Good evening!

I have translated a passage from "Tongguk Byunggam" (ca. 1450) about the defence of the Korean Kuju fortress (1231) against Mongols. There is a "tie ya" (Chinese prononsiation of Korean "chul ek") projectiles used by defenders to burn Mongolian siege machines. Sergey A. Shkolyar & S. Turnbull says there were "molten iron bomb".

Unfortunately, both of them were wrong - the melting point of Fe is 1539*C. It is impossible to act as shown upon the famous picture in S. Turnbull book "Siegekraft of Far East", were the episode of Kuju defence is shown.

I spent a lot of time to solve the problem. Nowadays I can stand for the meaning of "tie ya" as "black liquid". It means the special liquid of black colour, intended to burn wooden constructions.

Some researches gave me material that Chiniese used so called "jin zhi" too. As "zhi" = "ya" as an hyerogliph which means "liquid", "tie" & "jin" mean "black" and "yellow" correspondingly.

Unfortunately, I can not detect the exact composition of these ignition liquids as I feel the lack of information.

Could anybody give me passages from original Chinese medieval texts which mentions the usage of such bombs? I know that there is a passage from "Song shi" regarding the Mongol invasion and fortress battles of 1270-s. But I have no originals of these passages.

Your kind assistance would be highly appreciated.

Best regards,

Alexey.

i have a book at home that might have a passage on the information you are looking for. when i return home, i shall find it and try to translate it for you



in the mean time, here is a picture of excavated Chinese made grenades

Those are probably thundercrash bombs (zhentianlei), which were exploding grenades filled with gunpowder rather than incendiary bombs filled with molten material.

It is impossible to fill a bomb with a molten metall due to the physical reasons. F metall could not be molten and then poured into the vessel and then used as a bomb as the metall would harden and become a singl hot piece of iron/copper etc.

Even the size of bombs drawn in S. Turnbull's book suggests that the weight of them is much more than 100 kgs with the temperature more than 1500*C!

Frankly speaking the old Far Eastern technology used in X-XV centuries did not assume the unbreakable process of melting. The iron did not become the liquid at all. Only the high enough temperature of the process allowed the carbon to be burnt from the iron. The process repeated several times ("Muye dobo dongji" states that it could be repeated up to 100 times) to get the steel with optimal percentage of carbon to make hardware, weapon etc.

The main idea of my posting is to find the evidences in Chinese of using these "jin zhi" & "tie ya" bombs in the battles of 1270-s to recontruct the ingredients of the "yellow juice" and "black liquid".

Best regards,

Alexey.

In the book you mentioned, Siege Weapons of the Far East (I) by Stephen Turnbull, he states that it was the high phosphorus content of Chinese cast iron that gave it it's low melting point. I'm no chemistry expert but this would seem that they were not melting Fe but rather an alloy of Fe which could therefore be lower than 1539C.

The black liquid mentioned might be a totally different thing. It was possibly naphtha. They were filled into ceramic balls and flung via trebuchets to explode on impact.

Frankly speaking S. Turnbull is not a specialist in chemistry too and he says something unbelievable. If we have some phosphorus (more than several per cents) in the iron we have not iron but phosphate. And we need about 1100*C to melt phosphate!

So to investigate the matter I inquired MISIS (Moscow Research Institute for Steel and Alloys) - the leading research organization in Russia in this sphere. They even analyzed cast iron artefacts exavated in Kharakhortum (Mongolia). I was told that it is impossible if you have no modern technology of unbreakable iron melting process. And it is impossible to get the molten iron as a liquid for a time exceed several seconds as the iron being poured out becames extremely hot solid iron lump. Nobody can not even touch it but to come up closer than several meters.

So you cant not pour metal (esp. iron) onto enemies and you can not keep it in liquid form for a reasonable time. Proved by professionals!

Regarding the "black liquid' - it is not naphta. The hyeroglyph "tie" has extra meaning "black". So the liquid has the black colour. But the liquid should be prepared especially. And there is no natural naphta in Northern Korea.

Regarding the "yellow juice" - the matter is similar to the aforementioned.

