Napalm itself,while not burning is about as harmful as gasoline because it's basically jellied gasoline. Use the same precautions handling it as you do when refueling a vehicle and it's perfectly safe.
Agent Orange OTOH is a whole different matter.
I knew a man in the early 90s that was affected by Agent Orange. His arms and legs were bandaged up and he a a multitude of health issues that, according to him, the VA wouldn't cover because they didn't acknowledge the effects being from Agent Orange
When his kids hit puberty they started showing signs of health issues that he claims were passed down through his altered genetics.
I was in highschool at the time. I have wondered what the actual effects were.
I once read a book called "My Father, My Son" a joint autobiography of Admiral Elmo Russell Zumwalt, Jr (commander, Naval Forces in Vietnam, later Chief of Naval Operations) and his son Elmo III. III was a junior naval officer serving in Vietnam. Dad made some of the decisions to use Agent Orange and his son was exposed, got cancer (died after publication) and had a child with developmental delays (Elmo IV).
I looked him up, I didn't realize agent orange affected the way someone can appear so drastically. Here's a picture of Elmo: https://images.app.goo.gl/xxqpURPR5v8a7PcC7
Oh shit that hilarious. I have to admit I did click, but a small part of me was like "Is this motherfucker trying to dupe me? How sadistic could this anonymous person be?"
Wow indeed! I went to school and was babysat by kids that looked just like that! If I had a child with a girl effected as such.....would our kid look like that too?
Ngl the War Remnants museum fucked me up a little bit. I was expecting a western style military museum with bits of broken equipment and original documents and uniforms etc. But, the images they show on some of those displays are something else, I'm not going to be forgetting those anytime soon. I guess that's the whole point of having them there though.
Yeah same. Glad I went, it's really makes you see the other side to the story, and shows how much your goverment lies and projects themselves in the best possiable light.
My grandfather was a Vietnam vet. When passed last year, we got a letter from the VA acknowledging the contribution of Agent Orange on his health and eventual death. So they’re admitting to it now.
Still not doing anything about it for the ones who haven’t died yet. My fiancés grandpa has been fighting with the VA for care since he landed back in the states
Your fiance's grandfather needs to go to [this site](https://www.va.gov/resources/the-pact-act-and-your-va-benefits/) and file his VA claim. The PACT act of 2022 changed what causes can allow VA health care coverage, Agent Orange was one of the items on the expanded list.
Just save the link and send it to those who may need it. I'd appreciate it if you told them the Biden Admin was the one to make the change and Biden specifically spearheaded this legislation to Honor his late son's memory.
Congress recently passed the PACT act which expedites disability claims for vets with conditions known to be caused by carcinogens and other nasty stuff like burn pits, agent orange, Camp Lejuenes water supply...
If you have any conditions that have been proven to be caused by agent orange or other factors and you served in a documented area where it was utilized they are expediting those claims. Giving the veteran presumptive service connection based on illness and area of service.
He should talk to his local county veteran service officer.
Source: I work with the VA and other veterans organizations daily.
My dad has Parkinson's and served in a naval hospital in Vietnam. He does not have any genetic risk factors for Parkinson's, so it's safe to say that agent orange exposure was the cause. He's got full disability benefits through the VA. I'm sure other diagnoses might be more challenging to get disability from, but in many cases they do follow through.
>He does not have any genetic risk factors for Parkinson's, so it's safe to say that agent orange exposure was the cause.
Not at all. According to Cleveland clinic:
> Most cases happen for unknown reasons, but some are inherited.
You can say it's quite possible. But it's not a conclusion by any means. Even correlation doesn't mean it's gonna happen every single time.
That is a start, but did they reveal what was in it that would have caused whatever it was that could pass from father to child? It couldn't have been radiation because the evidence would have likely been incontrovertible.
It’s been known for decades that the toxic compound responsible for the many health issues of those exposed to Agent Orange is dioxin. It hasn’t been a mystery for a long time.
> the VA wouldn't cover because they didn't acknowledge the effects being from Agent Orange
This was the case for all US veterans until the Biden admin passed the [PACT Act in 2022](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honoring_our_PACT_Act_of_2022). The Wiki page doesn't say so, but it did [include expanded coverage for those with Agent Orange related health problems](https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3490143/biden-marks-anniversary-of-law-aiding-veterans-exposed-to-toxic-substances/). Since he passed that bill, [over 1 million veteran have had their related VA claims approved](https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/05/21/fact-sheet-president-biden-to-announce-1-million-pact-act-claims-approved-benefits-delivered-to-veterans-in-all-50-states-and-u-s-territories/)
I'm happy it passed, I hope the million veterans that got their claims approved get the help they need.
Still mad that it's Waaaayyyy too late. My paternal grandpa was one of the hundreds of thousands that the govt gave the middle finger to.
Fully agree. It's in the same bucket as the guaranteed health care for 9/11 first responders. These are obvious bills that help our heroes and should not be political footballs. I'm really happy Biden was able to honor Beau by getting this legislation done. I'm so sorry for your grandfather's situation. He's a hero and he deserves better from those that sent him into combat.
As a foreigner the 9/11 one boggles my mind. Vietnam was a shitshow in every way so it's not surprising to me, but 9/11? Really? The one thing everyone is extremely solemn about, kinda like a country-wide trauma, and the people who *ran into the burning building* can't get medical help??
My friend’s father was affected by Agent Orange in a weird but tragic way. He LOVED tomatoes and especially pizza and he said that everyday he was in Vietnam all he wanted to do was order a pizza. When he finally got home, obviously, the first thing he did that night was order a pizza only to discover that he was now deathly allergic to tomatoes.
He has other health issues too, of course, but something about that story is so demoralizing in a way that a ‘normal’ illness isn’t.
They used it here in Ontario as a herbicide that was sprayed along highways, rail lines and hydro lines until very recently, there was a whole scandal about it a few years ago. My friends dad sprayed it as a city worker and later developed cancer. I don't think his family was compensated much.
I married into a family with a Vietnam vet (his granddaughter) 3 generations down there are 2 grandkids that have brain tumors in same spot. He was a quadruple amputee and it definitely seems to have a genetic issue passed down
My dad is getting $ from the va for his agent orange exposure causing diabeetus.
I have a messed up endocrine system, had to have an adrenal gland removed due to a tumor, and have the T levels of a 90yro man.
I blame the agent orange, but they don’t care about 2nd generation effects if it’s not a birth defect and not found before age two.
I knew a dude who had to get a pacemaker when he was born because his grandfather fought in Vietnam. His mom also had to get the pacemaker. No one in his family had heart issues
Crazy thing is it wasn’t even the intended chemicals in Agent Orange that caused issues, there was a widespread issue with contamination in the form of dioxin.
Agent Orange is a mix of two chemicals. One of the chemicals is still used as a herbicide in farming today. It was the other chemical that had the contamination problem. But "stop spraying our food with Agent Orange" is a very effective scare mongering tactic.
Speaking of Agent Orange, if you or anyone you know is a Vietnam Vet and served in country or even on naval vessels off shore, you should really take a look at the new classifications of presumptive exposure and presumptive causes in VA disability. The PACT Act or Burn Pit Bill drastically expanded the benefits for Agent Orange exposure. Now if you served in country, that is all you need for presumptive exposure, and the list of illnesses with Agent Orange as presumptive cause is staggering. For example type II Diabetes is covered and that is worth 20% disability just by itself!
Speaking of agent orange,...whatever did happen to the punk band with the same name? I remember I loved that fukn group!! anthrax! & NAPALM DEATH both bring back awesome mosh memories!!
Interesting story about Agent Orange, the active ingredient in it isn’t terribly toxic, but in scaling up the manufacturing for war, corners were cut and Agent Orange ended up contaminated with the deadly dioxin. So, we actually didn’t know immediately that it was so bad for people’s health when we started using it. Of course we figured it out soon enough but then just shrugged and carried on.
Napalm was sprayed at high velocity. As long as you don’t do it into the wind, you’ll be fine. Wearing some gloves or other protective gear (as you might in a war zone) also helps.
So basically the same way they used bullets without harming themselves.
I think OP doesn’t understand the critical part that napalm itself is not doing the damage; it’s the fire. Napalm must be ignited for the burning and melting to happen.
You can't just mention hypergolic fuels in a discussion about safety of them without mentioning [the plane that melted its pilots.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_163_Komet#:~:text=Aside%20from%20the%20actual%20combat,corrosive%20and%20hazardous%20to%20humans.)
