Torpedo juice: Legendary, illegal WWII liquor drunk in Alaska and the world
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I'm not sure why people think this I'd guess its from burning toast it becomes charcoal and that will work to an extent. ( the filter story is also told about toast)
Experiment here - https://youtu.be/_A8AErdGz20?t=248
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.
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.
Thank you for the details. I heard about Russian women hiding their perfumes for men not to find (and drink) them...
Like of someone tells you you tie your shoes in the wrong way you become a child mentally or something.
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.
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.
This is very much the same reason I'm not going back now. It saddens me that I may never step foot there again.
I've got a pretty vivid memory of seeing the 'recruiters' grabbing an amputee out of a wheelchair in broad daylight and shoving him in the back of the van along with the several other men they already had in there.
Note, that my emphasis is on the system that make people behave strange.
It is somewhat ironic too, since being a soldier exposes you to so many practical and different problems that are so different each time that there is no room to be actually stupid.
And I am not talking about combat, but mundane stuff like, tying a rope between two trees to hang wet cloths on. In normal life people that would fail at stuff like this can get routine and hide that they can't do such tasks without messing up, but soldiers do so much different things that they don't get routine and if you are a bit off you are exposed.
If you are the kinda guy that can tie ropes between trees to dry cloths on, the military structure makes you behave like you would have been "stupid" in many situation that only is a problem because you lack power.
So Soviet or American sailors, that wanted booze but had no way to get it, solved it in the way they could. In civilian life they could just not have put them self in the situation where they couldn't buy booze.
Hazing is maybe a big problem since you are locked in with some jocks you can't escape since the front gate is guarded by MP.
Simple as that. The limitations make you stupid.
Here's an excerpt from "Inside the Soviet Army in Afghanistan" by Alexander Alexiev (US Army document):
You cannot imagine what they drink. They will drink shaving lotions and cologne. That's good stuff. Then they will drink toothpaste. The best one is the Bulgarian Pomorin brand. They will simply squeeze four or five tubes in a jar, dilute it with water and drink it. They also drank truck antifreeze, glue, and brake fluid. The brake fluid they used to heat up and put some nails in it for some reason. I don't know why. They will also take shoe polish and smear it on a piece of bread and leave it in the sun until the alcohol separates from the shoe polish. Then you eat the bread and get drunk.
1. Be someplace very cold.
2. Find a steel crowbar or something similar (metal and long).
3. Stick it in a bucket.
4. Drip brake fluid onto the exposed end such that the liquid flows slowly along the surface into the bucket.
This supposedly filters out most of the chemicals as they freeze onto the cold metal surface, leaving the liquid in the bucket drinkable.
I would strongly advise against actually trying this for real, though.
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...
To be fair it’s hard to reconcile with them being paid relatively high wages due to manpower shortages (since they are generally reluctant to send conscripts into Ukraine).
Kinda, sorta? The global data is roughly "the more patriarchal a society is, the less women drink".
> Or are men somehow more susceptible?
That's also possible, but it's hard to suss out of the data, because the cultural aspects are so large. In some countries, alcohol use is like an order of magnitude higher for men than women, and in others it's roughly equal.
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.
I doubt that ethanol used in car and torpedo fuel will go through the same quality control than drinking alcohol.
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.
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.
> The terms cleanliness and hygiene are often used interchangeably, which can cause confusion. In general, hygiene refers to practices that prevent spread of disease-causing organisms. Cleaning processes (e.g., handwashing) remove infectious microbes as well as dirt and soil, and are thus often the means to achieve hygiene.
> Home hygiene pertains to the hygiene practices that prevent or minimize the spread of disease at home and other everyday settings such as social settings, public transport, the workplace, public places, and more. Hygiene in a variety of settings plays an important role in preventing the spread of infectious diseases.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene
It does seem like hygiene controls are going to be concerned exclusively with infectious disease, while cleanliness is going to prevent broader contamination of anything toxic.
Here, 'absolute ethanol' is typically 99%. No doubt H2O is a significant part of that last 1% but going on my experience with 95% EtOH I wouldn't be a bit surprised about it being benzene and it's likely there's other undesirable stuff as well.
BTW, over the years I've bought a lot of industrial grade 'absolute ethanol' which I use in woodworking as a solvent for shellac. 95% EtOH is unsatisfactory as the water in it often causes the shellac to turn a cloudy/milky colour.
I have to buy the 99% grade in 20-litre plastic containers as usually that's the smallest amount that's supplied. Moreover, it's much more expensive, at least double the price and on par with that of isopropanol.
Given its price and comparative rarity I doubt whether its consumption would be a signifiant problem. Anecdotally, the stuff I buy seems to have significantly more denatonium than the normal EtOH, quite some time after using it I've momentarily held my (dry) hand on my face near my mouth and the denatonium is almost overpowering. That's not the case with normal domestic EtOH (in the same situation denatonium is present but nowhere near as objectionable).
