When General William M. Hoge, commanding the American forces in Europe made the remark: “Our new weapons are a brake on Russian ambitions for armed conquest,” he meant our atomic cannon, the Honest John rocket, and other instruments for mayhem, the possession of which are a tremendous psychological boost for their owners. The General went on to say later in this press conference: “We have every reason to believe that the Russians have similar weapons and we have reports that they are developing them along similar lines.”
In the beginning the secret of those Sunday Punch weapons belonged to us. But it got away. It is too bad that our internal security outfit didn’t take a lesson from the past. There was another nation that developed a world-shaker for use in war. They held on to the secret for over 500 years. At that time, exactly as it is today, the Christian world was threatened by a new and great power that stormed across international borders hell-bent on world domination. Then, as now, another nation stood practically alone against the onslaught. A miracle was needed. The people prayed for one; special services were held in the churches for the purpose. The prayers were answered. A weapon was developed that stopped the would-be world conquerors dead in their tracks in more respects than one. Their leader humbly requested peace on any terms. The peace lasted nearly three decades, and then the aggressors made a second try at conquest only to be defeated again by the use of the weapon. It was as truly a Sunday Punch weapon then as our atomic cannon and Honest John guided missiles are today. It was invented, developed, discovered—call it anything you like—by an obscure, little man who receives but a brief mention in history.
On an April day in 673 A.D. he appeared before the Neoru Gate of the city now known as Istanbul. Because he wore an officer’s uniform beneath a long, blue cloak and announced himself as a deserter from the besieging enemy, the captain of the guard was skeptical. This man claimed to be an engineer officer and insisted that he had information of great importance. He demanded to be taken to the commanding general at once and was so wild-eyed about his demand that the sergeant of the guard, a decorated veteran from a line regiment who had escorted him to the captain, stood a pace or two behind him and touched his forehead in a gesture that has indicated since the beginning of time that the prisoner was “off his rocker.” A clever spy, a possible assassin, or “off his rocker,” the captain wanted no part of him, so he sent the man back to battalion. Battalion listened briefly and passed him on to regiment where he was promptly clapped into a cell with a special sentry posted at the door.
Either the self-confessed deserter was the answer to the beleaguered city’s earnest prayers, or he was a blithering lunatic. He could lift the siege, he declared, and send the fanatical enemy scurrying home with terror in their hearts. He had all the information, he maintained, tapping his dark head, and there it would remain until he was granted an audience with Emperor Constantine.
Although the Chief of Staff was a very busy, harrassed man, he took time out to interview the man. The fellow could raise the siege, eh? Well, one couldn’t pass up any bets, the situation being what it was.
“So you have a new weapon?” he asked, eyeing the man sharply, “and you want an audience with the Emperor. You’ll have to tell me more about it first before I’ll take up the Emperor’s time with what is probably just another crack-pot idea.” He was deliberately sarcastic. “Now! What is this thing?”
The little man bowed. “With all due respect to you,” he said, “what I have to say is for the Emperor’s ears alone. This much I’ll repeat. I have knowledge which, if applied under my supervision, will destroy the enemy’s fleet. With that accomplished their land forces must retire. This is not a boast,” he snapped in response to the derisive smile on the Chief of Staff’s face. “I’ll prove every word of it, given fair opportunity.”
And he was right! He ushered in a new era in the art of war and became one of the most controversial figures in the history of deadliness. His name was Callinicus. He was an architect-engineer from Heliopolis, in Syria. There is no question but that he was an alchemist as well. The Sunday Punch weapon he was to develop has come down to us under the name of Greek Fire. The correct designation, and the one used by its inventor, was Wet Fire, or Marine Fire, because water was its igniting agent.
What was this material that revolutionized warfare, and by what means was it propelled toward an enemy? One jumps into the middle of an age-old argument hotter than the fire itself if he offers a glib answer to that question. The secret died with the East Roman Empire in 1204, but there is evidence, direct and circumstantial, which will arrive at a definite conclusion, once it is correlated without fear or favor. It is an interesting picture that develops from this research through many books and contemporary accounts, concerning the exciting events that took place when Callinicus developed his Sunday Punch weapon.
