INCENDIARY BOMBS

Evening Star, Issue 22450, 22 September 1936, Page 5

INCENDIARY BOMBS

THE THREAT TO TIE CITIES Fire from on liigli, blasting and consuming tlie people and all their works —does this doom that visited Sodom and Gomorrah of old await our modern cities, also, in the day when the world shall again go to war ? asks Dr Frank Thone in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle.’ Is it flame, tormenting scourge since even pre-human panic flights Irom primeval forest fires, that threatens us, rather than the shock and rending of bombs, or the inexorable creep of choking poison gases? Fire, that left Troy and Carthage and many another proud city of antiquity in final, unresurrecting rums, may bo the weapon of the modern destroyers of the air, the vast fleets of bombing aeroplanes that are crowding the flying fields of the world, where ambition-crazed and fear-maddened men again make ready for war. Such is the opinion of more than one military man entitled to a say on the subject, b.v reason of having specialised either in aviation or in chemical warfare. This possibility of a return to the oldest of all weapons of wholesale destruction, as a means of arming the newest of all weapon-carriers, the aeroplane, is largely due to the aeroplane s own unique powers—and to its own limitations. . The aeroplane can range far, strike at targets of its own selection, defy prediction of where it is going to appear next. But because of its very speed and mobility, it cannot sKv and carry out a systematic job of destruction. It can do a tremendous amount of damage in a few seconds; but it must do all its damage in those few seconds. . After its load of bombs or chemicals has been dumped, it is a minus quantity, militarily speaking, _ until it can return to base and refill its racks —usually a job for a whole, day. the aeroplane is like a “ one-punch boxer, able to deliver only one good solid “ sock ” per round. This powerful arm is therefore also a very costly arm- its few tremendous blows must be carefully calculated, to get ie^P for your money’s worth. What, then, is your choice if you want to destroy your enemy’s city; explosive bombs, poison gases, or fire? . , Of the first two, explosives and gases, there has been a lot of soundly based debunking done during the recent past. A few years ago a favourite game of one school of journalists was to drum up enormously scaresounding discussions of ‘ many times as powerful as UNI, so that, a small bomb weighing only a few pounds can wreck the Capitol, and new “ secret ” war gases so deadly that a pint or so would wipe out every living soul on Manhattan Island. Any ambitious journalist, with no more weapon than the one_ wherewith. Samson smote the Philistines, could also slap his tens of thousands—and find a ready sale for his article. . That elegant little scare-vending business was broken up by the military men themselves. TNT and mustard gas are still the best we have, they said; nothing more powerful in immediate prospect; neither one is sufficiently concentrated death-and-destruction to be profitablo on any but the most important targets, such as. warships and forts, arsenals and. traffic terminals, hangars, and troops at the front. If you want to “ muss up ” your enemy’s towns in general, think up something else, said the soldiers. THE RE Ah MENACE. ■ That the “ something else ’’ need not be something new was an idea proposed almost simultaneously by Lieuten-ant-colonel A. M. Prentiss, of the Chemical Warfare Service, U.S. Army, and a civilian expert on chemical warfare and Dr Enrique Zanetti, of Columbia ’University. And that fire, ‘ the forgotten enemy,” as Dr Zanetti teinis it, may be the real menace to our cities, is a doctrine accepted by many military men. Fire, for all its being an exceedingly old-fasbioncd weapon, still possesses a marked and unique advantage over its modern rivals. You drop a bomb. It goes bang, down crashes a building; maybe some people are killed. But that is the end of it. When your raid is over your mischief is finished. The survivors can begin picking up the pieces at once. Or you drop gas instead.' You choke some of the enemy population; but in a little while the wind blows your gas away, and the fire sirens sound the signal: “ All clear.” But suppose you drop fire-bombs. They are very small—need not weigh more than a couple of pounds each. Your two-ton bomber can scatter a hundred of them. If you manage to get past the anti-aircraft defences with 10 such bombers (out of, say, 40 that you started with), you can plant a thousand seeds of fire. If only one in 10 of them germinates into a tall red flame, you have given the fire-fighting forces of that city a job they can never take care of. Your enemy’s homes, warehouses, lumber yards, oil and coal supplies, even his hospitals, schools, and churches (you cannot see in the dark where your 2lb packets of hell are dropping) are all fighting on your side, with leaping blades of insatiable inexorable destruction—fighting against the hands that created them, reaching out to capture and make allies still further buildings. Your bombing: raid is over as soon as the bombs nave burst; your gas raid when the wind has blown for an hour. But your fire raid goes on for hours, even days, after you have flown home to your hangar—or have been shot down by the vengeful pursuit aeroplanes that came too late to save, hut soon enough to exact retribution. A fire raid need not stop short of complete destruction of everything combustible in the raided area. As Dr Zanetti tersely puts it; “ Gas dissipates while fire propagates.” No city in the world would he exempt from practically complete paralysis from a really successful fire raid.

