Infinitely cruel. Napalm, "stink bombs" and other prohibited weapons

The Second World War posed a challenge for scientists - to find a fuel that is highly flammable and burns for a long time. Gasoline was not suitable, since its effect is insignificant: it quickly spreads over a wide area and also quickly burns out. The reason for this unsuitability was the low viscosity of gasoline. In 1942, researchers at Harvard University found a solution to this problem.

Origin story

Dr. Louis Fieser and his closely-guided US Army Chemical Service, while investigating fuel issues, were able to find a thickening agent that we now know as napalm. This momentous moment, as mentioned above, took place in 1942. To understand what napalm is, you need to consider its composition.

The development of a jelly-like fuel, which was carried out in the pre-war period, boiled down to the fact that rubber was needed as a thickener. It was a very scarce commodity at the time. After Harvard research, it became clear that aluminum naphthenates and palmitates can be used as a thickener. In a mixture with gasoline, the now known fuel napalm is obtained.

What is this fuel?

Basically, every military man knows what napalm is and how to use it. But this fuel was banned. In 1980, the UN adopted a Convention prohibiting the use of certain types of weapons and incendiary mixtures, which include attack, against civilians. By 2005, 99 countries had signed the Convention. These include all European states, with the exception of Andorra and San Marino. Russia and Ukraine are also among the signatories to the Convention.

Convention and Protocol on Prohibited Incendiary Liters

Understanding what napalm and other combustible mixtures used in military operations are, there are countries that have signed the Convention, but have not signed Protocol III, which deals specifically with fuel. These are 6 countries: Monaco, Israel, Turkey, Turkmenistan, South Korea and the USA. Another 6 countries have not ratified the Convention, but signed the Protocol. These are Sudan, Nigeria, Iceland, Egypt, Vietnam, Afghanistan. Among the countries that are part of the CIS, there are those that have not acceded to the Convention and have not signed Protocol III. These are Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.

Knowing what napalm is, the United States used it extensively in hostilities. They used this fuel in landmines, aerial bombs, flamethrowers (knapsack and mechanized), incendiary cartridges that hit manpower. This fuel was used to create fires and in other military equipment.

First use

The United States first used napalm for weapons in that very 1942 year. But it was widely used on July 17, 1944. It was a raid of US fighters (bombers) on a German fuel depot in France (Coutance). After the application of napalm, scorched earth remains, and all living things around are incinerated. This fuel was also used by Israel and Iraq. It is impossible to predict the consequences of using napalm. It affects the entire surrounding space uncontrollably. That is why the Convention and the corresponding Protocol on combustible mixtures were adopted. A sufficient number of cases are known when after the use of napalm not only scorched earth remains, but also civilians die or suffer greatly.

Thickener

The fuel is named napalm from the first letters of the names of acids: naphthenic and palmitic. In terms of percentage, the mixture is as follows: from 89 to 93% of gasoline and from 7 to 11% of a thickener (aluminum salts of acids).

The aluminum acid thickener contains:

• naphthenic acid - 25%;
• palmitic acid (from coconut oil) 50%
• oleic acid - 25%;

The finished thickener looks like a grayish or pinkish powder. It will have a soapy consistency to the touch. For storage of thickeners, metal hermetically sealed cans are used.

Types of thickeners available in the United States

The United States produces several brands of this substance, which contain organic acid salts:

• M2 - dehydrated silica gel (5%) and a thickener from a mixture of aluminum salts of organic acids (95%);
• M4 - dibasic aluminum isooctanoic acid soap (98%) and anti-clumping agent (2%).

The main thickener used in the American Army is M4: 98% aluminum salt and 2% silica gel. The more expensive Ml is used as a fallback. He is in the category of a spare service, because it is prepared from natural material that is considered in short supply.

Varieties of brands

The fuel used by the Americans for incendiary bombs has a "1" grade. Napalm contains 92-96% gasoline and 4-8% Ml thickener. Ordinary napalm, with a gasoline content of 89-93% and 7-11% of a thickener, is a viscous liquid in consistency, up to a state that resembles a flowing jelly. In terms of density, napalm mixtures have indicators: 0.8-0.9 g / cm³. The combustion temperature of such a fuel is 900-1200 ° C, and the burning time is from 5 to 10 minutes. The more viscous the napalm is, the slower it burns.

