Napalm.

This is coolbert:

"I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like... victory. Someday this war's gonna end..." - - Robert Duvall as Lt. Col. Kilgore - - "Apocalypse Now".

It seems that since the very beginning of warfare, flame weapons have been used by combatants.

Fire as a weapon was of course appreciated and used by the ancients.

Sun Tzu devotes an entire chapter, chapter XII, of his most famous book, "The Art of War", to the subject of waging war by the use of flame weapons.

Excerpts from same are most interesting:

"There are five ways of attacking with fire. The first is to burn soldiers in their camp; the second is to burn stores; the third is to burn baggage trains; the fourth is to burn arsenals and magazines; the fifth is to hurl dropping fire among the enemy . . . . There is a proper season for making attacks with fire . . . In attacking with fire, one should be prepared for five possible developments . . . When you start a fire, be to the windward side of it . . . A wind that rises in the daytime lasts long, but a night breeze soon falls."

We can see from the comments of Sun that the use of fire and flame weapons was a well thought out practice even 2500 years ago.

In the same time period, as has been blogged before, the Scythians used fire, through the means of the prairie [steppe] firewall, to impede the advance of the a Persian army across the open lands of what is now the Ukraine.

The Byzantines had and used in a most famous manner the flame weapon known as "Greek Fire". A substance the actual chemical formula for has been lost in antiquity. Greek Fire was used primarily in naval warfare and gave the Byzantine navy a distinct advantage over it's foes. A spew of Greek Fire could be always counted upon when engaged in battle with Byzantine naval forces, fire from flame weapons of course being of mortal dread to sailors fighting in wooden vessels.

During the siege of Malta in 1565, the Knights of St. John of the Hospital made good use of flame weapons against the attacking Turks:

"the attackers suffered dreadfully from various incendiary devices used by the besieged, including wooden hoops coated with a lethal incendiary composition. These rained down on the Moslems, setting alight their loose robes while entangling their arms and legs"

Fire of course has also been used by the not so ancients as well.

The first use of flame throwers on the modern battlefield was during World War One [WW1]. The Germans developed and utilized with effectiveness in trench warfare the portable man-carried flame thrower as we know it today.

And of course the development of napalm in World War Two [WW2] is significant.

Napalm, jellied gasoline, is relatively easy to make and IS an effective weapon. Penetrates fortifications, bunkers, caves, etc., normally impervious to the effects of conventional explosives and munitions. Causes terrible burns that are difficult to treat.

[I found the recipe for napalm on the internet. The average person in his garage can make the substance. I do not include the recipe in this particular blog entry. Suffice to say that it is a simple process using simple ingredients. Shockingly so!!]

Was used extensively in the Pacific theatre against dug in-die hard Japanese defenders. Dropped from aircraft as a bomb, used in flame throwers, etc. The Japanese referred to napalm as "Yankee Hell Jelly".

Napalm was also used in Korea and in Vietnam. It was in Vietnam that napalm got a very bad press. Became known as a diabolical and sinister weapon. Especially when photos of small children ripping off their clothes and running down a road with terrible wounds from the flaming liquid caused revulsion throughout the world.




[Hans the German SS officer serving in the French Foreign Legion relates how the flame thrower was carried by ther German Foreign Legion battalion serving during he First Indo-China war. Hans only raves at length about the effectiveness of this weapon in the counter-insurgency type of warfare. "fight the enemy with weapons he does not have - - Alexander Suvorov."]

Among the militaries of the world, napalm has become a weapon that is no longer carried in their arsenals. This weapon is no longer considered to be kosher and has been discarded even by the U.S. U.S. stockpiles have been destroyed and evidently the use of napalm by the U.S. military is no longer an option.

[until recently, the U.S. military had in it's arsenal the M202 flame weapon. A rocket that could be fired from the shoulder of a troop at a nearby target. Exploding on the target, the rocket would unleash a ball of naplam. The back pack flame thower of WW1 and WW2 fame was no longer felt to be efficient. I believe the M202 was not considered to be effective by the troops and it also has been taken out of the inventory!!]

Napalm is said to "cause unnecessary suffering". Is outlawed under the provisions of the Hague Convention of 1900. [it was at the Hague Convention of 1900 that Admiral Fisher of the Royal Navy made his famous statement about buttons being a weapon of war!!]

Well, this certainly is the case, is it NOT!!?? Unnecessary suffering. Napalm falls into the same category as poison gas. Causes death it what has the appearance as being a slow, drawn out, agonizing process. This is an intuitive observation, is it not!!??

It may very well be, however, that the use of napalm is just no longer needed as modern conventional weaponry is so precise and deadly that YOU JUST NO LONGER NEED THE DIABOLICAL THING!!??

Just as you DO NOT NEED vast quantities of nuclear weapons as modern precision guided weapons can do the job of destroying your enemy without the secondary consequences of say nukes or fire weaponry.

coolbert.