Sure; I should have been more clear. The context in which I'm reading about it is Jutland. I'm reading Keegan's
Price of Admiralty and he assumes a certain knowledge of terminology on the part of the reader. Part of his contention is that the British ships were more susceptible to flash. For example:
Quote:
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...British crews, in their determination to achieve the highest possible rates of fire in gunnery competitions, had removed anti-flash devices from the magazine trunks without realising that cordite flash in the turret labyrinth was the gravest danger to which battle exposed dreadnoughts.
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He also mentions that victims of the flash that occurred on H.M.S.
Lion were not burned. Clearly a battleship turret/magazine complex would be extremely vulnerable to fire, and if the protective doors to the magazines are open or missing, fire can reach the magazine and obliterate the ship; what I'm curious to know is how flash is different from a "normal" fire. Is it more lethal, perhaps, because it occurrs in a sealed environment? What are the things that trigger it? How does a battleship's turret help it spread? That sort of thing.