WI: Greek Fire never lost?

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The characteristics that made Greek Fire so formidable a weapon seem to have defied industrial age attempts at rediscovery.Many incendiary mixtures have been formulated through the ages (including napalm our own time), but none quite corresponding to Greek Fire. Though a lot of people have claimed to have rediscovered it through the ages

Which points to the obvious explanation that Greek Fire was in fact a range of different incendiary weapons. It's easy to see how Byzantine secrecy led to a misunderstanding of it as having a single formula.

It isn't difficult to come up with a few separate recreations that covers the full range of Greek Fire's legend.
 
People need to consider that even it's contemporaries did not look upon Greek Fire as an omnipotent weapon. The Muslim navies eventually adapted countermeasures that included staying out of it's range ( probably plinking away at Byzantine craft with archery and catapults) and covering their own craft with vinegar soaked cloth and skins.

It's true that the naval siphon propelled substance probably used a boiler as well as a pump to heat up and mix it's ingredients as well as to pressurize it prior to expelling through the siphon. The "grenades" and the handheld siphons used in siege warfare (primarily) seemed to use a simpler substance.
 
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The frequent references to vinegar (dilute acetic acid) being used to extinguish greek fire are chemically interesting. They seem to numerous to be mere rumour, but my very rusty chemistry cannot think of a logical reaction path involving acetic acid .
 
The frequent references to vinegar (dilute acetic acid) being used to extinguish greek fire are chemically interesting. They seem to numerous to be mere rumour, but my very rusty chemistry cannot think of a logical reaction path involving acetic acid .

Perhaps it was a non-reaction path...
It would be fun to engage in a little chemistry experimentation on the whole matter. ( addressing my inner- pyro) :D
 
Well, there seem to be two fairly definite statements from antiquity.

One, that water is ineffectual at extinguishing the fire (some claim that it makes it worse, but that may merely indicate the water spreading a lighter than water oily substance)
Two, that vinegar does work to extinguish the fire.

Since vinegar is about 90% + water, the rest being mostly acetic acid, if water doesn't work and acetic acid does, that would indicate a reaction, rather than merely a damping/cooling. No idea what reaction though. Acid base ? that might tie in with some suggestions that quick lime was involved.
 
Well, there seem to be two fairly definite statements from antiquity.

One, that water is ineffectual at extinguishing the fire (some claim that it makes it worse, but that may merely indicate the water spreading a lighter than water oily substance)
Two, that vinegar does work to extinguish the fire.

Since vinegar is about 90% + water, the rest being mostly acetic acid, if water doesn't work and acetic acid does, that would indicate a reaction, rather than merely a damping/cooling. No idea what reaction though. Acid base ? that might tie in with some suggestions that quick lime was involved.

I've also read accounts of a mixture of vinegar, urine and sand being used.
Still going to have a large H2O component there.

Well, I think Thande is a chemist, maybe he'll be able to explain us if the part about the vinegar is possible...
 
I've also read accounts of a mixture of vinegar, urine and sand being used.
Still going to have a large H2O component there.

Sand is understandable. Cut off oxygen supply , and nothing is going to decompose sand to get oxygen out of it. Water will worsen a magnesium fire, because the Mg is a powerful enough reducer to break the water molecule and pull out the oxygen atom (and then the hydrogen atoms add to the mischief). But I can't conceive the ancient Greeks having magnesium metal.

Urine seems to make little sense, but that doesn't seem to be as common a statement as the vinegar one.

If part of the fire base was VERY hot oil, water might cause a steam explosion, like what happens when people try to put out a frying pan fire with water. But vinegar would be just as bad in that case.
 
Sand is understandable. Cut off oxygen supply , and nothing is going to decompose sand to get oxygen out of it. Water will worsen a magnesium fire, because the Mg is a powerful enough reducer to break the water molecule and pull out the oxygen atom (and then the hydrogen atoms add to the mischief). But I can't conceive the ancient Greeks having magnesium metal.

Indeed, OTL magnesium wasn't isolated until 1816 so it seems unlikely the ancient Greeks had access to it.
 

katchen

Banned
lime or lye or a mixture of the two?

Well, there seem to be two fairly definite statements from antiquity.

One, that water is ineffectual at extinguishing the fire (some claim that it makes it worse, but that may merely indicate the water spreading a lighter than water oily substance)
Two, that vinegar does work to extinguish the fire.

Since vinegar is about 90% + water, the rest being mostly acetic acid, if water doesn't work and acetic acid does, that would indicate a reaction, rather than merely a damping/cooling. No idea what reaction though. Acid base ? that might tie in with some suggestions that quick lime was involved.
Or lye (Sodium hydroxide). Or Potassium hydroxide perhaps. The ancients did know about potash. Or maybe ammonia compounds. Not necessarily ammonia nitrate (ANFO would be just too explosive to fit the description). But ammonium sulfate or ammonium chloride perhaps?
 
All alkaline, which would react with an acid. But AFAIK none of them burn as quick lime will when exposed to water (under the right conditions) . The hydration reaction with water (quicklime + water gives slaked lime) is highly exothermic, and can in some cases start fires. If the ancients had some way of incorporating quicklime with a benzene compound and a jelly agent, maybe. Throwing water on it would make things worse as the quicklime slaked, whereas vinegar would react with the quicklime to produce the acetate.
 
An interesting discovery, though tending somewhat toward the space-batty side.

A lot of the ancient writers on Greek Fire, mention tartar. Which seems odd, because tartar, potassium tartrate, is a very inert innocuous substance.