In hostilities there is such a thing as "to burn with napalm", which means to advance with fire, destroying all life in its path. Vietnam especially felt it. On the ground over which this deadly weapon passed, nothing grew for a long time.

This thickened gasoline, depending on the thickener and the brand of fuel, can have a different color: from transparent and completely colorless to pink and even brown. The weapon makers went further and developed the super napalm. It is a mixture to which light metals or phosphorus are added. Such a substance is very active on wet surfaces and is capable of spontaneous combustion. That is why this fuel is especially effective when used in the jungle and in the north. Supernapalm must not be extinguished with water.

There is a type of napalm called pirogel. It is obtained by adding powdered (you can shavings) magnesium, aluminum, as well as coal, saltpeter, asphalt, an inorganic oxidizer and other substances. It is a sticky mass with a gray color. It is pasty. The combustion temperature, which pyrogels have, reaches a value of 1600 ° C. These substances differ in that they are heavier than water. The combustion process lasts only 1 to 3 minutes.

Special properties

A flamethrower mixture such as an attacked one has increased stickiness. The composition adheres to the target, even if it is a vertical surface. Thus, this fuel provides itself with excellent ignition. The highest degree of adhesion to various kinds of surfaces (including wet ones) is endowed with napalm of the "B" brand. Its composition: gasoline (25%), benzene (25%) and polystyrene thickener (50%). Isobutyl methacrylate and organic salts of divalent and trivalent metals can also act as a thickener.

The speed at which such a fuel burns is controlled by the addition of wood flour, asphalt and various resins. Separate clots of flame-throwing mixture burn for up to 4-5 minutes. After the combustion temperature reaches its maximum, it begins to decrease. During the combustion process, a lot of heat is released, and oxygen is absorbed from the air with a high intensity. Such processes affect a significant increase in the concentration of carbon monoxide in the range of the bomb. As you know, this substance is highly toxic.

Experts in military technology note that viscous mixtures most of all satisfy the specifics of flamethrowing. But they have a drawback: instability. Viscous mixtures change their properties depending on the ambient temperature (air temperature) and the season. Because of this, napalm equipment can be used for 10 days, with the exception of "B" grade napalm.

What distinguishes it from other local wars is the widespread use of chemical weapons by the US army against units of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF). The Americans with the help of chemicals, namely the defoliant "Agent Orange", destroyed the foliage in the jungle to identify the units of the NLF, and with napalm - the manpower of their enemy. As a result, Vietnam has suffered more from the use of chemical weapons than any other country in the world.

Dioxin in the Vietnam War

Jungle treatment with Agent Orange by American planes during the Vietnam War

The default Agent Orange is a mixture of chemicals. The most poisonous ingredient is TCDD dioxin. In Vietnam, "Agent Orange" was delivered in containers marked with an orange stripe, hence the name "Agent Orange", that is, "agent orange" (in English, especially in the American version, the term "agent" is used for chemicals). The Americans used it in South Vietnam from 1961 to 1971. According to the US Department of Defense, during the war, the Americans sprayed 72 million liters of Agent Orange on 10% of South Vietnam, including 44 million liters containing dioxin. 10% was sprayed on the ground and from watercraft, the remaining 90% from C123 aircraft and helicopters.

