War and Military Atlas

How Battles Were Fought
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Napalm

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Napalm is an incendiary mixture of a gelling agent and a volatile petrochemical, usually gasoline, created in 1942 by a team led by chemist Louis Fieser for the United States Chemical Warfare Service at Harvard University. It was first used in combat in August 1943 during the Allied invasion of Sicily in napalm-fueled flamethrowers, and incendiary bombs using it followed in 1944, seeing extensive use against Japanese fortifications in the Pacific War.

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