heating kits

Nawt · Post by **Nawt** » Wed Aug 01, 2007 1:36 pm

Thank you anyway Housil.

If I'll light one up I'll let you know how long they last. My guess is around four hours.

Bye, Nawt.

mreheater72 · Post by **mreheater72** » Sat Nov 17, 2007 4:43 am

Hi guys,

yesterday I cleaned up my computer and found these two photos:

These two metal stripes can be plugged together and be used as a heating device for MCI-cans.

Did anyone of you have a better photo of the paper wrapper, so that the text is readable?

If anyone has this device for sale or some further information (how old this device could be), please tell me, I´m very interested!

Thanks mreheater72

dirtbag · Post by **dirtbag** » Sat Nov 17, 2007 4:47 am

We just made our own 'stoves' out of another can...
http://www.homestead.com/gruntfixer/files/crats.html
Simple !

Treesuit · Post by **Treesuit** » Sun Nov 18, 2007 3:35 pm

mreheater72,
Hello, maybe I can provide some background on this. Not to long ago a well known seller was selling two of these items on ebay. Both went for a lot of money

I know becuase I put bids in for both of them and got beat out. According to the sellers description was that Natick Laboratory wanted to design a field expeident cooking stove that the Special Forces guys could use in the field and maybe the "grunts" as well.
What they came up with was this and it proved to be successful but unfortunately there was something wrong with mass production and it was never fully put out to everyone. Kind of a "hit an miss" thing. The seller also mentioned a blurb about lack of funding.
But like I mentioned it was a couple of months ago and I don't exactly remember what was written. Though the seller is very well known, reputable and I have bought from him before. He pops up on ebay from time to time with really cool hard to find neat stuff.
Hope this helps.

Treesuit · Post by **Treesuit** » Sun Nov 18, 2007 3:37 pm

mreheater72,
Oh I almost forgot if you look closely at the paper wrapper just under the caption it reads "US Army Special Warfare Laboratory". So that would kind of hint towards somethng being developed for the SF guys.

mreheater72 · Post by **mreheater72** » Mon Nov 19, 2007 7:41 am

Treesuit wrote:mreheater72,
Hello, maybe I can provide some background on this. Not to long ago a well known seller was selling two of these items on ebay. Both went for a lot of money I know becuase I put bids in for both of them and got beat out. According to the sellers description was that Natick Laboratory wanted to design a field expeident cooking stove that the Special Forces guys could use in the field and maybe the "grunts" as well.
What they came up with was this and it proved to be successful but unfortunately there was something wrong with mass production and it was never fully put out to everyone. Kind of a "hit an miss" thing. The seller also mentioned a blurb about lack of funding.
But like I mentioned it was a couple of months ago and I don't exactly remember what was written. Though the seller is very well known, reputable and I have bought from him before. He pops up on ebay from time to time with really cool hard to find neat stuff.
Hope this helps.

Hi Treesuit,

thanks for the very interesting information!

I don’t know the source of my photos, perhaps I found them sometimes by the eBay seller you mentioned. As I understand right, it’s very hard to get these devices, because it wasn’t produced in great amounts. Do you know the year when it was offered the first time?

So long mreheater72

Treesuit · Post by **Treesuit** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 1:48 am

mreheater72,
I'm not sure of the date myself. I vaguely remember something about mid war time frame. Around 1966-68 was the testing period and production phase. As I mentioned before it was designed by the US Army Special Warfare Laboratory and not by some outside contractor for Natick Labs, so there may have been some actual useful thought behind this. As I sit here an write I can help thinking it might have caught on like the famous P-38 can opener.

C-rats · Post by **C-rats** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 7:03 pm

A couple of years ago I was talking with two co-workers and our conversation turned to lamenting about the time we had spent serving in the Army. They both had been in the Infantry as well and we naturally got around to discussing the finer points of Field Dining, A La C Ration. They described a method they had both used to heat up the entree can which surprised me as I had never seen it done (or even heard about for that matter).

Evidently they would remove all the cans from the (individual) C Ration, puncture the entree can with a single poke from their P38 at the 12, 3, 6, & 9 O`clock positions, and then place the entree upright back in to the (empty) C rat box. They would then light the cardboard can separation strip on fire and place it back inside the box (just layed on top of the entree can) and then would loosely close the C rat box lid.

They claimed that with the lid closed the fire would burn more slowly and it would of course spread to, and consume, the intire box. Supposedly when the cardboard box had been fully consumed by the fire the entree was nice and warm.

Has anyone else ever done this or seen it done? Four years in the Infantry and I never had ---- normally everyone used trioxane or hexamine bars/tabs and either balanced the opened ration can or their canteen cup on small rocks and placed the heat tabs under them (we would partialy fill the canteen cup with water to just boil the sealed entree can until hot). Those of us with either "wing stoves" or Esbit "cookers" were looked upon as being High Class Diners!

When I finally got my hands on a M1955 (or was it M1956?) Montain Stove with it's aluminum cooking pot(s) container, I thought I had died and went to Infantry Heaven!

Damn, those were the times......

C-rats

dirtbag · Post by **dirtbag** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 8:57 pm

Three rocks and a pinch of C-4, fastest cup of coffee in the world !
Those little heat tabs in the early c-rats were pathetic, but they worked very well as gopher killers... Lite and drop it in the hole, cover with a piece of shingle. et voila, no more gopher !!!
The new purple tri-ox is after my time...

Treesuit · Post by **Treesuit** » Thu Nov 22, 2007 5:08 pm

C-Rats,
Hey I have a similar story though it's not military related. But it is similar to what were talking about here. A long time ago when I was working as a seasonal firefighter for the US Forest Service, I ran into some "old timers" who always remember the surplus of C-rations being in there fire caches and having to consume a few on the fireline during the summer. They mentioned something similar to your story about punching some holes in the cans and then either lighting the cardboard box on fire or sticking the cans in a small camp fire to heat them up. Of course a lot of those guys also used a lot of tabasco sauce too.

I guess it would have been better than the 70's version "gag bags" i.e. boil in the bag types of entree's. When I came in they were still trying to phase them out and weren't very good. I estimated that they were some contractors idea of cost effective eating.