On wars new civilian front, the incendiary bomb has re-instated fire, in eclipse since the invention of gunpowder, as a potent weapon of siege and assault. According to Dr. J. En-pique Zanetti of Columbia University, who provided a demonstration for "Life," the Luftwaffe missed its chance to set all London afire by incendiary bombs before British fire defences were properly organized.
Like other weapons of the present war, incen diary bombs were first tested in World War 1. It was then established that the magnesium-thermite bomb is most effective. Ingredients are three common and useful metals, iron, aluminium and magnesium. Iron oxide and aluminium mixed in a granulated powder make thermite, which fills the magnesium casing of bomb. Set off by a flash of priming powder, both thermite and casing combust in an intense flame that burns through metal and cannot be smothered or put out by water or chemical extinguishers.
Small thermite bombs sown by thousands at random are well adapted to German style of indiscriminate bombing. But the Germans failed to achieve the ultimate in incendiary bombing, the merging of many fires into a general conflagration. By now, the fire defence of the British cities insures that no such con-flag ration will get started. Incendiary bombs, nonetheless, remain a potent weapon for harassment and help guide high explosives to their objectives.
Because magnesium is itself an incendiary, it collaborates with thermite powder to make the most efficient possible incendiary bomb. The two materials complement one another to defeat the two chief methods of fire-fighting. Thermite flames cannot be killed by smothering, while magnesium burns readily in standard chemical extinguisher and even sets water itself on dire. With big asbestos "snuffers," however, the flames can bq restricted until they burn themselves out. British scientists more recently have developed a chemical-sand extinguished which blankets the burning bomb with oxygen-excluding slag.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.