The Soldier at the Western Front – The Use of Flamethrower
Source 2: Thucydides: The History of the Peloponnesian War
The idea to use flammable liquids that would stick to a target and can’t be extinguished, as weapons of war was not new. The so called Greek fire was used for the first time in the year 673 AD to burn Arabian ships during the siege of Constantinople. This weapon was based on a mixture mainly made of naphtha, which was put under pressure by hand pumps and thus sprayed trough metal pipes. So this weapon system was the first flamethrower in a modern technological sense, even though the basic principle was known even earlier. Thucydides already reported about the use of such a devise during the Peloponnesian War during the siege of the city Delium in the year 424 BC.
“The Boeotians sent off at once for darters and slingers from the Maliac Gulf, and with two thousand Corinthian hoplites, who reinforced them after the battle, as well as the Peloponnesian garrison which evacuated Niseae, and some Megarians also, made an expedition against Delium and attacked the fortification. After trying other forms of assault they took it by bringing up an engine made in the following manner. Having sawed in two a great beam they hollowed it throughout, and fitted it together again nicely like a pipe; then they hung a cauldron at one end of it with chains, and into the cauldron an iron bellows-pipe was let down in a curve from that beam, which was itself in great part plated with iron. This engine they brought up from a distance on carts to the part of the wall where it was built chiefly of vines and wood; and when it was near, they inserted a large bellows into the end of the beam next to them and blew it through it. And the blast passing through the air-tight tube into the cauldron , which contained lighted coals, Sulphur, and pitch, made a great blaze and set fire to the wall, so that no one could stay on it longer, but all left it and took to flight; and in this way the fortification was taken. Of the garrison some were slain, and two hundred were captured; but most of the rest got on board their ships and were conveyed home.”
Thukydides IV, 100
The Soldier at the Western Front – The Use of Flamethrower
