There is another mention of flame-throwers in the same year, in the History of the Southern Yang Dynasty, where we are told that a commander named Ts'ao Pin 'came down upon-Chinling. He had large ships furnished with bundles of reeds saturated with thick oil, with the intention of taking advantage of the wind to start conflagrations ... But in urgent situations, then they used the machines to shoot the fire-oil forwards to resist the enemy.'
  In a book of 11 37 by K'ang Yii-Chih entitled Dreaming of the Good Old Days, we find a description of the storage and use of gasoline for flame-throwers. He speaks of 'a large reservoir more than ten feet square in order to store "fierce fire oil" ', which he says 'should only be stored in real glass vessels.' He recalls:

I myself still remember the district commanders coming to it to study and practise water-combat with their troops, and to test the fierce fire oil. The opposite bank of the take represented the fortified camp of the enemy. Those who were in charge of the oil sprayed it about, and as it was ignited it broke into a sheet of flame, so that the [fictitious] fortifications of the enemy were all in a short time completely destroyed. What is more, the oil had a secondary effect on the water, for all the water-plants were killed, and the fishes and turtles died.

  The mention of ignition in the passage above brings us to the question: how was the ejected gasoline ignited as it left the flame-thrower? Obviously it could not be burning before it left, for then the man holding the machine would be destroyed by flames himself. The answer is that a lighted fuse was held in front of the nozzle, so that when the gasoline was squirted out, it was ignited after it was already on its way through the air. The fuse was impregnated with gunpowder; as mentioned in the account of gunpowder, this was the first military use of the substance. This gunpowder was so low in saltpeter content that it could not explode, but only sparked and burnt slowly in the fuse. By 1044, the flame-thrower was standard issue to Chinese armies. A military encyclopedia of that date, Collection of the Most Important Military Techniques, gives drawings of a flame-thrower with design details. The text says: 'If the enemy comes to attack a city, these weapons are placed on the great ramparts, or else in outworks, so that large numbers of assailants cannot get through.' There is a lengthy description of the device, which commences:

  On the right is the gasoline flamethrower. The tank is made of brass, and supported on four legs. From its upper surface arise four [vertical] tubes attached to a horizontal cylinder above; they are all connected with the tank. The head and tail of the cylinder are large, the middle is of narrow diameter. In the tail end there is a small opening as big as a miflet-grain. The head end has two round openings 11/2 inches in diameter. At the -side of the tank there is a hole with a little tube which is used for filling, and this is fitted with a cover.

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