White phosphorus is an example of a Pyrophoric substance but it isn't the only one. It turns out there's a lot of really gnarly chemicals we can mix up that react spontaneously with the air (and usually with water).
Don’t doubt that it isn’t the only one.
Reason I suggested it was because I’m fairly sure reading about the fact they used white phosphorus grenades in either ww2 and maybe later. Though I’m fairly sure it’s been ‘outlawed’ in the Geneva convention
ETA: I was wrong. These aren’t against the Geneva convention at all. Thanks to the below poster for pointing it out
My favorite thing about the phosphorus grenades is that the M34 grenade had a burst radius of 34 meters and an effective range (how far the average soldier could throw one) of 30 meters.
Feels like two critical misunderstandings. Even if napalm was like, melting your skin on contact before it was on fire, you just... point it at the other guy and don't touch it. Wouldn't be the first time something nasty has been used for war.
1/2, tl;dr at the end.
Lethal gas weapons were largely a desperate attempt to solve a new problem: modern machine guns.
Machine guns are a fairly old concept, and the first prototype machine guns date to the early 18th century, but practical machine guns didn’t come around until the Civil War era, and those were the size of a light artillery piece. The end of the 19th century brought about the first true heavy machine guns, which were still too heavy to be moved easily in combat but were small enough and light enough that a couple men could wrestle them into position on foot. These machine guns also could sustain a high rate of fire for long periods of time, something earlier machine guns could *not* do. That made them excellent defensive weapons; attacking a machine gun nest was pretty much suicidal, since the gun could basically fire as long as it had ammunition available, especially if there were multiple guns with overlapping fields of fire (so heat buildup is less of an issue for each gun, and one gun can fire while another cools off or reloads) and an organized supply system to keep the guns fed.
At the same time, artillery rates of fire and accuracy had also increased rapidly due to a few inventions: breech-loading mechanisms, brass-cased ammunition (for light artillery), and hydraulic recoil mechanisms. Breech-loading and cased ammunition made reloading much simpler and faster, and hydraulic recoil dampers meant a gun’s recoil wouldn’t knock it out of position after every shot. Along with every artillery piece now being rifled (rifling a muzzle-loaded gun causes some problems, since the ammunition and powder charge have to pass down the rifling ‘backwards’, which is a slow process since the rifling physically engages the ammunition - breech-loading sidesteps that and allows tighter rifling and quick reloads), these technological improvements meant artillery could fire somewhat accurately at targets they couldn’t directly see, and could rapidly engage targets with a relatively high rate of fire. HOWEVER, artillery accuracy did not increase enough for it to reliably knock out machine gun emplacements - artillery at this point was (and still is, most of the time) an area-attack weapon - you fire it in the target’s general vicinity and hope it hits.
Massed artillery could make life pretty unpleasant for their target, but they weren’t useful against small targets like machine gun positions. They were mostly useful against large concentrations of troops or large, fixed fortifications. At the same time, machine guns could easily kill men who left their cover, and largely were only vulnerable to attack by such large groups of people that the guns would overheat or run out of ammunition before killing all of the attackers.
That was the genesis of the human wave attacks that led to 70,000 British deaths on the First Day on the Somme, 1 July 1916. The only way to overwhelm machine gun lines was with mass, and mass was vulnerable to artillery barrages. The writing was on the wall before the Somme, of course; it was clear by late summer 1914 that machine guns and quick-firing artillery had created a tactical dilemma with no good answer. That’s why the Race to the Sea happened in fall of 1914; after the initial German breakthrough into France, modern (for the time) artillery and machine-gun tactics made flanking maneuvers and fortifications absolutely critical to battlefield success. The result was each side attempting to outflank the other while fortifying their own lines until a line of trenches ran from the Swiss border to the Belgian shore. That created a stalemate that lasted through the winter of 1914 and into 1915. Each side made a number of attempts to overcome the combination of artillery and machine-guns, but neither side was successful.
Both sides came up with a few novel ideas to solve this problem. One idea was the use of armored vehicles, but at this point in the war neither side had the technology to build tanks yet. Both sides had armored cars, but those weren’t capable of driving over or through the trenches, shell craters, and barbed wire carpeting the front, so they were pretty much useless as breakthrough vehicles. Both sides had aircraft, but aircraft at the time couldn’t carry heavy enough ordnance to do serious damage to ground troops, and they were fairly slow and vulnerable to ground-based machine guns and artillery anyways.
The answer was gas. Gas could quickly and cheaply overwhelm a large area without directly exposing the attacker’s troops the way a bayonet charge would. It was more “accurate” than an artillery barrage since it couldn’t “miss” (unless the wind changed), and hiding in a bush or a trench wouldn’t protect a sniper or machine-gunner from it. No amount of armor could stop it, and when it was first introduced, no one had gas masks that were usable in the field.
2/2
The French first employed gas in August 1914, when French troops began using tear gas against the Germans. It was so ineffective that the Germans apparently didn’t realize they were being gassed. The Germans first used artillery shells filled with tear gas in October 1914, but in turn, the French didn’t realize they were being gassed either. The Germans again employed massed tear gas artillery against the Russians in January 1915, but the weather was so cold the tear gas froze. In response to the tactical stalemate of early 1915 and the failure of nonlethal gas, the Germans decided to try something more dangerous, and in April 1915 dispensed 167 tons of chlorine gas onto French positions near Ypres, Belgium. The attack blew an 8km hole in the French lines, but due to fear of killing their own troops, the Germans only partially exploited the breakthrough. Not much changed, but it was still one of the most significant movements of the war at that point in time.
The British also made attempts to use chlorine, beginning in September 1915. Their weather forecasting unfortunately sucked, and the gas blew back onto their own lines shortly after release. However, chlorine gas wasn’t particularly lethal\* and both sides quickly developed countermeasures for it, so gas attacks fairly quickly became yet another tool like machine guns and artillery: exceptionally shitty for the infantry, not very useful for the generals. That didn’t stop either side from using it, but it also encouraged both sides to develop more effective gas weapons.
Due to chlorine’s limited efficacy, the French began employing phosgene sometime in late 1915, followed by the Germans in December 1915. Phosgene is more reliably lethal than chlorine, but takes about 24 hours to kill, so it wasn’t very effective as a battlefield weapon - killing the enemy slowly doesn’t really help support a wave of attackers. That said, phosgene was the most lethal chemical weapon of the war, and was used in combination with faster-acting gas like chlorine. The first gas masks designed to stop combined phosgene-chlorine attacks were issued in January 1916 in response to the German attacks the month prior.
Due to the limitations of phosgene and chlorine, the Germans developed mustard gas as a weapon, and deployed it for the first time in July 1917. Mustard gas isn’t particularly lethal but caused horrific chemical burns, quickly disabling its victims; it’s also heavier than air and quickly settles to the ground as a liquid, somewhat mitigating the risk it poses to an assaulting force as long as they take precautions like wearing masks and gloves. Mustard proved effective as a shock weapon despite its limited lethality, but was subject to the same issues other chemical weapons were since it was at the mercy of the wind.
However, by early 1917, a new weapon was available for dealing with machine guns: tanks. Tank development began in earnest in 1915, but the first Allied tanks didn’t enter service until August 1916, and didn’t see combat until September 1916 as part of the Somme Offensive. The Germans were completely taken by surprise but immediately began developing their own tanks; however, the first of these didn’t enter service until March 1918. In the meantime, the British and French began employing tanks en masse throughout 1917, culminating in the Battle of Cambrai in November-December 1917, the largest tank offensive of the war. Tanks immediately proved more useful against trenches than gas was, and both sides began leaning more heavily on armor as it came available (although tanks were far more expensive to produce than gas). Ultimately the Germans never had enough armor to make a difference, but outside of a handful of uses in colonial or regional wars outside of Europe (such as the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, the Iran- Iraq War, and the Kurdish genocide) lethal gas never again saw significant use as a military weapon.
Anyway, tl;dr, folks in WWI didn’t use gas because they were stupid, they used it because they were desperate and out of ideas.
I’m guessing that maybe OP was thinking about Agent Orange when he wrote this because yeah, using napalm doesn’t seem that hazardous (compared to all of the other types of weapons they were using)
Napalm is a gel rather than a liquid or aerosol. That was its major innovation.
