Every WWII Flamethrower Ranked

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]No weapon in the Second World War produced more immediate surrender, more instant devastation, and more lasting psychological damage than this one. Here is every major World War II flamethrower ranked from the designs that nearly killed their own operators to the weapons that cleared entire island fortifications in seconds flat.

[00:00:18]Starting at the absolute bottom, the American M1 flamethrower of 1941.

[00:00:25]The United States entered the war so far behind in flamethrower technology that its chemical warfare officers reportedly when they saw what the infantry had been issued. The M1 was designed in 90 days by a fire extinguisher company, and it performed accordingly. Its range was 15 yd under ideal conditions, and significantly less than that in any real operational environment. Its ignition system was unreliable, its pressurized fuel tanks prone to leaks, and the flammable mixture it used was so poorly formulated that it sometimes failed to sustain a flame long enough to accomplish anything useful. American soldiers who carried it into the early Pacific campaign quickly understood that approaching an enemy fortification to within 15 yd, the distance at which the M1 might actually work, placed the operator inside the effective range of every weapon in that fortification simultaneously. The M1 was not simply an inadequate flamethrower. It was a weapon that asked the man carrying it to accept personal risk entirely disproportionate to its effectiveness. One US Army Chemical Warfare Service report from 1942 described it without diplomatic softening as the worst flamethrower of any army in the war. The men who carried it into combat already knew. Moving to the German Flammenwerfer 40 Kleif, the small single-use disposable flamethrower that Germany introduced as an assault infantry tool. The Flammenwerfer 40 was designed for use by individual infantrymen who were not specialist flamethrower operators, a compact unit that could be discarded after its single burst of fuel was expended. Its plus was tactical accessibility. Any soldier could pick one up and use it in an immediate assault without the training overhead required for the larger backpack systems. Its minus was everything else. A single burst lasting approximately 3 seconds and reaching perhaps 20 m was all it offered. Against a fortification where a Japanese or Soviet defender had 30 seconds of warning before the flame operator arrived, the single burst limitation was an immediate tactical problem. It was used primarily by German assault engineers in Eastern Front urban combat where its compact size allowed it to be carried in addition to standard infantry equipment without the logistical burden of the full backpack system. It was a specialist tool with specialist limitations, and it served its narrow purpose without pretending to be more than it was. Next, the Soviet ROKS-2.

[00:02:43]The Red Army entered the war with the ROKS-2 as its primary backpack flamethrower, and the design made one choice that no other nation's flamethrower made. It was specifically camouflaged to look like a standard infantry backpack and rifle. The fuel canister was shaped like a standard military pack. The discharge wand was shaped and finished to resemble a conventional rifle. The intent was to prevent enemy forces from identifying and immediately targeting the flamethrower operator because every army that used flamethrowers learned within days of their first operational deployment that enemy soldiers shot the flamethrower operator on sight as a priority target. If the operator carrying liquid fuel under pressure on his back was hit by an incendiary round or a tracer, the result was not a wound.

[00:03:28]The ROKS-2's camouflage design addressed a genuine tactical problem. Its range of approximately 30 m and fuel duration of approximately 8 to 10 seconds were adequate for the Eastern Front specific operational demands, clearing bunkers and fortified building positions in the kind of close urban terrain that characterized Stalingrad and the subsequent battles across Soviet cities.

[00:03:49]Its limitation was mechanical reliability in extreme cold. The Eastern Front's winters brought temperatures the ROKS-2's fuel system was not consistently designed to handle, and Soviet flamethrower operators in January conditions sometimes found their equipment performing unpredictably at the exact moment they needed it to perform absolutely. Then, the Italian Lancia Fiamme Mod. 35, Italy's primary portable flamethrower, which reflected the same pattern visible in Italian weapons development generally, a design that was adequate in theory, built to a production standard that made it inconsistent in practice. The Mod. 35 produced a flame stream reaching 20 to 25 m and carried sufficient fuel for approximately 20 seconds of total discharge. Italian assault engineers used it in the Ethiopian campaign of 1935 to 1936 where its opponents had no counter flamethrower doctrine and no effective response. Against Allied fortified positions in North Africa and the Mediterranean, the Mod. 35's operator faced the same targeting problem. Every flamethrower operator faced the need to approach close enough to be effective while carrying the most conspicuous weapon on the battlefield.