The Vietnamese had to sit in shelters for weeks due to the American bombings. When they went outside, the trees around were already without leaves. Penetrating into the body and accumulating in it, dioxin causes skin diseases, and also, in cancer, causes an increase in tumors. Dioxin alone does not cause cancer. In Vietnam, there are approximately 4.8 million victims of this toxic substance, including three million directly affected by the so-called "orange rain". A large number of people have been registered who became disabled due to the fact that their parents, grandparents, were subjected to dioxin treatment. Tens of thousands of "post-war" victims of "Agent Orange" died, hundreds of thousands more, including many children, suffer from diseases. In early 2004, Vietnamese dioxin victims sued US chemical companies for the first time, but on March 10, 2005, a Brooklyn federal judge dismissed the claim due to "lack of direct evidence." On February 22, 2008, a US Federal Court of Appeals rejected claims by the Vietnamese "Agent Orange" victims against Dow Chemical and Monsanto, which produced chemical weapons during the Vietnam War. So far, only American war veterans who fought in Vietnam, who suffered from their own chemical weapons, have been able to obtain compensation payments from chemical corporations. In 1984, following the adopted American laws, Dow Chemical and Monsanto donated $ 180 million to the fund for dioxin victims, but did not plead guilty.
Compensation for their Vietnam War veterans was also made by the governments of Australia and New Zealand, whose contingents were in South Vietnam as allies of the United States. According to data published by the journal Cytogenetic and Genome Research, Agent Orange and other defoliants have caused genetic changes in New Zealand veterans of the Vietnam War.
In January 2006, the Court of Appeals of the Republic of Korea ordered Monsanto and Dow to pay $ 62 million in compensation to about 7 thousand citizens of this country, who were also sent to Vietnam by the South Korean government, which supported the United States at the time.
In December 2006, the US Congress recognized the responsibility of the US authorities for the consequences of the use of defoliants in Vietnam. Congress expressed its intention to work with the Vietnamese government and US organizations to provide further assistance to Vietnam. In 2007, the United States provided Vietnam with a grant of $ 400,000 to train specialists in cleaning soil from dioxin at a former US military base in Da Nang. From time to time, the US government and various foundations, as well as US Navy ships on friendly visits to Vietnam, donate financial and material assistance to dioxin victims.

Several rehabilitation centers for dioxin victims have been built in Vietnam. France, Germany, Canada, Japan and the USA took part in their construction. The largest is Tu Du Hospital. West of Hanoi, in the Ha Tay province, there is a Friendship Village. This boarding house is for those born with serious defects due to Agent Orange and war veterans in need of neurological treatment. The boarding house is funded primarily by donations from the United States, including American Vietnam War veterans.
However, the solution to the issue of real large-scale compensation from the United States to Vietnam is most likely ahead. So far, the aid is incomparable with the damage inflicted on the Vietnamese. This has been repeatedly spoken about by the Vietnamese government and the public. But this is not a rebuke towards the American people, but towards the US administration.
Scientific research on overcoming the consequences of dioxin use is carried out by the Joint Russian-Vietnamese Scientific Tropical Center, founded in 1988 and located in Hanoi. The team of authors consisting of Poznyakov S.P., Rumak V.S., Sofronov G.A. and Umnova N.V. the book "Dioxins and Human Health" was written and published (Publishing House "Nauka", St. Petersburg, 2006 - 274 p.).

Vietnam has The Agent Orange Relief Fund located at 11 Tran Hung Dao, Hanoi, Vietnam, e-mail: [email protected], tel. 8-10-84-4-9332326, contact person Tran Dang Son.

Napalm in the Vietnam War

Napalm, or jelly-like gasoline, was used by the Americans to destroy the enemy's manpower, that is, the NFOYU fighters. Many civilians were also affected by napalm. This was because, having received information that Viet Cong fighters were hiding in a village, the Americans and the South Vietnamese army dropped napalm on it, often without checking whether there were civilians there or not. A few years after the end of the Vietnam War, in 1980, an international convention banned the use of napalm in conditions where civilians could be harmed.

