I was thinking fire arrows too. But there's actually nothing in the given dialogue that says they light the kite on fire in the air, as opposed to before launching it.
A person would have to be pretty good with a bow, to hit a flying kite. Also, where would these arrows be coming down, tipped with flaming tar or whatever?
A three-minute fuse would not be too heavy, and would give plenty of time for the kite to get altitude before it caught fire. I've been presuming the old-fashioned bamboo-and-newspaper kind of kite, which would flare up beautifully if freshly spray-painted, and would probably be light enough to stay aloft while it burned, even after the kite-string was burned through.
I think a store-bought nylon kite would fall right out of the sky as soon as the string detached, and then there's the question of where that little fire-bomb would be landing.
Use cane or laths instead of bamboo, then, and thin silk instead of nylon or paper. The Prussians did have both turpentine-based paint and lacquer-based hair or wig products, but they also naphtha, and a silk kite painted in that would make a glorious blaze. If you had the kind of burning fuse called a 'slow match', you'd have as much time as you needed, and not much fear of it going out before it reached the naphtha-soaked silk.
No idea whether such a kite would burn out fast enough to not set the Prussian forest on fire when it came down. Maybe fly it over a lake at night; that would be pretty as well as prudent.
You're welcome! LOL, my ex, my kid's Dad, is a kite-maker and a pyromaniac; I'm going to tell my daughter to mention this flaming-kite idea to him, and see if maybe he'll try it for real.
Natural silk doesn't catch fire that easily, and it tends to smolder rather than flame. Untreated paper would just smolder too, if it lit at all in the wind. Anything painted with naphtha would go up like a torch the instant a spark touches it. It's outrageously flammable; may have been the prime ingredient in Greek fire.
Silk would burn longer than paper. Whether silk or paper, as soon as it's burned away too much to hold the air, the sticks will fall. The advantage of using naphtha on silk would be that the naphtha would burn bright, but the silk under it would hold up a while, like a candle-wick or lantern-mantle does. It might even be that the naphtha would burn off and go out before the silk itself caught fire
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A three-minute fuse would not be too heavy, and would give plenty of time for the kite to get altitude before it caught fire. I've been presuming the old-fashioned bamboo-and-newspaper kind of kite, which would flare up beautifully if freshly spray-painted, and would probably be light enough to stay aloft while it burned, even after the kite-string was burned through.
I think a store-bought nylon kite would fall right out of the sky as soon as the string detached, and then there's the question of where that little fire-bomb would be landing.
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No idea whether such a kite would burn out fast enough to not set the Prussian forest on fire when it came down. Maybe fly it over a lake at night; that would be pretty as well as prudent.
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Follow up question: would silk burn/catch on fire more easily than paper? Because I was thinking that paper would be pretty flammable.
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Natural silk doesn't catch fire that easily, and it tends to smolder rather than flame. Untreated paper would just smolder too, if it lit at all in the wind. Anything painted with naphtha would go up like a torch the instant a spark touches it. It's outrageously flammable; may have been the prime ingredient in Greek fire.
Silk would burn longer than paper. Whether silk or paper, as soon as it's burned away too much to hold the air, the sticks will fall. The advantage of using naphtha on silk would be that the naphtha would burn bright, but the silk under it would hold up a while, like a candle-wick or lantern-mantle does. It might even be that the naphtha would burn off and go out before the silk itself caught fire ( ... )
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