff on fire from airplanes. It was solved decades ago and was banned as a weapon of war IIRC.
No, it wasn't . . . it's still used. There were multiple attempts to ban it, and were no more successful than with land mines.
IIRC about the only weapons that were successfully banned were poison gas and expanding bullets, and the only reason that poison gas held up during WWII was that Hitler thought that the Allies had nerve gas too . . . and the Germans didn't have a defense against it.
The small explosive projectile ban didn't hold up . . . the old land mine ban didn't hold up . . . the medieval ban on crossbows didn't hold up . . .
(Expanding bullets held up because the military realized that you don't want to kill enemy soldiers . . . you want them to suffer incapacitating wounds, so they have to be evacuated from the battle field. That way you've removed three or four soldiers from the battlefield instead of one.)
It's a thought experiment. The overthinking is the whole point. That's the fun of it!
He's mister GlytchMeister, he's mister code
He's mister exploiter, he's mister ones and zeros
They call me GlytchMeister, whatever I touch
Starts to glitch in my clutch!
I'm too much!
AnotherFairportfan wrote:Willy Pete: David Drake did the script for a comic version of Harold Coyle's "Team Alpha". He did a few text pages for each issue talking about events or concepts in that issue.
In one of those he talked abou white phosporus.
The last sentence of that section was " Everybody I know - or would CARE to know - is afraid of white phosphorus."
If I were writing it, that would be the entire chapter on white phosphorus.
No, I was definitely thinking of thermite. I have never dealt with white phosphorus, nor do I ever desire to do so.
He's mister GlytchMeister, he's mister code
He's mister exploiter, he's mister ones and zeros
They call me GlytchMeister, whatever I touch
Starts to glitch in my clutch!
I'm too much!
Thermite is basically self-melting metal . . . it's not all that bad.
Of course, I've done welding, and I worked in a foundry for 6-9 months, melting and casting metal for a living . . . in that time, I was the only one on the crew that didn't go to the hospital for burns.
I haven't used thermite myself, although I've been tempted to try out some of the little pre-packaged "hot-shot" thermite packets which are used to weld a ground rod to a ground wire. Much more secure than using clamps or screws or solder. If I lived in an area prone to lightning I'd be more tempted to do it, to help protect my home in the case that lightning decided that it wanted to get up-close-and-personal with my ham and TV antennas.
I'm not sure thermite actually makes sense for a dispersed fuel for the scenario you're thinking of. The iron oxide in it serves a dual purpose... it provides the oxidizer (for the aluminum or magnesium) and the "freed" iron melts together to form the weld (or to burn through something). It takes a lot of heat to get the reaction going, and the reaction is (I think) only self-sustaining for as long as there's fresh thermite powder in very close proximity to the fraction that's already burning.
If you disperse the powder in air, I strongly suspect that air-cooling will interrupt the reaction almost immediately. And, under those circumstances, the aluminum/magnesium isn't going to require oxygen from the iron oxide to burn... it'll be in close contact with lots of air, which has much-more-available oxygen.
At best, if you use really-finely-divided metal powder, you'll end up with a fuel/air explosion... a thermobaric-weapon WHOOMP which will probably spoil the day of whomever is piloting your small plane.
Dave wrote:I haven't used thermite myself, although I've been tempted to try out some of the little pre-packaged "hot-shot" thermite packets which are used to weld a ground rod to a ground wire. Much more secure than using clamps or screws or solder. If I lived in an area prone to lightning I'd be more tempted to do it, to help protect my home in the case that lightning decided that it wanted to get up-close-and-personal with my ham and TV antennas.
I'm not sure thermite actually makes sense for a dispersed fuel for the scenario you're thinking of. The iron oxide in it serves a dual purpose... it provides the oxidizer (for the aluminum or magnesium) and the "freed" iron melts together to form the weld (or to burn through something). It takes a lot of heat to get the reaction going, and the reaction is (I think) only self-sustaining for as long as there's fresh thermite powder in very close proximity to the fraction that's already burning.
