WEBVTT - May the Best Firebomb Win 0:00:15.356 --> 0:00:15.796 Pushkin. 0:00:20.316 --> 0:00:22.636 A couple of years before the United States entered the 0:00:22.636 --> 0:00:25.676 Second World War, there was a meeting at Harvard University. 0:00:28.316 --> 0:00:31.636 The president of Harvard was there, the president of MIT, 0:00:32.276 --> 0:00:35.156 a Nobel Prize winner, the president of the Standard Oil 0:00:35.196 --> 0:00:40.876 Development Company, and two professors, Louis Feezer from Harvard and 0:00:40.956 --> 0:00:43.636 the chair, Hoyt Hoddle from MIT. 0:00:44.796 --> 0:00:50.076 Come thirty nine. A lot of people fought the war 0:00:50.316 --> 0:00:54.236 was something we'd be in sooner or later, and our 0:00:54.836 --> 0:00:56.796 state of preparedness was poor. 0:00:57.996 --> 0:01:02.356 Hoddle was slender, high forehead, generous eyebrows, a giant in 0:01:02.436 --> 0:01:05.276 his field. He had been tapped by the National Defense 0:01:05.316 --> 0:01:09.916 Research Committee the NDRC, the top secret government group charged 0:01:09.956 --> 0:01:14.356 with developing new weapons for the American military. The most 0:01:14.356 --> 0:01:18.156 famous effort of the NDRC was, of course, the Manhattan Project, 0:01:18.476 --> 0:01:22.116 the multi billion dollar operation out of Los Alamos to 0:01:22.196 --> 0:01:26.556 develop the first atomic bomb. Hoddle's group was a more 0:01:26.596 --> 0:01:31.916 obscure subcommittee. They weren't physicists, they were chemists, and their 0:01:31.916 --> 0:01:34.756 focus wasn't on finding better ways to blow things up. 0:01:35.556 --> 0:01:38.436 It was on finding better ways to burn things down. 0:01:41.596 --> 0:01:45.036 My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to revisionist history. 0:01:45.236 --> 0:01:50.036 My podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This is part 0:01:50.116 --> 0:01:54.156 two of a four part series about Curtis LeMay and 0:01:54.236 --> 0:01:59.996 the events of March nineteen forty five. Part one, which 0:01:59.996 --> 0:02:02.276 you should listen to first if you have not already, 0:02:02.676 --> 0:02:05.476 was about the rise of an insurgent group of pilots 0:02:05.556 --> 0:02:09.796 known as the Bomber Mafia. They believed that wars could 0:02:09.796 --> 0:02:14.396 be won entirely from the air, but bombers need bombs, 0:02:14.956 --> 0:02:17.916 and this episode is about the scientists who tempted the 0:02:17.956 --> 0:02:21.076 bomber Mafia with one of the most seductive and the 0:02:21.116 --> 0:02:27.916 most deadly weapons of the modern era. It is important 0:02:27.956 --> 0:02:30.676 not to confuse the chemists of World War II with 0:02:30.756 --> 0:02:36.356 the physicists. They belonged to different ecosystems. Robert Oppenheimer, who 0:02:36.436 --> 0:02:42.996 ran the Manhattan Project, was the archetypal physicist. Brilliant, handsome, charismatic, moody. 0:02:43.556 --> 0:02:46.716 Oppenheimer grew up in luxury in Manhattan, in an apartment 0:02:46.756 --> 0:02:49.796 with paintings by Picasso and van go He fell in 0:02:49.836 --> 0:02:54.516 love with beautiful communists. In the world of science. Oppenheimer 0:02:54.836 --> 0:02:59.436 was an aristocrat. He had no difficulty persuading the government 0:02:59.476 --> 0:03:03.756 to build him a massive, secluded research facility at Los Alamos, 0:03:03.796 --> 0:03:06.956 near his ranch in Santa Fe, where Oppenheimer and his 0:03:07.036 --> 0:03:10.836 fellow physicists could pursue the whole grail of the atomic bomb. 0:03:12.436 --> 0:03:16.396 The Manhattan Project cost two billion in nineteen forty dollars. 0:03:17.076 --> 0:03:19.436 The people who worked on it were quite literally the 0:03:19.476 --> 0:03:23.436 smartest people in the world. The operation was infiltrated by spies. 0:03:23.756 --> 0:03:27.036 Everyone was having affairs. Los Alamos was like a high 0:03:27.036 --> 0:03:31.356 IQ reality show. That was physics in the nineteen forties, 0:03:31.676 --> 0:03:36.756 the province of glamour and intrigue. The chemists were not 0:03:36.876 --> 0:03:41.276 like that. Hoyt Hottle and his obscure subcommittee weren't trying 0:03:41.316 --> 0:03:45.076 to split the atom or glimp some distant scientific horizon. 