In message <200309122220.h8CMK5n18101_at_...> Neil Smith writes:
>On Thursday 11 Sep 2003 3:16 pm, Michael O'Brien wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I can't wait to find what all this stuff about exploding exploding
>> mayonnaise is about!
>>
>Seeing as it was my fault, I shall explain...
>
>Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.
>
>There was a programme on British TV a couple of weeks ago on the Byzantine
>fire ships. They decided that the ships had two major weapons: a greek
>fire projector (flamethrower) and some fire catapults. I'll leave the
>flamethrowers to others to explain, but the fire catapaults were bizarrely
>fascinating.
>
>The idea was to come up with a flammable substance which could be fired
>from a catapault, would splatter on impact, and then stick to the target.
>One of the historians surmised that the Byzantines had access to petrol
>(from the northern Black Sea coast) and were good cooks. Being good cooks,
>they knew that an easy way to turn oil into a sticky, splatty substance was
>to make mayonnaise. So, this historian proceeded to make mayonnaise, using
>eggs and petrol (but no seasoning - tch!), used a piping bag to squirt it
>into large glass balls, wrapped them in petrol-soaked cloth, and then fired
>them (with the cloth alight) from a catapault on a replica ship.
>
>Given all the effort, they weren't anything like as effective as they
>should have been. But they get marks for inventing the salad dressing of
>mass destruction.
The problem was landing the glass ball inside the target ship, it took
several attempts but when they did it worked very well. The big question
is how much less accurate they would be had not both ships been
stationary.
The oil and its source was referred to in some original manuscripts,
it is a particularly light oil which in those days seeped up from the
ground.
As for the flamethrower most of the programme was devoted to redeveloping
this thing. The end result was a large tank of oil which was heated and
a resin mixed in. This was fed though metal tubing by a hand pump to
the nozzle where it was squirted in the general direction of the target
and ignited. Short range but absolutely devastating because any bit of
this cloud of flame could ignite the target ship. The dodgy bit was the
tank of oil and resin being heated over an open flame on a ship underway.
--
Donald Oddy
http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/