In 1972, US photographer Huynh Cong Ut secretly filmed American bombers dropping napalm on a village. His lens caught a group of running children from the side of children and soldiers walking alongside. Nick Ut's brother was also a photographer in the US media and died in Vietnam, and Nick Ut himself was wounded three times. Nick Ut got the picture published in the newspaper, even though it worked against the US Army and its allies. Subsequently, he received the Pulitzer Prize for the photograph. It is believed that this image stopped the Vietnam War. Then they began to call it "The Horror of War".
Among the running children was a girl named Kim Phuc Phan Thi, who threw off a burning dress. Then most of the girl's skin was transplanted and cannot breathe. She was quickly taken to the hospital by the same Nick Ut. However, few are so “lucky”. Most died from the burns they received. Kim Phuk Phan Thi now lives in Canada, works in the foundation named after her, which helps children, victims of war.
With regard to this episode, the Americans claim that the napalm was dropped not by them, but by their allies - from a South Vietnamese plane, and the pilot of this plane at the end of the war, along with many other South Vietnamese, fled to the United States, where he currently lives. Indeed, in the picture, not far from the running children and the burning girl, most likely South Vietnamese soldiers who were carrying out a ground operation to “clean up” the NLF fighters are quietly walking. It is unclear about the planes.

This image was published in American and other publications. With the advent of the Internet, he was on many sites, including Facebook. 44 years have passed, and in September 2016, the Facebook administration removed all these photos from the social network for moral reasons. This drew criticism and the photo was returned to the network. The critics' argument was that normal people think that such pictures should be published so that people can clearly understand the horrors of war.

On this page, this snapshot was also, but deleted while the issue is controversial.
Similar disputes can arise (and probably did) about pictures from Nazi concentration camps, where mountains of corpses of people tortured in different ways are shown. After all, they can say that such pictures are liked by necrophiles, which means they should be deleted. On the other hand, if it goes this way, the picture of history will look good and disorient people who have not seen the horrors of wars.

Napalm is a flammable substance used as a flamethrower and incendiary mixture. It is obtained by adding special thickening powders to liquid fuel (kerosene, gasoline and other petroleum products), consisting of mixtures of aluminum salts of certain organic acids, such as naphthaic and palmitic acids. By the way, it was these two substances that gave napalm its name. From the English naphthenic acid and palmitic acid comes the word napalm.

Humanity has succeeded in inventing and creating various weapons to destroy their own kind, including the most terrible, and napalm, like poisonous, bacteriological and nuclear weapons, can be called the brainchild of an evil military genius. It appeared during the Second World War, and at first its creation was due to the vital necessity.

The fact is that in this conflict, flamethrowers were used by both belligerents, but they used gasoline, which spreads easily, as a result of which the affected area increases, contributing to rapid combustion. All this did not allow achieving high combat effectiveness. What was needed was a substance that burns slowly and at the same time gives a constant and strong fire.

Such developments were carried out before the outbreak of World War II, and the best component that gunsmiths could find to create a jelly-like fuel was rubber. However, this material was rather scarce, especially in wartime. And so, in 1942, all in the same United States, which can be called the recognized leaders in the invention of the most terrible means of murder, scientists at Harvard University under the command of Louis Fieser, together with the Chemical Service of the US Army, found a solution to an issue for which rubber was not required. So napalm was created, burning for a long time, easily flaming, and causing unbearable suffering to its victims before death.

It ignites easily, but burns slowly, depending on the viscosity of the substance. When burning, acrid dense black smoke is released, adheres perfectly to any surfaces, including vertical ones, the flame temperature can exceed a thousand degrees.

The consistency of napalm can range from a viscous liquid to a practically non-flowing jelly. Later, napalm was developed on the basis of polystyrene, which adheres perfectly even to wet surfaces.

Further more. If you add alkali metal alloys to napalm when it hits a target, it will spontaneously ignite, especially if the object is wet or covered with snow. This is the so-called supernapalm, which cannot and cannot be extinguished with water.

It turns out that napalm, originally planned as a fuel for flamethrowers, has turned into a completely independent weapon of destruction. But this was not enough for the evil geniuses, and they went further - adding inorganic oxidants and magnesium to the composition, they managed to raise the combustion temperature to 1600 degrees Celsius. The slags formed in the process easily burn through the metal.

The American army was the first to adopt napalm in the year of its creation and selflessly used it during the Second World War, the Korean War of 1950-1953, and especially zealously in Vietnam from 1964 to 1973.

In 1980, the United Nations convention banned the use of napalm against civilians. But, as recent events show, some are indifferent to its protocols, to put it mildly.