If you disperse the powder in air, I strongly suspect that air-cooling will interrupt the reaction almost immediately. And, under those circumstances, the aluminum/magnesium isn't going to require oxygen from the iron oxide to burn... it'll be in close contact with lots of air, which has much-more-available oxygen.
At best, if you use really-finely-divided metal powder, you'll end up with a fuel/air explosion... a thermobaric-weapon WHOOMP which will probably spoil the day of whomever is piloting your small plane.
Exactly. Igniting thermite requires either a carefully-prepared ignition train of successively hotter incendiary compounds, or something at least as hot as a propane torch.
And it loses a lot of heat very fast even under normal conditions, so I very much doubt that it would sustain a reaction when dispersed in air.
Now if you disperse powdered aluminum into air and ignite it before it settles . . . that's a fuel-air explosive. Also tricky to do . . . the solids settle too fast. But they are excessively entertaining when they happen . . . I don't want to see another one!
FreeFlier wrote:Thermite is basically self-melting metal . . . it's not all that bad.
Of course, I've done welding, and I worked in a foundry for 6-9 months, melting and casting metal for a living . . . in that time, I was the only one on the crew that didn't go to the hospital for burns.
--FreeFlier
You also seem to have experience with explosives and military time under your belt. I'm not nearly as experienced. I'm not even out of my twenties yet. I may be a pyro, but I'm not blasé about it.
The thermite grenades (read: thermite in a paper bag, wrapped with duct tape) we use are mainly for getting through roof/floor hatches, safes, vehicle sabotage, and creating a big,distracting, noisy, long-duration light.
They do a very good job. I've seen what this stuff does to engines and metal doors. It's probably the most dangerous substance we use.
He's mister GlytchMeister, he's mister code
He's mister exploiter, he's mister ones and zeros
They call me GlytchMeister, whatever I touch
Starts to glitch in my clutch!
I'm too much!
FreeFlier wrote:Thermite is basically self-melting metal . . . it's not all that bad.
Of course, I've done welding, and I worked in a foundry for 6-9 months, melting and casting metal for a living . . . in that time, I was the only one on the crew that didn't go to the hospital for burns.
--FreeFlier
You also seem to have experience with explosives and military time under your belt. I'm not nearly as experienced. I'm not even out of my twenties yet. I may be a pyro, but I'm not blasé about it.
The thermite grenades (read: thermite in a paper bag, wrapped with duct tape) we use are mainly for getting through roof/floor hatches, safes, vehicle sabotage, and creating a big,distracting, noisy, long-duration light.
They do a very good job. I've seen what this stuff does to engines and metal doors. It's probably the most dangerous substance we use.
It's great stuff to weld with
Rule 17 of the Bombay Golf Course- "You shall play the ball where the monkey drops it,"
I speak fluent Limrick-
the Old Sgt.
AnotherFairportfan wrote:The last sentence of that section was " Everybody I know - or would CARE to know - is afraid of white phosphorus."
The really nasty thing about it is that it's not just incendiary, it's also very toxic. So while it's burning the skin off of your face, it's also poisoning the rest of your body.
FreeFlier wrote:. . . though it's a little bit dated right now, since the CCCP (Soviet Union) doesn't exist at the moment.
That's just what the GRU wants you to think!!!
GlytchMeister wrote:No, I was definitely thinking of thermite. I have never dealt with white phosphorus, nor do I ever desire to do so.
Eh, thermite's not that bad. It's stable and not prone to easy ignition. Safer than most firecrackers. You just have to be absolutely sure of where you put it before you light it up.
I've got some scars on my right arm from a thermite grenade. A guy had the grenade stuffed in a loop on his harness. Apparently he'd watched too many Hollywood movies, because he had the spoon of the grenade outside the loop and the pin loosened for easier pulling. And it was more easily pulled, by a tree branch he was walking by. So the grenade ignited in his harness, and he ran around screaming and flailing until I grabbed him and yanked his harness off. I had a glove on and body armour protecting part of my arm, so it didn't do that much damage to me. I was still fully able to use that arm to slap the guy alongside the head multiple times.
