the History of Napalm

Napalm is not a single chemical rather it is a whole family of chemicals and when it is basically is a way of making gasoline into an effective weapon that will stick to anything and burn. There have been many different derivations of this over the years and probably the first one was dissolving raw rubber in gasoline or benzene. You can purchase the resulting napalm like material in your local stationery store as rubber cement. This was the first weapon to use mixture of gasoline and some other chemical to make the resulting compound sticky. Below.

During World War II the Allies were faced with a shortage of natural rubber and started casting about for some other chemical that would take its place. That chemical was palmatic acid a type of naturally produced wax that when mixed with gasoline imparted the desired features. Early in the war palmatic acid was distributed to the Gis who mixed it with gasoline thereby producing napalm. Later in the war napalm was purposely mixed in factories to produce napalm bombs they were used it extensively in the air war against Japan. It was with napalm bombs that Curtis LeMay burned out most of the cities in Japan including Tokyo. Napalm was extensively used in the later part of World War II in most theaters of operation, and continued in use throughout the Korean and Vietnamese wars. Weapons derived from napalm are still in use to this day wherever there is napalm there is conflict, and wherever there is conflict you will find napalm.

During the Vietnamese war Gis found a new way to produce a napalm like substitute called foo gas. This was a mixture of gasoline and the Styrofoam in which many of the weapons were packed. This is quite effective and was usually used as a make do weapon commonly loaded into 55 gallon drums that were set around the perimeter of fire bases. These were ignited whenever the enemy attacked. Foogas was made in the field by the soldiers rather than in a factory that was producing napalm bombs or other napalm-based weapons.

After the Vietnamese war the formula for napalm was once again changed and no longer used palmatic acid as the base to mix with gasoline. Dow Chemical came up with a different formula for napalm based on adding liquid styrene to gasoline. This created an even more effective weapon because it was not only stickier but hotter too.