GENERAL:

The 'Fire Bomb' consists of a jettisionable fuel tank filled with gasoline gel (gasoline-Napalm mix). These bombs have been effective against personnel, wooden piers, inflammable stores, etc., with each bomb covering an area appoxi-mately 100 feet by 300 feet.
Standard Navy or Army auxiliary fuel tanks are being used at the present; however, an effort is being made to improve the dropping characteris-tics by adding a tail fin assembly.

JETTISONABLE FUEL TANK AND STABILIZERS:

Various types of jettisonable fuel tanks are available for conversion into fire bombs. A 150 gallon Universal or Interchangeable tank is now in production.

Stabilizers have been designed to give the fire bomb a more stable flight when dropped from a higher altitude.

The stabilizers are attached to the present tanks by a harness consisting of four cables which run along the longitudinal axis of the tank and are attached to a ring fitted around the nose. The Universal tank has clips welded to the aft end, obvis-ting the necessity of the nose ring and cable harness.

FILLER:

The filler is a gasoline-napalm mix. Napaln consists of a mixture of basic aluminum soaps of fatty acids and napthenic acid which in itself is insert and is used only to gel the gasoline to the proper consistency. Either 100 octans or 80 octans gasoline can be used with 6 percent Napalm by weight added for the mixture. Another pow-der, Marinco, consisting of 50 percent magnesium carbonate and 50 percent calci-um carbonate, is added (7 percent of Napalm by weight) to prevent clogging in the outlet hose.

The Navy has developed an incendiary mixer, the Mk 1 Mod 0, which mixes the gasoline and the Napalm in the correct proportions.

IGNITERS:

The stabilizers are provided with a clamp for attaching an igniter which is in addition to the fuel tank cap igniter. See page 217 for igniters M13, M14, M15 and M16.