Editing Incendiary Weapons (section)

===Flamethrowers===
{{Topquote|I know of very few instances in which the word "'''flamethrower'''" could not be preceded by the word "'''fuckin''''".|[[Recommended Web Video Channels|Zero Punctuation]] on ''Alone in the Dark: Illumination''}}

[[File:Greekfire-madridskylitzes1.jpg|thumb|right|450px|The legendary [[LosTech|Greek fire]]]]

As soon as we started burning each other, everyone asked the next question ''"this is great, but how can we burn people to death at a distance?"'' The answer is that horrifying question is: The Flamethrower.

The basic mechanisms of a Flamethrower are pretty simple. All you need is a cistern for fuel, a pump, a nozzle, and a pilot light. It's not hard to figure out so long as you have the technology for pumps and access to some kind of Oil. As such there are various interment examples of their use throughout history. The earliest example this editor could find would be in the battle of Delium in 424 BC where the attacking Boeotians tried to some kind of flamethrower against the Athenian defenders. 

The first perhaps widespread use of flame throwers though goes to the Byzantines and their "Greek Fire". Greek Fire is sometimes considered 'the first secret weapon' and alongside Roman concrete is one of the earliest trope setters for 'unknown lost technology' that 40k takes and runs with. In any case, Greek Fire was a very effective weapon and although land-based uses are recorded, as you can imagine in an era of wooden ships (with the cistern and pump being heavy) it was a dangerous weapon on water. As stated we still don't know quite what Greek fire was, though we have a few ideas. It alongside most early (and modern) flamethrowers likely used some sort of petroleum-derived compound, but if you do a quick eyeball of Byzantine territory in the time Greek Fire was supposedly introduced, not a lot of natural oil fields were left especially easy to get stuff so the jury is still out. Others have suspected some kind of quicklime-based solution as well, Roman records mention mulberry resin often serving as a substitute for the petroleum, agitated by a small amount of quicklime (explaining old records of Greek fire being ''ignited'' by water) and sulfur.

Meanwhile, in Asia, the forces of the Song Dynasty also built flamethrowers, multiple types in fact. It's generally understood (read: stolen from wiki) that the Chinese of this time period were were given tributes of petroleum from Vietnam. Called "měng huǒ yóu" in Chinese which translates to "fierce-fire oil" which gave the Chinese fire weapons their heat. There was also some evidence of [https://csegrecorder.com/articles/view/ancient-chinese-drilling Oil Drilling in China itself during the Northern Song Dynasty]. One such flamethrower is recorded in the "Wujing Zongyao", a military guide written around 1040-1044. 

And of course, any discussion of pre-modern incendiary would be incomplete without mentioning: '''Naphtha'''. Naphtha is just a type of petroleum known since ancient times. Nowadays it's pretty broadly used as a name for crude oil or even more refined items like kerosene. But while Naphtha is a bit boring since it's ''just'' petroleum, it's still a name that shows up in both history and fantasy so it's worth going over quickly what it is: just read "crude oil" and you won't be too far wrong.

Even so, it was in the 20th century that Flamethrowers really came into their own as man-portable units. It started with the Germans who worked out that they could be used to clear out trenches and soon enough everyone was using them. In WW2 these were supplemented by [[Awesome|Flame Tanks]], like the German [[Panzer III|Flammpanzer III]] or the Churchill Crocodile.