0:03:45.596 --> 0:03:48.236 They were interested in the oldest and most basic of 0:03:48.236 --> 0:03:52.876 all weapons of war. Fire. They talked about it, obsessed 0:03:52.916 --> 0:03:54.476 about it, dreamt about it. 0:03:55.676 --> 0:04:00.116 On the day of my arrival, I was scheduled to 0:04:00.316 --> 0:04:04.196 talk before the Zoroastrian Society. 0:04:05.276 --> 0:04:07.476 This is Hoddle in an interview near the end of 0:04:07.476 --> 0:04:10.396 his life with the Science History in Steady, talking about 0:04:10.396 --> 0:04:13.116 meeting his counterparts in England in the middle of the war. 0:04:13.756 --> 0:04:17.756 The Zoroastrian Society was an informal group of military men, professors, 0:04:17.836 --> 0:04:21.956 and mathematicians. They named themselves for an ancient Persian religion 0:04:21.956 --> 0:04:25.356 which had special rituals based on fire, and. 0:04:25.156 --> 0:04:31.356 The Zoroastrian society talked about how better to put out fires, 0:04:31.556 --> 0:04:35.716 or how to do this that or the other passed 0:04:35.796 --> 0:04:37.276 on the quality of bombs. 0:04:38.476 --> 0:04:43.636 This was Hoddle's kind of crowd. His personal specialty was flamethrowers, and. 0:04:43.516 --> 0:04:45.476 I thought it would be a good thing to get 0:04:45.556 --> 0:04:53.276 general motors into a tank mounted flame thrower with intermittent ejection. 0:04:54.396 --> 0:05:00.076 Intermittency permitted you you use a very much larger diameter nozzle. 0:05:00.396 --> 0:05:03.756 If you mounted a flamethrower on a tank. Well, that 0:05:03.916 --> 0:05:09.916 really grabbed his imagination. But the NDRC needed the country's 0:05:09.916 --> 0:05:14.236 scientists to think bigger. The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor 0:05:14.556 --> 0:05:17.556 and controlled much of East Asia. The Germans were in 0:05:17.596 --> 0:05:23.916 command of Europe. America needed new weapons fast. Physicists were 0:05:23.956 --> 0:05:26.916 dispatched to New Mexico to split the atom and the 0:05:26.996 --> 0:05:30.076 chemists were asked to re examine the lethal qualities of 0:05:30.156 --> 0:05:31.156 thermal combustion. 0:05:32.196 --> 0:05:37.956 We needed to know more about encendry bombs. 0:05:38.716 --> 0:05:43.796 So Hoddle gathered his elite circle University presidents, Nobel Prize winners, 0:05:44.236 --> 0:05:47.716 Ivy League professors, all of them specialists in the particular 0:05:47.756 --> 0:05:52.356 consequences of combining oxygen, fuel, and heat. And he proposed 0:05:52.396 --> 0:05:56.116 a competition, a bakeoff. If you will, let us see 0:05:56.196 --> 0:05:59.236 who among us can build the finest weapon for burning 0:05:59.316 --> 0:06:08.796 things down. Let the best firebomb win. Hoyt Hoddle's bakeoff 0:06:09.116 --> 0:06:11.956 would eventually involve some of the biggest industrial companies in 0:06:11.996 --> 0:06:15.876 the country. But there was one dark horse, Louis Fezer. 0:06:16.356 --> 0:06:20.196 Some of the demonstrations of this film out standard frequently 0:06:20.236 --> 0:06:23.636 repeated operations, and I was showing a way with my 0:06:23.676 --> 0:06:24.396 own students. 0:06:24.636 --> 0:06:26.236 I supposed to kill them out. 0:06:26.596 --> 0:06:29.836 Fiser was born in Ohio in eighteen ninety nine. He 0:06:29.876 --> 0:06:33.676 majored in chemistry at Williams College, got his PhD from Harvard, 0:06:34.116 --> 0:06:38.036 postocs at Oxford and Frankfort. Fizer probably should have won 0:06:38.036 --> 0:06:40.796 a Nobel Prize for his work on vitamin K, but 0:06:40.916 --> 0:06:43.836 the war got in the way. His research assistant was 0:06:43.876 --> 0:06:47.956 his wife, the equally brilliant Mary Feesar. Women didn't get 0:06:47.996 --> 0:06:51.196 hired as chemistry professors in those days, but together the 0:06:51.236 --> 0:06:55.276 couple wrote one of the definitive chemistry textbooks co authors 0:06:55.436 --> 0:06:59.476 Fisa and Feeser. Louis was largely bald, a little heavy 0:06:59.516 --> 0:07:02.516 set mustache, always with a cigarette. 