Incendiary gas as a weapon

[KraytKing]

So I had this idea a few days ago relating to WWI gas tactics and such. I was wondering about the viability of deploying a gas canister full of, say, natural gas, waiting for it to sink deep into the trench systems, and then igniting it with artillery or rifle fire. The point being, use some heavier-than-air, flammable gas, preferably invisible to the naked eye, and drop in the enemy trench to set it ablaze. Could it work or would it simply dilute too quickly?

EDIT: Meant to put this in History. Misclicked. Someone mind moving it?

[Shroom Man 777]

Wouldn't people notice it and move out? And like, ain't the danger of natural gas ignitions due to say stoves' gas tanks being unclosed in confined places? For the outdoors... that might require A LOT of gas and a HE shell might be less bothersome.

EDIT:

Though thermobarics are pretty much like this.

[Lord Revan]

the thing one must remember when it comes to gas weapons is that wind direction matters a lot, one of the big reasons NBC weapon bans work at all is that they're viable to be dangerous to the deployer as to the victim, so it's just more practical to not use them in most cases (obviously you got some borderline cases like Agent Orange in Vietnam). What you suggested essentially takes the relibility issues of typical gas weapon them amplifies it by needing an external ignition source (IIRC thermobaric weapons are self-igniting when exposed to oxygen), not mention that large scale fires have a tendency to go where ever they please not where you want them to go again possibly ending up in your own lines which obviously is a bad thing for a weapon you're using.

In summary HE shells are way more relible in their application and in war you want a weapon that's easy and relible to deploy.

[Zixinus]

The problem is that gas is unreliable and finicky thing, as others already pointed out the wind. Even if it is heavier than air, it takes time for it to seep downwards and if its just leaking gas then the enemy could pick it up and throw it away. For best effect you'd want it to land deep inside enemy fortifications but if it got there why bother with gas at all?

[KraytKing]

Now what about as a sort of scorched-earth asset denial weapon? Would it be feasible to set canisters leaking with some sort of ignition timer within your own trench as you pulled out, to set the enemy ablaze as they triumphantly take over your trench? Naturally, few such tactics were used in the first World War, but I was just thinking about the possibilities. The only advantage of using gas rather than simply dynamite would be one of asset preservation; could you burn all of their troops out while leaving the general structure intact? Of course, all ammunition would cook off, all bunking areas would be trashed, food left behind would be crisped, etc, etc, but could you preserve major support beams and the like? If not, what could? How could you ensure that the majority of their troops are killed within a few hours of entering the trench while preserving the trench for your own use?

[General Zod]

I think it's safe to say that if you have the kind of weapons that make trench warfare obsolete, the enemy will just stop using trenches.

[KraytKing]

I think it's safe to say that if you have the kind of weapons that make trench warfare obsolete, the enemy will just stop using trenches.

"Fucking Krauts/Brits, adapting to the situation!"

But you could certainly cause a bit of mayhem in the meantime. And it took four years for the world to realize that trenches killed more men than they saved. It might take a while for the unspecified enemy to get out of the rut of tradition and get some new ideas in the field. If either side could have caused the casualties seen at the Somme, Verdun, etc. without taking similar casualties in return, the war might have ended very differently.

[bilateralrope]

Now what about as a sort of scorched-earth asset denial weapon? Would it be feasible to set canisters leaking with some sort of ignition timer within your own trench as you pulled out, to set the enemy ablaze as they triumphantly take over your trench? Naturally, few such tactics were used in the first World War, but I was just thinking about the possibilities. The only advantage of using gas rather than simply dynamite would be one of asset preservation; could you burn all of their troops out while leaving the general structure intact? Of course, all ammunition would cook off, all bunking areas would be trashed, food left behind would be crisped, etc, etc, but could you preserve major support beams and the like? If not, what could? How could you ensure that the majority of their troops are killed within a few hours of entering the trench while preserving the trench for your own use?

How many times would that work before the enemy soldiers are sent in with their own open flames to ignite the gas before the timer does to minimize the casualties it can cause ?

[Napoleon the Clown]

Natural gas is extremely picky about oxygen ratio, too. It would simply be too damned difficult to make it work. IIRC, if you want a conflagration that most people would just call an explosion you need to have something like 4% natural gas.

On the bright side, natural gas alone doesn't have much of a smell. That only comes into play when the gas company puts it there so you can actually tell there's a gas leak. The problem with having the right balance of oxygen and natural gas remains, though.

