“During the Vietnam conflict, French, American and South Vietnamese forces would employ napalm with devastating effect.”

(Originally published March 25, 2013)

“NAPALM IS THE MOST TERRIBLE PAIN YOU CAN IMAGINE,” Kim Phuc once told an interviewer. “Water boils at 100 degrees celsius; napalm generates temperatures of 800 to 1,200 degrees.”

The 49-year-old Vietnamese-Canadian woman became an unwilling expert on the effects of the fiery weapon at an early age.

Phuc was only 9 years old on June 8, 1972, when planes from the South Vietnamese air force attacked her village of Trang Bang, about 40 kilometres northwest of Saigon.

During the raid, an A-1 Skyraider dropped bombs containing the flammable petroleum-based gel mere yards from Phuc and a group of fleeing residents. The pilot reportedly mistook the villagers for communist soldiers.

As the bombs burst open, the sticky, flaming liquid adhered to her clothes. Phuc frantically tore the burning fabric from her body as she fled the town with a group of terrified children.

A 21-year-old Associated Press photographer by the name of Nick Ut snapped several frames of the ghastly scene before he took it upon himself to rush the girl to a nearby hospital. Doctors treated the burned youngster, but few expected her to survive.

Ut’s photo ran on the front page of The New York Times the following day and was soon seen worldwide. Amazingly, AP very nearly buried the now famous shots because of a policy that forbade the depiction of nudity. The image ended up winning Ut a Pulitzer Prize.

Alan Downes, a British cameraman standing nearby, captured film footage of the same scene. His pictures revealed the damage the napalm did to the young girl’s back and arms.

Overnight, Phuc’s ordeal became a powerful symbol for the anti-war movement. The incident also enflamed public opinion against the use of napalm. It’s been mired in controversy since.

Here are some other facts about terrifying incendiary weapon and its bizarre history.

• The recipe for “Napalm B,” as it’s formally known, consists of 33 percent gasoline; 46 percent polystyrene (a substance used in plastic); and 21 percent benzene, an aromatic chemical that’s been used in the production of everything from aftershave and paints to glue and cigarettes. [1]

• Harvard researcher Louis Fieser invented an early form of napalm in 1942 while researching synthetic rubbers. Napalm was first detonated on a football field at the university on July 4, 1942. The formula, which consisted of a brown powder that could be mixed with gasoline to create the sticky jelly, was soon passed along to the military where it was tested in both flamethrowers and free-fall bombs. Napalm was prized for its propensity to spread across vast areas, and its tendency to flow into foxholes, bunkers and trenches, where it would adhere to both victims and surfaces. Napalm fire, which can burn for up to ten minutes, also consumes high amounts of oxygen. This coupled with the carbon monoxide it generates often asphyxiates victims not killed by the flames.

• Napalm’s combat debut came on March 6, 1944, when American heavy bombers dropped canisters of it on Berlin. Allied planners soon gained an appreciation for the weapon’s decidedly unpleasant characteristics and began using it accordingly. For example, in July 1944, RAF Mosquitoes from 140 Wing delivered napalm onto elements of the 17^th SS Panzergrenadiers near Bonneuil-Matours, France after it was learned that the same Nazi unit had executed more than 30 allied POWs and resistance fighters. The use of napalm was intended to be retaliatory. [2]

• Napalm would be used again at La Rochelle, France, which remained in the hands of German holdouts from September 1944 until the end of the war in Europe. In late April 1945, two weeks before the fall of Berlin, Allied aircraft doused German positions with napalm to flush out the last stubborn resisters. The strike inadvertently killed a number of French civilians as well.

• Napalm featured more prominently in the Pacific War, where it was dropped by Allied aircraft onto Japanese fortifications on Saipan, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. B-29s released napalm across the Japanese home islands as well, destroying up to 40 percent of the country’s urban areas. [3]

• In the 1950s, heavily outnumbered UN forces in Korea would rely on napalm as an equalizer and used it against the massive human wave-style assaults unleashed by Chinese and North Korean armies.

• During the Vietnam conflict, French, American and South Vietnamese forces would employ napalm with devastating effect. Dow Chemicals, the manufacturer of napalm for much of the 1960s, was targeted by American peace activists, many of who pressed for widespread boycotts of the company’s other products. Dow steadfastly defended its production of the weapon citing its manufacture as a patriotic duty.

• Napalm’s inventor, Louis Fieser of Harvard, also discovered Vitamin K and would go on to research health risks associated with smoking. Until his death in 1977, Fieser maintained that he never intended his discovery to be used on human beings, but rather buildings and fortifications.

• In 1981, Protocol III of the United Nations Convention of Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) prohibited the use of napalm or any incendiary weapon on civilian areas and non-combatants. The United States only agreed to the terms of the treaty in 2009. Among the countries that did not sign are North Korea, Syria, Russia and Israel.

• Kim Phuc survived the napalm attack on her village in 1972, but underwent 17 surgeries in her 14 months in hospital. Kim survived and went on to study medicine in her homeland. She later moved to Cuba where she married a Vietnamese national. In 1992, the couple sought political asylum in Canada and settled near Toronto. She became a Canadian citizen in 1997. That same year, Phuc established The Kim Foundation, an organization that provides aid for children injured in war. In 2003, the foundation arranged medical treatment in Canada for Ali Abbas, a 12–year-old Iraqi boy who lost both arms when a missile destroyed his family’s home. She has maintained a life-long friendship with Nick Ut, the photographer who snapped the iconic photo and carried her to the hospital. Kim Phuc has two children. [4]