0:07:03.076 --> 0:07:07.516 Shall we go into the laboratie, don't forget your safety glasses. 0:07:08.276 --> 0:07:11.396 Louis Fieser was a man of imagination and whimsy. His 0:07:11.516 --> 0:07:15.476 scientific memoir, published in nineteen sixty four, begins with his 0:07:15.476 --> 0:07:18.916 wartime work, but then quickly turns to detailed descriptions of 0:07:18.956 --> 0:07:22.276 things like a pocket firebomb. He calls, in an inspired 0:07:22.316 --> 0:07:26.316 bit of brand awareness, the Harvard Candle, a chapter on 0:07:26.436 --> 0:07:30.196 attaching incendiaries to bats, an extended riff on how to 0:07:30.236 --> 0:07:34.116 ignite a one thousand gallon oil slick, and the Kudu Gras, 0:07:34.316 --> 0:07:37.436 a chapter on his Siamese cat sin Kai Pooh and 0:07:37.516 --> 0:07:43.836 his concept for a squirrel proof bird feeder. Feesar wasn't 0:07:43.836 --> 0:07:46.636 a physicist thinking big thoughts under the big skies of 0:07:46.676 --> 0:07:50.516 New Mexico. He didn't have security guards monitoring his every 0:07:50.596 --> 0:07:54.876 move like the physicists at Los Alamos, or review boards 0:07:54.996 --> 0:07:59.476 monitoring his progress, or anxious military men checking in every day. 0:07:59.596 --> 0:08:03.196 He just went to his basement laboratory and made stuff. 0:08:05.196 --> 0:08:07.676 We don't have many recordings of Feesar but in the 0:08:07.716 --> 0:08:11.116 Science History Archives there's an extended interview with a colleague 0:08:11.116 --> 0:08:14.636 of his, someone named William von Eggers during who taught 0:08:14.716 --> 0:08:17.836 chemistry for years at Yale and Harvard. It gives you 0:08:17.916 --> 0:08:21.116 a sense of this world of scientists with a license 0:08:21.676 --> 0:08:23.116 to be just a little mad. 0:08:24.036 --> 0:08:29.156 God, what was the compound we were after? Elliots trynaccro 0:08:29.636 --> 0:08:31.316 benzo nitrate. 0:08:32.116 --> 0:08:35.476 The interview goes on for hours, and it's weirdly riveting. 0:08:35.796 --> 0:08:37.516 Part of me just wanted to run the whole thing. 0:08:37.596 --> 0:08:41.356 Since it's so well you'll hear. Let me just play 0:08:41.356 --> 0:08:44.316 for you the part where von Eggers starts reminiscing about 0:08:44.356 --> 0:08:47.436 working in Feesers Laboratory at the very beginning of the war. 0:08:53.596 --> 0:08:59.196 Put it remember those having carryous tubes. So you put 0:08:59.236 --> 0:09:05.356 in about twenty or thirty grams of TNT. You poured 0:09:06.916 --> 0:09:14.636 a little access of bomb boaming Noel he sealed the 0:09:14.756 --> 0:09:19.996 dam to. You put it in a bomb and iron bomb, 0:09:19.996 --> 0:09:28.076 you know, with a wire after around the rains, so 0:09:28.196 --> 0:09:33.196 that in effect, if you put the uh, the heating 0:09:33.356 --> 0:09:37.156 to in that little space, then if it blew up 0:09:37.196 --> 0:09:40.556 the grassroom, hit this little part of the wall on 0:09:41.476 --> 0:09:45.036 the well, because half the tubes blew up. 0:09:47.636 --> 0:09:50.356 I understand that von Eggers was one of the great 0:09:50.436 --> 0:09:53.956 chemists of his generation. He published his first scientific paper 0:09:54.316 --> 0:09:57.156 in nineteen thirty nine and his last in two thousand 0:09:57.196 --> 0:10:00.916 and eight, eight decades of work. In every picture I've 0:10:00.916 --> 0:10:03.716 ever seen of him, he's wearing a polka dotted bow tie. 0:10:03.836 --> 0:10:06.836 His great uncle was president of the Reichbank in Germany. 0:10:07.436 --> 0:10:10.236 I may one day devote an entire a revisionist history 0:10:10.276 --> 0:10:12.716 episode to him. How can you not love this guy 0:10:13.076 --> 0:10:24.436 a laboratory? Why he's like a thirteen year old kid 0:10:24.436 --> 0:10:25.396 with a chemistry set. 0:10:25.876 --> 0:10:28.476 Oh god, it was marvelous times. 