Even, in America, where fire-resisting construction has been brought to a higher development than it has elsewhere in the world, the modern business blocks have vast numbers of old, timber-supported buildings interspersed among them—enough to naralyse their big neighbours, even if they could not infect them with the fever of fire ; and the vast stretches of tenements, rowhouses, walk-ups, and close-crowded blocks of bungalows, where dwell the working people and the lower whitecollar class, are predominantly combustible. European cities are even worse off than American in this respect. Old buildings are used longer, and many of them in the great centres of England, France, Germany, Italy have stood for generations, even centuries, until their massive timbers are dry as matchsticks. Perhaps the most fire-vulnerable cities in the world are those of Japan Some of the more modern buildings are solid enough—proof against earthquake

as well as fire. But the great bulk of the business and traffic buildings, and practically all the dwellings, are 100 per cent, fire-vulnerable. WOOD AND PAPER. The traditional Japanese dwelling is a structure of wood, bamboo, and paper—the most helpless construction imaginable, from the fire-resistance point of view. This state of affairs may have something to do with the distinct nervousness of the Japanese army’s regard for the Soviet aeroplane concentrations at Vladivostok and at Khabarovsk—both within a long but feasible flight of every city in the Japanese Empire! Nor need the attention of the fire raiders be confined to cities, as a British tactic on the north-west frontier of India taught. When bombers appeared over the native towns the hostile tribesmen took to caves in the hills; so that did not work. Then the aviators returned, and this time sowed fire among the wheat. The tribesmen, finding their lood destroyed and winter coming on,, sued for peace. That is a game that could easily be played elsewhere —and among forests or oil-derricks, too. _ That all this is not a nightmare of what war may bring is sharply brought out by a disclosure made by Dr Zanetti. When the Armistice was signed and the Germans began to turn

over their war material, he said, the j French were greatly surprised to find in ' i the ammunition depots an _ enormous number of small bombs weighing a little over two pounds. They contained thermite, which is the “ hottest ” incendiary substance known. Not until the appearance of General Ludendorff’s memoirs, late in 1919, was an explanation forthcoming. These small bombs were intended to set London and Paris on fire. However, they were not ready until late in 1918, and by that time the German military situation was so hopeless that the high command decided not to employ them. Thermite is a mixture of powdered aluminium and iron oxide. When one spot in a mass of it is heated enough the oxide transfers from the iron to the aluminium, producing a violent but quiet flame, and also flowing white-hot slag like that of a blast-furnace. The flames of thermite cannot be extinguished by any known means. Colonel Prentiss does not regard thermite as most effective when used alone, but suggests the use of various kinds of inflammables, particularly oils, that would spread the fire faster,, particularly on wooden structures or in oil reservoirs. Nor is thermite the only effective fiery weapon. Incendiary liquids might be sprayed from low-flying aeroplanes, with the ignition point regulated so that the

spray would, at the proper level, turn into a veritable fog of fire, as terrible in its material effects and as damaging to morale as the “ fiery cloud ” that bursts from volcanoes in certain types of eruptions, snuffing out thousands of lives in a few seconds..