Dan, he was referencing the weak and very lame flamethrowers that you see in the "Alien" movie series. Which is why I was laughing so hard. They were hastily thrown together with a small pressurized ( propane for the actors safety ) fuel canisters and had the range of maybe...15-20 ft or so? Basically as a real life weapon, such a unit is totally ineffective to say the least and would be more a hazard to anyone carrying it than the enemy.
WW2 units and todays modern REAL flamethrowers could and will incinerate a hostile as far away as 200 ft or even a bit more. Which is why I said, that the in-game unit could use a small bit of tweaking...but perhaps that would throw off game balance?
Besides, the use of a "flamer", is hazardous to a soldier...it's a bit HEAVY, and also makes the soldier have to get fairly close to a target...maximizing his / her chance of taking hostile fire.
Overall, the best use of flamethrowers IRL is to mount them on vehicles ( weight ), and in- game they would be really great on UGV's if the effective range was "increased" to something viable.