Torpedo juice: Legendary, illegal WWII liquor drunk in Alaska and the world
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Re: Torpedo juice: Legendary, illegal WWII liquor drunk in Alaska and the world
#2More recent analog: https://simpleflying.com/tupolev-tu-22-booze-carrier-why/
Re: Torpedo juice: Legendary, illegal WWII liquor drunk in Alaska and the world
#3"American torpedoes utilized 180-proof ethyl alcohol as fuel for the miniature steam engines that drove them toward their targets."
I wonder if this was by design ...
I think isopropyl alcohol is probably generally available/popular only because it is not drinkable.
Re: Torpedo juice: Legendary, illegal WWII liquor drunk in Alaska and the world
#4There's a story from the USS Drum (now a museum ship in Mobile, Alabama) that the skipper eventually gave up trying to get his crew to stop drinking the torpedo juice, and just ordered them to leave enough alcohol for a 1,500 yard range (out of 4,500yd or 9,000yd at slower speeds). Their success rate actually went up as a result, because they were making shots from much closer in.
Re: Torpedo juice: Legendary, illegal WWII liquor drunk in Alaska and the world
#5"American torpedoes utilized 180-proof ethyl alcohol as fuel for the miniature steam engines that drove them toward their targets." I wonder if this was by design ... I think isopropyl alcohol is probably generally available/popular only because it is not drinkable.
Apparently modern US production ratios for ethyl vs isopropyl alcohols are roughly 100:1.
Expect they would have been the same during the war era, hence engineering torpedos to run on a more widely available fuel.
Re: Torpedo juice: Legendary, illegal WWII liquor drunk in Alaska and the world
#6See also the Mark 14 torpedo, the primary American torpedo in WWII, which didn't actually work for the first 2 years of the war because they had never bothered to actually test it because it would be too expensive.
Re: Torpedo juice: Legendary, illegal WWII liquor drunk in Alaska and the world
#7In France, around 1985, an old man said to me that just after WW2 he was, as a French soldier, working in Germany in some airfield or military site which was then used to host Allied soldiers of various nationalities.
They had a problem with Soviet soldiers dying due to some poisonous/toxic substance they consumed.
It lasted for days, maybe weeks. Nobody had a clue.
Then they realized that some/many Soviet soldiers had discovered a tank containing jet fuel and secretly drank from it. Those who drank too much or were too weak just died, but other ones weren't deterred.
Re: Torpedo juice: Legendary, illegal WWII liquor drunk in Alaska and the world
#8In France, around 1985, an old man said to me that just after WW2 he was, as a French soldier, working in Germany in some airfield or military site which was then used to host Allied soldiers of various nationalities. They had a problem with Soviet soldiers dying due to some poisonous/toxic substance they consumed. It lasted for days, maybe weeks. Nobody had a clue. Then they realized that some/many Soviet soldiers h…
Why were people even drinking jet fuel? Did it have any psychotropic effects?
Re: Torpedo juice: Legendary, illegal WWII liquor drunk in Alaska and the world
#9"American torpedoes utilized 180-proof ethyl alcohol as fuel for the miniature steam engines that drove them toward their targets." I wonder if this was by design ... I think isopropyl alcohol is probably generally available/popular only because it is not drinkable.
Ethyl alcohol is _cheap_. You literally need just a bunch of sugar, yeast, and a still. Straightforward, low-tech, and safe.
Isopropyl alcohol needs to be synthesized from acetone, which itself is synthesized.
Re: Torpedo juice: Legendary, illegal WWII liquor drunk in Alaska and the world
#10In France, around 1985, an old man said to me that just after WW2 he was, as a French soldier, working in Germany in some airfield or military site which was then used to host Allied soldiers of various nationalities. They had a problem with Soviet soldiers dying due to some poisonous/toxic substance they consumed. It lasted for days, maybe weeks. Nobody had a clue. Then they realized that some/many Soviet soldiers h…
Why were people even drinking jet fuel? Did it have any psychotropic effects?
My guess: jet fuel is commonly kerosene, which if ingested (especially at somewhat palatable dilutions) will majorly fuck you up, but with effects that can somewhat mimic being drunk. That said, it's also going to fry your liver, kidneys, and pretty much anything else, but if you were already a conscript that spent 26 hours a day in a state somewhere between unconscious and drunk, a little kerosene nightcap might be just the thing. And if you ended up in the infirmary, at least they'd change the sheets between patients -- no such luxury in the barracks.
Some universities in the USSR, especially ones that dealt with electronics and silicon manufacturing, would keep their solvents under strict lock and key. Mostly because the military 'cadets' tended to pretty quickly consume any solvents that didn't immediately kill them.