How did Smaug (or any other firedrake) produce their flames?

[Ent]

Did you ask, for example, Sir Thomas Malory
the same question

Dear Sir Cat in a Coat: Being what you are, I must ask...
Given you're e-Speaking to the Human Animal, and your question assumes a certain logic and consistency exists with them...
is your question logical and consistent?
Ent thinks the answer is self-evident. 😁

 

[Aldarion]

It has something of the illogical nature of rockets in science fiction: where are the bloody fuel tanks on them??? A Saturn-5 (the moon rocket) was perhaps 90 percent fuel tank. So how do the firedrakes fuel their fire?

Magic? Balrogs also produce fire.

Flame-throwers "premiered" in WW I, if I read John Garth's 2003 "Tolkien and the Great War" correctly (The Byzantine Empire may have used them over 1,000 years earlier ...).

Not could. Did.

Though I doubt that dragons have naphtha* in their bellies...

* How Byzantines called petroleum or crude oil.

 

[Áramandë Amaniel]

Though I doubt that dragons have naphtha* in their bellies...

I would also highly doubt such...it seems only too unlikely.

 

[Olorgando]

Magic? Balrogs also produce fire.

Not could. Did.

Though I doubt that dragons have naphtha* in their bellies...

* How Byzantines called petroleum or crude oil.

Ah, that would be the "Greek fire" used by - among others? - the Byzantine navy, as per memories rattling around the dimmer recesses of my "data storage"? Ships would have much larger tank capacities than any land-based transportation of the time. And defensive use from city / fortress walls is also likely.

But liquid fuels (ethanol from bacterial fermentation, as mentioned here, had come to my mind) basically only shifts the problem's focus to "tank capacity", at least for flying dragons. Glaurung could have been a huge blob due to having a large capacity of this sort. But JRRT's own paintings, specifically of Smaug, show him as being quite "worm-like", not to say long and skinny. Where is his fuel tank? 🤔

 

[Eljorahir]

From the “Book of Mislaid Scribblings”:

‘After the fall of Smaug and the other fateful events of that time, the Dwarves of The Mountain set about the burdensome task of routing out the filth and defilement left behind by the Old Wyrm. After the treasures were ordered and counted, the living quarters were scrubbed and made clean, a chamber deep in the mountain was soon discovered: a dark lake of foul smelling fuel. What processes of fell fermentation or dark alchemy did the dragon draw upon to generate such a lode? No tale tells. But, it was clear that the secret source of Smaug’s refuelings had been found.’

 

[Elbereth Vala Varda]

That's terrible! 😂🤣

 

[Áramandë Amaniel]

Ai, indeed 'tis a place I would ne'er venture into, o'er my fallen hröa and fëa...

 

[Olorgando]

From the “Book of Mislaid Scribblings”:

‘After the fall of Smaug and the other fateful events of that time, the Dwarves of The Mountain set about the burdensome task of routing out the filth and defilement left behind by the Old Wyrm. After the treasures were ordered and counted, the living quarters were scrubbed and made clean, a chamber deep in the mountain was soon discovered: a dark lake of foul smelling fuel. What processes of fell fermentation or dark alchemy did the dragon draw upon to generate such a lode? No tale tells. But, it was clear that the secret source of Smaug’s refuelings had been found.’

Resurrected admittedly dim memories of a couple of fraternities from my US college days back in the early mid-1970's ... 🥴

 

[Eljorahir]

Resurrected admittedly dim memories of a couple of fraternities from my US college days back in the early mid-1970's ... 🥴

What about my post sparked these memories? Did the frat houses also contain foul-smelling chambers deep within?

 

[Elthir]

What about my post sparked these memories?

Pun intended?

 

[Eljorahir]

Pun intended?

Nope. Just a punny coincidence.

That's terrible! 😂🤣

You think that's terrible? There's an addendum to The Scribblings:

And for years uncounted ever after, the dwarf-wives of Erebor (when their husbands fell behind in their personal hygiene regimen) were wont to render the admonishment: 'For Aule's sake! You're beginning to smell of ripe old Smaug fuel. Take a bath or sleep outside, if the birds of the mountainside will tolerate your stench!'

