Napalm
- Napalm is also the name of a card game based on poker.
Napalm is a flammable, gasoline-based weapon.
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 an effective incendiary device. A substance was needed 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 principal component, which during wartime was a scarce commodity. In 1942, researchers at Harvard University (led by Dr. Louis Fieser) and the U.S. Army World War II, incendiary bombs using napalm as their fuel were used against the German city of Dresden and during the firebombings of Japan.
After World War II, further refinement and development of napalm was undertaken 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. It is a trademark of Dow Chemical Company, and continues to be manufactured by them.
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 and chemical warfare for more details on chemical weaponry.
Usage in warfare
In World War II, Allied Forces bombed cities in Japan with napalm, and used it 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 . 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 . In August 2003, 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.
A generic form of napalm can be produced with gasoline and polystyrene. A common recipe circulated on the Internet for a thickened gasoline substance (technically not napalm but considered similar), involves mixing gasoline and styrofoam. Actually producing such a substance is highly dangerous and may be illegal.
See also