Many Soviet people learned about what napalm is only in the sixties, watching TV reports from the warring Vietnam. Terrible burns, injured and dead children, burning cities and villages caused just outrage. Even filmed from afar, the airstrike looked terrible. Over the jungle "Phantom" or "Skyhawk" entered a combat course, at some point a large cigar-shaped tank, similar to an additional fuel tank, separated from its belly, it tumbled randomly until it touched the ground, then burst, and from he was spreading a real sea of ​​fire, from which there was no salvation ... In general, napalm is a terrible weapon.

Idea and implementation

In all that concerns methods of destruction of their own kind, people show ingenuity that clearly deserves better use. The first step to increasing the efficiency of killing, in addition to rapid-fire rifle and artillery weapons, were flamethrowers, knapsack, 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 even this simple matter hid its own catch. Firstly, you need to hit, and secondly, make the extinguishing process as difficult as possible. Petrol is good for everyone, but it burns out with lightning speed. Try to set 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 solved in general terms by specialists working in the group of Dr. L. Fieser on the instructions of the USACC (Chemical Corps Soon the Japanese who held the defense of Tinian learned what napalm is. True, not all of them could tell about it.

Cooking technology

The general technological idea was to add ingredients to the main fuel that slow down combustion, increase viscosity and increase adhesion. Rubber is very suitable for these purposes: it is both sticky and viscous, and dissolves perfectly, and burns, but it is painfully expensive. Here is a mixture of salts of palmitic and naphteic acids turned out to be very successful. The composition of napalm gave it its name, it has nothing to do with the Russian word "fire", 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, in its consistency more or less thick, 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 operations against the Japanese.

What is "Napalm-B"

It is impossible to stop progress, especially in the field of weapons of destruction. Here 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. First, the chemical stability is increased during long-term storage, the possibility of separation into fractions is eliminated. Secondly, it burned much brighter and hotter (up to 1500 ° C). And thirdly, most importantly, this product is capable of sticking to everything in the world. Pouring water on an object or sprinkling it with snow is even better (that is, worse for the object). The composition of napalm includes which, as is known from the school chemistry course, they simply explode when exposed to moisture. As a thickener in "Napalm-B", ordinary polystyrene dissolved in benzene is used. All this hellish mixture, along with sodium or potassium, is added to gasoline, stirred, and you're done. Even steel burns through. By the way, and inexpensive.

Common sense and prohibition

Against the so-called Viet Cong (National Liberation Front), the US Army used virtually all of its arsenal, with the exception of weapons of mass destruction. However, knowing and understanding what napalm is, it is difficult to give up the idea that it can be fully attributed to this category. For a given substance, it is completely indifferent whether there are a hundred, a thousand or more living beings in the zone of its application, it will burn everything it gets on. It is for this reason that 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 heeded the quiet voice of reason. But for this it was only necessary to imagine yourself or someone from your family under a napalm downpour. Probably not everyone has enough fantasy ...

After 1980

The convention banning 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 (Ukrainian SSR), Belarus (BSSR) and all of Europe (San Marino and Andorra do not have 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, 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 (the third protocol).

Napalm was used by the Salvadoran army (civil war, 1984), Argentina (Falklands, 1982), Iraq (against the troops of Iran, 1980), as well as Great Britain and the United States (during the "Desert Storm" 1991). As is often the case in war, the strikes were not always accurate enough, which caused civilians to suffer.

Another napalm

In search of a successful trademark, product manufacturers sometimes use words that are well known to ordinary people, but in a different context. For example, a means for fighting cockroaches was once called "Koba" (IV Stalin's party nickname), meaning, obviously, his ruthlessness towards enemies. Among other samples of household chemicals, one can also find "Napalm" from weeds. According to the advertising annotation, this is an effective herbicide, a real find for agricultural producers and owners of summer cottages. Its main advantage, like that of real napalm, is the strong retention of the substance on the surface of plants and resistance to precipitation. How ethical is this name? It is up to consumers to judge. Perhaps not everyone already remembers about