Probably these liquids were prepared from materials available in the medieval towns and has the proper color depending upon the ingredients available.

Both liquids should be prepared first, than warmed in a metal bowl and pouured into relatively small clay vessels wrapped into fabrics soaked with water. Then you should load a trebuchet and wait for a first drum signal to prod the fabric with a hot iron rod to flame the vapours of the liquid (I think the liquid prodused a lot of vapour being warmed) and then to throw the flamed projectile according to the second drum signal.

Song era (960-1279) authors said that it was a real magic show when these projectiles were fired in nigth time as they were like flying dragons with flame tails. And it was double effective if these projectiles were fired together with gunpowder-filled bombs. Enemy soldiers and horses were striken by horror and bombs destroyed completely even the whole detachements.

So you can evaluate the info from S. Turnbull really.

Best regards,

Alexey.

Ah, sounds like you've done a lot of indepth research on them. Stephen Turnbull's books as pointed out in various threads in this forum many times, is not necessarily accurate. This might prove to be just another such case then!

Let me render a passage of my translation from Chinese to Russian into English:

Монголы нагрузили возы сеном и дровами и, придвинувшись, атаковали. Кёнсон, растопив «черную жидкость», из передвижных камнеметов излил [ее] и зажег это сено. Монголы бежали. Снова сделали передвижные башни и винеи, обтянули их шкурами быков изнанкой наружу, спрятали внутри воинов и подошли к слабому основанию крепостной [стены. Там] стали делать подкоп. Со пробил [отверстие в стене] крепости [и] вылил «черную жидкость». Так сжег передвижные башни и обрушил подкоп. Монголы [потеряли] задавленными более 30 человек.

The passage is taken from the famous Korean Chronique "Tongguk Byunggam" (ca. 1450).

So, in English language it will sound something like that:
"Mongols loaded carts with hay and firewood and reached the wall to attack. Gyungsung (the Korean general in charge of Kuju fortress defence - A.M.) melted the "tie ya" (or "black liquid", as I think - A.M.) and poured it out using the "paoche" (movable traction trebuchet - A.M.). The hay was flamed and Mongols fled. Then they made helipoles (movable siege towers - A.M.) and vineas covered with the newly flayed ox-hides turn inside out, hid the warriors inside and attacked again. They reached the weak basement of the fortress wall and began to dig. So (the Governor of the province - A.M.) ordered to drill a hole in the wall and poured out the "tie ya". So the helipoles and vineas were burnt and the sap was demolished. Mongol's losses reached up to 30 soldiers supressed to death".

So everybody can evaluate the situation. According to the Ming era documents it takes more than 6 hours to melt ore up to the bloom (not to the liquid condition).

Best regards,

Alexey

yun, i know those are thundercrash bombs. i didn't imply that they were molten iron bombs

i merely use the opportunity to post the pictures up

which is why i said "in the mean time"

Why use molten metal when you can hurl Molotov Style bombs filled with flammable liquid at the enemy using ancient catapults?

my guess-
burning substance was used

but called 'molten iron bomb' because it is an iron bomb that explodes with molten substances.
someone could mistake it for molten iron.

The "moulten iron" bombs were probaby fillled with Naptha/tar/pertrol based substance (are there tar pits or similar in that part of Korea?) and mixed with some ingnition aiding chemical (phosphorus or sulphate based sustaces normally). Such liquids are dark and smooth surfaced (high surface tension) so look like molten metal. Similar weapons were widely used throughout the Arab world any by the Byzantines in Europe (napth based weapons are mentioned in sieges as far back as 850BCE in the Middle East). 9th c Islamic armies often included units of special naptha troops amongst the infantry with protective clothing, special slings to throw small pots in normal battles etc... Mongol armies in the campaings against Khwarizam included contingents of them as well.

nb. Turnbill has written some good books on Samurai but a lot of his other works include errors, some of which are very odd. (I suspect that he uses a lot of secondary sources of dubious accuracy).

rgds.
Tom..

Alloys have lower melting points than the pure metal itself. Also from what I've been reading, alloys usually don't have a clear distinctive melting point. Instead, they have a melting range in which the material is a mixture of solid and liquid phases. The temperature at which melting begins is called the solidus, and that at which melting is complete is called the liquidus.

