What is napalm? Application and composition of napalm

About what napalm is, many Soviet people found out only in the sixties, watching TV reports from the warring Vietnam. Scary burns, injured and dead children, burning cities and villages caused justified indignation. Even shot from afar, the air strike looked terrible. Over the jungle "Phantom" or "Skyhawk" went to the battle course, at some point from his belly separated a large cigar-shaped tank, similar to an additional fuel tank, he randomly tumbled until he touched the ground, then burst, and from It spread a real sea of fire, from which there was no salvation ... In general, napalm is a terrible weapon.

Idea and embodiment

In everything that concerns methods of destroying their own kind, people show ingenuity, clearly deserving of a better application. The first step to increase the effectiveness of the killing, besides quick-firing rifle and artillery weapons, was flamethrowers, knapsack, stationary and mounted on special tanks. The idea is simple: a flammable liquid like water from a hose should be sent to the enemy. But even in this simple case, he had his own catch. First, you need to get in, and secondly, to complicate the process of extinction as much as possible. Gasoline is good for everyone, but burns instantly. Try to burn diesel. You need some kind of substance that, if lightly ignited, emits a lot of heat for a long time. By 1942, this task was basically solved by specialists of Harvard University who worked in the group of Dr. L. Fisher on the instructions of the USACC (chemical corps of the US Army). Soon the Japanese, holding the defense of Tinian, learned what napalm is. However, not all of them could tell about it.

Technology of preparation

The general technological idea was to add ingredients to the main fuel that slow down combustion, increase viscosity and increase the ability to adhere. Very good for these purposes is rubber: it is sticky, and viscous, and dissolves perfectly, and burns, but painfully expensive. Here is a mixture of salts of palmitic and naphteic acids was very successful. The composition of napalm and gave it a name, it has nothing to do with the Russian word "shoot", but is formed from the first letters of chemical additives that make ordinary gasoline much more deadly.

The result of the efforts of developers was a certain substance, in its consistence more or less dense, up to the 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 on the Pacific theater against the Japanese.

What is Napalm-B

Progress can not be stopped, especially in the field of weapons of destruction. Here in education and medicine ... But now not about this.

Already at the beginning of the Korean War, the composition of napalm was supplemented with new components that significantly improved its effectiveness. Firstly, the chemical stability was improved during long-term storage, the possibility of stratification by fractions was eliminated. Secondly, it began to burn much brighter and hotter (up to 1500 ° C). And thirdly, most importantly - this product is able to stick to everything in the world. If an object is poured with water or sprinkled with snow, then this is even better (that is, worse for the object). Alkali metals are included in the composition of napalm , which, as is known from the school chemistry course, simply explode when moisture hits. As thickener in "Napalme-B" is used ordinary polystyrene, dissolved in benzene. All this infernal mixture, together with sodium or potassium, is added to the gasoline, mixed, and everything is ready. Burns even steel. By the way, and inexpensive.

Common sense and prohibition

Against the so-called Vietcong (National Liberation Front), the US Army used virtually its entire arsenal, except for weapons of mass destruction. However, knowing and understanding what napalm is, it is difficult to give up the idea that it can be attributed to this category. For a given substance, it is completely indifferent whether a hundred, one thousand or more living beings are in the zone of its application, it will burn everything on which it falls. It is for this reason that in 1980 the UN approved a convention banning napalm. The use of incendiary weapons was recognized as a barbarous method of warfare. But not everyone heeded the quiet voice of reason. But it only cost to imagine yourself or someone from your relatives under the napalm rainstorm. Probably, not everyone has enough imagination ...

After 1980

The convention on banning the use of napalm was adopted by 99 states of the world, more than half of all submitted to the UN. Among them, Russia (then the RSFSR), Ukraine (Ukrainian SSR), Belarus (BSSR) and the whole of Europe (San Marino and Andorra have no armies, therefore, in the process of limitations, deadly funds were not involved). Countries that were at or awaiting war, 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 (the third protocol).

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

Another napalm

In search of a successful brand, commodity producers sometimes use words that are well known to the common people, but in a different context. For example, the means for fighting cockroaches once called "Koba" (the party nickname of JV Stalin), referring, apparently, to his ruthlessness toward the enemies. Among other samples of household chemicals can be found and "Napalm" from the 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 the strong retention of the substance on the surface of plants and resistance to precipitation. How ethical is this name? About that to judge consumers. Perhaps not everyone already remembers about the Vietnam War.