Incendiary bombs 2,000-pound

The German incendiary bombs used a kilogram of magnesium [2.2 pounds], but magnesium was in short supply. Starting in September 1941, NDRC set out to produce an incendiary bomb at least as effective as the... 

At the end of May, Shadle expressed his satisfaction with the chemical offensive potential and ammunition status in the North African theater. His view seems to have been overly optimistic since smoke pots, tear gas, and HC smoke grenades were the only ammunition items available in sufficient supply. All the chemical supply officers reported urgent requests for unavailable white phosphorus grenades. The Twelfth Air Force reported limited quantities of ANM50A1 4-pound incendiary bombs, a few Mja yoo-pound incendiary bomb clusters, and a considerable number of My4 loo-pound incendiary bomb clusters. There was no other chemical ammunition in the theater although the New York port had promised that 120 days supply of high explosive and smoke shell was en route for the three chemical mortar battalions which had recently arrived in the theater. Aside from a small amount of artillery shell stored by Ordnance, no toxics were available in the theater and none was scheduled to arrive until the fall of 1943. The March theater plan for gas warfare, the first such plan, was based on meeting possible enemy gas attack with this plainly inadequate supply of artillery shell. The new War Department policy for retaliation in event of enemy initiation of gas warfare called for the use of aerial munitions as the principal gas weapons. Shadle s satisfaction with the toxic supply status can be explained by the fact that he did not con-... 

The CWS ETO was unable for most of 1942 to supply incendiary bombs. The British 30- and 250-pound incendiaries were therefore... 

Great Britain s principal incendiary bomb, the Baby Incendiary, weighed but two-fifths of a pound. Filled with a special thermite mixture these small bombs were carried in containers capable of holding either 272 or 144 units. Great Britain used few of its Baby Incendiaries during World War I, although these bombs were in production and were found to be effective. 

Moreover, the Army Air Corps was becoming increasingly interested in the potentialities of the incendiary bomb. As early as November 1934 the commandant of the Air Corps Tactical School at Maxwell Field, Ala., recommended to the Chief of Air Corps a project aimed at developing a filling for an incendiary bomb, and one month later he sent the Chief, CWS, the military characteristics for such a munition. By April 1936 the CWS Book of Standards showed a military requirement for an incendiary filling for the 2 j-pound chemical bomb, and on 30 December 1936 the CWS established a project to find an incen-... 

The outbreak of war in Europe called attention as never before to the possibilities of aerial incendiaries. German planes began to shower London with magnesium electron bombs and no-kilo oil bombs, and the English replied with their 4-pound magnesium munition. The United States Army could no longer afford to neglect the development and production of incendiary bombs. ... 

The incendiary bomb had the distinction of being one of the most effective munitions employed strategically by United States forces in World War II. Ranging from a compact 4-pound, metallic model to an oil-filled 500-pounder, these bombs, developed and procured by the CWS and employed by the Army Air Forces, wrought almost im-paralleled destruction. Tlie fire bomb, the tactical corollary of the incendiary, proved effective when dropped by fighter-bomber aircraft on a variety of targets in the forward areas. 

Burning Phosphorus From a 100-Pound Incendiary Bomb on an enemy airfield, Rabaul, New Britain. Aircraft are Japanese Betty-type bombers. 

Aircraft dropped more 4-pound magnesium bombs than all other incendiary bombs put together. Almost thirty million fell on Europe, and almost ten million on Japan, causing damage that ran into astronomical figures. 

By the summer of 1S>42 the first shipments of incendiary bomb clusters were beginning to fill the new facilities. As the carloads arrived, the 100-pound clusters were manhandled into the igloos from the railroad docks via trucks and roller conveyors arid stacked inside by hand, as many as twelve to a stack. This procedure, time consuming and laborious as it was, remained without much change for more than a year until the use of fork-lift trucks and pallets became general. A number of devices had by then been improvised for handling 100-pound and 500-pound clusters. 

For the greater number of CWS items, boxes of one sort or another were devised and specified. In some cases the specifications were changed over and over again in the attempt to attain the best possible protection in the face of a variety of hazards. The 500-pound aimable cluster, Ml9, an adapter holding thirty-eight M69 incendiary bombs, was one such ex-... 

In 1916 the British introduced a new means of projecting gas, the 4-inch Stokes mortar, developed from the 3-inch version of this weapon, which had been the standard mortar in the British Army. Because of their inability to manufacture gas shells, the British first used the mortar to fire improvised smokes and incendiaries. The Stokes gas shell, or bomb, as the British called it, contained six pounds of agent as compared to three pounds for the British 4.5-inch heavy howitzer shell. 

M47 loo-pound bomb with an incendiary filling was satisfactory, but it was late in 1942 before a successful filling could be produced in quantity. Quantity production of toxics was just beginning, and not even token shipments to the European theater were authorized until January 1943. Defensive equipment and service supplies were no more available to the air forces than they were to the ground and service forces, and all stockages in and destined for the European theater were subject to the demands of the North African campaigns. Existing demands on the British supply system had reached monumental proportions, but the British were in a position to be of some assistance to the chemical preparedness of the United States forces. 

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