The limited flight path experiments investigate the effect of reactor subcompartment flight path length on direct containment heating (DCH) in a severe reactor accident. The test series consists of eight experiments with nominal flight paths of 1, 2, or 8 m. A thermitically generated mixture of iron, chromium, and alumina simulates the corium melt of a severe accident in a light water reactor. After thermite ignition, superheated steam forcibly ejects the molten debris into a 1:10 linear scale model of either the Surry or Zion reactor cavity. The blowdown steam entrains the molten debris and disperses it into a 103-m3 containment model. The vessel pressure, gas temperature, debris temperature, hydrogen produced by steam/metal reactions, debris velocity, mass dispersed into the Surtsey vessel, and debris particle size are measured for each experiment. The measured peak pressure for each experiment is normalized by the total amount of energy introduced into the Surtsey vessel and increases with lengthened flight path. The debris temperature at the cavity exit is ∼2320 K. Gas grab samples indicate that steam in the cavity reacts rapidly to form hydrogen, so the driving gas is a mixture of steam and hydrogen. In these experiments, ∼70% of the steam driving gas is converted to hydrogen. These experiments indicate that the bulk of DCH interactions occur below the subcompartment structure, not in the upper dome of Surtsey. The effect of deentrainment by reactor subcompartments may significantly reduce the peak containment load in a severe reactor accident.