Constantine IV was Emperor when Callinicus appeared at Constantinople. We have an excellent picture of him. Among other things, he was 22 years old, a tall, well-built, man who wore a beard in direct opposition to past convention. He was the first East Roman ruler of the Christian faith who effected such facial adornment. He was energetic and had the forward look for the betterment of his people. He assumed his great responsibilities with youthful enthusiasm and he possessed the courage of his convictions. He had been a soldier for seven years, and he knew men and what made them tick. Constantine granted the Syrian deserter an audience at once.
Among those present at these first meetings was a member of Empros Munitions Firm. This family was a business dynasty and had the monopoly for the manufacture of war materials, as one phase of its activity, for years before and after Callinicus. All this was done under government supervision in the Byzantine equivalent of our own Picatinny Arsenal. One of their products was an incendiary mixture which consisted of sulphur, pinewood charcoal, pitch, incense, tow, and some other substances which have come down to us under the mysterious name of “obscure elements.”
There is no evidence about what went on in the Empros Arsenal for the next thirteen months—the trial and error, the experiments with strange substances prepared by the Syrian engineer—but we have plenty of eye-witness testimony of the result.
The besieging Saracen fleet had been reinforced several times during that interval. It outnumbered the defender’s warships by about ten to one. It had good ships, well equipped, and manned by efficient seamen from the Moslem controlled sea-coast and island countries. The vessels’ fighting men were Saracens, all excellently trained and filled with religious fervor, plus thoughts of the loot awaiting them in the world’s richest city. In an ordinary sea fight they would have overwhelmed the Byzantine ships by sheer weight of numbers. A good big man has a distinct advantage over a good little man, other things being equal.
The Byzantine navy was bottled up in the Golden Horn behind heavy booms chained across the harbor mouth. It was an excellent outfit. The men were not conscripts. They were well paid, well fed, efficiently led, and all had a grant of good land awaiting them on retirement from the service. The main unit was the Imperial dromon, a strong, heavy, and very swift vessel with a crew of 300 men. Of these 200 were rowers, sixty were marines; the forty others comprised the officers and seamen. The rowers had weapons handy and were assigned to battle stations for boarding operations which were the principal tactics of the times.
Such was the situation one morning when a citizen of Constantinople, taking an early stroll along the city’s wall, overlooking the Golden Horn, halted in amazement. Men were removing the obstructions across the harbor entrance. The huge booms were being swung back and fifteen dromons were forming up in line abreast, banners at their mast heads, crews at battle stations, while the slow thumping of the rower’s drums rose in the morning air. News spreads fast. Soon the walls were lined with spectators jabbering excitedly, pointing, calling to one another. Women, whose men were on the ships, crowded to the forefront of the crowd which made way for them. Now trumpets were blasting the alarm from the Saracen guard ships calling their comrades to this battle they had been waiting for.
We have no first-hand information about the feelings of the men on board the Byzantine ships that morning. They knew, of course, that strange, new equipment had been installed. Perhaps they felt like guinea pigs in a laboratory about to be used in a new experiment. Likewise we can only guess about the feelings of the spectators— the futility of it—so few against so many. Matters must be much worse than they had been led to believe to cause a sortie that could have but one end. The Saracens were already bellowing victory as their vessels formed up and took position facing the harbor mouth. Their line-abreast formation was shaped like an inverted half-moon, the points toward the Byzantine ships. A Byzantine trumpet blared, and a red banner burst into view at the masthead of the flagship. The dromons speeded up, their oars churning the water into foam as they drove straight into the Saracen line. Groans of dismay filled the air. Women covered their eyes, clasped their children to them. Men cursed and banged their fists on the wall.
Then came the thunder and the fire. The Byzantine ships were spouting flames from their forecastles. Black and grey smoke soared up with flashes of red and green fire darting through it. The watchers saw, with amazement, that their ships did not attempt to close with the enemy in the approved method. Instead, they darted about, spitting fire that struck and spread along the Saracen decks, enveloping them and driving the crews over the side.
And, miraculously, the enemy broke— each ship for itself, the Byzantines on their heels in what was in grim reality a hot pursuit. It was a blazing, blasting shambles spread out for the people of Constantinople to see that morning. A smoky pall rose and hung above the fighters bringing with it the stench of burning sulphur, mingled with shrieks of terror and the crackling roar of violent fire. Down below the wall, along the fortified shore line, catapults and ballistae whang-thunked from the harbor batteries hurling pots of the old-type incendiaries to add to the enemy’s confusion.
