There'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.
In 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.
I read the same story from Anthony Beevor’s book about the battle of Berlin, although I think it was a different chemical. The Red Army seemed to have a drinking problem.
Life in Soviet/Russian armies is grim. Many of the recruits come from remote regions so poor that they lack fridges, washing machines and even toilets (today as well [2], hence all the looting in Ukraine [3]). Broken-down equipment - either because it was crap from the factory or because someone along the chain sold off parts and fuel on the black market -, substandard equipment, shoddy living conditions, and on top of all of that (which would turn most Western soldiers into alcoholics already) come brutal hazing rituals [1] that traumatise those who manage to survive it (there's tens of thousands of incidents a year, and as late as 2006 hundreds of deaths a year), and the meatwave battle strategy that both past and current leadership have embraced.
No wonder that the Russian / Soviet / Russian army has always been associated with alcoholism, most of them self-medicate with it (or whatever other drugs they can get their hands on). And it's also no surprise given the traumatisation that many of the Russian soldiers act completely depraved on the battlefield - why not rape, torture and kill for fun, when you're probably not going to survive the war long enough to get held accountable?
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.
It is funny how putting on a uniform instantly makes you ... stupid. It is like a part of your brain shuts off. The social behaviour regress to like 5th grade in adult men.
Like of someone tells you you tie your shoes in the wrong way you become a child mentally or something.
Being a Soviet/Russian conscript is a terrible fucking lot in life. Being raped, beaten, denigrated was and remains extremely common. You're taken from wherever you had probably spent your whole life, thrown into a shitty uniform, shipped off like cattle to wherever it is that the motherland needs you, and used as an inanimate tool until you were either too broken and destroyed to function anymore, or you had managed to survive to the end of your term.
Alcoholism was and remains rampant, and in many cases even encouraged, as to keep the system 'lubricated'. Getting shitfaced on whatever you could find that'd get you there quickly is just an extension of that.
When Ethanol started being used as car fuel in Brazil (in the 70's), there were not life-threatening additives on it, so of course some people would use it to mix with drinks.
The practice only stopped in the late 80's when there was a supply crisis and Brazil had to import methanol and the TV started reporting cases of people going blind due to severe methanol poisoning.
The torpedo grade ethanol (fuel grade alcohol generally) necessitates quality control than ethanol for consumption because it has to pair with a precise number of oxygen molecules (which in the case of a torpedo are pre-allocated so you can't just tolerate it running lean or rich without a huge change in range) and produce known energy in the process and calling a bunch of subs and ships back to have their ethanol tested because you put out a bad batch is a way bigger PITA than telling a bunch of distributors to trash product and collect a refund.
If unsafe for humans amounts of methanol in the product was tolerable for the torpedos they would have just done that to prevent consumption.
The cleanliness and hygiene controls along the way are going to be lesser. It's not like it's being made in a food factory.
> The cleanliness and hygiene controls along the way are going to be lesser. It's not like it's being made in a food factory.
Sincere question: isn't "hygiene" usually referring only to bacteria, viruses and other organic contamination? Don't get me wrong, I'm with you that I'd worry about contamination with all kinds of other toxic stuff.
This is why I've written severe poisoning. It was never a healthy thing to do, but it took a case of "shit, people are actually going blind because of this" for it to stop.
> Alcohol proof (usually termed simply "proof" in relation to a beverage) is a measure of the content of ethanol (alcohol) in an alcoholic beverage. The term was originally used in England and from 1816 was equal to about 1.75 times the percentage of alcohol by volume (ABV).
That omits entirely the origin and meaning of the word proof in this context.
Proof originally related to proving that the alcohol content was of such a degree that excise duty was due not to actually measuring the alcohol content.
"In 16th-century England, the original test involved soaking a pellet of gunpowder with the liquor. If it was still possible to ignite the wet gunpowder, the alcohol content of the liquor was rated above proof and it was taxed at a higher rate, and vice versa if the powder failed to ignite."
https://homepages.uc.edu/~jensenwb/reprints/111.%20Proof.pdf
Acetone–butanol–ethanol fermentation was itself a critical WWI technology, as cordite required acetone. That fermentation process requires only sugars and an acetobutylicum strain. The first president of Israel developed this process.
I don't know how the balance broke down during WW2, but synthesis of ethanol from ethylene in more recent times is economically competitive with fermentation. So for instance, fermentation of sugarcane is easily cheaper in Brazil, but in America most industrial ethanol came from synthesis until corn subsidies were introduced in the 80s which made fermentation cheaper than synthesis.
