Posted: 3/11/2004 9:28:35 AM EDT
| Does the U.S. armed forces still utilize Napalm? |
|
A lot a anti-war activists protested that naphalm was an inhuman weapon, and partially because of that the USA stopped using it. Don't you remember the bro-ha-ha the govt created a few years back, when it wanted to railway a bunch of tank cars of that stuff to a special incenerator to be destroyed? The reason why the USA don't have that stuff in the arsenal is because it has been replaced by the deadlier cluster bomb. |
|
Quoted: A lot a anti-war activists protested that naphalm was an inhuman weapon, and partially because of that the USA stopped using it. Don't you remember the bro-ha-ha the govt created a few years back, when it wanted to railway a bunch of tank cars of that stuff to a special incenerator to be destroyed? The reason why the USA don't have that stuff in the arsenal is because it has been replaced by the deadlier cluster bomb. cluster munitions, nasty combinations of bomblets, delayed fused devices and minelets. some go boom when they hit the ground, some go boom minutes to days later and some don't go boom until you get close to them. emagine a building is hit with one and these little bomlets are scattered about. some detonate and damage the building and it catches fire. the fire fighters that are sent out to put out the fire are killed in the second wave of explosions from the delayed fused devices. paramedics are killed trying to get the fire fighter out. then the order is given to let the fire go out. for several days the area has little explosions and no one can get in to do any repairs. when everything "settles down" a repair crew goes in and trips a mine. it's a very demoralizing weapon. much worse than burning people. |
|
somewere I have the army manual on flame and smoke opperations. damn now i want to go read it agien. Anyone know were i can get PDF's of field manuals. thats Kinda sad we stopped using Napalm my uncle swears the stuff saved his ass a couple times when they dropped it on VC in Nam. |
|
There was somewhat of a media generated controversy during OIF regarding Napalm. The reporter asked the military spokesman guy if we were using Napalm. He said no. But then they had pictures of us using it. So WTF? The answer is this... Napalm stands for Napthenic Palmate. Naptha (lighter fluid?) + Palmitic acid = Napalm. Very toxic, and somewhat unstable. Lots of accidents using the stuff that hurt friendlies when mixing and arming aircracft with it. So then they came out with Napalm II. This was a mixture of hydrocarbons (gasoline, diesel, kerosene, etc) and some kind of detergent. Was just as nasty in use, without the toxic environmental effects, and much safer for our troops to handle. Under Comrade Clinton this stuff was all incinerated. It was, however, replaced, with a mixture that is based, I think, on Diesel. Maybe Kerosene. I don't remember exactly. It is safer still than Napalm II, less toxic to the envoronment, and just as effective when used. But it's not known as "Napalm", but rather as incenrary mixture XXX or somehting like that. In use though, it is pretty much indistinguishable from actual Napalm in use. The troops on the ground are still calling it Napalm. So when the spokesman guy said "No, we're not using Napalm", he was actually being truthful. We've just replaced it with something more effective. So to answer the question, no, we're not using Napalm any more, but really we are... sorta. |
|
For whatever reason the US stopped using Napalm. They stored all of the Napalm bombs at the Naval Weapons Facility in Fallbrook, CA. They had been stored there since the end of the Vietnam war. They were leaking and were becoming a problem, that's why the Navy got rid of it. |
|
"Napalm" is actually now a general term for jellied gasoline. There are many prescriptions for how to jelly the gasoline, and hence the resulting products can differ dramatically. In particular, napalm made poorly or with incomplete mixing can end up being very similar to gasoline, with its attendant hazards. Gasoline, being a volatile, easily ignited compound with a high energy density, was immediately used as a weapon in war. In World War I, both Germany and the Allies used it in flame throwers, but it burned itself too quickly to be very effective at igniting the target of the flame throwers. As you might imagine, intensive research to slow down the burning was funded by the