I know there are military history buffs on here - PU!
Just watched a C4 Time Team special about :-
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7697251/Secret-terror-weapon-of-the-Somme-battle-discovered.html
I had only briefly heard about it, the Royal Engineers built a replica, good lord, what an astonshingly horrific piece of kit. Enthralling and macabre!
Check it out on C4 OD when its available.
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Just watched that too. As you say a horrific weapon.
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Hardly as effective as a US jet passing overhead at 500mph and dropping a couple of tons of blazing petroleum jelly on a Vietnamese village though.
People were every bit as ghastly in 1915 as they were in 1968. They just didn't have the technology though, poor darlings.
Tchah!
(the old weapons freak trumpeted hypocritically in the hope of appearing humane at least in part)
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Had they had jets loaded with Napalm in 1916 they would have used them!
The flame projector was much more classically evil, it rose from a previously undetected tunnel with a cobra like head, and spat death and destruction like a malevolent fire breathing serpent.
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A horrible weapon indeed. So was Poison Gas.
"Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime"
Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est
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Livens large Gallery Flame Projector. - CGNorwich
