|
Napalm Napalm is simply gelled gasoline. It is cloudy with in apparent and extremely sticky. Once ignited it burns with an intense, sooty flame. It was invented in 1942 by Louis F. Fieser. After having the natural rubber supply cut off from the US during W.W.II, Fieser and his group had to come up with another method to gel gasoline. After much trial and error and a bit of luck they decided to try metal soaps. The best combination of metal soaps that they found were "aluminum palmitate" and aluminum naphthenate. This is where napalm originally got it's name - from NAphthenate and PALMitate.(42)
32,215 tons of this formulation (also know as Napalm A) was used in Korea. When the Vietnam conflict came around a new formulation had been devised. Napalm B consisted of 50% polystyrene, 25% benzene, and 25% gasoline.(14) This new formulation was able to tolerate temperatures well above 150°F (effective in the tropics) and as low as -40°F (bomb shelters, cold weather environments) which made it particularly suitable for use in Vietnam.(43). During the Vietnam conflict a lot of naplam was used. In 1963 - 2181 tons of napalm was used. In `64 it was 1777 tons. `65 it skyrocketed to 17659 tons. An in 1966 alone an amazing 54670 tons of napalm was used. This means that in 1966 alone 300 million lbs of polystyrene was used to make napalm.
|