See 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.
If I remember correctly part of the issue was that they used magnetic detector based firing systems and only tested them off the coast of California. When they fired them elsewhere the Earth's magnetic field was different enough that the detonators failed.
Not only did the magnetic fuses not work, the impact fuses would collapse and fail if the torpedo made a direct hit. And the torpedoes would consistently run deeper than they were set to. US torpedoes in the early stages of the war were nearly completely ineffective.
FWIW, everyone in the beginning of WWII had magnetic detonator / torpedo problems, so it couldn't be just that. They were difficult to depth-keep just right to pass under a ship but within detection, for one thing. The sub captain had to correctly identify the ship, look up the draft, and call down to manually set the depth keeping. (Good luck in the swells of north atlantic). Often it just didn't use that depth anyway, due again to issues with design/testing.
The contact detonators had their own issues, for one they couldn't explode at an oblique angle, instead needed near-right-angle impact - but even then had a high dud ratio.
So, in theory the magnetic ones were preferable, even though standard doctrine was to fire for right-angle impact regardless (it makes evasion much more difficult, for one thing).
There'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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZQ-uMspz5c
That's good leadership
[dead]
In 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.
I read the same story from Anthony Beevor’s book about the battle of Berlin, although I think it was a different chemical. The Red Army seemed to have a drinking problem.
> The Red Army seemed to have a drinking problem.
s/seemed to have/has had and still has/
Life in Soviet/Russian armies is grim. Many of the recruits come from remote regions so poor that they lack fridges, washing machines and even toilets (today as well [2], hence all the looting in Ukraine [3]). Broken-down equipment - either because it was crap from the factory or because someone along the chain sold off parts and fuel on the black market -, substandard equipment, shoddy living conditions, and on top of all of that (which would turn most Western soldiers into alcoholics already) come brutal hazing rituals [1] that traumatise those who manage to survive it (there's tens of thousands of incidents a year, and as late as 2006 hundreds of deaths a year), and the meatwave battle strategy that both past and current leadership have embraced.
No wonder that the Russian / Soviet / Russian army has always been associated with alcoholism, most of them self-medicate with it (or whatever other drugs they can get their hands on). And it's also no surprise given the traumatisation that many of the Russian soldiers act completely depraved on the battlefield - why not rape, torture and kill for fun, when you're probably not going to survive the war long enough to get held accountable?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dedovshchina
[2] https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/04/02/indoor-plumbing-st...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looting_by_Russian_forces_duri...
Don't forget shitty leadership - harsh, anti-intellectual, and expecting obedienece, not initiative.
Where have I heard that before?
Look for a copy of Zinky Boys. It shows the conditions for Soviet soldiers during the Afghan war, I think it hasn't changed much.
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.
Indeed! The man who told me this did not know the reason but his hypothesis was indeed that they wanted to get drunk.
Thank you for the details. I heard about Russian women hiding their perfumes for men not to find (and drink) them...
It is funny how putting on a uniform instantly makes you ... stupid. It is like a part of your brain shuts off. The social behaviour regress to like 5th grade in adult men.
Like of someone tells you you tie your shoes in the wrong way you become a child mentally or something.
Being a Soviet/Russian conscript is a terrible fucking lot in life. Being raped, beaten, denigrated was and remains extremely common. You're taken from wherever you had probably spent your whole life, thrown into a shitty uniform, shipped off like cattle to wherever it is that the motherland needs you, and used as an inanimate tool until you were either too broken and destroyed to function anymore, or you had managed to survive to the end of your term.
Alcoholism was and remains rampant, and in many cases even encouraged, as to keep the system 'lubricated'. Getting shitfaced on whatever you could find that'd get you there quickly is just an extension of that.
It's probably not the clothing, but rather some aspect of the circumstance that coincides with the uniform (such as, loss of freedom.)
Oh ye ofc. There are many normal professions with uniforms.
But when you are in it, putting on the uniform is the magic transition between the real you and vice corpral Rightbyte.
Loss of freedom is certainly the main factor.
I read somewhere that some Soviet jets used huge quantities of alcohol for cooling.
Still do, though these days they're a little more efficient, so it's only the flight crew that needs to be cooled with that alcohol.
Some did, however there were no Soviet jets at the time of this story.
Specifically the Tu-22 is known for this.
https://archive.is/cGLMS
Depicted in the 2012 Paul Thomas Anderson movie “The Master” - a movie I love for reasons I don’t understand.
