Aerial Flamethrower

[Alvis 3.14159]

It was tried by the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain to no success. In fact, it possibly attracted more attention to the bomber, as from a distance, it looked like it had caught on fire. I also belive that while ignition seemed to work fine on the ground, altitude played havoc with the actual area covered.

Alvis 3.1

[deathjester]

As a defensive weapon, how about a large calibre gun firing command detonated napalm shells, or better yet, FAE's ?

[Hobbes]

Flying through a fireball is easier to survive than through a cloud of shrapnel. It looks scary, but at airplane speeds you'll cross the fireball in seconds, or too little time for your aircraft to heat up significantly.

[deathjester]

Flying through a fireball is easier to survive than through a cloud of shrapnel. It looks scary, but at airplane speeds you'll cross the fireball in seconds, or too little time for your aircraft to heat up significantly.

Mmm, that's true - but the thing is that Napalm is sticky, and can get sucked into intakes, and the FAE's generate HUGE shockwaves that marmalise anything inside of 1000ft for the Rockeye - sized ones.  How does that sound?

[perttime]

a napalm tank would be superior in almost any application.

The only "practical" flamethrower I can think of for air-to-air use would have to be a thermobaric weapon,

... like a fuel-air explosive:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon#Fuel-air_explosive

They only seem to be used against ground targets, and use a container to get the fuel to the target. Most likely, it would be very tricky to make it work air-to-air.

[Rheged]

The only time I have ever heard of  such a creation is in the last of the Harry Potter  books.   There is a flying motor bike mentioned with such a piece of equipment installed----------or so my younger son tells me!

[PR19_Kit]

....like a fuel-air explosive:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon#Fuel-air_explosive

They only seem to be used against ground targets, and use a container to get the fuel to the target. Most likely, it would be very tricky to make it work air-to-air.

Like deathjester suggested. But FAEs work in the air anyway, and have a strong effect in all directions. A proximity or command fused FAE round could cause all sorts of havoc if detonated near enough to the targhet, even if it's airborne.

[Mossie]

Slightly off topic, but some years back there were reports of a flamethrower weapon being marketed for use in cars in South Africa.  One of the weapons was fitted to a BMW, it was a defensive weapon to ward off car jackers.  As far as I know, it was completely legal as long as you used it defensively.

[mkhulu]

how about releasing ball bearings in the path of a pursuing jet aircraft ?

thinking about KE (Kinetic Energy) = 0.5*mass*velocity^2 ...

dispersal might be a prob though

[Mossie]

A version of canister shot maybe, the canister falling away after a shirt interval to keep the dispersal tighter?

[Weaver]

Related idea: how about a long length of cable with a small parachute/aerodynamic device on the end that can be deployed out of the tail of the bomber and held in place with a sheer pin? It could be designed to spiral around, then when it got wrapped around the attacking fighter's prop, the sheer pin would break and leave the latter to crash while the bomber flew off.

[deathjester]

Related idea: how about a long length of cable with a small parachute/aerodynamic device on the end that can be deployed out of the tail of the bomber and held in place with a sheer pin? It could be designed to spiral around, then when it got wrapped around the attacking fighter's prop, the sheer pin would break and leave the latter to crash while the bomber flew off.

Hmm, I seem to recall the AAA units were trying something like that around London during WW2, but fired via rockets from the ground - IIRC, it was a brainchild/personal favourite of no less than Churchill himself. 

Unfortunately, it didn't work too well.

The main problem(s) I can see with it is, it would be both quite short ranged, and would only affect a narrow cone at the rear of the aircraft due to the slipstream - the attacking aircraft could perform a slashing attack outside of that cone, and be quite safe.  The other problem is that it could only affect one attacker at a time.

However.

As a towed anti missile decoy system for later aircraft - great idea!  Could even tow an explosive device to discourage pursuit?

[PR19_Kit]

As a towed anti missile decoy system for later aircraft - great idea! 

That was proposed for the TSR2 according to Paul Lucas' book and current Typhoons have them as standard. It took while to come to fruition, didn't it? 

[deathjester]

As a towed anti missile decoy system for later aircraft - great idea! 

That was proposed for the TSR2 according to Paul Lucas' book and current Typhoons have them as standard. It took while to come to fruition, didn't it? 

Now don't get me wrong, I love the TSR2 - but is there anything BAC didn't try to shoehorne into that bird!?!    I mean, I feel like I'm gonna have to check my cutaway to find where Warton's kitchen sink got stashed away!!


If only one could be made operational.  Then it could be taken on a worldwide embarrassment tour - kind of an international Bullseye - style 'look at what you could have won...' affair

A thought though: on a fighter, when you have expended a decoy, it's gone - but in a bomber, couldn't you just winch in the cable, and 'reload' it?

[Weaver]

Related idea: how about a long length of cable with a small parachute/aerodynamic device on the end that can be deployed out of the tail of the bomber and held in place with a sheer pin? It could be designed to spiral around, then when it got wrapped around the attacking fighter's prop, the sheer pin would break and leave the latter to crash while the bomber flew off.

Hmm, I seem to recall the AAA units were trying something like that around London during WW2, but fired via rockets from the ground - IIRC, it was a brainchild/personal favourite of no less than Churchill himself. 

Unfortunately, it didn't work too well.

The main problem(s) I can see with it is, it would be both quite short ranged, and would only affect a narrow cone at the rear of the aircraft due to the slipstream - the attacking aircraft could perform a slashing attack outside of that cone, and be quite safe.  The other problem is that it could only affect one attacker at a time.

However.

As a towed anti missile decoy system for later aircraft - great idea!  Could even tow an explosive device to discourage pursuit?

Well you could say that about any of these "dropped" tail-defence weapons: whether it's a flame jet of a cloud of ball-bearings, it will only go backwards and affect a fighter directly astern. You'd still need other turrets to defend in other directions, and they WOULD be pretty much limited to machine guns, 'cos they're the only things with enough velocity to work at any significant angle off-axis.

At least with the cable you get it back if it doesn't score, whereas a ball-bearing cloud is gone forever once launched. It also wouldn't need to be that long or heavy: a few hundred yards of pretty fine stuff would still work, given that typical gunnery ranges were no more than that. Even if all it did was force the fighter to back off or attack from a different direction, that's still an advantage since it's gunnery accuracy in a long-range astern attack or an off-axis one would be significantly less.