Japan incendiary raids

At the time of the outbreak of the Second World War the aid of Professor Louis Fieser of Harvard University, a distinguished organic chemist, was enlisted. The Japanese invasion of the East Indies had cut off supplies of rubber which was crucial to the thickener for napalm. The research programme that followed, conducted at Harvard University, saw the first successful napalm detonations on the games field behind the football stadium - an excellent example of applied weapons research in the universities.55 The new napalm gel proved far superior to the original rubber-based gel, and napalm was used extensively by the United States in incendiary raids on Japan in the Second World War.56 Napalm was also used in Korea where it was called the United States best all round weapon 57 and, of course, it was used extensively in Vietnam. SSg-E6 Tom M. Jackson (Vietnam, 12 September 1970 to 12 September 1971) described watching napalm set off from only 50 yards away ... 

The incendiary bomb most widely used against Japan was a 6-pounder. The NDRC conceived the idea for the bomb in 1941 after European air raids had proven the effectiveness of small incendiaries. Since magnesium was scarce, the NDRC contracted with the Standard Oil Development Company for a steel-cased bomb filled with thickened gasoline. ... 

This plant at Edgewood turned out the AN-M54 incendiary bombs which were used in Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle s raid on Japan, 18 Apr 42. See (1) Ltr, Brig Gen T. H. Marshall to Hist Off, 24 Jan 54. Marshall at that time was a captain working on the incendiary bomb program at Edgewood. (2) Seth Q. Kline, Robert E. Patchel, and Charles T. Mitchell, Development of Quick-Opening Cluster Adapters M4, Ms, M4 M7, and M8 for Incendiary Bombs. TDMR 1015, 16 Apr 45. 

---