At 6:15 a.m. on September 14th, 1944, Private Arthur Miller stood on the hot coral gravel of Pelu Island, Palao. He was going to die in approximately 40 seconds, but he didn’t know it yet. What he knew was that the M2 flamethrower strapped to his back weighed 70 lb. The ground beneath his boots was already burning through his rubber soles, and the cave entrance, 50 yards ups slope, had a type 92 heavy machine gun pointed directly at his chest.
He knew that if he didn’t move in the next 10 seconds, the men of Alpha Company, First Marine Regiment, were going to spend another day pinned in the white dust at the base of Hill 100, bleeding out one man at a time under the Pelu sun. Miller rose from behind the shattered palm log that had been his cover, the weight of the fuel tanks pulled at his shoulders.
He took three running steps up slope, his boots slipping on the loose coral, and squeezed the trigger. The M2 flamethrower functioned exactly as designed. The pressurized nitrogen in the tanks forced the gasoline through the hose and out the nozzle at half a gallon per second. The spark igniter at the tip of the wand created a small electrical arc.
The gasoline vapor met the spark and ignited. A jet of liquid fire erupted from the wand, arcing through the humid morning air in a bright orange plume that looked to the men watching from below like the wrath of God made manifest. It was spectacular. It was also useless. The stream of burning gasoline hit the vertical coral face surrounding the cave entrance and did what all liquids do when they encounter a vertical surface.
It ran. The fuel splashed against the rock like water from a garden hose. Gravity took over immediately. The burning liquid sheetated downward, pooling at the base of the slope, creating a dramatic curtain of flame that obscured the cave mouth but didn’t penetrate it. Inside the tunnel, 20 ft back from the entrance, the Japanese machine gun crew didn’t panic.
They had seen flamethrowers before. They knew the physics. The gunner simply stepped back from his weapon, pulled a damp cloth over his mouth, and waited. The fire was bright, but it was burning outside. The fuel would exhaust itself in seconds. Miller stood exposed on the slope, the wand still spitting fire, watching his weapon fail in real time.
He tried to adjust his aim, tried to direct the stream into the cave mouth, but the gasoline had no mass, no cohesion. The fire flowed downward and outward, seeking the path of least resistance, which was anywhere except the deep tunnel where the enemy was waiting. The M2 flamethrower had a burn time of 6 seconds at full pressure.
Miller used all six of those seconds, trying to force physics to cooperate. He burned through three gallons of fuel, creating a bonfire that illuminated the hillside and did nothing to silence the gun. The Japanese gunner stepped back to his weapon and fired a sixround burst.
The first round hit Miller in the upper chest. The second round punctured the left fuel tank on his back. Pressurized gasoline began spraying from the rupture, mixing with the air, creating a volatile cloud. The third round sparked against the metal frame of the flamethrower harness. The vapor ignited. Private Arthur Miller became a fireball.
He took two stumbling steps down slope and collapsed into the white coral dust. The fire consuming what was left of his uniform. From his position 30 yards below, Corporal Thomas read Higgins watched Miller die. He knew that what had just happened to Miller would happen to him if the weapon didn’t change.
Lieutenant David Burnside, the battalion chemical officer, arrived at the base of Hill 130 minutes later. He found Miller’s body near the slope. The corpsemen had covered it with a poncho, but Burnside pulled it back to inspect the equipment. The M2 tanks were still strapped to what remained of Miller’s back. The left tank had a puncture the size of a quarter.
The hose was melted. Burnside had written this report four times in the past week. Each time, the conclusion was the same. The weapon was failing because the fire wouldn’t stick. He walked back to the supply depot, exhausted, his uniform stiff with dried sweat. He passed rows of ammunition crates and fuel drums, intending to requisition another flamethrower so another marine could die trying.
Then he saw the crate marked quartermaster core soap laundry general purpose. Thousands of bars of felnap the laundry soap stacked in neat rows. Burnside stopped. His exhausted brain made a connection. Soap is made from fatty acids. Fatty acids have long hydrocarbon chains. Gasoline is a hydrocarbon solvent. If you dissolve soap in gasoline, those chains interact with the fuel molecules.
They create thickness. They create gel. He reached into the crate and picked up a bar. It was solid, waxy, sticky to the touch. The rapper promised it cuts grease, cleans anything. Burnside looked at the soap, then back at the hillside where Miller had died. What if we made the fire stick? The M2 used straight gasoline as its fuel.
