hi guys thanks for tuning in to another
video on Forgotten weapons comm I'm Ian
and today courtesy of armament research
services we are taking a look at a
British life buoy style flamethrower so
this particular flamethrower is actually
a mixture of several different
components
it's a 1945 dated wand the firing
component here and it's a might be
experimental might be issue composite
tank from probably the late 1950s or
early 1960s
although it's in the same style that the
British were using through late World
War 2 and what happened after the war
was they had plenty of these wands left
over that still worked very nicely but
the steel tanks tended to rust tended to
wear out and by the early 60s everybody
was experimenting with these cool new
composite materials and you end up with
things like fiberglass or similar to
fiberglass material tanks for
flamethrowers now let's go ahead and
take a closer look at the wand and we'll
give you some details on this thing so
the early British World War two
flamethrowers actually used a hydrogen
spark ignition system which was fairly
common at that time but kind of
horrifically complicated and unreliable
that sort of ignition system would often
not work when it was wet or maybe not
just wet but damp and that's not a good
thing
if you're using a military flamethrower
it really needs to ignite any time and
every time
so in 44 they changed that out to this
wand style and this is a 10 cartridge
igniter system so if we look at the
muzzle here you can see there are holes
for 10 ignition cartridges you would
load those in and they're basically like
little road flares this is pretty
similar to what the u.s. m2 flamethrower
used and you're firing grip here every
time you fire it it's going to light one
of those and then when you release the
grip it rotates the whole assembly one
position so it's only lighting one of
them at a time as just rotating each the
the whole set into alignment with the
striker igniter now that flare will burn
for a couple seconds probably four to
eight seconds and during that time as
long as you're holding down
the main trigger fuel will flow through
the hose out the front over the flame of
that flare igniter catch fire and well
that's a flame thrower for you the front
grip here is you know it's just there to
control this contrary to maybe common
expectation flame throwers do have
recoil they're kind of like pressure
washers in that you're actually throwing
a pretty heavy volume of liquid forward
and so it does push backwards and you
absolutely want to be able to control it
effectively so that front grip is very
useful and necessary now if we look at
the rest of this unit there are a couple
things to point out first off the hose
that goes from the wand comes straight
back here and is screwed directly into
the bottom of the tank there's no
regulator there's no on/off switch
there's nothing else right here it's
just a hose connection now it's a little
tricky to see at this angle but right
here is where you would have originally
attached a pressure bottle and the
pressure bottle is missing on this one
unfortunately so that pressure bottle
goes in here sits in the middle in
wartime pictures you'll see the obvious
pressure bottle there this one's a
little chipped up there this this tank
is probably not serviceable anymore but
you then have a knob here on top once
the pressure bottle is connected it
stays segregated from the actual fuel
tank until you open this valve you can
see that there's pressure on and off
once you open this the pressure is going
to go from that tank completely
pressurize this doughnut and you then
have well the tank is then pressurized
until you fire all of the fuel out
there's no discharge for this you could
close closing the pressure valve at the
top no longer does anything because the
pressure has equalized between the
center bottle and the outside doughnut
and closing it well doesn't doesn't do
anything all the pressures already in
the main fuel component so the way to
safely unload this is literally just to
fire the whole thing there's no way to
turn it off and depressurize it
otherwise you can make out here around
the outside and around the inside the
seam lines where this was manufactured
this is I believe a fiberglass or some
type of fiberglass tank and a lot of
countries were experimenting them with
this it really does make a lot more
sense than a steel tank
for a combat flamethrower where rust
holes cause well cause weak spots which
cause the things to leak or burst and
that's obviously a problem and lastly
the strap setup is just a couple of
simple straps that go through these
loops at the top and then you have a
pair of braces down here the belt
attaches at the bottom so this holds the
tank off of your back slightly and then
the belt loop kind of cool has six
different attachment points so you just
strap it on tight and you don't have to
try and adjust the belt any other way
just hook that into whichever one
happens to fit you the current operator
there are a pair of quick-release
buckles here one on each of the shoulder
straps so if you need to ditch this
thing in a hurry which is certainly a
possibility with a flamethrower it's
pretty quick to pop this buckle snap
these two and the whole thing drops off
your back the British used these in
World War two but then also went on
using them in East Asia and that's where
something like this would have been used
Malaya or other British small Wars thank
you for watching guys hopefully you
enjoyed the video these lifebuoy
flamethrowers are actually really hard
to find these days there aren't all that
many of them out there so thanks very
much to Aries for allowing me to get
into this collection and take a look at
this particular one if you're interested
take a look at their website for some
cool high-res pictures of this
particular flamethrower assembly and
stay tuned to Forgotten weapons comm
thanks for watching