Incendiary leaves

[SG500]

I came across this in a pile of paperwork today, thought it would be of interest.

I've never heard of them before but google comes up with a bit more info.

Dave.

 

[Dreamk]

It's quite strange. What they describe is...identical to a device dropped by the RAF for this very purpose.

These pictures comes from the wartime German EOD services through Deminest of Henry Belot, illustrating a description of such incendiary leaves dropped by the RAF between 1940 and 1942:

 

[Alan1]

Showing my age now! I remember a comic of the fifties that ran a series of pictures of various weapons etc, one of wch was this very device! The illustration accompanying it showed an RAF erk making toast over the flames, clearly an opportunistic chap. At the time, wartime weird devices were quite well known to the public, and typically appeared in similar comics for boys, usually accompanied by an imaginative drawing, such as this one.
Afficianados of Wizard, Hotspur, Eagle etc will no doubt remember them.
Alan1.

 

[LEI-13-HG]

These are very rare indeed and I have only ever seen them mentioned a couple of times. I don't think they were really employed as such. There also appears to be some confusion as to whether they were British or German. Interestingly, they do not appear in any of the British ARP pamphlets 'Objects Dropped From The Air.'

 

[Bellifortis]

They were british, but they did not work as well as their inventors expected, so production and use was stopped quickly. The intention was to start fires in ripe cornfields. But that did not work very well. The flame of these contraptions was not strong and did not last long enough. In areas where these were dropped, schoolchildren were taught to swarm out with small waterbuckets and tongs to pick up these "leaves".