The weapon and its units largely remained a secret, however, until the Germans finally unleashed it at Verdun on Feb. The German army adopted the Kleif in 1906, and by 1912 the Guard Reserve Pioneer Regiment boasted its own regiment of Flammenwerfer troops. Its smaller cousin the kleine Flammenwerfer, or Kleif, could project flames only half as far but was portable, small enough to be operated by two men. A stationary form of the weapon, the grosse Flammenwerfer, or Grof, was capable of throwing fire as far as 120 feet. The lower section held compressed gas, usually nitrogen, which forced flammable oil from the upper section through a rubber tube and past a simple ignition device in the steel nozzle. Fiedler’s early design centered on a vertical tank divided into two compartments. In 1901 Richard Fiedler rolled out a prototype of what he called a Flammenwerfer (“flamethrower”).
Germany’s first attempt was a weapon developed in secret more than a decade earlier. (Illustration by Gregory Proch)Īs World War I bogged down in the trenches, each side sought a means of breaking the stalemate. The early Flammenwerfer ('flamethrower') was terrifying though not terribly effective.
