Thread: m69 fire bomb

M-69's were a jelly-petrol compound that was highly inflammable. These were napalm which was used in other places besides Japan in WW2 and were possibly at their most destructive during the Vietnam War.

US Superfortress Aircraft would carry 12,000 pounds (nearly 7 tons) of 24 by 500 pound clusters although I have seen differing upward variations of weight and numbers as the fortress could carry 20,000 pounds. Stripped of guns and ammunition they carried more clusters.

In one ten day period, the Americans dropped nearly 9,500 tons of incendiaries on Japanese cities and destroyed 29 square miles of what was considered to be important industrial land while decimating the outlying "cottage industries" that provided parts to the big industrial manufacturing areas.

This is why I have said previously that if the fire-bombing had continued, it would have been more destructive overall than the Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The M-69's dropped on Tokyo killed 100,000 and injured 100,000. If these were extensively repeated over many months across Japan, the result would have been horrendous to the overall human population and the food chain resulting in millions of casualties through horrific fire-storms and starvation from which Japan would have taken many years to recover from.

Japanese industry was producing cars again by 1947.

The atomic bombs brought the war to a close and Japan was given aid to become one of the flourishing economies post WW2.

There were those in the USAAF that would have preferred to continue using Napalm than the Atomic Bomb. Some who were against using this type of device on the population and others who wanted to fire-bomb Japan off the face of the earth.

Geoff