Newsgroup: it.cultura.storia.militare
Titolo: [OT?] - bombe Molotov

Qualcuno ha idea dell'origine del nome "bottiglie Molotov"? Immagino ci
sia una correlazione col ministro degli esteri di Stalin, ma onestamente
non riesco a capire quale sia
Grazie
Ciao
Eugenio
P.S. Si', ho cercato in rete, ma temo di non aver saputo impostare i
parametri - mi vengono fuori link a migliaia e quasi tutti non correlati.
-- 
"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."
(Mark Twain)


Esatto.
Per quello che ne so io, prendono il suo nome in quanto pare che ne
consigliò l'uso ai miliziani durante la guerra di Spagna.
--
Roberto
"Ci sedemmo dalla parte del torto,
  perchè tutti gli altri posti erano già occupati"
Bertold Brecht.

 consigliň l'uso ai miliziani durante la guerra di Spagna.
Grazie mille
Eugenio
-- 
A Puritan is someone who is deathly afraid that someone, somewhere, is
having fun.

 non riesco a capire quale sia
A quanto ne so sia la bottiglia di benzina da usare contro i carri sia
il termine che la designa, Cocktail Molotov, furono inventati dai
soldati Finlandesi durante la guerra d'inverno contro l'URSS. Il nome
era una presa di giro del commissario agli esteri Molotov.
Ciao
Ale
--
*La sconfitta reclama ad alta voce perche' esige spiegazioni; mentre la
vittoria, come la carita', nasconde un gran numero di peccati*
Alfred T. Mahan

 non riesco a capire quale sia
Molotov Cocktail
The bitter days of 1941?The German Panzers, employing flank attack
tactics, cut our defense in pieces. The Red Army units start to suffer
"ammo starvation", as most of the ammo depots located in border areas
have been captured by Germans. In this critical situation on the 7th of
July 1941 GKO makes the decision to employ petrol bombs as an anti-tank
weapon. This allowed providing the Army with quite efficient anti-tank
weapon in very short time. Like many other weapons, the petrol bombs
were quickly dubbed Molotov cocktail (Molotov was Stalin?s deputy in GKO
? Valera. Another version of the origin of the nickname tells that it
was dubbed so by Finnish soldiers during the Winter war. During that
period Molotov held the office minister for foreign affairs and was
perceived by Finns as largely responsible for the war - Bair). However,
the first ones to use the petrol bombs were the Spanish republican
troops, who used them to burn tanks during the Civil war as early as
1936. The Spaniards filled a glass bottle with petrol, sealed the bottle
and wrapped the bottleneck with tow. Before throwing it at the tank, the
tow was set on fire. Burning petrol penetrated the fighting compartment
and caused ammo detonation; when hitting the transmission section,
petrol easily set engine on fire.
Later this primitive ignition mechanism was improved through use of
igniting chemical agent, which was actually a modified Kibalchich fuse
for hand grenades. The only difference was that Molotov cocktails used
petrol instead of solid inflammable substance. The Red Army received two
types of petrol bombs: with self-igniting mixture KS (mixture of
phosphorus and sulphur, which ha very low melting temperature) and the
ones with inflammable mixtures #1 and #3. These mixtures were made of
regular car petrol, condensed by OP-1 hardening powder ? actually this
was prototype of what is now called napalm. KS mixture was normally
bottled in 0.5-0.75 liter bottles and sealed with rubber corks, attached
to the bottleneck with wire and wrapped in scotch. Once ignited, the
liquid burnt with bright flame for some 1.5?3 minutes, at the
temperatures up to 1000° C. Petrol bombs with inflammable liquid #1and
#3 were sealed with regular corks. Special ampoules with chemical agents
were used for ignition. The liquid ignited when contacting the chemical
agent in the ampoules ? this occurred as both the bottle and the ampoule
broke when hitting a tank. The ampoules were attached to the bottle with
a rubber belt or were inserted in the bottles. Another ignition
mechanism used special matches, attached to the bottle with rubber
belts. These fuse-matches were large sticks fully covered with igniting
agent. They were set on fire before the throw with a special grater or
with a regular matchbox. The contents of the bottle, when hitting a tank
burnt for 40-50 seconds at the temperatures of up to 800° C. When
fuse-matches were unavailable, the recommendation was to do the
following: first throw a bottle with KS liquid, and later one or two
bottles with #1 or #3 solution.
Tactics of an infantryman armed with Molotov cocktail was seemingly
simple. One had to let a tank come as close as 15-20 metres and throw a
bottle at it, targeting the engine compartment or the area between the
turret and the hull. This all looks easy on the paper, but not in the
real engagement when armour assault is accompanied with artillery
barrage and the enemy infantry follows the tanks. Quite often, when a
soldier got up to throw a bottle at the tank, a bullet or a shell
fragment hit the bottle, and a soldier would consequently become a
living torch. One of them is marine Mikhail Panikakha*, who was
posthumously awarded with the Golden Star of the Hero of the Soviet
Union for his heroic action in Stalingrad (however, officially he was
awarded much later, 45 years after the war, in 1990). However most of
the soldiers, who have fulfilled their duty, remain unknown.
*In a street fight, Panikakha prepared to throw a bottle at a German
tank, but a bullet hit the bottle, and the marine burst into flames.
However, he managed to grab another bottle, ran to the tank and smashed
the second bottle against the tank?s armour.
Petrol bombs were used in roles other than the short-range anti-tank
weapon. Minefields, complemented by KS bottles used as mines protected
tank-passable terrain and possible directions of enemy armour assaults.
To protect themselves from the enemy infantry, our infantry used so
called "flame landmines". The holes dug in the no-man?s land were filled
with up to 20 bottles and small explosive charges serving as remote
controlled detonators. The area covered by flame of this landmine was on
average 250 m2. Americans, who considered petrol bombs a primitive
weapon for the first time, having analysed the experiences of WWII,
started to employ them in post-war military conflicts. Using napalm as
the contents, Americans widely used them as anti-infantry landmines
during the Korean War (1950-1953). Soviet tank crews themselves had to
experience the effectiveness of Molotov cocktail in 1968, when Soviet
troops entered Prague. The stand-off between Yeltsin and the Supreme
Soviet in Moscow in October of 1993 also reminded many of the fiery
cocktail, and it was only well coordinated work of the police that
prevented the "mass consumption" of this "drink".
da 
http://www.battlefield.ru/library/bookshelf/weapons/weapons2.html
ciao
S.
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