[00:05:00]Italian flamethrower operators showed genuine courage in the engagements where their equipment was deployed. The equipment itself was not the limiting factor. The tactical situation that required them to use it at 20 m against prepared defenders was. Moving to the German Flammenwerfer 34, the first standardized backpack flamethrower adopted by the Wehrmacht after Hitler's rearmament began, preceding the more refined Flammenwerfer 35 that superseded it operationally. The Flammenwerfer 34 used a two-cylinder design with fuel and propellant in separate containers and a distinctive two-nozzle delivery system.

[00:05:36]Its range was approximately 25 to 30 m, and its operational fuel duration was around 10 seconds of continuous discharge. German assault pioneer units used it during the early campaigns in Poland, Belgium, and France environments where the specific scenario of a prepared fortification with minimal exposed surface and a narrow approach lane made the flamethrower's 30-m range sufficient. The Maginot Line's fortifications during the French campaign was specifically targeted by flamethrower-equipped pioneers who used the Flammenwerfer 34 to neutralize embrasures and force the evacuation of defenders from positions that conventional weapons could not suppress.

[00:06:14]Its limitation was weight over 35 kg fully loaded, which restricted operational mobility and required operators to move with deliberate slowness through terrain that rewarded speed. The Flammenwerfer 34 worked. It simply weighed enough to remind the operator of every meter between his starting position and his target. Next is the German Flammenwerfer 35. Germany replaced the Flammenwerfer 34 with this improved model, which retained the basic operational concept but refined the engineering to reduce the weight slightly and improve reliability of the ignition system. The Flammenwerfer 35 used a hydrogen ignition system that allowed multiple discrete bursts rather than requiring a continuous stream, which gave German operators the ability to conserve fuel for the specific moment of maximum effect. Its range improved to approximately 25 to 35 m, and its streamlined two-tank design was considered more field maintainable than its predecessor. German pioneers who used it in the early Eastern Front campaign applied it against Soviet bunker complexes with documented effectiveness. Soviet defenders who had withstood artillery preparation and infantry assault sometimes evacuated positions immediately upon the appearance of a flamethrower operator, which was a psychological effect valued separately from the weapon's physical damage output. The Wehrmacht's field reports from 1941 and 1942 noted repeatedly that the flamethrower's greatest tactical contribution was not the burns it inflicted but the immediate behavioral change it produced in defenders who recognized what the operator was carrying. Moving to the British Lifebuoy, formerly the Ack Pack or Portable Flame Projector No. 2, Britain's primary portable flamethrower of the mid-war period named by its operators for the circular shape of its toroidal fuel tank worn around the operator's torso. The Lifebuoy was a departure from the conventional backpack cylinder design. Its donut-shaped tank distributed weight differently and kept the center of gravity closer to the operator's body, improving mobility compared to the tall cylinder designs used by Germany and the United States.

[00:08:19]Its range was approximately 27 m, and its fuel capacity allowed approximately 10 seconds of discharge. British and Commonwealth forces used it in the Italian campaign and in Burma where the specific terrain of jungle and mountains placed premiums on the mobility advantages the Lifebuoy's design provided. Its limitation was the fuel system's sensitivity to temperature fluctuations in the Italian winter and at altitude. British operators reported performance degradation that was not present in temperate conditions. The Lifebuoy was reliable enough for its operational deployment but never achieved the reputation of the American M2. It was eventually supplemented by in late-war British Commonwealth operations. Then, the Japanese Type 93 portable flamethrower, one of the most technically sophisticated aspects of Japanese infantry equipment issued in a theater where the terrain and the defensive nature of Japanese operations made flamethrowers tactically relevant in ways that were different from European deployments. The Type 93 used a pyrotechnic ignition system rather than the hydrogen or electric systems used by Western designs, which was actually more reliable in the humid tropical environment of the Pacific where electronic ignition systems could be compromised by moisture. Its fuel capacity and pressure system were designed for the specific Japanese operational philosophy of defensive fortification. Japanese defenders used flamethrowers to protect cave and bunker networks against attacking Allied infantry, the reverse of the offensive role in which Western forces primarily deployed theirs. The Type 93's range of approximately 20 to 25 m was adequate for the narrow cave entrances and jungle trails where Japanese defensive positions required it. American forces who encountered Japanese defensive flamethrowers on Iwo Jima and Okinawa reported that the weapon was used in ambush configurations at ranges where its effective performance was maximized.

[00:10:10]The Type 93 was designed for a defensive war in terrain where defense had the advantage, and it performed accordingly.

