The Allies were using jellied gasoline as an incendiary weapon at the beginning of World War II, but a shortage of the necessary ingredient latex drove the search for a substitute. That's when napalm was developed. We tend to associate napalm with the Vietnam War, but the fearsome fuel that stuck to whatever it touched was also used in World War II and the Korean War.
In 1942, Louis Fieser and his team became the first to develop such an alternative—a synthetic powdery compound, which when mixed with gasoline turns into an extremely sticky and inflammable substance. They named it napalm, from the words “naphthenic acid” and “palmitic acid”, the two chief constituents of the agent.
Napalm was first tested on a football field near the Harvard Business School. Later tests were carried out at Jefferson Proving Ground on derelict farm buildings. But more extensive testing was needed in order to determine the effectiveness of the weapon against German and Japanese cities.
To do that, the military built an entire village in the Utah desert, filled with creepily authentic reproductions of German and Japanese houses. Read about the testing village and the destruction it enabled at Amusing Planet.
(Image credit: US Army)
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