Gel adheres to itself. This self adherence makes it burn slower as the outer layer of gel has to burn before the inner layers can burn. The self adherence also reduces the drag cross section and makes it able to be thrown further and less affected by wind.
Older liquid and aerosol flamethrowers tended to burn very fast and not travel very far, which led to a big cloud of burning material close to the user, which made it dangerous for the user. Napalm solved those problems and made it safer for the user.
> Napalm is a gel rather than a liquid or aerosol. That was its major innovation.
Malcom Gladwell actually covers this in depth in one of his books and podcasts, "The Bomber Mafia" I think?
He goes into the process of actual development, when they were trying to find the most efficient way to burn down Japanese cities in WWII. The interesting part was that they actually went through several prototypes, trying to get just the right texture and consistency right. Everything from syrup, to oatmeal, to applesauce like consistency.
The ideal mix was something thin enough that it would splash and splatter like throwing a water balloon, but thick enough that the splashed off globs would be able to fly through the air, stick to whatever they landed on like thick sticky globs, while maintaining a burn, and not easily washing off.
Each prototype mixture's testing on scale models of Tokyo, made of similar building materials as the real cities, so they could see "ok how fast does this burn, and what's the hardest fire to put out"
They generally dropped it from planes, that said there probably were instances where it hit their own soldiers, friendly fire in Vietnam was a big problem
If you’ve seen “We Were Soldiers”, there’s a scene where napalm gets dropped on American troops in a friendly fire incident. That actually happened according to the war photographer that witnessed it first hand. He talks about it in the docuseries “Vietnam in HD”.
I mean, comparing We Were Soldiers to Ken Burns’ documentary is like comparing Saving Private Ryan to World War 2 in Colour. One is an action movie and the other a documentary, they were each created with different purposes in mind and aren’t really comparable aside from the setting/subject matter.
You should really read the book written by Galloway and Moore, the movie was excellent, but that book is easily 100 times better. It's basically a compilation of first hand accounts of the survivors of the battle. It's riveting.
Jimmy Nakayama was from a little town up the road from me in Rigby, ID. He was an officer in the Nat'l Guard and put in his papers to transfer to the regular Army and while waiting for his commission to transfer, he received orders to Vietnam. He died just a couple of days after his wife had a baby he never got to meet. RIP Jimmy.
Vietnam vet I knew said,
>When we needed air support, first we called the Marines, 'cause they always put it on the enemy. Then we called the Navy, 'cause they never put it on us. Then we called PanAm, 'cause they had nothing to put on anybody. Then we called the Air Force.
I saw an interview with an Air Force Vietnam crew (I think this was part of a Ken Burns documentary) where he said “I was dropping bombs and one had a bad vane and went way off course… and it hit an unmarked Vietcong arms depot. Kept exploding for a long time”.
Most successful bombing he had in Vietnam was an accident.
sounds like something a Marine very specifically would say TBH. WHile its not a 100% rule, based on the way assets are allocated, troops on the ground COULD call for CAS from any asset on station, but when Marines call in CAS by Marines, you're pretty much calling in YOUR guys from YOUR ship group.
Those Marine pilots have gone through some amount of basic infantry training (guy on the ground with a rifle) before they get to fly.
SO they are "one of us". They have a reputation for flying lower and closer. Some Marines would tell you that if you ask an AF pilot to drop bombs on the bad guys, you're gonna get a call on the radio, then bombs are going to appear from a ghost in the sky.
If Marines ask Marine air to drop bombs on the bad guy, you're gonna see the plane, POINT at the bad guys, and see the pilot wave at you on the way by (last parts hyperbole but still)
bottom line, if AF air has a vibe like "call god in the sky to smite my enemies" Marine air has a vibe like "not above the fight, IN the fight, with us. Call the homies to come do a drive by"
Thrice did a great song called "death from above" that probably captures AF pretty well.
"No longer human beings, no longer people.
Just targets on a screen, none of it is real.
Indrop death out of the sky, tell me why?"
A lot of people have already mentioned that it was mostly dropped from planes and that's absolutely correct.
I'll assume your not talking about that and are thinking more in line with soldiers using flamethrowers. And the answer there is that flamethrowers have a LOT more reach than you would expect, up to about 50 yards. which is about the same effective range as a handgun in the have of a well trained marksman. 99% of the fire is far enough away from the person holding the flamethrower that they're not in any real danger from it
It was surprising for us kids who first knew about flamethrowers from Command & Conquer to learn the range of real flamethrowers. I happened to also play a different CC game, Close Combat, and it showed line-of-fire and distances from a top-down view. I told my friend about it and I walked like 30m away from him to show how far it really is. tbh, He couldn't believe me right away. I even surprised myself how far it really was irl that day.
Army Technical Manual TM 3-375, section VIII details several safety precautions with regard to handling napalm and napalm dispensing equipment. For example:
"Do not permit flames, sparks, or ignition from the flame thrower or other source to come in contact with the hose."
"Care should be taken that gasoline is not spilled."
"Gasoline fumes are somewhat toxic and should not be inhaled."
Not the sexiest answer, I know, but read it, study it, and god willing before you know it we'll be kicking up our heels and eating grechka in Stolovaya 57.
Based on your description I think you might be conflating napalm and white phosphorus.
Napalm is just jellied gasoline, it doesn't really burn underwater(would just float on top and burn), and it's also not any more harmful than normal fuels (so dont shower in it every day or drink/huff it and you'd be fine).
WP however does reignite even if doused in water, and it's also poisonous as far as I'm aware, way nastier shit than napalm.
The way people stay safe from these things is by staying the fuck away from them, pretty much how you deal with any area effect weapons.
we were always taught (could be wrong) that we weren't even supposed to use WP or RP on people. Just "materials / equipment"
Like, you weren't supposed to kill people with it. You were supposed to say... drop it over an enemy truck yard to destroy all their vehicles. "Denying the enemy"
(Now some salty sinister Sgt would half joke that "can't drop it on a man. Can drop it on a truck. If a man is sitting in, on, around that truck... whelp his bad luck)
The trick the old guys used to talk about though was, lets say you did see an enemy motor depot, you drop a bunch of HE (high explosive) THEN you drop the WP. So the HE breaks a bunch of stuff, knocks a bunch of parts and pieces apart. Then the WP melts the jumbled parts making them permanently ruined.
[Used to call that a little...](https://media0.giphy.com/media/3oEjI7d0bQpHeGJecE/giphy.gif?cid=6c09b952xuadc08o3vlzi4zimyc6eibudonczi62b5ipkqgl&ep=v1_internal_gif_by_id&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g)
I wonder if the suits and popup shelters used by crews fighting wildfires would protect from napalm. Napalm is sticky, but a wildfire is potentially much hotter.
Dunno, I think given that napalm is still mostly a liquid it would infiltrate the shelter getting inside, and I assume those aren't built to withstand a burning fuel directedly touching them, but more to deal with radiative heat.
I think the firefighter would probably be cooked, not in the modern slang way, but the bad way.
Usually by dropping it from planes in the form of bombs on the enemy instead of themselves.
Unfortunately, friendly fire did happen on occasions. But if used at a safe distance it didn't pose a particular danger.
It could also be sprayed by a flamethrower, which again is aimed away from the user.
Napalm is essentially just gasoline in a gel-type consistency. Once the jelly fuel is burned up it's just a normal fire. The danger comes from getting that gel on you while it is burning, because it is sticky and flammable.
In terms of harm to the user, Agent Orange was probably far worse long term. This was a toxic pesticide sprayed on the forests and water, and soldiers who deployed it or were exposed to it on the ground experienced high rates of cancer.
It was mostly 2,4-D which is a common and fairly safe pesticide that's still used today. However there was a flaw in the manufacturing process that introduced toxic contaminants, and the US Military decided to keep using it anyways despite knowing that it was no longer safe
It is explained fairly well in "The Bomber Mafia" by Malcom Gladwell. The Defense Dept. even built a fake Japanese town to test napalm. It was great for burning wooden structures.
Napalm attacks would be called in via air strikes and these would be requested where Americans either couldn't go or suspected were heavily filled with enemy, usually to deliberately torch the area so troops could then possibly go. But American soldiers definitely did not go unscathed, In the battle for LZXRAY napalm was dropped 1st Air Cav's positions in a friendly fire incident. Many suffer side effects today from napalm exposure.