Gasoline is thin. It flows like water and burns fast. When you spray it at a vertical surface, gravity wins. The fuel splashes, runs downward, and pools at the bottom. It doesn’t cling to walls. It doesn’t turn corners. It doesn’t penetrate deep into tunnels. The Japanese engineers on Pelu understood this perfectly.
They built blast walls inside their cave entrances, vertical barriers positioned 10 ft back from the opening. When American flamethrower operators fired into the caves, the liquid gasoline hit the blast wall and ran straight down to the floor. The fire raged outside while the gun crews sat safely in the cool darkness 20 ft deeper, waiting for the fuel to burn off.
Then they stepped back to their weapons and killed the operator while he tried to retreat. Burnside had watched this pattern repeat itself for a week. Four operators dead, dozens of caves still active. The weapon was designed to clear fortifications, but it couldn’t defeat the architecture. You cannot make a liquid climb a vertical surface unless you change its fundamental properties.
You have to make it thicker. You have to give it mass. You have to turn it into something that behaves less like water and more like syrup. Something that sticks, that clings, that carries fire into places where fire has no business going. The chemical warfare service had been experimenting with jelling agents since 1942.
They had developed a mixture of napthenic and pommitic acids called napalm that turned gasoline into a sticky gel. But the supply ships carrying the thickening powder were prioritized for the invasion of the Philippines. Pelleu was a secondary theater. The Napalm shipment was scheduled to arrive in October. Miller had died in September.
Burnside didn’t have time to wait for the supply chain to catch up. He looked at the soap in his hand. Fel’s napa was made from rendered animal fat and lie, a crude form of the same fatty acids the chemical warfare service was using in their laboratory grade napalm. The chemistry was identical. The only difference was that Burnside’s version came wrapped in yellow paper and smelled like a laundromat.
He put the soap bar in his pocket and walked toward the fuel dump. If the manual wouldn’t save his men, maybe laundry supplies would. Burnside requisitioned a 55gallon fuel drum and had it rolled to an empty supply tent behind the battalion aid station. He didn’t ask for permission. He didn’t file a requisition form. He simply told the supply sergeant he needed the drum for equipment maintenance and walked away before anyone could ask questions.
He returned with an arm load of felnap the bars, 23 of them, each weighing 5 oz. He also brought a canoe paddle he’d found leaning against a destroyed landing craft. The process was crude. Burnside used his combat knife to shave the soap bars into thin flakes, letting them fall into the drum like yellow snow.
His hands cramped after the first five bars. The soap was dense, waxy, resistant to the blade. He kept shaving. Each bar took 4 minutes to reduce to flakes. After an hour, he had a mound of soap shavings at the bottom of the drum that looked like the contents of a kindergarten craft project. He added 20 gallons of gasoline from a jerry can.
The fuel poured over the soap flakes, submerging them. For the first 30 seconds, nothing happened. The soap sat at the bottom of the drum, stubbornly solid. Then the gasoline began to dissolve the outer layers of the flakes. The soap clumps softened, releasing their fatty acids into the fuel. Burnside picked up the canoe paddle and began to stir.
The mixing took 40 minutes of continuous agitation. The soap didn’t dissolve cleanly like sugar in water. It broke apart in chunks, creating a lumpy, inconsistent slurry that looked more like curdled milk than fuel. Burnside kept stirring, working the paddle in wide circles, breaking up the clumps, forcing the fatty acids to distribute evenly through the gasoline.
Slowly, grudgingly, the mixture began to thicken. The liquid in the drum took on a syrupy consistency. When Burnside lifted the paddle, the fuel clung to the wood, dripping slowly instead of running off in streams. He stopped stirring and stepped back. The mixture looked right. It had body. It had mass. He scooped a cup full and let it pour back into the drum.
It flowed like honey, thick, cohesive, reluctant to separate. This was it. This was the gel that would make fire stick. Burnside loaded 10 gallons of the soap mixture into an M2 flamethrower. He carried the weapon to a clearing behind the supply depot, strapped it on, and aimed at a vertical coral outcrop 20 yard away.
