* "Do you smell that? Napalm, son. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. It smells like... Victory."
_{Robert Duvall als Lt. Col. William Kilgore in Apocalypse Now}


Napalm is any of a number of flammable liquids used in warfare, often jellied gasoline. Napalm is actually the thickener in such liquids, which when mixed with gasoline makes a sticky incendiary gel. It was developed by the U.S. in World War II by a team of Harvard chemists led by Louis Fieser, and the name comes from the use of the original chemicals, coprecipitated aluminium salts of naphthenic and palmitic acids, which were added to the flammable substance gasoline to cause it to gel. [1]

One of the major problems of early incendiary fluids (such as those used in flamethrowers) was that it splashed and drained too easily. The U.S. found that a gasoline gel increased both the range and effectiveness of flamethrowers, but was difficult to manufacture because it used natural rubber, which was in high demand and expensive. Napalm provided a far cheaper alternative, solving the issues involved with rubber-based incendiaries. [2]

Modern napalm is composed primarily by benzene and polystyrene and is known as Napalm-B. [3]