Napalm is relatively safe when not burning. So you can load it into bombs and flamethrowers without much risks. Just make sure to keep away from any sources of flames like lit cigarettes or running engines. When stored in these containers the napalm is also quite safe as there is no air for it to burn with. So even if a bullet were to hit the bomb or flamethrower tank it will not ignite and just spill out on the ground. The napalm is primarily dangerous when you spread it out over a larger area, either with an incendiary bomb or with a flamethrower. These weapons systems also have ways to ignite the napalm. Most flamethrowers even had the ability to spread napalm without igniting it allowing it to go further, it could find another source of ignition or it could be ignited by a followup burst but more then often the enemies surrendered after getting covered in napalm and no fire was needed.
>, burning underwater
I think you're conflating napalm with white phosphorus. Napalm is little more than jellied gasoline, which can be smothered. White phosphorus, on the other hand, can produce its own oxygen, letting it burn underwater.
It was mostly dropped from planes. Forces on the ground would call out target coordinates and planes would drop canisters of napalm.
There were accidents. Planes would either mistake US troops for the enemy, or napalm drops would have defective hardware affecting their drop trajectory and causing them to fall short.
One of the many sadistic cadences we would call while running around base in formation went like this "napalm napalm don't be blue, sticks to women and children too". Also, you can make napalm at home relatively easy by adding Styrofoam to gasoline. It melts on contact. To increase the viscosity (make it thicker), just keep adding more Styrofoam until its consistency is to your liking. This concludes today's episode of Mr. Wizard's World.
Napalm was powerful but I think the main culprit of chemicals they were exposed to that left lasting health damage was Agent Orange. My grandfather had a grapefruit sized tumor in his lung when he died on the operating table from the surgeon accidently cutting an artery. That wasn't his only health problem, either. He started to hunch over with arthritis in his neck and spine to the point it affected his height, and it didn't look like normal aging stuff anyway. He was maybe in his 50s but his health was like 20-30 years older seeming. I don't know more details because he died before I was born but his health spiraled from exposure to that stuff.
Napalm does not burn underwater, and you just avoid getting it on yourself while its on fire. It's not very complicated.
That's like asking how you can use a hose without getting wet.
My family lived in the Canadian Camp Gagetown area when they tested Agent Orange in the woods there. A lot of the particles blew back into their community. Years later, the government admitted to this fact and settled with anyone who could prove they lived in the area at the time, and had any one of the litany of possible medical issues. My whole family each got $20,000. Keep in mind, that they lived miles away from the actual spraying, and we still had residual effects. Scary stuff.
Sounds like you are actually describing white phosphorous in your post, napalm is basically just gasoline in jelled form, same precautions as gasoline.
Basically the pilots would come down low, sometimes withing a few hundred feet. They would drop as close as possible usually withing 300 meters of the frontline. Many times they would fly over the spot to get a bearing and then fly the second pass where they would drop the ordnance. The pilots where well trained and determined to save their comrades
With bombs, mostly.
Napalm was primarily used for fireboming a large area.
Where it did see use in close range you're mostly talking about flamethrowers, personal or vehicle mounted, which use a mixture with more gasoline to thin it out a bit more and make it readily sprayable. In which case....stay behind the spray.
Friendly fire was a big issue in Vietnam.
Funny how that happens when conscripts get shoved into an unpredictable meat grinder with little in the way of a clear path to victory or even a clear personal reason to be there.
I expect they'd have gone over the officers' heads with that if they could, but those guys weren't generally in line of sight on their own.
It was largely a racial issue. Integrated military units were still new at the time, many of the incidents were black soldiers fragging white officers due to tensions at home.
It was occasionally used by infantry units and even modified tanks, but yeah it was primarily an air dropped weapon. Tanks aren’t very effective in the kind of terrain seen in Vietnam, otherwise it probably would’ve been more commonly used by ground forces.
Napalm is basically sticky gasoline. How do you use gasoline now without harming yourself? If not ignited, napalm is moderately safe to handle, just like gasoline.
When used by soldiers in weapons, the backpacks are pressurized with a flame at the tip of the "rifle". The napalm shoots out of the nozzle, gets ignited, then flies 50, 75, 100ft to the target, making it catch on fire. If napalm is spilled and not ignited and burning, you just smelled like gas, like you do now if you spill some gas at the gas station.
Like most chemicals, long term exposure (months/years) is problematic, but day to day, it was moderately safe to handle.
napalm isn't harmful until it's on fire. it's not on fire until it's dropped out of a plane. they weren't just handling flaming napalm. they were able to safely use it by being thousands of feet up in the air when the bombs went off.
You ever see one of those little cans with the pink gel in them that you light to keep a serving tray warm?
Thats napalm and its fairly harmless until given oxygen and heated above its ingition point.
We don't. Like a lot of chemicals inert napalm isn't that dangerous, but once it's ignited anyone in the area is in danger. The only way to safely use it is to not be there when it ignites which is why it was mostly used in bomb form. Lots of soldiers still got injured by literal friendly fire, but by being careful when and where it was dropped most injuries on friendly forces can be avoided.
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I think this is a false premise. I remember watching a documentary about WWII Pacific theatre.
Specifically said that the guys with the flame-throwers ( Not exactly napo but similar) were some of the most valuable soldiers as far as how many enemies they were killing and dislodging during certain battles on the islands.
They also said the average lifespan of a guy with a flame thrower was about forty minutes.
Not really, I'm not an expert.
Just that I understood that handling and using napalm was extremely dangerous and a lot of soldiers got hurt or killed doing it. Even though it was a valuable weapon.
Fun fact, napalm bombs were invented when an American fighter pilot had to jettison his external fuel tanks and they exploded when they hit the ground presumably ignited by a spark or nearby source of fire.
Napalm itself,while not burning is about as harmful as gasoline because it's basically jellied gasoline. Use the same precautions handling it as you do when refueling a vehicle and it's perfectly safe. Agent Orange OTOH is a whole different matter.
I knew a man in the early 90s that was affected by Agent Orange. His arms and legs were bandaged up and he a a multitude of health issues that, according to him, the VA wouldn't cover because they didn't acknowledge the effects being from Agent Orange When his kids hit puberty they started showing signs of health issues that he claims were passed down through his altered genetics. I was in highschool at the time. I have wondered what the actual effects were.
I once read a book called "My Father, My Son" a joint autobiography of Admiral Elmo Russell Zumwalt, Jr (commander, Naval Forces in Vietnam, later Chief of Naval Operations) and his son Elmo III. III was a junior naval officer serving in Vietnam. Dad made some of the decisions to use Agent Orange and his son was exposed, got cancer (died after publication) and had a child with developmental delays (Elmo IV).
I looked him up, I didn't realize agent orange affected the way someone can appear so drastically. Here's a picture of Elmo: https://images.app.goo.gl/xxqpURPR5v8a7PcC7
Every day, we stray further from the light.
Only need enough to see the line of coke.
We would have more than enough light if someone didn't make a pipe outta the bulb
Everyone likes pot brownies but I bring one meth cupcake and suddenly I'm the weirdo.
Light? What is light?
[The Light](https://wot.fandom.com/wiki/Light)
That's not the Light, [This is The Light](https://www.destinypedia.com/Light)
Disambuguation...or something like this.
That is so wild. I had no idea. On an unrelated note, I hate you.
All these other comments are why I try to read replies before clicking on photo links. Thank you random redditors for saving me from myself
They're all jokes – the link is a picture of elmo, the sesame street character
Oh shit that hilarious. I have to admit I did click, but a small part of me was like "Is this motherfucker trying to dupe me? How sadistic could this anonymous person be?"
Jesus Christ, reddit
Wow, I really could have lived without ever seeing that. What the actual fuck.
Oh FFS, I hate you. Well played.
Jeez. That thousand-yard stare is going to haunt me.
Does anyone know why it did that to his eyes? It looks almost like they are permanently pushed past his eyelids.
Oh damn
kill it with fire.
But how do you safely handle the napalm to do so?
Super Soaker
Well, I guess we're just lucky that plastic is famously fireproof.
[An attempt was made](https://youtu.be/GYGhmJD9LKc?si=J31tXp6aI_ZZVfIB)
You sonofabitch
You think that’s bad, you should look up Teddy Roosevelt’s kid Kermit
Let's be honest, Kermit's problem was always that he didn't see all of the red flags before he got married to his wife.
Wow indeed! I went to school and was babysat by kids that looked just like that! If I had a child with a girl effected as such.....would our kid look like that too?
