Napalm and the Vietnam War

Napalm was used extensively by the US in the Vietnam War as a weapon to burn down jungles, destroy crops, and terrorize enemy forces and civilians. The Daily Dose provides microlearning history documentaries like this one delivered to your inbox daily: We strive for accuracy and unbiased fairness, but if you spot something that doesn’t look right please submit a correction suggestion here: Learn more: Subscribe for daily emails: Become a Patron: Follow us on social media: Twitter: Facebook: Click to subscribe on YouTube: #documentary #history #biography Today’s Daily Dose short military history film covers the use of napalm during the Vietnam War. The filmmaker has included the original voice over script to further assist your understanding: Today on The Daily Dose, Napalm and the Vietnam War. During the First World War, flamethrowers spewed ignited gasoline on enemy combatants, which proved to be of minimal effectiveness, since gasoline burned out quickly. To remedy the deficiency, the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service added rubber to gasoline, producing a jelly-like mixture that burned longer and stuck to enemy combatants with more fatal consequences, but when rubber became a scare commodity during World War Two—particularly in the Pacific—a team of Harvard chemist led by Louis Fieser developed a mix of naphthenic and palmitic acids, creating a hideous yet highly effective jellied liquid that burned at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit and stuck to human skin like glue, at the same time creating suffocating carbon monoxide gas, much like Zyclon-B, which was the Nazi’s gas of choice for exterminating Jews and political dissidents in World War Two concentration camps. In 1965, The Dow Company—best known for their kitchen wonder product, Saran Wrap—began making napalm in mass quantities for use in the Vietnam War, raising chemical warfare to new heights of inhumanity, yet despite its obvious cruelty, napalm proved to be a highly effective weapon. From 1963 to 1973, 388,000 tons of napalm was dropped on Vietnam, compared to 32,357 tons used during the Korean War and a mere 16,500 tons used in World War Two, covering victims both civilian and military, with a viscous magma the consistency of tar, causing burn wounds generally too great for a victim to survive. First deployed during the early years of the Vietnam War in flamethrowers and flame-throwing tanks, as the war dragged on, U.S. war planners switched to carpet bombing that could leave an area as large as 2,500 square yards engulfed in unquenchable fire. Accuracy, however, proved to be an illusive objective, causing untold casualties to civilian populations in Vietnam, at the same time creating one of the most impactful weapons in the history of psychological warfare. As media coverage of the Vietnam War intensified in the United States, napalm became a rallying point for antiwar protesters, calling for a boycott of The Dow Company beginning as early as 1966. After the Fall of Saigon in 1975, five years later, the United Nations declared the use of napalm against concentrations of civilians a war crime, making napalm, one of the worst inhumanities of chemical warfare. Insert: “I love the smell of napalm in the morning. And there you have it, napalm and the Vietnam War, today on The Daily Dose.