Bringing the flammen to the Trench
During the great push to drive the Kaiser out of France and Belgium, the new U.S. National Army had a host of wonder weapons that they intended to arm their 4-million man force with under a protective cloud of thousands of Billy Mitchell’s new airplanes. While some of these arms made it to the trenches– the M1918 BAR most notably– others such as the Thompson submachine gun, M1919 LMG, and Pedersen-device enabled rifles, would have given an upper hand to the Doughboys for sure had the war lasted into 1919-20.
Another innovation was a series of flamethrower bayonets designed by the Army’s Chemical Warfare Branch.
This is not a joke. They included the following types with the cartridge type holding six .44-caliber “dragon’s breath” style rounds in a box projector.
-Flaming Bayonet Liquid-type, Mark I
-Flaming Bayonet Cartridge Type, Mark I
-Flaming Bayonet pistol, Mark II
-Flaming Bayonet pistol, Mark III
According to Brophy, these flame bayonets went as heavy as 4.5-pounds but could project hate some 30-feet away.
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