Alternative Titles: fire bomb, firebomb
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Incendiary bombs are of two main types. The burning material of the intensive type is thermite, a mixture of aluminum powder and iron oxide that burns at a very high temperature. The casing of such a bomb is composed of magnesium, a metal that itself burns at a high temperature when ignited by thermite. Intensive-type incendiaries are designed to set buildings afire by their intense heat. The...
laws of war
Like nuclear weapons, incendiary weapons are not specifically banned unless used against the civilian population. It might be argued, however, that their use against enemy combatants (as opposed to military equipment) would infringe the 1925 Geneva Gas Protocol, since they could come within the prescription of “all analogous liquids, materials, or devices.”
World War II
...of Japan from bases in the Marianas. Instead of high-altitude strikes in daylight, which had failed to do much damage to the industrial centres attacked, low-level strikes at night, using napalm firebombs, were tried, with startling success. The first, in the night of March 9–10, 1945, against Tokyo, destroyed about 25 percent of the city’s buildings (most of them flimsily built of...