 

[Olorgando]

What about my post sparked these memories? Did the frat houses also contain foul-smelling chambers deep within?

Have you ever been in a beer pong cellar when it gets close to Saturday midnight? 😬🥶🤢🥴
I can imagine next day AM is not much fun, either, when the spilled stuff has dried (and the nature of the game inevitably leads to much spillage), but I was mostly still sleeping then, as must have been the vast majority of my opponents. 😴😴😴

 

[Amon Rudh]

This article suggest an apparently plausible theory. There seem to be lots online.

 

[Ent]

I'm so thankful the Great Halls of Speculation are being rebuilt.. 😁

 

[Deimos]

"How did Smaug (or any other firedrake) produce its flames?"

Methane (could be from either end...) 😄

 

[Eljorahir]

While rereading The Fall of Gondolin (The Original Tale) last night I came upon this. As the city is coming close to its downfall...

"Now then the plan that they made was to hold what they had won, while those serpents of bronze and with great feet for trampling climbed slowly over those of iron, and reaching the walls there opened a breach wherethrough the Balrogs might ride upon the dragons of flame: yet they knew this must be done with speed for the heats of those drakes lasted not for ever, and might only be plenished from the wells of fire that Melko had made in the fastness of his own land."

Off-topic, but a few pages later Tuor makes good use of his axe:

"...but Tuor hewed at a foot of the creature so that flame spouted forth, and that serpent screamed,..."

I love the imagery of flame spouting from the wounded foot of the dragon.
Apparently, its entire body is full of fire!🔥🔥🔥

 

[Olorgando]

..., while those serpents of bronze and with great feet for trampling climbed slowly over those of iron, ...

Looks like another case of early writing seriously in need of revision.
I guess metallurgy was not something JRRT had delved into all too deeply. Textbooks will tell you at which temperatures metals (or alloys like bronze) will melt, but they lose their structural integrity a lot earlier. Think of a blacksmith heating iron in a forge. Not to the point of melting (that would be casting), but enough so the blacksmith can form it with the hammer, which wouldn't work with cold iron. Get the temperature too high, and those "serpents" would collapse into shapeless bags like those bean-filled things popular for party seating some decades ago ...

 

[Eljorahir]

the heats of those drakes lasted not for ever, and might only be plenished from the wells of fire that Melko had made in the fastness of his own land."

I wonder if this is the only place where Tolkien "explained" how a dragon refuels.

Granted, it's early writing, and maybe not addressed again, or thoroughly enough to satisfy.

I could be mistaken, but I think this part of the sentence is referring to a dragon and not one of the mechanical serpents.

 

[hamstar]

When Feanor died, it was said that the intensity of his spirit was so strong, his body burned itself into ash. If powerful beings are like this in general (for example, Balrogs always seem to be a bit... candescent), maybe dragon fire is literally a projection of their spirit in an externalized, weaponized form (i.e. basically magic)?

That would explain why it "might only be plenished from the wells of fire that Melko had made in the fastness of his own land."; the creator of the dragons literally has to expend spirit energy to re-up their fuel. This might also be why it was suggested as a possible way to destroy a ring of power, considering spirit energy, magical artifacts, holy light, and the Flame Imperishable might each be of the some composition.

 

[Olorgando]

I could be mistaken, but I think this part of the sentence is referring to a dragon and not one of the mechanical serpents.

My guess is rather that "drake" is synonymous with "serpent" earlier - the bronze and iron ones. "Worm" is another term JRRT uses elsewhere in his writing. And "plenished" kind of sounds like "fill 'er up" to me, a vehicle rather than a creature.

And as for Smaug, he certainly he no longer had access to Melko's wells of fire in Angband (Melko being a giveaway for early writing), which had been doused in the drowning of Beleriand (chalk one up for Ulmo, I guess). Would be an awfully long round trip from Erebor to Angband and back, anyway.