When Ethanol started being used as car fuel in Brazil (in the 70's), there were not life-threatening additives on it, so of course some people would use it to mix with drinks.
The practice only stopped in the late 80's when there was a supply crisis and Brazil had to import methanol and the TV started reporting cases of people going blind due to severe methanol poisoning.
Methanol is a biproduct of fermentation, and will be part of the destillate if not done carefully.
I doubt that ethanol used in car and torpedo fuel will go through the same quality control than drinking alcohol.
The torpedo grade ethanol (fuel grade alcohol generally) necessitates quality control than ethanol for consumption because it has to pair with a precise number of oxygen molecules (which in the case of a torpedo are pre-allocated so you can't just tolerate it running lean or rich without a huge change in range) and produce known energy in the process and calling a bunch of subs and ships back to have their ethanol tested because you put out a bad batch is a way bigger PITA than telling a bunch of distributors to trash product and collect a refund.
If unsafe for humans amounts of methanol in the product was tolerable for the torpedos they would have just done that to prevent consumption.
The cleanliness and hygiene controls along the way are going to be lesser. It's not like it's being made in a food factory.
> The cleanliness and hygiene controls along the way are going to be lesser. It's not like it's being made in a food factory.
Sincere question: isn't "hygiene" usually referring only to bacteria, viruses and other organic contamination? Don't get me wrong, I'm with you that I'd worry about contamination with all kinds of other toxic stuff.
This is why I've written severe poisoning. It was never a healthy thing to do, but it took a case of "shit, people are actually going blind because of this" for it to stop.
TIL:
> Alcohol proof (usually termed simply "proof" in relation to a beverage) is a measure of the content of ethanol (alcohol) in an alcoholic beverage. The term was originally used in England and from 1816 was equal to about 1.75 times the percentage of alcohol by volume (ABV).
(from Wikipedia)
That omits entirely the origin and meaning of the word proof in this context.
Proof originally related to proving that the alcohol content was of such a degree that excise duty was due not to actually measuring the alcohol content.
"In 16th-century England, the original test involved soaking a pellet of gunpowder with the liquor. If it was still possible to ignite the wet gunpowder, the alcohol content of the liquor was rated above proof and it was taxed at a higher rate, and vice versa if the powder failed to ignite." https://homepages.uc.edu/~jensenwb/reprints/111.%20Proof.pdf
"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.
Isopropyl is drinkable (and highly intoxicating). Just very unpleasant to drink and highly irritating to the mucosa.
If I recall correctly, a politician's wife back in the 80's was hospitalized for drinking isopropyl.
(Just looked it up on Wikipedia - I recall correctly)
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.
Acetone–butanol–ethanol fermentation was itself a critical WWI technology, as cordite required acetone. That fermentation process requires only sugars and an acetobutylicum strain. The first president of Israel developed this process.
I don't know how the balance broke down during WW2, but synthesis of ethanol from ethylene in more recent times is economically competitive with fermentation. So for instance, fermentation of sugarcane is easily cheaper in Brazil, but in America most industrial ethanol came from synthesis until corn subsidies were introduced in the 80s which made fermentation cheaper than synthesis.
More recent analog: https://simpleflying.com/tupolev-tu-22-booze-carrier-why/
See 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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_14_torpedo
If I remember correctly part of the issue was that they used magnetic detector based firing systems and only tested them off the coast of California. When they fired them elsewhere the Earth's magnetic field was different enough that the detonators failed.
Not only did the magnetic fuses not work, the impact fuses would collapse and fail if the torpedo made a direct hit. And the torpedoes would consistently run deeper than they were set to. US torpedoes in the early stages of the war were nearly completely ineffective.
I had never heard that theory before!
FWIW, everyone in the beginning of WWII had magnetic detonator / torpedo problems, so it couldn't be just that. They were difficult to depth-keep just right to pass under a ship but within detection, for one thing. The sub captain had to correctly identify the ship, look up the draft, and call down to manually set the depth keeping. (Good luck in the swells of north atlantic). Often it just didn't use that depth anyway, due again to issues with design/testing.
The contact detonators had their own issues, for one they couldn't explode at an oblique angle, instead needed near-right-angle impact - but even then had a high dud ratio.
So, in theory the magnetic ones were preferable, even though standard doctrine was to fire for right-angle impact regardless (it makes evasion much more difficult, for one thing).
There's a building at NUWC Division Newport that's designed to survive a direct hit from a 500 lb bomb.
The joke is they had to build it to survive attack from Navy crews that were livid about the quality of the torpedoes built there.