What were incendiary bombs that were used in WW2?

Answer 1

They are chemical bombs designed to start signal fires or destroy sensitive equipment or as a terror weapon.
A large bomb casing was loaded with small sticks (bomblets) of incendiaries,designed to open at altitude scattering the bomblets in order to cover a larger area, like todays cluster bombs are designed, one large bomb drops many smaller bombs. An explosive charge would ignite the incendiary material,usually white phosphorus in WW2, starting a raging fire. White phosphorus can't be out put by throwing water on it, water just spreads the fire.
During WW2 white phosphorus bombs were used against large troop concentrations, signaling, smokescreens and target-marking purposes.
One of the first uses of incendiary bombs was during the London Blitz of 1940,German planes dropped incendiary bomblets on London first, to start fires so the in-coming attack could locate their target, London was blacked-out at the time.

Answer 2

Incendiary Bombs

Answer 3

Incendiary bombs were used on both fronts in WW2 as part of the strategic bombing campaign. In other words to bomb cities.

In Germany high explosives were dropped first to crack open brick buildings and then incendiaries we dropped to set it all ablaze. This tactic was used in Dresden and actually caused a fire storm. An event were the inferno suck all the oxygen out of the area. People were found who had taken cover in basements. They were not physically wounded, but had suffocated.

In Japan incendiaries could be used alone, because of the heavy use of wood and paper in construction. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were spared from these attacks because the U.S. wanted to nuke undamaged cities. This was so a complete assessment could be made of the impact of the atom bombs.

Answer 4

I'll give you a simple answer: They dropped high explosive bombs as well as incendiaries. Most of their bombs were relatively small and were dropped in "sticks" from level bombers, but Hitler was known to be a proponent of dive bombing and some dive bombers might have carried somewhat larger bombs. When attacking ground forces, the Luftwaffe generally preferred dive bombing or strafing attacks, which might at least partly have been considered a psychological weapon. Germany might have considered something like a napalm bomb, but probably did not use it to any extent because of their other fuel requirements. Incendiaries used would be your basic thermite or other chemical fire-starter bomb.

Answer 5

my understanding is napalm didn't come till Korea and Vietnam.WW2 incendiaries were phosphorous,,,,exact same principle as a kitchen match......

and yes, the massive B-29 raids on Japan were sometimes just incendiary bombs to take advantage of the largely wooden construction of Japanese cities.......in fact more people were killed in the Tokyo raid than at Hiroshima or Nagasaki.....

Answer 6

Napalm with some explosive to scatter it was used. Napalm is jellied gasoline. Plain gasoline vaporizes and burns too quickly. Napalm is thrown and sticks, causing more damage.