Flame Weapons

[Turret]

What effects would flame-type weapons have on AFVs?

I'm assuming the armour doesn't melt.

The flame weapons are rated too powerful, and in my own OOBs, I've lowered the HE penetration to 1, and left the damage to be done to the warhead size.

[scorpio_rocks]

Flame throwers are particularly nasty weapons resulting in a horrific death. The liquid flame seeps through small cracks, around corners, etc. making all but an airtight, fireproof target vulnerable. They also consume all the oxygen in the target area - most victims suffocate before thay burn to death...

With the advent of gunpowder the early fire weapons (greek fire, etc) were eclipsed and fell in to neglect, flame throwers were re-introduced to deal with fortifications, bunkers and then tanks. They are hellishly effective (their only drawbacks being short range and fragility).

There is a reason people fear fire / flamethrowers - and why people often believe they are banned...

[Turret]

Could an AFV be rendered fire-proof, such as being buttoned up, and the engine compartment fire-proofed? The wheels might burn.

[Cross]

Your original intuition regarding flamethrowers may be about right.

There are one or two WWII studies that concluded they were poor against AFVs, as it was difficult to get any fuel inside the vehicle. An open drivers hatch gave you a chance, but an open turret hatch was not much use. The best chance to disable a tank was to get fuel onto the rear engine deck - if it had open louvres - because fuel may burn the fan belts and wiring.

Flamethrowers were only slightly better against pill boxes.
When storming a pill box, the Soviets would try to assign as many flamethrowers as embrasures.

Not very good against fox holes, as long as the occupants ducked.

They were most effective against houses and even fortified houses, because they would set the building on fire; and against defenses built into hedges and undergrowth for the same reason.

The main effectiveness of flamethrowers was against enemy morale. They caused only few causalities, but caused quite a lot of troops to surrender.

Cross

[DRG]

There is nothing wrong with the values assigned to flamethrowers in the game . Using a flamethrower alone will rarely knock out a tank in the game. It's not impossible, it does happen but you are more likely to cause it to button and retreat, but it's certainly not repeatedly one shot one kill.


Don

[DRG]

Originally Posted by Turret

What effects would flame-type weapons have on AFVs?

I'm assuming the armour doesn't melt..

So what you are saying is you don't really know but are guessing, like most of the other modifications you have made to data in your OOB's

Originally Posted by Turret

in my own OOBs, I've lowered the HE penetration to 1, and left the damage to be done to the warhead size.

Really ? That is interesting because EVERY flamethrower in both games has an HE penetration of zero


Don

[PvtJoker]

Originally Posted by scorpio_rocks

With the advent of gunpowder the early fire weapons (greek fire, etc) were eclipsed and fell in to neglect, flame throwers were re-introduced to deal with fortifications, bunkers and then tanks. They are hellishly effective (their only drawbacks being short range and fragility).

There is a reason people fear fire / flamethrowers - and why people often believe they are banned...

Flame weapons have never been primary AT weapons... While some early WW2 light tanks were pretty vulnerable to Molotov cocktails, later medium and heavy tanks resisted their effects better simply by having better protected engine compartments. Already in the Winter War the T-28 proved to be very difficult to destroy with Molotovs.

Infantry flame throwers were in general not very effective against tanks. Heavy vehicular flame throwers were somewhat better, but their short range put them at a disadvantage against tanks, and usually only very long flame bursts would work, further complicating their tactical usefulness. Most of the time the tank could simply drive away from the flame.

With the introduction of napalm there was renewed interest in using flame weapons against tanks, but test showed that air-dropped napalm did not work as well as AT bomblets. In the 1950s new tank designs also took the napalm threat into account, further reducing its effectiveness.

Flame throwers were never banned, but almost no modern army has used them after the 1960s. The Soviets designed many thermobaric weapons to replace flame throwers and by all accounts they work much better against bunkers than flame throwers ever did while still having much better range and being much safer to the operator. Still, even they do not work against modern AFVs with NBC protection (overpressure) system.

It seems that Cross beat me to it, but I'll post my €0.02 worth anyways.

[Griefbringer]

Some WWII tankers had a habit of loading all sorts of baggage on the exterior of their tanks, due to the limited amount of space inside. Especially US tanks shown on pictures sometimes display all sorts of bags, backbacks, tarps, boxes etc. hanging on the outside.

Having those set on fire by a flamethrower might not cause much direct harm, but it would probably distract the crew quite a bit (suppression in game terms), especially until they figure out where all that smoke is coming, and has their engine caught fire or is it just PFC Jones spare socks that are in flames.