[KraytKing]

etc

How many times would that work before the enemy soldiers are sent in with their own open flames to ignite the gas before the timer does to minimize the casualties it can cause ?

Just imagine what that would do to morale. Of course, there are other methods, but in the meantime you could certainly win some battles. Or use some other revenge weapon, like several hundred mini shotguns in the walls. Or wait until one timer goes off to release the gas, then ignite it based on another timer. Of course, someone accidentally tripping a timer would fuck you up immensely.

Natural gas is extremely picky about oxygen ratio, too. It would simply be too damned difficult to make it work. IIRC, if you want a conflagration that most people would just call an explosion you need to have something like 4% natural gas.

On the bright side, natural gas alone doesn't have much of a smell. That only comes into play when the gas company puts it there so you can actually tell there's a gas leak. The problem with having the right balance of oxygen and natural gas remains, though.

Exactly. A gas weapon that is undetectable until your entire trench is on fire. Gas masks won't save you.

[Sea Skimmer]

No it would not be undetectable at all, the weapon would need to burst and detonate at once or the gas will uselessly disperse. It would only work at all given fairly large caliber shells, battlefields are HUGE. One reason poison gas was not decisive itself was that it also wasn't stealthy, you would hear the plonk of the shells landing but no explosion, blatantly indicating gas, so people would mask up before anything else happened. Later some shells had some HE and some gas, the HE intended to mask the gas presence, but that just made it really hard to fire enough shells to get lethal gas clouds, also the HE would destroy certain kinds of war gas, further reducing effectiveness.

As far as overall concept, See fuel air explosives. Those are an old idea, very old in fact, they were used for demolition work in the 1880s that I've heard of (this is around when you could start getting industrial amounts of LOX) but for open air battlefield use its a technology that did not work well until the 1970s, and only then we a lot of duds. Modern Russian thermobarics meanwhile use solid fuels, which is less effective then a gas or liquid, but far more reliable. The 1970s FAE bombs proved to have dud rates as high as 70%, which is a big reason why not so many got produced, the US dropped a fair number in the Gulf War. Obtaining a reliable fuel air mixture with a gas, mixing into the gas of the atmopshere, in highly varying weather conditions remember, is very hard.

Making this work worth a damn is beyond WW1 technology and the actual time they had to design and perfect new armaments in time to matter. Also FAEs would be sorta useless against troops in heavily constructed bunkers and dugouts, where they will be normally, as the maximum intensity of the blast is MUCH less then that of solid high explosives, it will just be over a wider area, and they wont do any damage to trenches, and vitally, FAEs are ineffective against heavy barbed wire entanglements.

FAEs make sense for crushing aboveground buildings, troops in the open or shallow entrenchments, and other light soft targets. Against massively prepared trench systems the value is limited, also they are of limited value in the counter battery role because while they will kill enemy artillery crews they wont fragment, which means they wont actually wreck the guns beyond repair, which is what people wanted. Otherwise the enemy will repair a slightly damaged gun in a few days and put it back into the battle.

Also I'd just say realistically, trench warfare was dead 1918 from overall military improvements anyway. It only set in in the because everyone was really badly prepared for a long war, what was needed was more diverse weapons and better tactics, and far more ammunition, but trying to blow up every trench was never going to work.

[Sea Skimmer]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQlSutYJsV8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livens_La ... _Projector
Also I feel the need to point out this replica of a British 1916 static trench to trench flamethrower, which was fired out of a tunnel dug close to the Hun lines on the Somme. Several of them employed in fact. Its so so silly, nothing could be more trench warfare. If you used one of these to spray gas you could probably blowup a big area, but it would be rather wind dependent, and since its close to your own lines you only want so big an explosion. Problem is installing the thing in secret.

The inventor is better known for a later idea, which was the Livens projector, a form of absurdly crude 4in mortar that could be installed and fired in massed batteries, just dig in the tubes with a log to set the angles. This was primarily used for massive surprise gas attacks, but he did design flame oil carrying rounds for it too. Some British attacks had several thousand of these things going off together (thing is if the Germans noticed them being installed, they could easily destroy them with counter fire). This kind of gas attack was a lot more lethal then gas artillery barrages, its like having a gas cloud attack dropped on top of you, but realistically the total area attacked would still be limited.

This idea didn't carry far postwar though the British kept them in stock through WW2, because normal mortars improved a lot, a Livens projector only fires about 1,000 yards, and also because rockets began to appear. A lot of projector battery sites were prepared in the English countryside in 1940.