Okay, considering the “I love the smell of Napalm in the morning…it smells like victory” quote from the greatest American film of all time—Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, of course—I was just wondering: what DOES burning napalm smell like? Buring gas? Camphor? What?
That’s…it, I think.
What does burning napalm smell like? Why, it smells like freedom of course.
I believe it smells like teen spirit.
“It smells like … Victory.” Thus spake Robert Duvall, and he should know.
I asked my, Vietnam vet uncle, he laughed.
Then he said it had a chemical odor, but, mostly, he thought it smelled like shit.
:smack: “Victory”, it smells like victory.
I always assumed it smelled like gasoline, but I don’t really know. Sorry.
I don’t recall smelling it, but we used to climb on top of a small water tower, about 25ft., and watch air strikes. Napalm is a spectactular sight, a black cloud , building and rolling across the landscape w/ flames expoding up inside the cloud. If your watch high explosive drops through binoculars, you can actually see the air compress in waves. We often had a commercial, SW radio and we could search the dial until we found the right freq, where we could hear half the tranmission between the bird dog and the attack aircraft. Entertainment in a combat zone.
This was in a place called Dong Ha, very near the DMZ.
It smells like oil burning. It also leaves a greasy feel in the air.
Napalm, at least in my experience of the late 60s, is made by taking gasoline and adding a geling agent. The agent looked a lot like oatmeal. You just poured it in a bucket and stired it all up until it got to looking like thin pudding and then poured it into a flamethrower tank.
Years ago, my friends and I made homemade napalm by mixing gasoline and rubber cement.
It smelled like sweet liberty itself, the essence of these great United States of America.
Seriously, it smelled like gasoline and rubber cement.
Napalm[sup]TM[/sup] is a compound (formerly) made by Dow Chemical formed of aluminum naphthenate and aluminum palmitate, and the slurry of those two chemicals was the jelling ingredient that you added to gasoline to create the jellied incendiary known as napalm. Now the word “napalm” is used informally to talk about any liquid incendiary, whether Napalm was used to thicken it or not. The smell depends on what you’ve added to the gasoline or fuel, but it probably smells a lot like gasoline.
I thought it was made by the people who made Band Aids. Remember the jingle?
I am stuck on Napalm
'Cause Napalm sticks to me!
It smells like “I should not be here, I should get the fuck out of here ASAP,” but some guys can disregard.
Thanks to the few who answered the question when it was still a General Question.
MOved to MPSIMS.
samclem GQ moderator
I apologize for adding to the hijack. The subject reminded me of that memory and I thought it might be an interesting side note.
Well, everyone knows that napalm sticks to kids. And as any parent knows, the stickies thing ever is gum in a kid’s hair. SO I deduce that napalm smells like juicy fruit. QED.
It smells like chicken.
(Ok, I’m not sure if that works as a joke at all.)
Napalm hasn’t been used since the Korean conflict. Other compounds that do a much better job were developed and used after the Korean conflict.
But rumor has it, a smell of victory does linger after its use.
Wikipedia seems to disagree with you, unless you are referring to Napalm-B