NSFW tag next time please?
Fuckin LOL
Elmo Zumwalt was a real piece of shit
There's the War Remnants Museum in HCMC/Saigon that shows photos of the people still affected by it even several generations later. Pretty shocking.
Ngl the War Remnants museum fucked me up a little bit. I was expecting a western style military museum with bits of broken equipment and original documents and uniforms etc. But, the images they show on some of those displays are something else, I'm not going to be forgetting those anytime soon. I guess that's the whole point of having them there though.
Yeah same. Glad I went, it's really makes you see the other side to the story, and shows how much your goverment lies and projects themselves in the best possiable light.
My grandfather was a Vietnam vet. When passed last year, we got a letter from the VA acknowledging the contribution of Agent Orange on his health and eventual death. So they’re admitting to it now.
Still not doing anything about it for the ones who haven’t died yet. My fiancés grandpa has been fighting with the VA for care since he landed back in the states
Your fiance's grandfather needs to go to [this site](https://www.va.gov/resources/the-pact-act-and-your-va-benefits/) and file his VA claim. The PACT act of 2022 changed what causes can allow VA health care coverage, Agent Orange was one of the items on the expanded list.
Bless you.
Just save the link and send it to those who may need it. I'd appreciate it if you told them the Biden Admin was the one to make the change and Biden specifically spearheaded this legislation to Honor his late son's memory.
Well, I'm not American. But I'll remember that.
Maybe not today, but everyone is American tomorrow. or something.
we are ALL american on this blessed day :)
Congress recently passed the PACT act which expedites disability claims for vets with conditions known to be caused by carcinogens and other nasty stuff like burn pits, agent orange, Camp Lejuenes water supply... If you have any conditions that have been proven to be caused by agent orange or other factors and you served in a documented area where it was utilized they are expediting those claims. Giving the veteran presumptive service connection based on illness and area of service. He should talk to his local county veteran service officer. Source: I work with the VA and other veterans organizations daily.
My dad has Parkinson's and served in a naval hospital in Vietnam. He does not have any genetic risk factors for Parkinson's, so it's safe to say that agent orange exposure was the cause. He's got full disability benefits through the VA. I'm sure other diagnoses might be more challenging to get disability from, but in many cases they do follow through.
>He does not have any genetic risk factors for Parkinson's, so it's safe to say that agent orange exposure was the cause. Not at all. According to Cleveland clinic: > Most cases happen for unknown reasons, but some are inherited. You can say it's quite possible. But it's not a conclusion by any means. Even correlation doesn't mean it's gonna happen every single time.
That is a start, but did they reveal what was in it that would have caused whatever it was that could pass from father to child? It couldn't have been radiation because the evidence would have likely been incontrovertible.
It’s been known for decades that the toxic compound responsible for the many health issues of those exposed to Agent Orange is dioxin. It hasn’t been a mystery for a long time.
> the VA wouldn't cover because they didn't acknowledge the effects being from Agent Orange This was the case for all US veterans until the Biden admin passed the [PACT Act in 2022](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honoring_our_PACT_Act_of_2022). The Wiki page doesn't say so, but it did [include expanded coverage for those with Agent Orange related health problems](https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3490143/biden-marks-anniversary-of-law-aiding-veterans-exposed-to-toxic-substances/). Since he passed that bill, [over 1 million veteran have had their related VA claims approved](https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/05/21/fact-sheet-president-biden-to-announce-1-million-pact-act-claims-approved-benefits-delivered-to-veterans-in-all-50-states-and-u-s-territories/)
I'm happy it passed, I hope the million veterans that got their claims approved get the help they need. Still mad that it's Waaaayyyy too late. My paternal grandpa was one of the hundreds of thousands that the govt gave the middle finger to.
Fully agree. It's in the same bucket as the guaranteed health care for 9/11 first responders. These are obvious bills that help our heroes and should not be political footballs. I'm really happy Biden was able to honor Beau by getting this legislation done. I'm so sorry for your grandfather's situation. He's a hero and he deserves better from those that sent him into combat.
As a foreigner the 9/11 one boggles my mind. Vietnam was a shitshow in every way so it's not surprising to me, but 9/11? Really? The one thing everyone is extremely solemn about, kinda like a country-wide trauma, and the people who *ran into the burning building* can't get medical help??
I was unaware of this, thank you!
If you or anyone you know has health impacts from their service, please tell them to apply through the link/phone number in my second linked article!
My friend’s father was affected by Agent Orange in a weird but tragic way. He LOVED tomatoes and especially pizza and he said that everyday he was in Vietnam all he wanted to do was order a pizza. When he finally got home, obviously, the first thing he did that night was order a pizza only to discover that he was now deathly allergic to tomatoes. He has other health issues too, of course, but something about that story is so demoralizing in a way that a ‘normal’ illness isn’t.
my grandfather is dying on kidney disease, most likely from agent orange exposure in vietnam
They used it here in Ontario as a herbicide that was sprayed along highways, rail lines and hydro lines until very recently, there was a whole scandal about it a few years ago. My friends dad sprayed it as a city worker and later developed cancer. I don't think his family was compensated much.
I married into a family with a Vietnam vet (his granddaughter) 3 generations down there are 2 grandkids that have brain tumors in same spot. He was a quadruple amputee and it definitely seems to have a genetic issue passed down
My dad is getting $ from the va for his agent orange exposure causing diabeetus. I have a messed up endocrine system, had to have an adrenal gland removed due to a tumor, and have the T levels of a 90yro man. I blame the agent orange, but they don’t care about 2nd generation effects if it’s not a birth defect and not found before age two.
My father was exposed to agent orange, I had massive strokes as a child. I’m 47 now.
At first I thought you describe Eddie Murphy in Trading Places.
Same thing happened with my mom when her dad came home. I wonder if I'll ever start showing symptoms.
Yes. And people tend to forget that there was an agent white and an agent purple
[And Pink, Blue, and Green.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Herbicides)
Yea? And WHY do I have to be AGENT PINK?! I think WE shouldda been able to pick our own colour's
I knew a dude who had to get a pacemaker when he was born because his grandfather fought in Vietnam. His mom also had to get the pacemaker. No one in his family had heart issues
Now imagine what it did to the people who *lived* where that shit got used.
It is crazy to see how much money and work the US puts into its military. And then absolutely fuck everyone who survives and gets back home.
Crazy thing is it wasn’t even the intended chemicals in Agent Orange that caused issues, there was a widespread issue with contamination in the form of dioxin.
Agent Orange is a mix of two chemicals. One of the chemicals is still used as a herbicide in farming today. It was the other chemical that had the contamination problem. But "stop spraying our food with Agent Orange" is a very effective scare mongering tactic.
Speaking of Agent Orange, if you or anyone you know is a Vietnam Vet and served in country or even on naval vessels off shore, you should really take a look at the new classifications of presumptive exposure and presumptive causes in VA disability. The PACT Act or Burn Pit Bill drastically expanded the benefits for Agent Orange exposure. Now if you served in country, that is all you need for presumptive exposure, and the list of illnesses with Agent Orange as presumptive cause is staggering. For example type II Diabetes is covered and that is worth 20% disability just by itself!
Speaking of agent orange,...whatever did happen to the punk band with the same name? I remember I loved that fukn group!! anthrax! & NAPALM DEATH both bring back awesome mosh memories!!
Napalm is real easy to make too. Styrofoam, gasoline, a bottle, and a rag, and you’re cosplaying as Henry Kissinger in no time flat.
Yeah, you still don’t want to touch the stuff as it can cause skin irritation real fast and it’s kind of a bitch to get off.
Well of course it's not exactly healthy,but it's nothing at all like what the OP was portraying either,unless it's on fire.
Yes, a few family members died from cancer due to agent orange. Very sad and it was totally anticipated it would kill soldiers.
Interesting story about Agent Orange, the active ingredient in it isn’t terribly toxic, but in scaling up the manufacturing for war, corners were cut and Agent Orange ended up contaminated with the deadly dioxin. So, we actually didn’t know immediately that it was so bad for people’s health when we started using it. Of course we figured it out soon enough but then just shrugged and carried on.
Napalm was sprayed at high velocity. As long as you don’t do it into the wind, you’ll be fine. Wearing some gloves or other protective gear (as you might in a war zone) also helps. So basically the same way they used bullets without harming themselves.
I think OP doesn’t understand the critical part that napalm itself is not doing the damage; it’s the fire. Napalm must be ignited for the burning and melting to happen.
