Many Soviet people found out what napalm was only in the sixties, watching television reports from warring Vietnam. Terrible burns, injured and dead children, burning cities and villages caused a fair outrage. Even shot from afar, the airstrike looked awful. Over the jungle, the Phantom or Skyhawk entered a combat course, at some point a large cigar-shaped tank, similar to an additional fuel tank, was separated from his belly, he randomly tumbled until he touched the ground, then burst, and from a real sea of fire spread from it, from which there was no salvation ... In general, napalm is a terrible weapon.
Idea and embodiment
In all that relates to methods of destroying their own kind, people show ingenuity that clearly deserves the best use. The first step to increase the effectiveness of the killing, in addition to rapid-fire rifle and artillery weapons, were flamethrowers, knapsacks, stationary and mounted on special tanks. The idea is simple: a flammable liquid like water from a hose should be directed at the enemy. But in this simple matter, there was a catch. Firstly, you need to get in, and secondly, to maximize the process of extinguishing. Gasoline is good for everyone, but burns out at lightning speed. Try setting fire to diesel fuel. Some kind of substance is needed so that with ease of ignition it releases a lot of heat for a long time. By 1942, this problem was broadly solved by Harvard University specialists who worked in the group of Dr. L. Fizer on the instructions of the USACC (chemical corps of the American army). Soon, the Japanese, holding the defense of Tinian, learned what napalm is. True, far from all of them could tell about him.
Cooking technology
The general technological idea was to add to the main combustible substance ingredients that slow down combustion, increase viscosity and increase the ability to adhere. Rubber is very suitable for these purposes: it is sticky and viscous, and dissolves perfectly, and burns, but it is painfully expensive. Here the mixture of salts of palmitic and naphteic acids turned out to be very successful. The composition of napalm also gave it a name, it has nothing to do with the Russian word "scorch", but is formed from the first letters of chemical additives that make ordinary gasoline much more deadly.
The result of the efforts of the developers was a certain substance, its consistency more or less dense, up to jelly. The combustion temperature reached eight hundred degrees Celsius. Additives accounted for about a tenth of the total. It was successfully used in Europe, in battles with German troops and their allies, and in the Pacific theater of war against the Japanese.
What is Napalm B
Progress cannot be stopped, especially in the field of weapons. That's in education and medicine ... But now is not about that.
By the beginning of the Korean War, the composition of napalm was supplemented with new components that significantly improved its effectiveness. Firstly, increased chemical stability during prolonged storage, eliminated the possibility of separation by fractions. Secondly, it became much brighter and hotter (up to 1500 ° C). And thirdly, the most important thing is that this product is capable of sticking to everything in the world. If some object is poured with water or sprinkled with snow, then this is even better (that is, worse for the subject). The composition of napalm includes alkali metals, which, as is known from the school chemistry course, simply explode when moisture enters. As a thickener, Napalme-B uses ordinary polystyrene dissolved in benzene. All this hellish mixture along with sodium or potassium is added to gasoline, mixed, and you're done. Burns even steel. By the way, and inexpensive.
Common sense and prohibition
Against the so-called Viet Cong (National Liberation Front), the US Army used almost its entire arsenal, with the exception of weapons of mass destruction. However, knowing and understanding what napalm is, it is difficult to abandon the idea that it can be fully attributed to this category. For a given substance, it makes no difference whether one hundred, one thousand or more living creatures are in the zone of its use; it will burn everything that gets into it. For this reason, in 1980, the UN approved a convention banning napalm. The use of incendiary weapons was recognized as a barbaric method of warfare. But not everyone listened to the quiet voice of reason. But for this it was only necessary to introduce himself or someone from his family under a napalm shower. Probably not everyone has enough imagination ...
After 1980
The Convention on the Prohibition of the Use of Napalm was adopted by 99 states of the world, more than half of all represented in the UN. Among them are Russia (then the RSFSR), Ukraine (USSR), Belarus (BSSR) and all of Europe (San Marino and Andorra have no armies, therefore, they did not participate in the process of limiting lethal means). Countries that were at war or awaiting it abstained from signing or ratifying. Among them are the USA, Israel, Turkey, the Republic of Korea, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Sudan, Nigeria and some others. After the collapse of the USSR, four former republics (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan) also did not join the convention (third protocol).
Napalm was used by the Salvadoran Army (Civil War, 1984), Argentina (Volkland, 1982), Iraq (against the forces of Iran, 1980), as well as Great Britain and the USA (during the 1991 “Desert Storm”). As often happens in war, strikes did not always turn out to be accurate enough, which caused civilians to suffer.
Another napalm
In search of a successful brand, product manufacturers sometimes use words that are well known to ordinary people, but in a different context. For example, a means to combat cockroaches was once called “Koba” (the party nickname of IV Stalin), obviously referring to its ruthlessness towards enemies. Among other samples of household chemicals can be found and "Napalm" from weeds. This, according to the advertising annotation, is an effective herbicide, a real find for agricultural producers and owners of summer cottages. Its main advantage, like that of real napalm, is its strong substance retention on the surface of plants and resistance to precipitation. How ethical is the name? To judge consumers. Perhaps not everyone already remembers the Vietnam War.