[00:10:17]Moving to the Japanese Type 100 portable flamethrower, the improved successor to the Type 93, and one of the most technically interesting flamethrowers of the entire war for reasons that only became apparent after comparative testing conducted after the war ended. The Type 100 was lighter than its predecessor and used a modified pressure system that American Chemical Warfare Service officers who tested a captured example rated as more advanced in several specific technical respects than the contemporary American M1A1. Its pyrotechnic ignition was more reliable in tropical humidity than Western electric systems.

[00:10:52]Its shorter discharge wand was less conspicuous and easier to maneuver in confined cave environments.

[00:10:58]The post-war comparison test conducted at the Mid-Atlantic Air Museum firing the Japanese Type 100 and American M2A1 negative two side-by-side showed nearly identical performance when both were full, the primary difference appearing only as the Type 100's fuel depleted, at which point its volume of fire fell more rapidly than the M2A1 negative two's.

[00:11:19]The US Army Chemical Warfare Service acknowledged in post-war documentation that several features of the Type 100 were subsequently incorporated into American flamethrower development. A weapon built by a nation running out of everything needed to fight the war it was losing influenced the equipment of the nation that defeated it. Next is the American M1A1 flamethrower, the immediate successor to the disastrous M1, representing the lessons learned from the M1's operational failures applied in a single redesign iteration.

[00:11:49]The M1A1 improved the ignition reliability, strengthened the fuel tank construction, and reformulated the flammable mixture to produce a more sustained and more temperature stable flame. Its range improved to approximately 15 to 20 m, still modest by comparison to German and Japanese equivalents, but double the M1's practical effective range and coupled with a system that actually ignited when the operator needed it to.

[00:12:14]American forces in the Pacific in 1942 and early 1943 used the M1A1 during the Guadalcanal campaign, where its improved reliability over the M1 made it marginally more operationally viable.

[00:12:29]The M1A1 was acknowledged by the Chemical Warfare Service as an interim solution. The fundamental design architecture still had limitations that required a more comprehensive redesign rather than incremental correction.

[00:12:41]It served in the gap between the M1's failure and the M2's arrival with the dignity of a weapon that was better than what it replaced while being clearly inadequate compared to what was being developed to replace it.

[00:12:52]Moving up to the Soviet ROKS-3, the Red Army's improved flamethrower of the middle war period, which addressed several of the ROKS-2's operational limitations while retaining the distinctive camouflage design philosophy that had made the original operationally useful.

[00:13:07]The ROKS-3 improved the cold weather fuel performance that had caused problems in the ROKS-2, modified the pressure system for more consistent delivery, and maintained the rifle and backpack camouflage that continued to reduce the operator's immediate identification risk.

[00:13:22]Soviet flamethrower doctrine by 1943 had evolved significantly from the early war period. The Red Army was deploying flamethrower operators in coordinated assault teams rather than individually with conventional infantry providing covering fire while the operator advanced to effective range. The combined arms coordination that Soviet infantry had learned through two years of the hardest fighting in history was being applied to the flamethrower's specific tactical requirements, producing results that the weapon alone could not achieve when operated without that supporting context. At the Battle of Kursk and in the subsequent Soviet offensive operations of 1943 and 1944, ROKS-3 teams participated in the reduction of German defensive fortifications that were holding up Soviet armored breakthrough operations, clearing the specific strong points that German defenders had used to channel and slow Soviet momentum.

[00:14:17]Then the Churchill Crocodile, Britain's flamethrower tank, which solved the most fundamental tactical problem of portable flamethrower operations by putting the fuel tank and operator inside an armored vehicle.

[00:14:28]The Crocodile was a Churchill Mk. VII infantry tank with its hull machine gun replaced by a flamethrower nozzle towing an armored trailer containing 400 imperial gallons of flame fuel.

[00:14:38]Its range was approximately 120 yd, three to four times the range of any portable system. The flame operator was protected by the Churchill's 152 mm frontal armor.

[00:14:49]The fuel in the trailer was armored, reducing the risk of a catastrophic fuel fire from a hit. Crocodile crews developed the operational practice of firing short bursts at maximum range to suppress and terrify defenders, then advancing to shorter range for the killing burst, a tactical sequence that exploited both the psychological and physical dimensions of the weapon simultaneously.

[00:15:11]At the Rhineland campaign in early 1945, Crocodile-equipped squadrons accompanied British infantry assaults on fortified German towns and villages, reducing positions that would have required costly infantry clearing operations to surrenders that occurred before the Crocodile had closed to its minimum range.