0:10:29.436 --> 0:10:33.476 The Germans have a word to describe certain persons as 0:10:34.556 --> 0:10:40.356 cherish antst, which means having an animal like seriousness about them, 0:10:40.636 --> 0:10:41.516 and I must. 0:10:41.276 --> 0:10:46.956 Say that there was very little of that in those days. 0:10:50.276 --> 0:10:53.036 When Louis Feezer came down to Vonegger's lab with his 0:10:53.076 --> 0:10:56.796 ever present cigarettes, the grad students would play pranks on him. 0:10:57.396 --> 0:11:01.796 Louri would come in to talk to his people and. 0:11:03.796 --> 0:11:10.396 Would invariably throw his cigarettes still burning and for the 0:11:10.556 --> 0:11:15.276 saint and so the game was to try to guess 0:11:15.356 --> 0:11:16.876 when he was coming. 0:11:16.516 --> 0:11:18.476 Down, and then for ether. 0:11:22.476 --> 0:11:24.436 Alsunder would catch fire. 0:11:24.996 --> 0:11:29.396 In the hopes that it would catch fire. These were 0:11:29.396 --> 0:11:32.076 the scientists the government gathered during the war for the 0:11:32.116 --> 0:11:39.396 second Obscure Subcommittee of the NDERC, the basement chemists. They 0:11:39.476 --> 0:11:44.516 kept on meeting around the country, planning, scheming, tinkering, and 0:11:44.596 --> 0:11:47.716 one day May twenty eighth, nineteen forty one, at a 0:11:47.796 --> 0:11:51.636 National Defense Research Committee meeting in Chicago, Fizer hears about 0:11:51.636 --> 0:11:55.756 a curious instant that just happened at a DuPont chemical plant. 0:11:56.356 --> 0:11:59.116 A group in one of DuPont's paint factories had been 0:11:59.116 --> 0:12:03.756 working with something called divinyl acetylene. It's a hydrocarbon, an 0:12:03.796 --> 0:12:06.836 oil byproduct, and if you mix it with a pigment, 0:12:07.356 --> 0:12:10.436 the paint will dry into a tough, thick, adhesive film. 0:12:10.876 --> 0:12:14.116 But the film kept bursting into flame. That was obviously 0:12:14.196 --> 0:12:17.196 bad news for someone to make a better paint, but 0:12:17.276 --> 0:12:20.556 not for people thinking about how to make a better firebomb. 0:12:27.276 --> 0:12:30.396 When Louis Feeser was told of the strange fire at 0:12:30.396 --> 0:12:35.116 the DuPont paint factory, he offered to investigate. In his memoirs, 0:12:35.116 --> 0:12:38.636 he writes, I volunteered chiefly because I had available in 0:12:38.716 --> 0:12:42.116 my peace time research group a man ideally qualified to 0:12:42.196 --> 0:12:47.196 experiment with and evaluate a hazardous chemical doctor E. B. 0:12:47.356 --> 0:12:47.796 Hirschberg. 0:12:48.516 --> 0:12:50.876 Do you know how he got hooked up with. 0:12:52.076 --> 0:12:56.076 Feesar, Yes, versus FUM Boston area. 0:12:56.476 --> 0:13:01.076 That's Robert Hirschberg. His father, EBI Hirschberg was Feeser's research fellow. 0:13:01.436 --> 0:13:05.316 I think the very quick and short answer was there 0:13:05.356 --> 0:13:09.716 were limited places for employment for Jews and couldn't care 0:13:09.796 --> 0:13:13.516 less about religion. So that's the labby wound up in. 0:13:13.956 --> 0:13:18.996 Eb Hirschberg was, in Louis Feesar's words, a masterful experimentalist 0:13:19.076 --> 0:13:23.996 inorganic chemistry and also versed in engineering, in mechanical drawing, 0:13:24.396 --> 0:13:28.716 in carpentry, and in photography. Fiser goes on he was 0:13:28.796 --> 0:13:33.796 experienced in the handling of military explosives, fuses, poison gases, 0:13:33.956 --> 0:13:37.476 smoke pots, and grenades, and had invented a long list 0:13:37.476 --> 0:13:42.196 of devices, including the Hirschburg stir the Hirschburg stirring motor, 0:13:42.636 --> 0:13:45.236 and the Hirschburg melting point apparatus. 0:13:45.836 --> 0:13:49.836 In our basement we had diffuse bombs and things of 0:13:49.876 --> 0:13:54.236 that nature, and pictures of explosions that occurred, and some 0:13:54.276 --> 0:13:58.196 of the incendiary devices were in the desk jars. 0:13:58.476 --> 0:14:01.516 So what were the what these were just the devices 0:14:01.516 --> 0:14:05.716 that he and Fieser had been experimenting with during the forties. 0:14:05.876 --> 0:14:08.956 Yeah, they invented them that lab, and there are other people. 