U.S. government, and in 1942 Harvard University scientists and the U.S. army chemical warfare service found a way to jelly gasoline that worked quite well. They found that mixing an aluminum soap powder of naphthene and palmitate (hence na-palm), also known as napthenic and palmitic acids, with gasoline produced a brownish sticky syrup that burned more slowly than raw gasoline, and hence was much more effective at igniting one's target. The napalm was mixed in varying concentrations of 6% (for flame throwers) and 12-15% for bombs mixed on site (for use in perimeter defense). This mixture was a big hit with the allied forces, who used it extensively in World War II in flame throwers and fire bombs in the latter part of the war. (The incendiary bombs that rained on Dresden were probably mostly made with phosphorus, not napalm, but I have not been able to find an authoritative source online describing the incendiary material.) Napalm bombs burned out 40% of the area of Japanese target cities. In the Korean war, 165 gallon napalm bombs were dropped on enemy troops, with very effective "results". Popular weapons continue to be refined and developed, of course, and napalm was no exception. With many more compounds available after World War II, a safer and just as effective napalm compound was developed. After all, gasoline is a pretty nasty substance, and of course is extremely flammable (see below). The safer napalm is known as "napalm-B", super-napalm, or NP2, and it uses no napalm at all! Instead, polystyrene and benzene are used as a solvent to solidify the gasoline. Napalm-B has a huge advantage over the original napalm - its ignition can be well controlled. Hence soldiers smoking around napalm-B face no hazard at all. (I'm told that workers at the Fallbrook Naval Weapons Station used napalm to put out their cigarettes!) Yet a reliable igniter can be used to start napalm-B burning exactly when you want it to do so. Since the military would much prefer that the napalm burn opposing forces rather than their own forces, the military quickly adopted napalm-B, and it was this form of bomb-grade napalm which was used for aerial bombardment in Vietnam and which was stored in Fallbrook. To a first approximation, the Fallbrook napalm is basically gasoline, only less flammable due to the addition of plastics. Hence the basic hazard of napalm is less than the hazard of gasoline. To be precise, the Fallbrook napalm was a mixture of 46 parts polystyrene, 33 parts gasoline and 21 parts benzene. Thermite, which burns at 4,532°, is usually used to ignite napalm, which needs a tremendously high, constant source of heat to ignite. A road flare, which will not ignite napalm, burns at 3,632°. A hot forest or structure fire burns at 1,800-2,000°. There were a total of 34,123 bombs, weighing 500 and 700 pounds each, at the Naval Weapons Station Fallbrook. The total weight is 23 million pounds, equal to 12,000 tons. You can buy some of the USA's finest Napalm here: [url]http://www.napalm.net/index.html[/url] |
| Why buy it when you can make your own? When I was a kid we got a big coffee can full of gasoline and "dissolved" styrofoam into it. We called it "Jelly Gas". You just push pieces of styrofoam into the gas and it dissolves and/or converts into "jelly" on contact with the gasoline. When you think you have enough in the can, leave it overnight and the next day you will have a jelly-like substance similar to gooey Play-Doh. Small pieces will burn forever! We use it when we are winter camping in the mountains to light up wet firewood. |
|
Quoted: As you might imagine, intensive research to slow down the burning was funded by the U.S. government, and in 1942 Harvard University scientists and the U.S. army chemical warfare service found a way to jelly gasoline that worked quite well. Louis F. Fieser, the lead Harvard scientist on the project, wrote a detailed account of his development of Napalm in the book "The Scientific Method: A Personal Account of Unusual Projects in War and in Peace" published in 1964. His U.S. patent 2,606,107 (declassified 1952)describes the very simple process in detail. Curiously, the USPTO has taken the patent off their website. I wonder why? Originally Psted By KA3B They found that mixing an aluminum soap powder of naphthene and palmitate (hence na-palm), also known as napthenic and palmitic acids, with gasoline produced a brownish sticky syrup that burned more slowly