So it is still possible for them to have used a mixture that was an alloy of iron and was heated to just beyong it's solidus point to be a slag-like molten morrass that would splatter on impact.

*shrug*

I'm still trying to search the boiling points of all the commonly known alloys of iron to maybe find one low enough for ancient furnaces to reach.

The only thing I can think of that can come remotely close to molten iron bomb is some sort of Napalm like material.

It's hard to believe that anyone even today can keep iron molten long enough to shot it. I know, it's my job.

I consulted with my friend who is researching some mettalurgical processes in the Technological Institute named after Bauman in Moscow (he is a specialist of metalwork, especially melting of iron). And he toldme the lowest temperature to melt iron in alloys should reach at least 1100*C. So t is impossible to melt iron, fill bombs and shoot hoping to hit an enemy with the drops of molten iron.

I think, that Tom says the best variant for the chemical ingeredients for that "blackk liquid" except for the oil - there are no oil pits in that part of Korea.

Best regards,

Alexey.

Forget Iron.

The point I was trying to make is not to melt iron at all but to melt and fill the bomb with an alloy of iron that (I don't know really) may be low enough. I have been searching for a ferroalloy with a low melting point and there initially seemed like there were some possibilities but so far it's been drawing blanks though. Besides, you don't need to melt a an alloy to liquid to get splatter. A semi-liquid state is already sufficient to splatter on impact and you can get a semi-liquid state at lower temperatures in ferroalloys which don't have the distinctive change of phase seen in a pure metal.

Further to this, someone I'm in correspondence with made a very good point about molten iron bombs. He reproduces ancient weaponry for films. He said that there wouldn't be a need to melt, then pour the metal into canisters for catapulting. One could simply make round crucibles of ceramic filled with the metal, heat it in a furnace and fling the whole shebang, crucible, metal and all. The metal doesn't even need to be melted, just semi-liquid slag, sufficient to splatter when the ceramic crucible shatters on impact.

(yes I know this post is old)

Maybe the term "molten iron" was just being used as a metaphor. Just like "thundercrash bombs" has nothing to do with thunder. Quite often Chinese writing use metaphors that arnt literal in meaning.

It could just as well be hollow iron balls filled with molten lead or some flamible pitch like substance.
I know in Europe "hot shot" iron balls were used at one time. They were simply iron balls heated on charcoal and shot from cannons to cause fire (or set to off their gun powder supplies) in your opponents territory or wooden ships.

That was the theory given by the History Channel's program on warships, correct?

Could be. I find it interesting that the term was "Iron Juice" in the manuscript though--it does seem to imply something a lot more free flowing than the hot shot catapult round that the History Channel thought of. In any case, I wonder if anyone here has something to say about that?

This is something else. Its regarding the using of "molten iron balls".

The History Channel thing was in regards to "thundercrash bombs" found in ship recks off teh cost of Japan.
The History Channel thing was not a theory. It was evidence that such devices existed.

I recently watched an episode of "Future Weapons" that detailed a bomb that utilized molten copper slag as a weapon. The apply named "Krakatoa" looks like a black can turned on its side. The open end is packed with C-4 explosive, which is then capped with a lid. The other end is an innocent looking inverted cone-shaped (<) copper plate. When the C-4 is detonated, the copper plate melts, sending a molten bullet down range to penetrate an inch of steel plate armor from up to 25 yards! Check it out:

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/182023.html

These weapons sound similar.

No, what you are thinking is completely different from what I am. We must be talking of different episodes.

The History Channel recently aired one called "Chinese Super Ships" in which they talked about the weapons of the Song Navy. Their recreation of the "Tie Zhi" "Iron Juice" rounds was simply a red hot ball of iron. I am not referring to the explosive grenades found off of Japan, which I know existed.

YZB, thats the episode I was talking about. Richard and I discussed this use of "red hot" iron balls prior to the filming. Quite amazing really since he only took 1 week to build and setup the xuanfeng for the shot. He thinks the "molten" (slag) iron in ceramic crucibles is definitely do-able.