0:14:09.276 --> 0:14:14.996 They're things like Noe books that had incendiary devices in 0:14:15.036 --> 0:14:17.636 them that if you were captured and you wrote, you 0:14:18.556 --> 0:14:21.116 pull the pen out, you had half an hour to 0:14:21.116 --> 0:14:23.716 write everything down and what you wanted and get out 0:14:23.756 --> 0:14:25.956 of there before blew up and burned down the building. 0:14:26.516 --> 0:14:32.836 That's Ebie Hirschberg. So he and Louis Feeser go to Wilmington, 0:14:32.956 --> 0:14:37.156 Delaware to investigate the DuPont compound that makes paint catch 0:14:37.196 --> 0:14:41.436 on fire, divinyl acetylene. Then they come back to Harvard 0:14:41.636 --> 0:14:44.636 and start cooking up batches of it. They would put 0:14:44.676 --> 0:14:47.316 the batches in pans and place them in the window 0:14:47.316 --> 0:14:51.116 well of Feesar's basement lab. They noticed how the substance 0:14:51.196 --> 0:14:55.236 gradually changed from a liquid to thick, viscous gel. They 0:14:55.276 --> 0:14:57.756 poked the gel with sticks. Then they set fire to 0:14:57.836 --> 0:15:00.876 it and noticed, and I'm quoting here from Feesar's book, 0:15:01.196 --> 0:15:05.596 because this was the crucial insight. When a viscous gel burns, 0:15:05.956 --> 0:15:10.756 it does not become fluid, but retains its viscous, sticky consistency. 0:15:11.516 --> 0:15:14.596 The experience suggested the idea of a bomb that would 0:15:14.636 --> 0:15:21.036 scatter large burning globs of sticky gel. You dropped the bomb, 0:15:21.436 --> 0:15:24.956 and the gel scatters, and it doesn't just burn itself out. 0:15:25.276 --> 0:15:28.476 Big globs of gel fly in every direction, and those 0:15:28.516 --> 0:15:32.156 globs stick to whatever surface they land on and keep burning, 0:15:32.556 --> 0:15:37.716 and keep burning and keep burning. Hirschbrug and Feezer now 0:15:37.716 --> 0:15:40.036 had to find a way to test this new concept 0:15:40.276 --> 0:15:43.716 of incendiary gels. So they built a little two foot 0:15:43.796 --> 0:15:47.076 tall wooden structure in the lab and compared how well 0:15:47.156 --> 0:15:51.516 different gel formulations did in burning it down. Divinyl acettlene 0:15:51.596 --> 0:15:54.156 was good, but a gel made of rubber and benzene 0:15:54.196 --> 0:15:58.076 was better, and gasoline was even better than benzene. They 0:15:58.156 --> 0:16:02.796 tried amber colored smoke sheet rubber, pale crape rubber, rubber, 0:16:02.876 --> 0:16:06.636 latex vulcanized rubber. They made a prototype and took it 0:16:06.676 --> 0:16:08.876 with them in a suitcase on the train to Washington, 0:16:09.236 --> 0:16:11.876 giving it to the Porta de Caerry, who said it 0:16:11.956 --> 0:16:15.836 feels heavy enough to be a bomb. Next, they tried 0:16:15.956 --> 0:16:19.996 aluminum napthanate, a sticky black tar made by a chemical 0:16:20.036 --> 0:16:23.396 company out of Elizabeth, New Jersey. The tar didn't mix 0:16:23.436 --> 0:16:26.716 well with gasoline, but they solved the problem by mixing 0:16:26.756 --> 0:16:32.636 in something else called aluminum palmitate. Gasoline mixed with aluminum 0:16:32.916 --> 0:16:37.076 napthanate plus aluminum palmitate napom. 0:16:40.476 --> 0:16:43.276 So if you want an effective incendiary, something that is 0:16:43.476 --> 0:16:47.076 sticky is much more effective than something that is not sticky, 0:16:47.316 --> 0:16:51.916 because it actually adheres to whatever it is transferring its 0:16:51.996 --> 0:16:55.956 radiation energy into. And that's why napalm is so effective. 0:16:56.356 --> 0:17:00.556 That's Robert Neer, author of Napalm an American Biography. 0:17:00.956 --> 0:17:06.356 If the gelled material is too soft or too weak, 0:17:06.716 --> 0:17:10.316 then it won't actually deliver a large amount of radiation 0:17:10.396 --> 0:17:13.356 to whatever it's sticking to. You can think of a 0:17:13.396 --> 0:17:17.876 Molotov cocktail that's filled up with gasoline, exploding and delivering gasoline. 