Re: AW RCR123 blew out P1D
The protection circuits on AW cells are at the negative terminal, which will heat up much more slowly than the positive terminal, which is much closer to the LED. The separator is on the positive terminal, as I recall. Now, it does seem unlikely that even in direct-drive operation the battery would heat up so fast as to cause a catastrophic failure, but if this light had been overdriven repeatedly for a couple of years, it's entirely possible that the regulator circuit failed completely and shorted-out the battery -- or that something was wet inside, and created a conduction path across the back of the head.. That definitely would've caused the battery to heat up extremely quickly. From what I've seen, AW RCR123s can output ~16A when fully-charged, even after sitting around for a couple of days. That's enough to pop a household circuit breaker, for reference.
Then again, maybe he just dropped the battery on the floor before installing it, and it shorted-out internally.