...the local Mein Kampf club...
I see your vocabulary choice for those who don't agree with you have been growing more colorful.
"Perfectly safe," they called it in the last thread.
No, they called the 163 "perfectly safe" to fly, and they quoted Rudy Opitz to overturn some urban legends about the 163. No one in that thread ever mentioned the fuel was "perfectly safe".
They're quite willing to believe Mr. Galland when it comes to him bashing United States fighters (never mind that he later retracted it), but they discredit him when he says that the Me-163's rocket fuel melted pilots. Isn't that cute?
We can use this simplistic logic in just the opposite manner.
Someone who discredits Galland by claiming "he defends Nazi equipment", all of a sudden takes his word so importantly to put it above the word of the chief test pilot directly involved in the plane's development history?
What does Rudy Opitz have to say about it?
When fuel contacted organic material, including skin, it ignited after only a few seconds.
... and what he has observed is right, because hydrogen peroxide of high concentration reacts differently from what one would imagine in bathroom cleaning liquids.
So, tell us, ye "pilot would melt" mythmongers, how the T-Stoff would "melt" a pilot, when;
1. Above roughly 70% concentrations, hydrogen peroxide can give off vapor that can detonates above 70 ¡ÆC (158 ¡ÆF) at normal atmospheric pressure. This can then cause a boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion (BLEVE) of the remaining liquid.
2. Hydrogen peroxide vapors can form sensitive contact explosives with hydrocarbons such as greases. Hazardous reactions ranging from ignition to explosion have been reported with alcohols, ketones, carboxylic acids (particularly acetic acid), amines and phosphorus. The saying is 'peroxides kill chemists'.
3. Hydrogen peroxide, if spilled on clothing (or other flammable materials), will preferentially evaporate water until the concentration reaches sufficient strength, then clothing will spontaneously ignite. Leather generally contains metal ions from the tanning process and will often catch fire almost immediately.
4. Concentrated hydrogen peroxide (>50%) is corrosive, and even domestic-strength solutions can cause irritation to the eyes, mucous membranes and skin. Swallowing hydrogen peroxide solutions is particularly dangerous, as decomposition in the stomach releases large quantities of gas (10 times the volume of a 3% solution) leading to internal bleeding. Inhaling over 10% can cause severe pulmonary irritation.
Spill sufficiently enough quantities of T-Stoff on your clothes, and you'd be seriously burnt. Spill sufficiently enough quantities of T-Stoff on a protective nylon suit, and the liquid will eventually eat its way through the suit, and then either it ignites and explodes, or 'melts' the pilot.
Only question is, what kind of idiot would settle down and wait for a bucket load of T-Stoff to eat away his suit until finally it comes in contact with his skin to 'melt' him? Not to mention hydrogen peroxide of high concentration, in its nature being so severely unstable that it would in most cases ignite before it even has a chance to react to organic material long enough to actually corrode them?
If you're imagining a pretty picture of someone drowning in a leaking 163, and then melting away as if he fell into a pool of acid, then you'd be seriously wrong.
If enough 163 fuel spilled into the cockpit to be really fatal, the chances are the pilot is either engulfed in flames by spontaneous ignition by fuel, or knocked unconcious due to toxic gas and crashes to death.
The "melt" is a pure urban legend.
That's very interesting....
Nothing interesting about it. Simply, Puck's wrong.