0:17:17.876 --> 0:17:20.836 It can burn somebody or something quite terribly, but the 0:17:20.876 --> 0:17:24.316 fire will go out relatively quickly, whereas, by contrast, if 0:17:24.436 --> 0:17:27.636 napalm is thrown on something, it will stick to it. 0:17:27.996 --> 0:17:31.156 A gel that was too loose would produce what they 0:17:31.236 --> 0:17:34.876 described dismissively as apple sauce. In other words, it wasn't 0:17:35.196 --> 0:17:38.516 thick enough or solid enough in its globules to adhere 0:17:38.516 --> 0:17:41.476 to something, and something that was just right would form 0:17:41.716 --> 0:17:44.476 quite large sized chunks. So it had to be a 0:17:44.516 --> 0:17:48.236 balance in between too thick and too thin and just right. 0:17:48.636 --> 0:17:51.636 And that's what they ultimately hit upon with napalm. 0:17:52.076 --> 0:17:54.436 I met Robert near at Harvard and asked him to 0:17:54.476 --> 0:17:56.636 take me on what he calls his napalm tour of 0:17:56.676 --> 0:18:00.676 the campus. The Is this the soccer field? 0:18:00.996 --> 0:18:03.676 Yeah, this is o'hii field. It's named after one of 0:18:03.716 --> 0:18:09.116 the greatest Harvard soccer players ever. And it's the soccer 0:18:09.196 --> 0:18:11.476 field now. And it also was used as a soccer 0:18:11.516 --> 0:18:13.796 field in the nineteen forties. 0:18:14.076 --> 0:18:17.356 The Harvard soccer field right behind the Business School is 0:18:17.396 --> 0:18:21.676 across the river from the main campus. Eb Hirschberg had 0:18:21.676 --> 0:18:23.876 figured out a plan to turn their new gel into 0:18:23.916 --> 0:18:27.996 a bomb. He suggested inserting a stick of TNT with 0:18:28.036 --> 0:18:30.956 a layer of white phosphorus wrapped around it in the 0:18:30.996 --> 0:18:34.596 middle of a canister of napalm. Phosphorus burns at a 0:18:34.716 --> 0:18:38.716 very high temperature, so the TNT would go off, driving 0:18:38.756 --> 0:18:43.076 the burning phosphorus into the napalm gel, igniting it and 0:18:43.156 --> 0:18:46.756 sending globs of it in every direction. For a bomb case, 0:18:46.996 --> 0:18:49.676 they used a shell that had originally been designed to 0:18:49.716 --> 0:18:54.636 hold mustard gas. Herschbergen and Fezer come to test here 0:18:55.316 --> 0:18:58.956 when what year do you remember, forty to forty three? 0:18:58.996 --> 0:19:03.156 It was on Independence Day nineteen forty two. So they 0:19:03.396 --> 0:19:08.036 finalized the formulation for the geldincendiary on Valentine's Day, February 0:19:08.036 --> 0:19:12.476 fourteenth of nineteen forty And then they figured out the 0:19:12.516 --> 0:19:19.076 white phosphorus burster ignition system and got the bombshells from 0:19:19.076 --> 0:19:23.716 the military and built their prototypes, and as I had mentioned, 0:19:23.756 --> 0:19:25.916 dug this lagoon into the field. 0:19:26.156 --> 0:19:28.036 In the middle of this field the big how big 0:19:28.156 --> 0:19:28.756 was the lagoon? 0:19:29.796 --> 0:19:33.796 The lagoon was I believe about one hundred feet in diameter. 0:19:34.076 --> 0:19:37.196 It was quite a substantial lagoon because they didn't want 0:19:37.276 --> 0:19:40.276 anybody to get hurt. And they had this pretty large 0:19:40.356 --> 0:19:43.636 Napon bomb in a canister that they were going to 0:19:43.676 --> 0:19:47.436 explode in the center. So they put the bomb right 0:19:47.436 --> 0:19:49.956 in the center of this lagoon, which had been filled 0:19:50.036 --> 0:19:53.036 up with water by some trucks from the Cambridge Fire Department. 0:19:53.996 --> 0:19:58.076 The birth of Napon baptized in eight inches of water 0:19:58.396 --> 0:20:01.596 in the middle of Harvard's soccer pitch. When he was 0:20:01.636 --> 0:20:04.996 doing his research, Robert Near spotted a little detail in 0:20:05.036 --> 0:20:06.276 the photos from that day. 0:20:06.756 --> 0:20:09.916 So in the initial pictures of the test, there are 0:20:09.916 --> 0:20:13.316 people dressed in whites, playing on the tennis courts, which 0:20:13.356 --> 0:20:15.476 are still just right over there. You can see the 0:20:15.476 --> 0:20:19.516 tennis courts, And then after the bomb goes off, you 0:20:19.556 --> 0:20:23.076 see that the tennis courts are abandoned. So maybe they 0:20:23.076 --> 0:20:25.716 told everybody that they were about to test this napalm bomb, 0:20:25.956 --> 0:20:28.036 or maybe they just let