Incendiary device

An incendiary device is a device or weapon designed to create a fire.

Incendiary devices or incendiary bombs are bombs designed to start fires or destroy sensitive equipment using materials such as napalm, thermite, chlorine trifluoride, or white phosphorus. Napalm proper is no longer used by the United States although the similar Mark 77 bomb is currently in use. The United States has admitted to use MK-77 in Operation Iraqi Freedom. The Fallujah insurgency is a case in point.

Incendiary bombs, also known as fire bombs, were used as an effective bombing weapon in WWII. The large shells of the bombs would be filled with an initial explosive, which would start off a raging fire. The fire would burn at extreme temperatures that could destroy most buildings. The bombing of Dresden in World War II, and to a lesser degree the 1943 bombing of Hamburg, remains a source of controversy to this day.

Modern incendiary bombs usually contain thermite, made from aluminium and Iron (III) oxide. The most effective formula is 25% aluminium and 75% iron oxide. It takes very high temperatures to ignite, but when alight, it can burn through solid steel. It is used to burn through heavy armor or as a quick welding mechanism.

White phosphorus is also used in incendiary bombs.

Use of incendiary weapons against civilian targets was banned by Protocol III of the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.

See also

• Accelerant
• Arson
• Driptorch
• Flamethrower
• Fuel-air explosive
• Greek fire
• Molotov cocktail
• Napalm
• Thermite
• White phosphorus incendiary

Claude A. R. Kagan 23:13, 31 July 2006 (UTC) Large numbers of these bombs were dropped over England in 1940 and it was soon discovered by the children, of whom I was one, 'usually burned out completely with the exception of the tail fin which was a most attractive kid collection item and a brass cylinder with a firing pin embedded on top of the cylinder. One morning I noticed a very nice completely intactd bomb in the school yard below my window Garlands. I hastened to collect this new souvenir. It had hit on the edge of the roof and deflected it did not fall down square and so did not fire. The front end was a little loose so I unscrewed it and took it off and surprise no brass cylinder in it. That expensive piece had been replaced with a simple metal firing pin swaged on a small disk. Inertia of the bomb hitting on edge of roof deflected the firing pin and so it did not strike the exploive cap. That was my introductionin manufacturing cost reduction, a career I did follow many years later. In the meanwhile I was very proud of this discovery and rushed indors to show it to the housemaster E. D. Laborde. He was not amused and three stripes across the bottom with a flexible cane was my reward. Incidentally I never again disassembled a bomb.