To Blind Its Enemies, the U.S. Army Once Built a Giant Flashlight (Vietnam, 12-D batteries)

Link— To Blind Its Enemies, the U.S. Army Once Built a Giant Flashlight | by Joseph Trevithick | War Is Boring | Medium

EXCERPT: “Hence LWL’s 1968 prototype “ambush light.”

Really a giant lamp, the device produced a beam of light five degrees high and 40 degrees wide. The cone could completely light up a person 100 feet away. Powered by a dozen “D” batteries, the light would run non-stop for 15 minutes.

Troops could strap the whole setup to a tree or to the carrying case—which was a standard ammunition box. In the field, soldiers could daisy-chain multiple lights together, and turn the whole array on with the flip of a a single switch.”

HERE IS A SECOND (better) ARTICLE ON THE LIGHT— U.S. Army Once Built a Giant Flashlight to Blind Enemies | RealClearDefense

Cool find

Yeah, we have come a long way even since Surefires debuted. This was high technology once and now it is so obsolete that you would have to pay someone to dispose of it…

Nice find and great articles that you linked to.

A friend of mine once bought a bunch of surplus aerial photography flash bulbs. They were about the size of a basketball. They could easily dazzle your eyesight from over a mile away. Up close, cause permanent vision problems… and they were rather sensitive to static electricty… They were basically a glass sphere filled with magnesium/zirconium wool and high-pressure oxygen.

This is claimed to be a “photo flash bomb”.

Popular Mechanics Aug 1944

i had over 100 of these n the 70’s.
they looked to be filled with loosly crumpled foil.
once had the cops come by on the 4th because someone a mile away thought they were flashes from nukes!
wish i would have saved some but teens dont think about that.we lined a metal washtub with foil as a reflector and shield.
since i knew what a press 25 did i wanted no part of viewing these directly!

when I was a kid we used to make “flashbangs” from magnesium shavings and Potassium permanganate. boy did they flash,
but my favorite was 2 carbon rods from F cell, car battery, and a tin can. a diy carbon arc light.

minute run time?Makes me wonder what lights 40 years from now will be like ?

Oh, and if one went off in your hands (remember… static sensitive), you were not only blind, but no longer had hands. Fun stuff…

Always love reading these, thank you for sharing.

Now you have the FourSevens XM18 to do that hahaha it’s strobe mode is wild.