them keep playing tennis and 0:20:28.076 --> 0:20:30.756 then tested and everybody ran away. I don't know, but 0:20:31.316 --> 0:20:34.596 I mean nobody was injured in these tests. After the 0:20:34.636 --> 0:20:38.556 bomb was exploded, they made a very careful catalog of 0:20:38.596 --> 0:20:42.516 the distribution and size of the extinguished globules of napalm, 0:20:42.996 --> 0:20:46.436 because that was part of determining the most effective consistency 0:20:46.436 --> 0:20:46.916 of the gel. 0:20:47.796 --> 0:20:53.116 And how does the gel explode past the Now it's 0:20:53.156 --> 0:20:54.436 all contained within the limit. 0:20:54.636 --> 0:20:55.836 Oh see, there's no disaster. 0:20:56.036 --> 0:20:58.436 Yeah, they know. In other words, they have some idea 0:20:58.476 --> 0:20:59.996 about how far the gel's going to fly. 0:21:00.356 --> 0:21:05.076 These are genius engineers and incredibly skilled people, and so 0:21:05.156 --> 0:21:08.916 they know how far things will fly based on the 0:21:09.156 --> 0:21:12.236 out of explosive that they put inside the device. And 0:21:12.276 --> 0:21:12.756 they're right. 0:21:15.236 --> 0:21:18.796 This was the firebomb that Fiser and Hirschberg entered in 0:21:18.836 --> 0:21:22.676 the National Defense Research Committee. Bakoff up against some of 0:21:22.716 --> 0:21:25.876 the biggest chemical companies of the day. Standard Oil had 0:21:25.876 --> 0:21:29.796 a sodium soap nicknamed Apple Sauce, Kodak had a prototype 0:21:29.836 --> 0:21:35.116 made out of ground up newsprint, Fiser and Hirschberg had Napon, and. 0:21:35.116 --> 0:21:39.996 The fourth one showed that Lupont had a methyl methacral 0:21:40.396 --> 0:21:41.596 thickened gel. 0:21:42.916 --> 0:21:47.476 Hoyt Hoddle organized it all. The Army sent generals to 0:21:47.556 --> 0:21:52.236 monitor the proceedings. The Bakoff testers slammed the explosives with 0:21:52.316 --> 0:21:56.236 something hard. They tested the explosives in the attics of houses. 0:21:56.676 --> 0:21:59.156 They flew them at high altitudes, in the bombing bays 0:21:59.156 --> 0:22:03.556 of plains, resting in beds of dry ice. Test after test, 0:22:04.116 --> 0:22:07.636 how well did the ingredients disperse, how hot did they burn? 0:22:08.916 --> 0:22:12.476 And what one After months and months of this, NAPAN 0:22:13.396 --> 0:22:17.876 created at Harvard University, perfected in the soccer fields along 0:22:17.916 --> 0:22:28.756 the meandering Charles River. The philosophy taught at the Air 0:22:28.796 --> 0:22:33.356 Corps Tactical School was based on precision and elegance. Fly 0:22:33.516 --> 0:22:36.996 high use some kind of sophisticated aiming device to perfectly 0:22:36.996 --> 0:22:40.996 line up the target. Disable a city by surgically destroying 0:22:41.076 --> 0:22:44.756 its water supply, or its power plants, or its bridges 0:22:45.396 --> 0:22:52.116 with one beautifully choreographed attack. When Curtis le May arrived 0:22:52.156 --> 0:22:55.076 in Europe, he made his flight crews spend their spare 0:22:55.156 --> 0:22:58.636 time studying the targets they were supposed to bomb. No 0:22:58.716 --> 0:23:01.916 one had done that before. Most commanders just gave their 0:23:01.956 --> 0:23:05.156 flight crews their orders and let them go. But to 0:23:05.196 --> 0:23:08.796 the bomber mafia, that was crazy. How could you hit 0:23:08.836 --> 0:23:12.116 some think precisely that you'd never seen before. 0:23:12.556 --> 0:23:14.836 Any crew could hit a target if he could see 0:23:14.836 --> 0:23:19.516 it and had an opportunity to hit it. But there's 0:23:19.516 --> 0:23:21.956 a lot of difference between bombing circles in the desert 0:23:22.076 --> 0:23:25.916 and bombing a northeast corner of a factory building in 0:23:25.956 --> 0:23:28.836 the midst of an industrial build up, of industrial haze 0:23:28.836 --> 0:23:31.556 and bad weather and poor visibility and so forth. 