That evening, and for the rest of the night, the victory was celebrated in many different ways among the city’s 900,000 inhabitants. The churches held thanksgiving services. There were parades through the streets, converging at the Imperial Palace where the crowds cheered Emperor Constantine for hours. The drinks were free all over the city for the sailors and marines, and the girls from the vicinity of the Hippodrome greeted the fighting men on their own terms. Citizens gathered round the victors, slapping them on the back, shoving wine jugs into their faces, or lifting them high on their shoulders and carrying them through the streets like banners. The seamen and marines had plenty to say.
“This new stuff—it burns the water they throw on it,” one shouted excitedly to an admiring group. “Our tubes have the faces of lions with open jaws. The fire squirts out of their mouths with a noise like thunder. They vomit flames. . . .”
“. . . we hurled caltrops first,” another shouted. “A new kind, egg-shaped, and filled with some new stuff. They burst when they struck, and caught fire, and leaped about like wild things among the infidels. . .”
“Water sets it off. Water makes it burn,” a scorched marine took up the story, healing salve on his reddened face gleaming in the torch light. “I saw them trying to douse the flames with water. It was as it they had poured naphtha on it. Made it explode—blaze higher, and spread. It ate up everything— decks—oars—men! It burned the water, I tell you!”
And so Greek Fire was born, but they called it Wet Fire, or Marine Fire in Constantinople. The Saracens called it an invention of the devil. They lifted the siege and retreated. It is history that only ten ships of their vast armada ever arrived at a home navy yard. The Byzantine dromons harried them every step of the way.
The Moslem Sultan, Muaviah, made a bid for peace. He agreed that it should last for at least thirty years, and that his nation would pay the East Romans 3,000 pounds of gold, fifty captives, and fifty thoroughbred Arabian horses, each year. Nor was that all. The Sunday Punch weapon brought great recognition for Emperor Constantine IV from all the European nations. He received lavish gifts, and embassies from all the Christian countries hailed him as their saviour. There resulted a universal state of security throughout the Christian world.
What about the little man who brought all of this about? History is silent. There is no word in any of the contemporary chronicles concerning Callinicus, but the writers of that day have plenty to say about his weapon.
The Saracens showed up for a return engagement some years after their defeat. Leo was Emperor at that time. From a palace observation tower, he watched the enemy fleet which consisted of all classes of vessels including huge transports. They were bucking a swift current at the entrance to the straits when he went into action. Leo had a small fleet ready and went aboard a swift dromon and assumed command. Again the citizens crowded the walls, and again they saw flaming destruction among the enemy’s ships.
On this occasion Suleiman, the Saracen admiral, retreated without fighting, following the loss of twenty of his transports, and set up a base 48 sea miles away on the Bithynian coast. Emperor Leo gave him no rest. Night and day, the Byzantine navy attacked, sending frog-men in to cut away the obstructions, in order that the lighter dromons might enter the harbor. Once inside they burned and captured, until mutiny broke out aboard the Moslem ships. The siege was lifted, and once more the East Romans harried the fleeing ships into their home ports.
During the years until 1204, the Sunday Punch weapon was put into action whenever the Empire was threatened with grave danger. The Russians had a bitter taste of it when they came barreling down through the Black Sea in 941 and again in 1043. World conquest and loot spurred them on. They swept everything before them until they met the Byzantine fleet. Igor, their leader in 941, sums it up very well in a chronicle he left for us: “The Greeks have a fire resembling the lightning from heaven, and when they threw it at us they consumed us; for this reason we could not overcome them.”
The records of the navy of Pisa tell us that they were: “Terrified by an apparatus which directed on them flame of an extraordinary nature. Ordinary flame rises upward, but this flame shot downward and sideways as well at the will of the gunner.” An excellent hint relative to the method for projecting Marine Fire, it also clears up for us the brief statement found in East Roman naval records that: “The fire was projected by means of siphons, and flexible apparatus. . . ”
From the existing evidence we know that: it was a wet fire because its action was directly connnected with water; its composition was such that it could be—and was— kept secret; it burned with considerable noise, smoke, and flame; water thrown upon it only aggravated its action; it was connected with siphons as a projecting medium.