[00:15:27]German defenders who recognized the Crocodile's distinctive towed trailer frequently surrendered or evacuated before the vehicle reached effective range.

[00:15:36]The Churchill Crocodile's greatest tactical weapon was its reputation, which preceded it into every engagement.

[00:15:42]Moving to the American M4A3R3 Sherman Zippo, the United States Marine Corps' answer to the specific operational problem of Iwo Jima and the Pacific island fortification system. The M4A3R3 replaced the standard Sherman 75 mm gun with a flamethrower unit in the turret and carried 290 gallons of thickened fuel, giving it a range of 150 m and approximately 70 seconds of total discharge.

[00:16:09]Over 30% of all Japanese killed on Iwo Jima were killed by flamethrower, either portable units or the Zippo tanks that progressively cleared the cave and tunnel network that conventional infantry and artillery could not reach. The Zippo operated with infantry providing close protection against Japanese infantry attempting to knock it out while it systematically directed flame into cave entrances, bunker apertures, and tunnel openings that had no other effective countermeasure.

[00:16:36]Japanese defenders inside the Iwo Jima cave network who survived artillery, naval gunfire, and rifle fire died to Zippo flame directed through the entrance apertures.

[00:16:45]The psychological effect on Marine infantry who watched the Zippo work was documented in multiple post-war accounts. The immediate silence that followed a sustained flame burst into a position that had been actively engaging them moments before. The Sherman Zippo did not win Iwo Jima, it cleared the specific parts of Iwo Jima that nothing else could clear.

[00:17:04]And at the top, the American M2A1 negative two flamethrower.

[00:17:08]The M2A1 negative two was the direct result of applying the entire body of operational experience accumulated from the M1's failures, the M1A1's partial improvements, the Japanese Type 100's technical innovations, and two years of Chemical Warfare Service engineering research to a fundamental redesign.

[00:17:26]Its range was 40 m, over twice the M1's effective distance. Its thickened fuel formulation produced a heavier, more adhesive flame stream that stuck to surfaces rather than splashing away, increasing the incendiary effect on fortifications and making it significantly more difficult for defenders to escape the burning area.

[00:17:46]Its ignition system used an electric spark igniter with a separate pilot flame, providing the redundancy that had made the M1's single system approach catastrophically unreliable.

[00:17:57]Nearly 25,000 M2A1 negative two units were manufactured and issued to both the US Army and Marine Corps.

[00:18:03]American flamethrower operators on Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and the Philippines used it to systematically reduce a fortification network that had been specifically designed to defeat the conventional weapons of an attacking army.

[00:18:16]The Marine Corps' after-action reports from Iwo Jima described the operational sequence with consistent simplicity.

[00:18:22]After a couple of bursts from the flamethrower, no further resistance or activity was encountered from that position.

[00:18:28]The M2A1 negative two was the weapon that resolved the specific tactical problem of Pacific island defense more completely than any other single weapon system employed in that theater.

[00:18:38]It was the most widely used flamethrower of any nation in the war, the most reliably produced, and the most consistently effective in the specific environments where the Pacific war was decided.

[00:18:49]The Small Arms Review assessment written by the Chemical Warfare specialists who tested and compared every major flamethrower of the war was unequivocal.

[00:18:56]The M1 was the worst flamethrower of any army.

[00:18:59]The M2 was the best.

[00:19:01]From the M1's 15-yd embarrassment to the M2A1 negative two's systematic reduction of the Pacific's most formidable fortification network, the flamethrower story of World War II is the story of a weapon that every army needed, few armies initially understood, and only one army fully developed in time to use it where it mattered most.

[00:19:21]The weapon that produced more immediate surrenders per deployment than any other infantry tool in the Pacific theater also carried the highest personal risk of any role in the infantry because a man wearing 70 lb of pressurized liquid fuel advancing toward an enemy position that was actively trying to kill him was combining the physics of a bomb with the exposure of a scout.

[00:19:41]The men who carried flamethrowers in the Pacific did not do it because it was safe. They did it because it was the only thing that worked.

[00:19:47]If you enjoyed this complete breakdown of every major World War II flamethrower ranked from worst to most effective. Hit that like button and subscribe. Next up, we are covering every World War II tank, ranked from tin can to iron beast, from the rolling disasters that got their crews killed on the first engagement to the steel fortresses that made entire armies recalculate their plans before approaching. You will not want to miss it. Thanks for watching.