Clearly this grade should have denatonium added no matter where it's sold and I'm surprised that it's not readily available in the US. Moreover, there's no technical/chemical reason why denatonium shouldn't be added given that so little is need to be an effective bitterant. It seems to me the residual 1% 'impurities' would be much more relevant than the denatonium, even then, for most purposes, this 1% is already insignificant as far as the EtOH chemistry is concerned.
On the other hand as you note absolute ethanol as used as a reagent in precision experimentation (and in the pharmaceutical industry) would have to be devoid of denatonium. I'd add these grades usually come with a certified purity analysis/impurities percentage list together with the complying standard, BP grade, etc.
I'm unfamiliar with the regulations covering denaturants in the various countries but it seems to me the normal 99% grade with denatonium of the type I use is suitable for most purposes including most undergraduate lab chemistry (there's little point unnecessarily tempting students to imbibe).
Incidentally, when I was studying chemistry the denatonium option wasn't yet available so labs always had absolute EtOH available and the normal commercial denatured grade was roughly EtOH ~80%, MeO ~15%, pyridine ~5%.
I'm now curious as to how US-based woodworkers and painters manage using shellac if 99% denatured EtOH isn't readily available.
So if you are not very picky when it comes to drinks, it doesn't really matter if your ethanol has 10% of methanol.
Perhaps so, but is that a one-off shot/dosing or habitually (as an alcoholic)?
In my other post I pointed out that denatured ethanol sold as 'Methylated Spirits' used to have 15% methanol and 3% pyridine as denaturants and in practice this combination was considered highly toxic and that's why the denaturants were changed to nontoxic denatonium (ie 95% ethanol, 5% H2O and trace denatonium).
For Methylated Spirits the methanol/pyridine ratios were set deliberately to be toxic and the product was labeled 'POISON'.
Whether the pyridine added significantly to the toxicity I cannot say. Nor do I know why the ratios were set as they were. No doubt a check of how that standard was set and the death rate stats before and after the denatonium was added would tell the actual story.
That's usually true. Adding methanol to ethanol can be either deliberate or accidental. Where I am (Australia) methanol and pyridine used to be added to ethanol as a denaturant so it could be sold without liquor tax and it was sold as 'Methylated Spirits' and labeled 'POISON'. If I recall the amount of methanol was 15% and the pyridine was 3%. Methanol was set at 15% with the deliberate intention of making the 'spirits' toxic and the pyridine to make it foul tasting (and pyridine itself is also toxic). At those percentages both denaturants were similar enough to ethanol as not to interfere significantly with its primarily purposes—as a solvent, fuel, etc.
Nevertheless, that didn't deter diehard drinkers/alcoholics from consuming methylated spirits and the effects on their health were catastrophic—blindness and death.
Several decades ago both methanol and pyridine were removed and replaced with denatonium (aka Bitrex) as the denaturant, which is not toxic at the level necessary for its purpose. Nevertheless, the product is still sold as 'Methylated Spirits' with the fine print calling it 'ethanol solution 95%, UN 1170', and the warning changed from 'POISON' to 'CAUTION'. The logic behind the change being that it was 'safer'—read it cost the State less in medical expenses.
I think the UK has done something similar and no doubt a number of other countries have followed suit, except I believe the US makes ethanol harder to get and usually substitutes isopropanol/rubbing alcohol for domestic use (someone in the US please update me on the rules there).
Since the advent of denatonium as a denaturant, it seems to me there is no need to add methanol and I reckon it ought to be highly illegal to do so. If ethanol/methanol mixtures are needed for some purpose then they should be strictly labeled and denatonium a mandated additive.
What concerns me is the accidental addition of methanol to ethanol (to 'Methylated Spirits'). I use a lot of ethanol in the form of Methylated Spirits for cleaning and as a solvent as it's a much cheaper substitute for isopropanol and I've noticed occasionally that its odor is very different (once every 3 or 4 months on weekly purchases). In fact, I've noticed the odor of formaldehyde on more than one occasion (and that's not the only impurity I've detected by nose).
This tells me there's very little control on the distribution of industrial solvents (in this class that is). I'd suggest tanks/tankers, etc. aren't properly flushed when changing product and or such. If distribution equipment isn't being cleaned properly then people aren't being careful and worse could easily happen.
From my experience it seems to me it's still a very risky business to assume that 'industrial' ethanol is actually just that (95% ethanol, 5% H2O and trace denatonium). There's no way I'd ever risk drinking the stuff—that is assuming I could stand the taste of the excruciatingly bitter denatonium.
I'd be interested to know how other countries now handle the rules in regard to ethanol distribution.
Some quick notes about "it's just propaganda" with some "regulation is hard to do without tons of side effects" undercurrents:
1. When distilling you DO concentrate methanol but as a waste product. An unethical moonshiner could still sell this or cut it back into the main product (although the latter isn't usually a problem because of the concentration and the fact that ethanol is a treatment for methanol proving). You would definitely know if you were drinking straight methanol but you might not know in a cocktail (or might not care - lots of crazy stuff in these comments about drinking various dangerous liquids).