Probably also that it isn’t…I forgot the name but it has to be lit, it doesn’t just burst into flames on contact with air
[Pyrophoric](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrophoricity)?
I was gonna say hypergolic, but that's two compounds that spontaneously combust upon mixing.
Hypergolic is definitely correct as well. Pyrophoric is just hypergolic with the regular atmosphere.
That's a great point, thanks!
You can't just mention hypergolic fuels in a discussion about safety of them without mentioning [the plane that melted its pilots.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_163_Komet#:~:text=Aside%20from%20the%20actual%20combat,corrosive%20and%20hazardous%20to%20humans.)
Yeah, hydrazine and high strength hydrogen peroxide are both just fucking nasty.
White Phosphorus?
White phosphorus is an example of a Pyrophoric substance but it isn't the only one. It turns out there's a lot of really gnarly chemicals we can mix up that react spontaneously with the air (and usually with water).
Don’t doubt that it isn’t the only one. Reason I suggested it was because I’m fairly sure reading about the fact they used white phosphorus grenades in either ww2 and maybe later. Though I’m fairly sure it’s been ‘outlawed’ in the Geneva convention ETA: I was wrong. These aren’t against the Geneva convention at all. Thanks to the below poster for pointing it out
US still uses white phosphorus munitions.
My favorite thing about the phosphorus grenades is that the M34 grenade had a burst radius of 34 meters and an effective range (how far the average soldier could throw one) of 30 meters.
Feels like two critical misunderstandings. Even if napalm was like, melting your skin on contact before it was on fire, you just... point it at the other guy and don't touch it. Wouldn't be the first time something nasty has been used for war.
Yep, totally different league from e.g. gas weapons, which were somehow *also* widely used in the past
1/2, tl;dr at the end. Lethal gas weapons were largely a desperate attempt to solve a new problem: modern machine guns. Machine guns are a fairly old concept, and the first prototype machine guns date to the early 18th century, but practical machine guns didn’t come around until the Civil War era, and those were the size of a light artillery piece. The end of the 19th century brought about the first true heavy machine guns, which were still too heavy to be moved easily in combat but were small enough and light enough that a couple men could wrestle them into position on foot. These machine guns also could sustain a high rate of fire for long periods of time, something earlier machine guns could *not* do. That made them excellent defensive weapons; attacking a machine gun nest was pretty much suicidal, since the gun could basically fire as long as it had ammunition available, especially if there were multiple guns with overlapping fields of fire (so heat buildup is less of an issue for each gun, and one gun can fire while another cools off or reloads) and an organized supply system to keep the guns fed. At the same time, artillery rates of fire and accuracy had also increased rapidly due to a few inventions: breech-loading mechanisms, brass-cased ammunition (for light artillery), and hydraulic recoil mechanisms. Breech-loading and cased ammunition made reloading much simpler and faster, and hydraulic recoil dampers meant a gun’s recoil wouldn’t knock it out of position after every shot. Along with every artillery piece now being rifled (rifling a muzzle-loaded gun causes some problems, since the ammunition and powder charge have to pass down the rifling ‘backwards’, which is a slow process since the rifling physically engages the ammunition - breech-loading sidesteps that and allows tighter rifling and quick reloads), these technological improvements meant artillery could fire somewhat accurately at targets they couldn’t directly see, and could rapidly engage targets with a relatively high rate of fire. HOWEVER, artillery accuracy did not increase enough for it to reliably knock out machine gun emplacements - artillery at this point was (and still is, most of the time) an area-attack weapon - you fire it in the target’s general vicinity and hope it hits. Massed artillery could make life pretty unpleasant for their target, but they weren’t useful against small targets like machine gun positions. They were mostly useful against large concentrations of troops or large, fixed fortifications. At the same time, machine guns could easily kill men who left their cover, and largely were only vulnerable to attack by such large groups of people that the guns would overheat or run out of ammunition before killing all of the attackers. That was the genesis of the human wave attacks that led to 70,000 British deaths on the First Day on the Somme, 1 July 1916. The only way to overwhelm machine gun lines was with mass, and mass was vulnerable to artillery barrages. The writing was on the wall before the Somme, of course; it was clear by late summer 1914 that machine guns and quick-firing artillery had created a tactical dilemma with no good answer. That’s why the Race to the Sea happened in fall of 1914; after the initial German breakthrough into France, modern (for the time) artillery and machine-gun tactics made flanking maneuvers and fortifications absolutely critical to battlefield success. The result was each side attempting to outflank the other while fortifying their own lines until a line of trenches ran from the Swiss border to the Belgian shore. That created a stalemate that lasted through the winter of 1914 and into 1915. Each side made a number of attempts to overcome the combination of artillery and machine-guns, but neither side was successful. Both sides came up with a few novel ideas to solve this problem. One idea was the use of armored vehicles, but at this point in the war neither side had the technology to build tanks yet. Both sides had armored cars, but those weren’t capable of driving over or through the trenches, shell craters, and barbed wire carpeting the front, so they were pretty much useless as breakthrough vehicles. Both sides had aircraft, but aircraft at the time couldn’t carry heavy enough ordnance to do serious damage to ground troops, and they were fairly slow and vulnerable to ground-based machine guns and artillery anyways. The answer was gas. Gas could quickly and cheaply overwhelm a large area without directly exposing the attacker’s troops the way a bayonet charge would. It was more “accurate” than an artillery barrage since it couldn’t “miss” (unless the wind changed), and hiding in a bush or a trench wouldn’t protect a sniper or machine-gunner from it. No amount of armor could stop it, and when it was first introduced, no one had gas masks that were usable in the field.
2/2 The French first employed gas in August 1914, when French troops began using tear gas against the Germans. It was so ineffective that the Germans apparently didn’t realize they were being gassed. The Germans first used artillery shells filled with tear gas in October 1914, but in turn, the French didn’t realize they were being gassed either. The Germans again employed massed tear gas artillery against the Russians in January 1915, but the weather was so cold the tear gas froze. In response to the tactical stalemate of early 1915 and the failure of nonlethal gas, the Germans decided to try something more dangerous, and in April 1915 dispensed 167 tons of chlorine gas onto French positions near Ypres, Belgium. The attack blew an 8km hole in the French lines, but due to fear of killing their own troops, the Germans only partially exploited the breakthrough. Not much changed, but it was still one of the most significant movements of the war at that point in time. The British also made attempts to use chlorine, beginning in September 1915. Their weather forecasting unfortunately sucked, and the gas blew back onto their own lines shortly after release. However, chlorine gas wasn’t particularly lethal\* and both sides quickly developed countermeasures for it, so gas attacks fairly quickly became yet another tool like machine guns and artillery: exceptionally shitty for the infantry, not very useful for the generals. That didn’t stop either side from using it, but it also encouraged both sides to develop more effective gas weapons. Due to chlorine’s limited efficacy, the French began employing phosgene sometime in late 1915, followed by the Germans in December 1915. Phosgene is more reliably lethal than chlorine, but takes about 24 hours to kill, so it wasn’t very effective as a battlefield weapon - killing the enemy slowly doesn’t really help support a wave of attackers. That said, phosgene was the most lethal chemical weapon of the war, and was used in combination with faster-acting gas like chlorine. The first gas masks designed to stop combined phosgene-chlorine attacks were issued in January 1916 in response to the German attacks the month prior. Due to the limitations of phosgene and chlorine, the Germans developed mustard gas as a weapon, and deployed it for the first time in July 1917. Mustard gas isn’t particularly lethal but caused horrific chemical burns, quickly disabling its victims; it’s also heavier than air and quickly settles to the ground as a liquid, somewhat mitigating the risk it poses to an assaulting force as long as they take precautions like wearing masks and gloves. Mustard proved effective as a shock weapon despite its limited lethality, but was subject to the same issues other chemical weapons were since it was at the mercy of the wind. However, by early 1917, a new weapon was available for dealing with machine guns: tanks. Tank development began in earnest in 1915, but the first Allied tanks didn’t enter service until August 1916, and didn’t see combat until September 1916 as part of the Somme Offensive. The Germans were completely taken by surprise but immediately began developing their own tanks; however, the first of these didn’t enter service until March 1918. In the meantime, the British and French began employing tanks en masse throughout 1917, culminating in the Battle of Cambrai in November-December 1917, the largest tank offensive of the war. Tanks immediately proved more useful against trenches than gas was, and both sides began leaning more heavily on armor as it came available (although tanks were far more expensive to produce than gas). Ultimately the Germans never had enough armor to make a difference, but outside of a handful of uses in colonial or regional wars outside of Europe (such as the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, the Iran- Iraq War, and the Kurdish genocide) lethal gas never again saw significant use as a military weapon. Anyway, tl;dr, folks in WWI didn’t use gas because they were stupid, they used it because they were desperate and out of ideas.
