How Napalm Works. Napalm is often used in combination with gasoline or jet fuel to make a bomb with a thin outer shell that easily explodes and ignites upon impact with a target. Once ignited, napalm can burn at more than 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius).
What is napalm and is it still used in warfare?
The security information Web site GlobalSecurity.org describes napalm as "a tactical weapon used to remove vegetative cover and instill fear." It comes from a powder that's mixed with gasoline (in some forms). Napalm, also called a firebomb fuel gel mixture, has a gel-like consistency, allowing it to stick to targets.
What was the purpose of napalm?
Napalm, 2004
- Napalm. “Can’t Beat That Feeling…” Napalm is probably one of the most poignant and striking print that Banksy created, cementing his position as one of the pioneering political contemporary artists.
- DESCRIPTION
- COLORWAYS. The Serpentine Edition is a special release that coincided with a Damien Hirst exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery.
- VALUE
What happens when you mix gun powder and Napalm?
You may get some degradation in velocities from the slower powder but other than that there should be no harm. Not like mixing a fast powder with a slower one and using the slower data. Check loads on a scale to make sure of the charges. Rework up loads and don't try to uses "extra" because of the mistake.
How to extinguish Napalm?
This would continue until one of the following happens:
- The liquid cools down and pressure reduces.
- The liquid continues to expand and off-gas but the container is big/strong enough to contain it.
- The liquid continues to expand and off-gas
How long does napalm burn for?
Conventional napalm burns for 15-30 seconds, whereas napalm B burns for up to 10 minutes. Napalm B provided the United States with an incendiary substance with enhanced stability and controllability and, as such, became the weapon of choice during the Vietnam War.
What happens if you get hit by napalm?
Napalm can cause death by burns or asphyxiation. Napalm bombs generate carbon monoxide while simultaneously removing oxygen from the air. The air in the bombing area can be 20 percent or more carbon monoxide [source: GlobalSecurity.org].
Will napalm burn underwater?
Versions of napalm B containing white phosphorus will even burn underwater (if there is trapped oxygen in folds of cloth, for example) so even jumping into rivers and lakes won't help those unfortunate souls attacked with this vile weapon.
Can you extinguish napalm?
So hot and sticky that it acts like napalm — most often associated with wars — in that it sticks to clothing and skin, and cannot be extinguished by the usual "stop, drop and roll" command used for years by firefighting experts.
Why was napalm used in Vietnam?
Napalm was used in Vietnam by American flamethrowers to burn down bushes and forests, neutralizing guerrilla fighters.
How do you treat napalm burns?
It's difficult to treat napalm wounds, as the chemical burns extremely hot. Doctors remove contaminated clothing to stop the continued burning.
What is napalm?
Napalm is a substance that can be used to create a bomb, also known as a firebomb fuel gel mixture. It has a gel-like consistency that allows the a...
What does napalm do to humans?
Due to its sticky nature, it can stick to one’s skin even after ignition. That is why it produces awful burns on the human body. Even brief contact...
Why is it called napalm?
Chemists from Harvard invented napalm during World War II. Its name is derived from the first ingredients used to make it – aluminum salts of palmi...
What happens when you use napalm?
When used as a part of an incendiary weapon , napalm can cause severe burns (ranging from superficial to subdermal), asphyxiation, unconsciousness, and death. In this implementation, napalm fires can create an atmosphere of greater than 20% carbon monoxide and firestorms with self-perpetuating winds of up to 70 miles per hour (110 km/h).
What was the purpose of the Napalm?
Napalm also has fueled most of the flamethrowers (tank, ship and infantry-based) used since World War II, giving them much greater range, and was used in this role as a common weapon of urban combat by both the Axis and the Allies in World War II.
What happened to Dow Chemical after the napalm B?
After news reports of napalm B's deadly and disfiguring effects were published, Dow Chemical experienced boycotts of its products , and its recruiters for new chemists, chemical engineers, etc., graduating from college were subject to campus boycotts and protests.
How many tons of napalm were dropped in the Korean War?
Reportedly about 388,000 tons of U.S. napalm bombs were dropped in the region between 1963 and 1973, compared to 32,357 tons used over three years in the Korean War, and 16,500 tons dropped on Japan in 1945.
Why was Napalm used in the Vietnam War?
Napalm became an intrinsic element of U.S. military action during the Vietnam War as forces made increasing use of it for its tactical and psychological effects.
When was the napalm bomb used?
The first recorded strategic use of napalm incendiary bombs occurred in an attack by the US Army Air Force on Berlin on 6 March 1944, using American AN-M76 incendiary bombs with PT-1 (Pyrogel) filler.
Who invented napalm?
A team led by chemist Louis Fieser originally developed napalm for the United States Chemical Warfare Service in 1942 in a secret laboratory at Harvard University.
