Napalm

On Valentine's Day 1942, in Harvard's Gill Laboratory basement, chemistry professor Louis Fieser perfected a weapon that would reshape modern warfare. The substance—a jellied incendiary he named "napalm"—combined naphthenic acid from crude oil and palmitic acid from coconut oil with aluminum salts to create a sticky, flammable gel. The name was a portmanteau: naphthenic and palmitic.

What made napalm revolutionary was its chemistry. Before Fieser's breakthrough, liquid incendiaries like gasoline burned quickly and dispersed on impact. Fieser's team discovered that aluminum soap could gel gasoline into thick syrup that clung to surfaces and burned at higher temperatures for extended periods. The long hydrocarbon chains made it hydrophobic—water couldn't extinguish it.

The U.S. Chemical Warfare Service needed effective incendiary weapons for the Pacific Theater, where conventional explosives proved less effective against Japanese cities built from wood and paper. The first test occurred July 4, 1942, on Harvard's football field. Cambridge firefighters stood by as Fieser detonated white phosphorus into 45 pounds of napalm. Flaming lumps arced through the air as nearby tennis players yelped. It worked.

Combat debut came August 1943 in Sicily. The first napalm bombs dropped February 15, 1944 on Japanese positions in Pohnpei. Production ramped from 500,000 pounds in 1943 to 8 million pounds. On March 9-10, 1945, Operation Meetinghouse firebombed Tokyo—334 B-29s dropped 1,665 tons, mostly napalm incendiaries. The firestorm killed approximately 100,000 people—more than Hiroshima or Nagasaki—and destroyed 15.8 square miles.

In Korea, 32,357 tons fell—double Japan. In Vietnam, 388,000 tons between 1963-1973. Nick Ut's 1972 photograph of nine-year-old Phan Thị Kim Phúc, skin burned by napalm, became the conflict's defining image. In 1980, the UN banned napalm use against civilians. In 2001, the U.S. Army destroyed its remaining stockpiles. A substance born in an Ivy League basement became synonymous with the terror of modern war.