2. Other things went into the shine. A very common one was dynamite because nitroglycerin helps fermentation continue at low temperatures, like out in the woods where your secret still might have to be. Nitroglycerin can do all sorts of things to you - it is sometimes prescribed as a heart medicine.
3. Moonshining is, by definition, a criminal enterprise and things-you-might-not-like happen all the time just like with illegal drugs today. One common blindness cause wasn't actually methanol but antifreeze and other "engine gunk" because you could put your new, un-aged shine into things like car engines and it would come out the other side with the impression of being aged or in some way better.
So there is some fun-fact nuance on the "moonshine could make you go blind" lore! I like to respond to that with "yes, but probably not for the reason you think!"
> 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)
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
See, the early hard drives used in Soviet computers required a lot of manual maintenance, which included cleaning the heads with ethanol. They also topped out at ~5Mb.
In late 80s these were gradually replaced with imported Western hardware that offered more storage for less. In some places, the engineers in charge of servicing those things got creative and used such upgrades as an excuse to up their ethanol quota. After all, if a 5Mb HDD needs N ml of ethanol to service daily, it stands to reason that a 20Mb HDD needs N*4, right?
I wonder if this was by design ...
I think isopropyl alcohol is probably generally available/popular only because it is not drinkable.
Expect they would have been the same during the war era, hence engineering torpedos to run on a more widely available fuel.
Isopropyl alcohol needs to be synthesized from acetone, which itself is synthesized.
When was this supplanted by the cumene process?
EDIT: this process was developed from 1939-1945.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumene_process
https://shop.tarjomeplus.com/UploadFileEn/TPLUS_EN_2421.pdf
BTW, isopropyl alcohol is industrially produced from propylene, not acetone.
(Just looked it up on Wikipedia - I recall correctly)
I'm an ER physician. I have worked in a poison control center. I take care of the people that drink IPA. I work on the Navajo Native American reservation, where this isn't terribly uncommon.
I am not sure I would call that "drinkable", unless you just mean it will physically go down your gullet.
Nearly everything above is also true of ethanol.
Drinking too much water is also lethal.
I take care of plenty of patients that drink IPA. It is not uncommon in both people that think it will kill them and do it as a suicide attempt, as well as people that are desperate for a buzz but can't access ethanol (I work on the Navajo nation where ethanol is illegal and more difficult to obtain).
In general, these patients sober up and go home, just like patients that drink ethanol. Compared to ethanol, patients are much more intoxicated, take much longer to get sober, and are more likely to exhibit symptoms of gastritis or esophagitis. But there is nothing about caring for them that is categorically different than caring for a patient with a significant alcohol ingestion -- in both cases, it is dose dependent.
He told me stories of how they would make barges that would float off the side of the ship, where sailors would go to drink torpedo juice.
He claimed at the time it was only the “expired” kind that they would have to change out anyways.
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.
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).
Specifically, they didn't want to waste 1-10 torpedoes for testing, which maybe that can be defensible, but it became utterly indefensible when every single submarine came back from patrol with reports of "we launched a spread of 4 torps, 2 hit the hull of the enemy ship, zero detonations".
The lost value in un-sunk enemy shipping, the number of dead seaman that should have come back victorious, the number of subs that got sunk after an attack utterly failed, all were individually prices that dwarfed a single Mk14 torpedo, and together had a measurable impact on war performance.
All because the bureau of ordinance basically refused to hear any feedback.
Nearly every single component of the torpedo was unfit for service. The magnetic exploder didn't work. The contact detonator was nearly incapable of working because of the physics of torpedo impacts in a way that meant getting a perpendicular hit, which was considered optimal, actually was less likely to detonate. The depth keeping system was calibrated incorrectly, due to module integration mistakes, and ran 10 feet deeper than it was supposed to in some cases.
It's actually kind of common for US military procurement to produce a somewhat failed piece of equipment initially, but it usually gets modified and iterated on and improved to the point of being very respectable hardware in short order. The refusal of BuOrd to hear feedback is the real problem here. Their insane delays in fielding and responding to feedback cost real US lives. Once the torpedo was fixed up, the American sub fleet in the pacific ran roughshod over Japanese supply and utterly crippled their abilities to maintain control over the island chains.
The reason BuOrd gave for refusing to double check their work as these scathing reports came in? You see, the navy was struggling to produce enough torpedoes to meet requirements, so we can't waste a couple for testing. Instead, HUNDREDS of outright non-functioning torpedoes were sent to the bottom of the pacific, completely wasted, with almost no hope of actually working, because they were never tested.
The entire situation should be required reading for anyone in management, anywhere. Textbook case of penny smart, pound foolish.
/s