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Thread: Naphta throwers

  1. #1
    Edelfred's Avatar Semisalis
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    Default Naphta throwers

    interestingly enough the word Naphta is taken from Persian and has been used for over two thousand years to refer to flammable liquid hydrocarbon mixtures
    I wonder why haven't Persians used that to stop invading Alexander ? Why nearly useless against skirmishers , tight heavy-infantry formations would be in real peril being targeted by naphta throwers .
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  2. #2
    Magister Militum Flavius Aetius's Avatar δούξ θρᾳκήσιου
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    Default Re: Naphta throwers

    They didn't have the mechanical technology yet. It required engineering invented by the Greeks, after all, to do that, and wouldn't be realized until the 9th century in the Medieval Roman Empire.

  3. #3
    Grymloq's Avatar Domesticus
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    Default Re: Naphta throwers

    It was also used by the Abbasids at the end of the 8th/beginning of the 9th century

  4. #4

    Default Re: Naphta throwers

    I can think of two main problems with naphta throwers. The first is logistical; they hadn't invented oil drilling back then, so securing an adequate supply for large scale warfare wasn't feasible for a few centuries yet.

    The second problem is that I have a hard time imagining what was basically a primitive molotov cocktail being much more effective then say, a javelin, or if war engine launched, a bolt or large rock. A naphta bomb isn't explosive like a grenade, just flamable, and while modern chemists can make all sorts of nasty concoctions nowadays, back then they didn't have chemists, only trial and error, which would result in rather impotent incendiary compounds. Centuries later, it would take a couple of hundred years to get the ideal ratios to mix gunpowder right (something a bright high school chemistry student could do in a weekend today), and I can't imagine the refinement process for incendiary components was any better.

    I'm sure the stuff still had its uses burning down wooden walls and torching ships, or if the enemy wasn't familiar with the concept, some shock value, but for general use, conventional ammo was cheaper, faster and easier to use, and doesn't need an open flame to be handy. The Byzantines got a lot more use out of the stuff then the Persians did, but they had a thousand years more to work out the kinks (and a much greater need to be good at naval warfare to spur them on).
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