Then I discovered this note in a work from 1830

M. Brunner, by acting on calcined tartar in a. bottle of wrought iron, has succeeded in obtaining potassium at a comparatively moderate heat. The bottle is spheroidal, about half an inch in thickness, and capable of holding about a pint of tartar; a bent gun-barrel of ten or twelve inches in length screws into the mouth of the bottle. The bottle, well luted over with fire-clay, is set in a strong air furnace, so that the tube may dip down externally beneath the surface of naphtha contained in a cylindric copper vessel, sitting in a tub containing ice and water. The lop of the naphtha vessel has a cover fixed on it, pierced with a hole to receive the end of the (run-barrel; and, from the side of the upper part of the vessel, a small tube goes off at right angles to let the air and vapors escape. It is advantageous to mix a little ground charcoal with the tartar previously calcined in a covered vessel, in the same iron bottle for example. Nearly 300 grains of potassium have been procured by this apparatus from twenty-four ounces of crude tartar.

So. To make metallic potassium. Wrought iron. The Greeks had that. Gun barrel, no, but they certainly could have ad an iron tube, which is all it is. Fireclay, check. Naptha, yes. Charcoal, of course, and strong air furnace, yes.

So, the Greeks did have all that is required by M Brunner. To make potassium metal. Which spontaneously decomposes and burns with a hot red non-extinguishable flame when put into water. But, potassium and acetic acid would react to produce safe, inert potassium acetate.

I dunno. Awfully far fetched. Ancient Greeks making a metallic alkali ? Sounds ASB, but if the above quotation is true, then it would have technically been possible.

EDIT. Clearly, Greek Fire was NOT just potassium metal. It must have largely been some sort of hydrocarbon , or hydrocarbon distillate, and a resin of some sort. But, with the addition of some "special" ingredients, that gave it its particular fearsomeness. Use of burning oil , turpentine etc in sieges was common and well known. Nasty, but a commonplace nastiness. Greek Fire had to have something else, quite special, to give it its reputation.

And, given the way it disappeared quite suddenly, one suspects a "special" something that was rather difficult to make.
 
Calcium phosphide may have been an ingredient of Greek Fire, accounting for its recorded attribute of spontaneously igniting in contact with water as it turns into phosgene. It can be made by heating lime, bones, and charcoal.

More in this interesting article on all things Greek and fiery:
http://www.castlesandmanorhouses.com/medievalwarfare/121349_psychology.htm
including historical "wildfire" (!) and other medieval incindery devices.
It also validates the point that if vinegar was an effective countermeasures it was because Greek Fire's most active ingredients made for a strongly alkaline compound.
 
I've read that Greek fire wasn't lost until much later, it was being used by both Byz and Arabs at the turn of the millennia and the Chinese also had their own version. The Byz kept the mixture secret but the mechanism open and the Arabs kept the mixture open but the mechanism secret.

Can't recall the book now.
 
d'you all suppose we have a consensus for what we'll use in discussing Greek Fire? an alkaline-based substance that can be countered (to an extent) by vinegar seems the most plausible to me
 
Reckon so.

For the purpose of the exercise, let us take it that:

  • Greek Fire was a different beast to the various "throw inflammable stuff on enemy and set fire to it" weapons .
  • Greek Fire was a weapons system, consisting of an aim-able discharge mechanism, and an incendiary substance. As well as the aimable siphon , it could be delivered by grenades or archeo-Molotov cocktail type devices
  • The incendiary substance consisted largely of a hydrocarbon , like naphtha, a resin or gelling agent , and pitch. But, in addition, various other substances , now unknown, which gave it its particular capabilities.
  • These capabilities included burning on water; not being extinguished by water; sticking to whatever it landed on; being propellable for a considerable distance.
  • It could be extinguished by sand (probably, lots of sand; or strong vinegar (again, probably lots of strong vinegar. Not items that everyone has ready in hand in large quantities)
  • Historically, the main use was defensive. Little apparent use as an anti personnel weapon.
  • Used for area exclusion in ports, ship to ship combat, counterattacking besieging forces, against siege towers, scaling ladders, battering rams and such
  • The incendiary substance was either difficult to produce , or the "extra" ingredients were very hard to obtain. (If it was just naphtha, pitch & resin the formula would certainly have leaked out. How hard is it to remember those. And the actual production must have been delegated to fairly low level people)

Therefore, if that capability was still known in the Middle ages- what then. Does Constantinople still fall to the Ottomans ?
 
how about phosphorous? i know officially it was discovered a little later
But when i read the wiki about it, it seems that in the beginning it was distilled from urine.
So it is not that difficult a process just cumbersome, which could explain the disappearance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphorus
 
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Could be one of the "extra items". I don't think there's a lot of mileage trying to identify them all. But it takes a LOT of urine to get much phosphorus. Can't help thinking someone would have made the connection , why is the Eastern Emperor gathering lake fulls of piss ?
 
Could be one of the "extra items". I don't think there's a lot of mileage trying to identify them all. But it takes a LOT of urine to get much phosphorus. Can't help thinking someone would have made the connection , why is the Eastern Emperor gathering lake fulls of piss ?
this is sounding more and more like a reason for why it was lost. perhaps after acquiring the formula the Byzantines secretly had as much of it collected as possible so that they could stockpile it and use it when they really needed it?

but i thought we were gonna go on the supposition of Dupre getting the go-ahead from a different European monarch in the mid-18th century? or perhaps we could discuss both?
 
it was used as a bleaching agent, urine is what made the roman toga white.

there are quite a few uses for actually.
i just read up on napalm compounds, naphtenic acid and palmitic acid.
the first is found in crude oil, the second in palm oil and tallow. Both would be available for the byzantines.

on the other hand the used thickening agent might be from a plant, something that has similar properties to latex
 
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