What is the purpose of napalm?
Napalm, the aluminum salt or soap of a mixture of naphthenic and aliphatic carboxylic acids (organic acids of which the molecular structures contain rings and chains, respectively, of carbon atoms), used to thicken gasoline for use as an incendiary in flamethrowers and fire bombs.
What is a napalm?
See Article History. Napalm, the aluminum salt or soap of a mixture of naphthenic and aliphatic carboxylic acids ...
What is the temperature of Napalm?
Napalm is also employed in a pyrotechnic gel containing gasoline and less-volatile petroleum oil, powdered magnesium, and sodium nitrate; this composition burns at a temperature of about 1,000° C (1,800° F), compared to 675° C (1,250° F) for thickened gasoline.
What is the official team of Napalm?
The official team that maintains NAPALM, also known as the “ Core Developers “, have made developments for multiple vendors and operating systems. They currently support: In addition to the core drivers, napalm also supports community powered drivers. This community maintains its driver repositories on Github.
Is NAPALM a free software?
Here you can find drivers for other manufacturers such as Huawei, Cumulus, HP, ArubaOS, among others. NAPALM is a Free Software project. It is published and maintained on Github. Licensed under Apache 2.0.
Why is napalm used in the military?
The effectiveness of the weapon overruled its cruelty. In fact, napalm caused carbon monoxide poisoning when used on enclosed environment which wasn’t directly hit by fire. The effects of carbon monoxide were well known ...
When was napalm invented?
This is how napalm was born. In a period between 1942 and 1943, a team of leading Harvard chemist headed by Louis Fieser developed a mixture of naphthenic and palmitic acids added to the classic ingredient ― gasoline. The weapon was first tested in bombing raids on Berlin and later on Tokyo, where it caused mass panic after ...
What happened to the napalm bombs?
Using napalm bombs dropped by a fast moving aircraft didn’t guarantee much accuracy. This resulted in many civilian casualties. One of the most iconic photographs taken during the Vietnam War depicted children fleeing from a napalm strike, terrified.
How many square yards did a napalm bomb leave?
A napalm bomb could leave an area of 2,500 square yards engulfed in unquenchable fire. Using napalm bombs dropped by a fast moving aircraft didn’t guarantee much accuracy.
How much napalm was used in the Korean War?
In the decade from 1963 to 1973, 388,000 tons of napalm were dropped on Vietnam. That is ten times the amount of napalm used in Korea (32,357 tons) and almost twenty times more than was used in ...
What temperature does napalm produce?
Napalm generates temperatures of 800 to 1,200 degrees Celsius (1,500–2,200°F).”. Anti-Vietnam War demonstration, 1967. Among the US public, napalm became the symbol of all that was abhorrent about the war in Vietnam.
What happens when you touch a napalm?
Napalm causes wounds that are too deep to heal. In contact with humans, it would immediately stick to the skin and melt the flesh. There is no way to put the fire out, except by smothering it, which causes unbearable pain.
What is napalm used for?
For more peaceful purposes, napalm can be used in animal traps and to focus a burn on a given area for a prolong ed period of time (for instance, to kill certain crops by burning off their seeds). It can even be used as a cutting device in a survival situation.
How to make napalm?
Homemade napalm can be made as follows: Fill a large container about half-way with gasoline (diesel works best). Break a Styrofoam (polystyrene) plate into small pieces. Add the pieces to the gasoline mixture and stir. The gasoline will dissolve the Styrofoam into a jelly-like substance. Pour out the extra gasoline leaving the white, ...
What is the name of the modern version of napalm?
There are several different types of modern-day Napalm mixtures, including Napalm-B, the more modern version of napalm. Commercial versions are typically formulated from hard-to-find agents such as naphthenic acid and palmitic acid (hence the name: nap hthenic + palm itic) but homemade versions of Napalm are fairly easy to mix.
When was Napalm invented?
Napalm as we know it today, was developed at a secret Harvard University laboratory in 1942 and was intended to be used as an incendiary device for buildings and structures.
Is Napalm flammable?
The dangers of Napalm. Remember, this is “napalm” and as such, includes all the dangers inherent with other flammable substances with the added dangers that (1) it sticks to you, (2) it produces unhealthy, toxic smoke and fumes.
What is the purpose of Napalm B?
It can cause fires, extreme burns and explosions, all in one. It can also lead to asphyxiation (suffocation) to those close to the detonation point. The unique thing with napalm is that it sticks to the skin of people and is hard to remove even when it is burning.
What is the difference between Napalm B and Napalm B?