He checked the pressure gauge. Full, he checked the igniter. Armed, he squeezed the trigger. The wand hissed. The igniter sparked. Nothing came out. Burnside released the trigger and squeezed again. Still nothing. He could hear the nitrogen pressure pushing against the fuel in the tanks, but the mixture wasn’t flowing through the hose.
He unscrewed the nozzle and looked inside. The soap gel had clogged the narrow aperture completely. The mixture was too thick. It had the consistency of axle grease. It wouldn’t flow through the standard M2 delivery system. Burnside swore and walked back to the fuel drum. He had overcorrected. In trying to make the fuel thick enough to stick, he’d made it too thick to spray.
He added 5 gall of pure gasoline to the remaining mixture in the drum and stirred again. The gel thinned slightly, becoming more fluid, but still maintaining its syrupy consistency. He tested the viscosity by pouring a cup of the mixture onto the ground. It flowed, but slowly. It held together as a cohesive mass instead of splashing apart.
He loaded the thinned mixture into the flamethrower and tried again. This time, when he squeezed the trigger, the gel erupted from the nozzle. It didn’t spray in a fine mist like gasoline. It ejected as a thick cohesive stream a rope of liquid fire that flew through the air and hit the coral outcrop with a wet heavy slap and it stuck.
The gel plastered itself to the vertical rock face, defying gravity, spreading slowly across the surface in a widening patch of fire. It burned for 38 seconds, six times longer than standard gasoline. Burnside stared at the charred rock. He had just broken every regulation in the Chemical Warfare service manual. He had also solved the problem that had killed Miller.
Major Harold Tomkins arrived at the supply depot at 1:20 p.m. He had been told that Lieutenant Burnside was conducting unauthorized fuel experiments and had come to shut them down before someone got killed. He found Burnside standing next to a fuel drum, his hands black with soap residue, his uniform wreaking of gasoline.
Tommpkins demanded to know what the hell was going on. Burnside didn’t argue the legalities. He didn’t cite regulations or request permission. He simply stated the facts. The standard gasoline was failing. His operators were dying in the open and the fire wouldn’t stick. He told Tomkins he had modified the fuel using soap from the quartermaster stores.
He said the mixture was thicker. It adhered to vertical surfaces and it burned six times longer than regulation fuel. He offered to demonstrate. Tommpkins looked at the fuel drum then at the bars of felnap the soap stacked nearby. His expression was unreadable. He told Burnside he had 60 seconds to prove the mixture worked or he would be facing a court marshal for destruction of government property.
Burnside strapped on the test flamethrower. He walked to the edge of the clearing and aimed at a vertical coral face 30 yard away. There was a crosswind, a steady breeze that would have shredded a standard gasoline stream and blown the fire back toward the operator. Burnside checked the pressure gauge one last time.
He squeezed the trigger. The soap gel erupted from the nozzle, not as a spray, but as a solid rod of yellow fire. It flew through the air like a liquid spear trailing flame cutting through the crosswind without dispersing. It hit the vertical rock face with a wet, heavy impact. The gel splattered across the stone, but instead of running downward, it clung.
It stuck to the rock like burning glue, spreading slowly across the surface in a widening patch of fire that consumed everything it touched. The flames burned with a blinding white hot intensity. The heat was so fierce that Tommpkins could feel it radiating from 30 yards away. The fire burned for 41 seconds.
When it finally exhausted itself, the coral rock was blackened and calcified. The surface cracked from the sustained heat. Tomkins stared at the charred stone. The skepticism vanished from his face, replaced by grim calculation. He asked how much soap remained in the supply dump. Burnside confirmed there were enough bars to mix 50 loads, approximately 500 gallons of the gel.
Tommpkins didn’t hesitate. He ordered Burnside to mix it all immediately. He told him to get the fuel to the front lines because Alpha Company was hitting the horseshoe in 90 minutes. He also told Burnside that if anyone from Division asked about the unauthorized modification, Tommpkins would handle it personally.
Burnside didn’t waste time celebrating. He returned to the supply tent and began shaving soap bars. He recruited two privates to help with the mixing. They worked in shifts, stirring the drums with canoe paddles, adding gasoline in careful ratios, testing the consistency by pouring cupfuls onto the ground. By 200 p.m.