than raw gasoline, and hence was much more effective at igniting one's target. Partly correct. Aluminum naphthenate and palmitate have a waxy, unctuous consistancy and a light beige color. They are [b]not[/b] liquids. They also do not sustain their own combustion ie. you can stick a match to them and they will not burn. Actually, they didn't actually use palmitic acid. What happened was a chemical distributor had sent Fieser something [i]labelled[/i] as aluminum palmitate, but in reality it was the aluminum salt of the fatty acids of coconut oil. He didn't discover this until later but decided to keep the word Na-Palm anyway. Quoted: (The incendiary bombs that rained on Dresden were probably mostly made with phosphorus, not napalm, but I have not been able to find an authoritative source online describing the incendiary material.) Incorrect. High altitude incendiary bombs in WWII were made by using a magnesium outer bomb casing and then thermite inside. When the bomb hit, the fuze would ignite the thermite, which would then melt and ignite the magnesium casing. The burning magnesium would drip from floor to floor, igniting everything on its way down. Without going into detail, white phosphorus actually makes a poor choice for igniting anything other than easily flammable structures/materials. Originally Posted By: KA3B The safer napalm is known as "napalm-B", super-napalm, or NP2, and it uses no napalm at all! Instead, polystyrene and benzene are used as a solvent to solidify the gasoline. Napalm-B has a huge advantage over the original napalm - its ignition can be well controlled. Hence soldiers smoking around napalm-B face no hazard at all. (I'm told that workers at the Fallbrook Naval Weapons Station used napalm to put out their cigarettes!) Yet a reliable igniter can be used to start napalm-B burning exactly when you want it to do so. Since the military would much prefer that the napalm burn opposing forces rather than their own forces, the military quickly adopted napalm-B, and it was this form of bomb-grade napalm which was used for aerial bombardment in Vietnam and which was stored in Fallbrook. . . . To be precise, the Fallbrook napalm was a mixture of 46 parts polystyrene, 33 parts gasoline and 21 parts benzene. While it is true that a second type of Napalm, Napalm-B, came into use, there was only one reason for it: Money. It was far cheaper to produce. Also, the original Napalm was used extensively in Vietnam because WWII/Korean stockpiles hadn't even been used up. Original Napalm is no less or more flammable than Napalm-B. You can put a cigaette out in either one since the temperature isn't high enough to ignite it. You also have to ask yourself: How is someone going to accidentally ignite Napalm sitting inside a steel bomb casing? Originally Posted By: KAB3 Thermite, which burns at 4,532°, is usually used to ignite napalm, which needs a tremendously high, constant source of heat to ignite. A road flare, which will not ignite napalm, burns at 3,632°. A hot forest or structure fire burns at 1,800-2,000°. Well that simply shows that the writer has absolutely no idea how a Napalm bomb actually works. The bomb has a thin steel outer casing. There are two thin steel inner tubes, one inside the other that run the whole length of the middle of the bomb. The innermost tube contains granulated TNT. The tube around it contains white phosphorous. The rest of the bomb contains gasoline with 9% Napalm to gel it. There is a fuze attached to the end of the bomb. Once the bomb hits something, the fuze detonates the small charge of TNT, this then ruptures the white phosphorous steel cylinder and also the outer bomb casing. The heat from the explosion of the TNT melts and ignites the white phosphorous, and also propels it through the Napalm, igniting it. The amount of TNT used is such that it is only enough to rupture the container and spread the Napalm a short distance. The original horizontal velocity of the bomb then spreads the ignited Napalm on the target. Proximity fuzes were also sometimes used to detonate the bombs 20-30 feet above the ground. As proof of the above, the next time you watch [b]real[/b] footage of Napalm being used, you will notice white streaks of smoke coming from the bombs as it hits the target. This is the white phosphorous which burns with white smoke. Napalm (or Napalm-B) will ignite with a [b]match[/b]. Thermite was never used to ignite Napalm bombs. |