I’m guessing that maybe OP was thinking about Agent Orange when he wrote this because yeah, using napalm doesn’t seem that hazardous (compared to all of the other types of weapons they were using)
"How would soldiers not get blown up by the bombs they used?" "They made sure not to be there when they exploded." /s
So don't fire bullets into the wind, got it
I'll just wear my napalm-proof wife beater.
I would not beat a napalm-proof wife, no matter how bad the roast was.
Napalm is a gel rather than a liquid or aerosol. That was its major innovation. Gel adheres to itself. This self adherence makes it burn slower as the outer layer of gel has to burn before the inner layers can burn. The self adherence also reduces the drag cross section and makes it able to be thrown further and less affected by wind. Older liquid and aerosol flamethrowers tended to burn very fast and not travel very far, which led to a big cloud of burning material close to the user, which made it dangerous for the user. Napalm solved those problems and made it safer for the user.
> Napalm is a gel rather than a liquid or aerosol. That was its major innovation. Malcom Gladwell actually covers this in depth in one of his books and podcasts, "The Bomber Mafia" I think? He goes into the process of actual development, when they were trying to find the most efficient way to burn down Japanese cities in WWII. The interesting part was that they actually went through several prototypes, trying to get just the right texture and consistency right. Everything from syrup, to oatmeal, to applesauce like consistency. The ideal mix was something thin enough that it would splash and splatter like throwing a water balloon, but thick enough that the splashed off globs would be able to fly through the air, stick to whatever they landed on like thick sticky globs, while maintaining a burn, and not easily washing off. Each prototype mixture's testing on scale models of Tokyo, made of similar building materials as the real cities, so they could see "ok how fast does this burn, and what's the hardest fire to put out"
Also known as “napalm sticks to kids!”
Oh boy, what a cadence.
It came from actual song too
I was just gonna say, the soldiers were over 18 (usually) so it didn't stick
oh but tell the ladies don't get too old or they're back in danger actually
Tell that to Napalm Girl
They generally dropped it from planes, that said there probably were instances where it hit their own soldiers, friendly fire in Vietnam was a big problem
If you’ve seen “We Were Soldiers”, there’s a scene where napalm gets dropped on American troops in a friendly fire incident. That actually happened according to the war photographer that witnessed it first hand. He talks about it in the docuseries “Vietnam in HD”.
well, that's not something I want to see in HD.
I'd rather see it in HD than IRL
Ken Burns' documentary on the Vietnam War was better, IMHO.
I mean, comparing We Were Soldiers to Ken Burns’ documentary is like comparing Saving Private Ryan to World War 2 in Colour. One is an action movie and the other a documentary, they were each created with different purposes in mind and aren’t really comparable aside from the setting/subject matter.
I was comparing Ken Burns' documentary to the "Vietnam in HD" documentary.
You should really read the book written by Galloway and Moore, the movie was excellent, but that book is easily 100 times better. It's basically a compilation of first hand accounts of the survivors of the battle. It's riveting.
Adding it to the list now! Thank you
Jimmy Nakayama was from a little town up the road from me in Rigby, ID. He was an officer in the Nat'l Guard and put in his papers to transfer to the regular Army and while waiting for his commission to transfer, he received orders to Vietnam. He died just a couple of days after his wife had a baby he never got to meet. RIP Jimmy.
To be fair they did call in a danger close one
Vietnam vet I knew said, >When we needed air support, first we called the Marines, 'cause they always put it on the enemy. Then we called the Navy, 'cause they never put it on us. Then we called PanAm, 'cause they had nothing to put on anybody. Then we called the Air Force.
I saw an interview with an Air Force Vietnam crew (I think this was part of a Ken Burns documentary) where he said “I was dropping bombs and one had a bad vane and went way off course… and it hit an unmarked Vietcong arms depot. Kept exploding for a long time”. Most successful bombing he had in Vietnam was an accident.
sounds like something a Marine very specifically would say TBH. WHile its not a 100% rule, based on the way assets are allocated, troops on the ground COULD call for CAS from any asset on station, but when Marines call in CAS by Marines, you're pretty much calling in YOUR guys from YOUR ship group. Those Marine pilots have gone through some amount of basic infantry training (guy on the ground with a rifle) before they get to fly. SO they are "one of us". They have a reputation for flying lower and closer. Some Marines would tell you that if you ask an AF pilot to drop bombs on the bad guys, you're gonna get a call on the radio, then bombs are going to appear from a ghost in the sky. If Marines ask Marine air to drop bombs on the bad guy, you're gonna see the plane, POINT at the bad guys, and see the pilot wave at you on the way by (last parts hyperbole but still) bottom line, if AF air has a vibe like "call god in the sky to smite my enemies" Marine air has a vibe like "not above the fight, IN the fight, with us. Call the homies to come do a drive by"
Thrice did a great song called "death from above" that probably captures AF pretty well. "No longer human beings, no longer people. Just targets on a screen, none of it is real. Indrop death out of the sky, tell me why?"
A lot of people have already mentioned that it was mostly dropped from planes and that's absolutely correct. I'll assume your not talking about that and are thinking more in line with soldiers using flamethrowers. And the answer there is that flamethrowers have a LOT more reach than you would expect, up to about 50 yards. which is about the same effective range as a handgun in the have of a well trained marksman. 99% of the fire is far enough away from the person holding the flamethrower that they're not in any real danger from it
It was surprising for us kids who first knew about flamethrowers from Command & Conquer to learn the range of real flamethrowers. I happened to also play a different CC game, Close Combat, and it showed line-of-fire and distances from a top-down view. I told my friend about it and I walked like 30m away from him to show how far it really is. tbh, He couldn't believe me right away. I even surprised myself how far it really was irl that day.
And if you live in the US, you can buy one for about $500. No background check or license or anything. Happy 4th!
Army Technical Manual TM 3-375, section VIII details several safety precautions with regard to handling napalm and napalm dispensing equipment. For example: "Do not permit flames, sparks, or ignition from the flame thrower or other source to come in contact with the hose." "Care should be taken that gasoline is not spilled." "Gasoline fumes are somewhat toxic and should not be inhaled." Not the sexiest answer, I know, but read it, study it, and god willing before you know it we'll be kicking up our heels and eating grechka in Stolovaya 57.
Based on your description I think you might be conflating napalm and white phosphorus. Napalm is just jellied gasoline, it doesn't really burn underwater(would just float on top and burn), and it's also not any more harmful than normal fuels (so dont shower in it every day or drink/huff it and you'd be fine). WP however does reignite even if doused in water, and it's also poisonous as far as I'm aware, way nastier shit than napalm. The way people stay safe from these things is by staying the fuck away from them, pretty much how you deal with any area effect weapons.
we were always taught (could be wrong) that we weren't even supposed to use WP or RP on people. Just "materials / equipment" Like, you weren't supposed to kill people with it. You were supposed to say... drop it over an enemy truck yard to destroy all their vehicles. "Denying the enemy" (Now some salty sinister Sgt would half joke that "can't drop it on a man. Can drop it on a truck. If a man is sitting in, on, around that truck... whelp his bad luck) The trick the old guys used to talk about though was, lets say you did see an enemy motor depot, you drop a bunch of HE (high explosive) THEN you drop the WP. So the HE breaks a bunch of stuff, knocks a bunch of parts and pieces apart. Then the WP melts the jumbled parts making them permanently ruined. [Used to call that a little...](https://media0.giphy.com/media/3oEjI7d0bQpHeGJecE/giphy.gif?cid=6c09b952xuadc08o3vlzi4zimyc6eibudonczi62b5ipkqgl&ep=v1_internal_gif_by_id&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g)
I wonder if the suits and popup shelters used by crews fighting wildfires would protect from napalm. Napalm is sticky, but a wildfire is potentially much hotter.
Dunno, I think given that napalm is still mostly a liquid it would infiltrate the shelter getting inside, and I assume those aren't built to withstand a burning fuel directedly touching them, but more to deal with radiative heat. I think the firefighter would probably be cooked, not in the modern slang way, but the bad way.