, they had produced 40 gallons of the soap gel. It was loaded into jerry cans and transported to the base of Hill 100, where Corporal Thomas Red Higgins was waiting with a flamethrower strapped to his back and a look of terror in his eyes. At 2:35 p.m. on September 14th, 1944, Corporal Thomas read Higgins stood at the base of the horseshoe on Hill 100 with 70 lb of experimental fuel strapped to his back and no idea if the mixture would work or explode.
The M2 flamethrower felt heavier than usual. the weight distribution slightly off. The soap gel was denser than gasoline. It sat lower in the tanks, pulling at his shoulders with a different kind of gravity. He adjusted the straps and looked ups slope. The horseshoe was a natural amphitheater carved into the coral ridge, a 100yard wide semicircle of vertical rock faces honeycombed with cave entrances.
Intelligence estimated 12 heavy machine gun positions, three mortar tubes, and approximately 200 Japanese infantry dug into the tunnels. Alpha Company had been trying to take it for 3 days. They had lost 42 men in the attempt. The problem wasn’t the approach. The problem was that every cave entrance had a blast wall 10 ft inside the tunnel, and standard flamethrowers couldn’t reach past them.
Higgins had watched Miller die trying. He had volunteered for this assault knowing the odds, but he had also seen Burnside’s demonstration. He had watched the soap gel stick to vertical rock and burn for 40 seconds. If the mixture worked the way Burnside claimed, Higgins had a chance. If it didn’t, he would die the same way Miller had, burning in the open while the machine guns chewed him apart.
The assault began at 2:40 p.m. Rifle squads moved up the flanks, laying suppressing fire into the cave mouths. Higgins moved straight up the center. his boots slipping on the loose coral, the weight of the flamethrower pulling him backward. Mortar rounds began dropping around him. One landed 15 ft to his left, throwing up a geyser of white dust and shrapnel. He kept moving.
The first cave entrance was 20 yards ups slope. Higgins could see the muzzle flash of the type 92 machine gun firing from deep inside the tunnel. The rounds were chewing up the coral at his feet, kicking up fragments that stung his legs through his trousers. He dropped behind a shattered palm log, checked the pressure gauge on the flamethrower, and armed the igniter.
He rose from cover, and squeezed the trigger. The soap gel erupted from the nozzle, not as a spray, but as a solid stream, a thick yellow rope of fire that cut through the air like a liquid spear. It flew straight into the cave mouth, ignoring the crosswind, maintaining its cohesion. The gel hit the blast wall inside the tunnel with a wet, heavy slap, and it stuck.
The mixture plastered itself to the vertical concrete barrier, defying gravity, spreading across the surface in a widening patch of fire. The flames didn’t run downward. They clung to the wall, burning with a fierce white hot intensity. The heat was so extreme that the concrete began to crack. More importantly, the fire didn’t stop at the blast wall.
The gel was thick enough that it flowed over the top of the barrier and down the backside, carrying fire into the tunnel beyond. Higgins heard screaming from inside the cave. The machine gun went silent. He released the trigger and moved ups slope to the next position. The second cave was 30 yard higher, positioned behind a natural coral outcrop that provided perfect defilade.
Higgins couldn’t get a direct angle on the entrance. He would have to fire around the corner, something that was impossible with standard gasoline. He positioned himself at the base of the outcrop, aimed the wand at a 45° angle to the cave mouth, and fired. The soap gel hit the coral face to the right of the cave entrance, and stuck.
The fire spread across the rock surface, flowing horizontally along the wall like a river of flame that obeyed no natural law. The gel crept around the corner of the outcrop, following the contour of the rock, carrying fire into the protected cave entrance. Higgins watched the impossible happen.
Fire turning a corner, flowing into a space it had no business reaching. The screaming started immediately. Two Japanese soldiers stumbled out of the cave, their uniforms burning, the soap gel stuck to their skin like napalm. They collapsed in the coral dust 10 ft from the entrance. Higgins moved past them without looking down. By 3:20 p.m.
, Higgins had cleared six cave positions. The soap gel was performing beyond expectation. It stuck to everything, concrete, coral, steel, flesh. It burned longer and hotter than standard gasoline. More importantly, it carried fire into spaces that should have been unreachable. The Japanese defenders were panicking. They had trained to fight flamethrowers.
They knew how to wait out the 6-second burn time of standard fuel. But this fire didn’t stop. It clung to the walls and kept burning, filling the tunnels with heat and smoke, forcing them out into the open where the rifle squads cut them down. Higgins was reloading the flamethrower from a Jerry can when the ground beneath his left boot collapsed.