The base for Callinicus’ invention was certainly the composition then in general use. This consisted of sulphur, pine-wood charcoal, pitch incense, and tow. Naphtha was also in general use. This mixture, however, required the use of a fuse to set it off.
There were two substances available to Callinicus. Water has a most unusual effect on both of them. One of these was quicklime. Quicklime had been used in war since early in the 3rd century both as an ingredient in an incendiary mixture, and to blow dry into the faces of the enemy if the wind was right. If a large quantity of quicklime were wetted with water its temperature rose quickly to about 302 degrees Fahrenheit, and it brought about combustion of substances with a low ignition point. But quicklime is out of the picture at once because such a large quantity would be required and because of the secrecy angle. The use of quicklime would not remain a secret for even a month, let alone 500 years.
The other substance available to Callinicus was phosphide of calcium. It meets every one of the requirements:
a very small quantity would set ablaze the other substances in an inflammable mixture very promptly when water was added;
it could be kept a secret without much difficulty;
it burned in conjunction with such stuff as sulphur, charcoal, pitch, etc., with considerable noise, smoke and flame;
additional water would aggravate its action;
it was so unsafe to handle after ignition that it was necessary to have a projecting medium, which was the siphon.
The alchemists knew the substances required for its production, but only Callinicus stumbled upon its war possibilities. Common elements comprise phosphide of calcium: limestone or lime, bones, and urine. There had to be certain refinements, of course, all of which were worked out to perfection by the Syrian engineer.
The siphons used by the East Romans were made of wood with a brass, bronze, or copper inner casing. The muzzles were carved in the likeness of lions, or other animals, with open mouths. These siphons were mounted on pedestals and handled very much like the fire nozzles on board our modern fire-boats, having a free action to be elevated, depressed, and trained right or left as the occasion required. The “projectile” was propelled, and ignited at the same time, by applying the hose of a water engine to the breech of the tube.
We know that the crew of a siphon consisted of two men. One was called the siphonator and he was beyond doubt the combined loader, trainer, pointer, and triggerman. His companion operated the force pump which was connected with the sea. The siphons were mounted beneath the forecastle of the dromon, the barrel of the tube protruding through a gun-port which could be sealed against heavy weather by leather gaskets. The pump was in the same compartment, a two-cylinder affair of the type invented by Heron of Alexandria centuries before the appearance of Callinicus.
The hose was made of leather with an exceptionally water-tight fitting at the breech of the firing tube.
The ammunition consisted of a pasty mixture of sulphur, charcoal, nitre, rosin, and phosphide of calcium. This dangerous combination was moulded into lumps slightly smaller than the bore of the siphon. The siphonator had to be a well-trained man. When the target was at the proper distance, he dropped a lump of his ammunition into the muzzle of the siphon, giving his pumpman a preliminary signal. When about to fire he opened a metal gate at the breech of the siphon and shouted “FIRE!”, and the pump-man bore down on his levers.
The distance the clay-like lump of Marine Fire was thrown, or projected, did not need to be very far. Ships brought the fight close aboard in those days. As the distance closed, the crewmen hurled their caltrops, a form of hand grenade filled with dry Marine Fire, to the enemy deck. These were constructed of a brittle material and burst on impact. When the siphon’s fireball struck, everything broke into violent flames and water had no effect except to aggravate the flames.
Callinicus had his brief moment in history—the day he arrived at Constantinople. The historians tell us about that, and they give him credit for bringing with him the secret of the “fire,” but there is no record that he ever received any recognition from his government for saving the Christian world from Moslem conquest. He simply passed into oblivion. Was he liquidated after the East Romans milked him dry? Did he wind up in the Byzantine equivalent for the old soldiers’ home, or did he become a charred remnant of his own invention? One guess is as good as another. However, his secret kept East Rome in power for 521 years until it died with the Empire in 1204.
If Callinicus is watching from another world, he has undoubtedly followed with interest the developments in fire weapons over the centuries and would feel right at home in White Sands, New Mexico. In fact, in the awesome spectacle of a rocket launching he would be sure to recognize the offspring of his own brain child.