Flammenwerfer

The Flammenwerfer is the German name, now used broadly in English-language military history for the pioneering line of German flamethrowers, portable weapons that propel a stream of burning fuel toward an enemy position, first used by the German army in combat in 1915 during the First World War as a shock weapon intended to clear enemy trenches and fortified positions at close range where conventional rifle and artillery fire struggled to dislodge defenders. German flamethrower troops, organized into specialist units, typically carried the fuel and pressurized propellant gas in tanks strapped to the operator's back, connected by a hose to a nozzle with an ignition source at its tip, and though effective at terrifying and clearing defenders from a short section of trench, the weapon's short range and the highly flammable fuel it carried on the operator's own back made flamethrower troops especially vulnerable to enemy fire. Other combatant nations rapidly developed their own flamethrower designs after encountering the German weapon, and the basic backpack flamethrower concept the Germans pioneered in 1915 remained in military use, refined but fundamentally similar, through the Second World War and into later twentieth-century conflicts.