Napalm B uses different t chemicals, it uses plastic polystyrene and hydrocarbon benzene. These ingredients combined, creates jellied gasoline, which naturally is extremely flammable and hot when ignited. Napalm B is easier to control than the previous napalm, because previous napalm was so unsecure and flammable that if a soldier smoked near it, it caught on fire. However, despite the different characteristics, napalm B is often referred to as simply as “napalm”.
Overview
Napalm is an incendiary mixture of a gelling agent and a volatile petrochemical (usually gasoline (petrol) or diesel fuel). The name is a portmanteau of two of the constituents of the original thickening and gelling agents: coprecipitated aluminium salts of naphthenic acid and palmitic acid. Napalm B is the more modern version of napalm (utilizing polystyrene derivatives) and, although distinctly different in its chemical composition, is often referred to simply as "napalm". A team le…
Forms
Napalm was used in flamethrowers, bombs, and tanks in World War II. It is believed to have been formulated to burn at a specific rate and to adhere to surfaces to increase its stopping power. During combustion, napalm rapidly deoxygenates the available air and generates large amounts of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.
Alternative compositions exist for different types of uses, e.g., triethylaluminium, a pyrophoric co…
Development
Use of fire in warfare has a long history. Greek fire, also described as "sticky fire" (πῦρ κολλητικόν, pýr kolletikón), is believed to have had a petroleum base. The development of napalm was precipitated by the use of jellied gasoline mixtures by the Allied forces during World War II. Latex, used in these early forms of incendiary devices, became scarce, since natural rubber was almost impossible to obtain after the Japanese army captured the rubber plantations in Malaya, Indonesia,
Military use
Napalm was first employed in incendiary bombs and went on to be used as fuel for flamethrowers.
The first recorded strategic use of napalm incendiary bombs occurred in an attack by the US Army Air Force (USAAF) on Berlin on 6 March 1944, using American AN-M76 incendiary bombs with PT-1 (Pyrogel) filler. The first known tactical use by the USAAF was by the 368th Fighter Group, Ninth …
Antipersonnel effects
When used as a part of an incendiary weapon, napalm can cause severe burns (ranging from superficial to subdermal), asphyxiation, unconsciousness, and death. In this implementation, napalm fires can create an atmosphere of greater than 20 percent carbon monoxide and firestorms with self-perpetuating winds of up to 110 kilometers per hour (70 mph).
Napalm is effective against dug-in enemy personnel. The burning incendiary composition flows i…
International law
International law does not specifically prohibit the use of napalm or other incendiaries against military targets, but use against civilian populations was banned by the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) in 1980. Protocol III of the CCW restricts the use of all incendiary weapons, but a number of countries have not acceded to all of the protocols of the CCW. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), countries are conside…
See also
• Early thermal weapons
• Flame fougasse
• German Village (Dugway proving ground)
• Greek fire, an ancient flamethrowing weapon that may have resembled napalm
Further reading
• Neer, Robert M. (2013). Napalm: An American Biography. Belknap Press ISBN 978-0-674-07301-2
Introduction
What Is Napalm?
- NAPALM (Network Automation and Programmability Abstraction Layer with Multivendor support) is a Python library created and developed in 2015 by David Borroso and Elisa Jasinska. The goal was to unify device access, data collection, and configuration manipulation from multiple device vendors. Through a unified API NAPALM allows to obtain data or man...
How Does Napalm Work?
- Let’s look at it this way, if you wanted to access different network devices with different operating systems through Python, we would probably have to use libraries developed for each operating system. It would be a tedious task to apply Network Programmability in these circumstances. To facilitate programming, NAPALM adds an abstraction layer. This layer allows us to use the sam…
How Does It Do The Trick?
- What NAPALM does is to hide this abstraction layer by unifying how we access a network device, regardless of who created it. This is possible thanks to the introduction of the Network Driver concept. Every time we want to interact with a device, we only have to specify what operating system we are going to talk to and NAPALM will select the correct Network Driver. That is, selec…
Napalm Installation
- To install NAPALM we need to meet the following requirements: 1. We will need a machine with the Linux Operating System. In my case I use the Ubuntu console for Windows 10. 2. We need to have Python3 installed. 3. PIP – Python Library Package Manager. 4. Python Virtual Environment (Optional) Once these requirements are completed, we will proceed to install NAPALM with the …
Napalm Documentation
- One of the main sources of documentation for NAPALM is the official documentation page of the project: https://napalm.readthedocs.io On this page you will find more details and tutorials on the installation process, programming examples. We can find the complete list of the functions developed until today to communicate and obtain information from the devices. NAPALM can b…
Conclusion
- We have reached the end of our Introduction to NAPALM article. In the next one, this will get more interesting because we are going to work fully with routers with Cisco IOS and IOS-XR. The details and depth of practice will be seen in the Coding Networks YouTube channel videos. So subscribe, turn on notifications so you don’t miss out, and continue learning Network Programmability and …