0:23:32.396 --> 0:23:36.916 The May made his crews pour over maps memorize plan. 0:23:37.516 --> 0:23:43.636 At least they became familiar with the geography the prominent landmarks, 0:23:44.556 --> 0:23:47.556 so that if they saw anything through a hole in 0:23:47.596 --> 0:23:50.036 the clouds, they can immediately translate it to the map 0:23:50.076 --> 0:23:50.996 and knew where they were. 0:23:51.916 --> 0:23:55.196 This is what the bomber mafia meant by precision bombing. 0:23:55.756 --> 0:24:01.516 It relied on skill and preparation. But there was another 0:24:01.516 --> 0:24:05.356 school of bombing area bombing. It had to see goal 0:24:05.756 --> 0:24:09.076 break the morale of the enemy. But the area bombers said, 0:24:09.556 --> 0:24:12.876 why bother trying to hit an aqueduct from thirty thousand feet? 0:24:13.156 --> 0:24:17.436 Why not just bomb everything in sight? Carpet bomb much easier. 0:24:18.036 --> 0:24:21.996 Can we turn to Dresden? What nineteen forty four to 0:24:22.036 --> 0:24:25.356 forty five was it the bombing of Dress? 0:24:25.476 --> 0:24:25.676 Yes? 0:24:25.916 --> 0:24:26.276 Yes. 0:24:29.596 --> 0:24:32.236 The great proponent of area bombing was the head of 0:24:32.276 --> 0:24:36.276 the Royal Air Force's bomber Command, Arthur Harris, known as 0:24:36.356 --> 0:24:39.676 Bomber Harris to the British press and Butcher Harris to 0:24:39.716 --> 0:24:43.516 his men. Once the story goes, Harris was stopped for 0:24:43.596 --> 0:24:46.996 speeding during the war. The policeman said, you could kill 0:24:47.076 --> 0:24:51.796 innocent people driving like that. Harris replied, young man, I 0:24:51.916 --> 0:24:56.036 kill thousands of people every night. Harris was interviewed by 0:24:56.076 --> 0:24:59.636 the British Forces Broadcasting Service in nineteen seventy seven. 0:25:00.996 --> 0:25:05.756 Well, of course, pree per apt to say, all poor 0:25:05.876 --> 0:25:12.156 dressed in a lovely city, certainly in producing beautiful little 0:25:12.276 --> 0:25:17.036 China shepherdesses with finny skirts. As a matter of fact, 0:25:17.036 --> 0:25:20.636 it was the last viable governing center of Germany. 0:25:21.196 --> 0:25:24.436 Dresden was one of the signature atrocities of the Second 0:25:24.476 --> 0:25:28.036 World War. An entire city reduced to rubble in one 0:25:28.156 --> 0:25:30.156 night by Harris's pilots. 0:25:30.516 --> 0:25:34.756 How do you answer criticisms that you did bomb civilian 0:25:34.796 --> 0:25:38.996 populations and kill civilian populations rather than members of the 0:25:39.116 --> 0:25:43.676 armed forces. What we were doing, we weren't aiming particularly 0:25:43.676 --> 0:25:48.636 at the civilian population. We were aiming at the production 0:25:48.996 --> 0:25:52.996 of everything that made it possible for the German armies 0:25:52.996 --> 0:25:57.316 to continue the war. That was the whole idea of 0:25:57.436 --> 0:26:02.396 the bombing offensive, including as I said, it's the destruction 0:26:03.156 --> 0:26:09.316 of the facilities for building submarines and the armor and 0:26:09.716 --> 0:26:13.956 industries throughout Germany and the people who worked in them. 0:26:14.396 --> 0:26:19.316 They're all active soldiers. To my mind, people who worked 0:26:19.796 --> 0:26:23.556 in the production of m munitions must expect it to 0:26:23.596 --> 0:26:28.036 be treated as active soldiers. Otherwise were they would raw 0:26:28.116 --> 0:26:28.596 the line. 0:26:29.636 --> 0:26:33.596 That statement they were all active soldiers, to my mind, 0:26:34.076 --> 0:26:36.476 went to the heart of the difference between the precision 0:26:36.516 --> 0:26:42.796 bombers and the area bombers. The precision bombers said, you 0:26:42.916 --> 0:26:46.796 limit yourself to only the most critical targets, the aqueducts 0:26:46.836 --> 0:26:50.396 and the power plants and the bridges, because civilians should 0:26:50.396 --> 0:26:54.396 not be primary targets of any bombing campaign. The area 0:26:54.476 --> 0:26:57.636 bombers said there is no such thing as a civilian 0:26:57.756 --> 0:27:01.036 in time of war, which meant the bomber could bomb 0:27:01.236 --> 0:27:05.596 whatever he wanted. Air Marshall Harris liked his pilots to 0:27:05.636 --> 0:27:08.916 fly in at night because they didn't particularly need to 0:27:08.916 --> 0:27:12.036