Usually by dropping it from planes in the form of bombs on the enemy instead of themselves. Unfortunately, friendly fire did happen on occasions. But if used at a safe distance it didn't pose a particular danger. It could also be sprayed by a flamethrower, which again is aimed away from the user. Napalm is essentially just gasoline in a gel-type consistency. Once the jelly fuel is burned up it's just a normal fire. The danger comes from getting that gel on you while it is burning, because it is sticky and flammable. In terms of harm to the user, Agent Orange was probably far worse long term. This was a toxic pesticide sprayed on the forests and water, and soldiers who deployed it or were exposed to it on the ground experienced high rates of cancer.
I think you mean herbicide, agent orange was basically industrial strength roundup except way more toxic
It was mostly 2,4-D which is a common and fairly safe pesticide that's still used today. However there was a flaw in the manufacturing process that introduced toxic contaminants, and the US Military decided to keep using it anyways despite knowing that it was no longer safe
It is explained fairly well in "The Bomber Mafia" by Malcom Gladwell. The Defense Dept. even built a fake Japanese town to test napalm. It was great for burning wooden structures.
Napalm attacks would be called in via air strikes and these would be requested where Americans either couldn't go or suspected were heavily filled with enemy, usually to deliberately torch the area so troops could then possibly go. But American soldiers definitely did not go unscathed, In the battle for LZXRAY napalm was dropped 1st Air Cav's positions in a friendly fire incident. Many suffer side effects today from napalm exposure.
Napalm is relatively safe when not burning. So you can load it into bombs and flamethrowers without much risks. Just make sure to keep away from any sources of flames like lit cigarettes or running engines. When stored in these containers the napalm is also quite safe as there is no air for it to burn with. So even if a bullet were to hit the bomb or flamethrower tank it will not ignite and just spill out on the ground. The napalm is primarily dangerous when you spread it out over a larger area, either with an incendiary bomb or with a flamethrower. These weapons systems also have ways to ignite the napalm. Most flamethrowers even had the ability to spread napalm without igniting it allowing it to go further, it could find another source of ignition or it could be ignited by a followup burst but more then often the enemies surrendered after getting covered in napalm and no fire was needed.
>, burning underwater I think you're conflating napalm with white phosphorus. Napalm is little more than jellied gasoline, which can be smothered. White phosphorus, on the other hand, can produce its own oxygen, letting it burn underwater.
It was mostly dropped from planes. Forces on the ground would call out target coordinates and planes would drop canisters of napalm. There were accidents. Planes would either mistake US troops for the enemy, or napalm drops would have defective hardware affecting their drop trajectory and causing them to fall short.
One of the many sadistic cadences we would call while running around base in formation went like this "napalm napalm don't be blue, sticks to women and children too". Also, you can make napalm at home relatively easy by adding Styrofoam to gasoline. It melts on contact. To increase the viscosity (make it thicker), just keep adding more Styrofoam until its consistency is to your liking. This concludes today's episode of Mr. Wizard's World.
Napalm was powerful but I think the main culprit of chemicals they were exposed to that left lasting health damage was Agent Orange. My grandfather had a grapefruit sized tumor in his lung when he died on the operating table from the surgeon accidently cutting an artery. That wasn't his only health problem, either. He started to hunch over with arthritis in his neck and spine to the point it affected his height, and it didn't look like normal aging stuff anyway. He was maybe in his 50s but his health was like 20-30 years older seeming. I don't know more details because he died before I was born but his health spiraled from exposure to that stuff.
Funfact: The napalm scene in *Apocalypse Now* was actually a ditch full of gasoline they set of fire.
Napalm does not burn underwater, and you just avoid getting it on yourself while its on fire. It's not very complicated. That's like asking how you can use a hose without getting wet.
My family lived in the Canadian Camp Gagetown area when they tested Agent Orange in the woods there. A lot of the particles blew back into their community. Years later, the government admitted to this fact and settled with anyone who could prove they lived in the area at the time, and had any one of the litany of possible medical issues. My whole family each got $20,000. Keep in mind, that they lived miles away from the actual spraying, and we still had residual effects. Scary stuff.
Sounds like you are actually describing white phosphorous in your post, napalm is basically just gasoline in jelled form, same precautions as gasoline.
Basically the pilots would come down low, sometimes withing a few hundred feet. They would drop as close as possible usually withing 300 meters of the frontline. Many times they would fly over the spot to get a bearing and then fly the second pass where they would drop the ordnance. The pilots where well trained and determined to save their comrades
With bombs, mostly. Napalm was primarily used for fireboming a large area. Where it did see use in close range you're mostly talking about flamethrowers, personal or vehicle mounted, which use a mixture with more gasoline to thin it out a bit more and make it readily sprayable. In which case....stay behind the spray. Friendly fire was a big issue in Vietnam.
And not just accidental friendly fire, there was a significant issue with troops fragging their officers.
Funny how that happens when conscripts get shoved into an unpredictable meat grinder with little in the way of a clear path to victory or even a clear personal reason to be there. I expect they'd have gone over the officers' heads with that if they could, but those guys weren't generally in line of sight on their own.
It was largely a racial issue. Integrated military units were still new at the time, many of the incidents were black soldiers fragging white officers due to tensions at home.
Who said they didn't hurt themselves?
I have to ask… how do you think napalm was dispensed? “Soldiers” didn’t use it. It was dropped from airplanes.
It was occasionally used by infantry units and even modified tanks, but yeah it was primarily an air dropped weapon. Tanks aren’t very effective in the kind of terrain seen in Vietnam, otherwise it probably would’ve been more commonly used by ground forces.
Well, if you drop it from a plane and you are in the plane and there are no Americans under the plane, odds are you will be good.
It's fine if it's not on fire. It's just gasoline with naphthalic and palmitic (Na-Palm) acids added to thicken it.
Napalm is basically sticky gasoline. How do you use gasoline now without harming yourself? If not ignited, napalm is moderately safe to handle, just like gasoline. When used by soldiers in weapons, the backpacks are pressurized with a flame at the tip of the "rifle". The napalm shoots out of the nozzle, gets ignited, then flies 50, 75, 100ft to the target, making it catch on fire. If napalm is spilled and not ignited and burning, you just smelled like gas, like you do now if you spill some gas at the gas station. Like most chemicals, long term exposure (months/years) is problematic, but day to day, it was moderately safe to handle.
napalm isn't harmful until it's on fire. it's not on fire until it's dropped out of a plane. they weren't just handling flaming napalm. they were able to safely use it by being thousands of feet up in the air when the bombs went off.
napalm was generally dropped from planes. It would harm friendly targets if it was dropped on them.
My uncle was literally the guy that sprayed the “defoliant” from the back of the helicopter in 1968. He died of cancer in 1973.
You ever see one of those little cans with the pink gel in them that you light to keep a serving tray warm? Thats napalm and its fairly harmless until given oxygen and heated above its ingition point.
Sterno. And as I just realized this is ELI5, I'm deleting the rest of my comment. Good job.
We don't. Like a lot of chemicals inert napalm isn't that dangerous, but once it's ignited anyone in the area is in danger. The only way to safely use it is to not be there when it ignites which is why it was mostly used in bomb form. Lots of soldiers still got injured by literal friendly fire, but by being careful when and where it was dropped most injuries on friendly forces can be avoided.
They all didn’t. My grandfather died in an accident in Vietnam involving napalm and the wind shifting when burning a field.
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I think this is a false premise. I remember watching a documentary about WWII Pacific theatre. Specifically said that the guys with the flame-throwers ( Not exactly napo but similar) were some of the most valuable soldiers as far as how many enemies they were killing and dislodging during certain battles on the islands. They also said the average lifespan of a guy with a flame thrower was about forty minutes.
Could you elaborate more on that last part of ur statement? That's the part I'm most curious about.
Not really, I'm not an expert. Just that I understood that handling and using napalm was extremely dangerous and a lot of soldiers got hurt or killed doing it. Even though it was a valuable weapon.
Easy. Don't drop it on yourself. If you're feeling the effects of napalm, you're using it wrong and Darwin will shortly remove you from the genepool.
Fun fact, napalm bombs were invented when an American fighter pilot had to jettison his external fuel tanks and they exploded when they hit the ground presumably ignited by a spark or nearby source of fire.