Napalm

Napalm is a gasoline-based flammable substance used in war.

(Napalm is also the name of a card game based on poker.)

Table of contents

1 Background
2 Usage in Warfare
3 How To Make "Napalm":

Background

During World War I both the Allies and Germany used gasoline as a weapon in flamethrowers but gasoline burns itself too quickly to be effective as an incendiary device. What was needed was a substance which would produce a powerful and persistent flame but would not consume itself too quickly.

Though researchers had found ways to make jellied gasoline earlier, many of them required rubber as a principle component, which during wartime was an ever more scarce commodity. In 1942, researchers at Harvard University and the U.S Army Chemical Warfare Service found a rubber-less solution: mixing an aluminum soap powder of naphthene and palmitate (napthenic and palmitic acids) with gasoline resulted in a substance which was highly flammable yet was slow burning. In World War II incendiary bombs using napalm as their fuel were used against the German city of Dresden and during in the infamous firebombings of Japan.

After World War II, further refinement and development of napalm was undertook by the government and its affiliated laboratories. Modern "napalm" contains neither napthenic nor palmitic acids (despite the name), but often uses a bevy of other chemicals to stablize the gasoline base.

See Bombing of Tokyo in World War II and Bombing of Dresden in World War II for more information on the usage of napalm in the second World War.

Usage in Warfare

Napalm bombing was used during World War II by the Allied Forces against cities in Japan and in bombs and flamethrowers in Germany. It was used by United Nations forces in Korea, and later by the United States during the Vietnam War.

The use of napalm and other incendiaries against civilian populations was banned by a United Nations convention in 1980 [1]. The United States didn't sign the agreement but claimed to have destroyed its arsenal in 2001.

The United States has reportedly been using napalm in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. [1] In August 03 the Pentagon stopped denying the charge, admitting it did use "Mark 77 firebombs".

"We napalmed both those [bridge] approaches," said Colonel James Alles, commander of Marine Air Group 11. "Unfortunately there were people there ... you could see them in the [cockpit] video. They were Iraqi soldiers. It's no great way to die. The generals love napalm. It has a big psychological effect."

These bombs contain a substance "remarkably similar" to napalm. This substance is made with kerosene and polystyrene. [1]

A generic form of napalm can be produced with gasoline and polystyrene.

How To Make "Napalm":

A common recipe circulated on the internet for a thickened gasoline substance (technically not napalm but considered similar) is the following:

Take 1 part gasoline to 40 parts styrofoam and put the styrofoam into the gasoline slowly. It will seem like the gasoline is just eating the styrofoam, but after some time, you will start to notice a sticky mixture start to develop, this is the napalm... Add more styrofoam to make it a thicker mixture. (NOTE: More styrofoam makes it take longer to ignite, but makes it burn for longer.)

Actually producing such a substance is highly dangerous and likely illegal.

See also : Agent Orange