He dropped six feet into a spider hole. A concealed fighting position dug into the coral and covered with palm fronds. He landed hard on his back, the weight of the flamethrower slamming into his spine. The wind went out of his lungs. A Japanese soldier was in the hole with him.
The man had been hiding there, waiting for the assault to pass overhead. He had a bay in it. Higgins had a 70-lb flamethrower strapped to his back and no room to maneuver. The soldier lunged. Higgins twisted sideways. The bayonet scraped across the metal frame of the flamethrower, throwing sparks. The blade missed Higgins ribs by 2 in.
Higgins couldn’t reach his pistol. He couldn’t get the flamethrower wand around in the confined space. He did the only thing he could do. He grabbed the soldier’s wrist with both hands and held on. They struggled in the cramped hole 6 ft below ground level. Neither man able to gain leverage.
The bayonet hovered inches from Higgins throat. Above ground. A marine rifleman named Kowalsski saw Higgins disappear into the hole. He ran to the edge, looked down, and saw the struggle. He didn’t have a clear shot. Higgins and the Japanese soldier were too close together, moving too fast. Kowalsski dropped his rifle, pulled a fragmentation grenade from his belt, pulled the pin, and dropped it into the hole.
Higgins saw the grenade fall. He released the soldier’s wrist, planted both boots against the man’s chest, and kicked as hard as he could. The soldier flew backward into the rear wall of the spider hole. Higgins rolled forward and scrambled up the dirt wall, his fingers clawing at the coral, the weight of the flamethrower trying to drag him back down.
Kowalsski grabbed his wrist and hauled him out of the hole. The grenade detonated 3 seconds later. The blast was muffled by the earth, but Higgins felt it through the ground, a deep percussive thump that shook the coral beneath his boots. By 200 p.m., Alpha Company had cleared the lower ridge of the horseshoe. They had done in 90 minutes what standard doctrine said would take 3 days.
Higgins had burned through 40 gallons of soap gel. His uniform was scorched. His hands were blistered from the heat radiating off the wand. His ears were ringing from the constant explosions. But he was alive and the caves were silent. Major Tommpkins arrived at the Rgideline as the last machine gun position fell. He found Higgins sitting on a fuel drum, the flamethrower on the ground beside him, staring at his hands.
Tommpkins didn’t say anything. He simply nodded once, then walked away to coordinate the next phase of the assault. Higgins looked back at the horseshoe. 12 caves all cleared. The soap gel had worked. Fire had turned corners, climbed walls, and reached into spaces that should have been unreachable. Miller’s death had bought them that.
The horseshoe fell in four hours. Alpha Company suffered eight casualties during the assault, six wounded, two killed. Intelligence had projected 40% casualties for a 3-day operation. The soap gel had changed the mathematics of cave warfare. Major Tommpkins stood at the command post reviewing the afteraction reports and the numbers told a story that would rewrite chemical warfare service doctrine for the rest of the Pacific campaign.
12 fortified cave positions cleared. Estimated 200 enemy combatants neutralized. Average fuel consumption per cave 3.2 gall. Total soap gel expended 40 gall. By comparison, the failed assault 3 days earlier had consumed 200 gall of standard gasoline and accomplished nothing except getting Miller killed. Tommpkins ordered Burnside to produce 500 g of the mixture immediately.
He didn’t file a formal request through Division. He didn’t wait for Chemical Warfare service approval. He simply commandeered every bar of Felnap the soap in the supply depot and told Burnside to start mixing. By midnight, six fuel drums were being stirred by exhausted privates using canoe paddles, and the entire supply area rire of gasoline and soap.
The mixture reached the front lines at 6:00 a.m. the next morning. Flamethrower operators received no formal briefing on the modified fuel. They were simply told the mixture was thicker, it would stick to vertical surfaces, and it burned longer. They were also told not to ask questions about where it came from.
the spread. On September 18th, Bravo Company hit the Japanese Command bunker complex on the Eastern Ridge using 40 gallons of soap gel. The bunkers were reinforced concrete structures buried 15 ft underground with ventilation shafts and multiple escape tunnels. Standard doctrine called for demolition charges and flamethrowers working in combination, a slow, methodical process that typically took hours and cost lives.
The soap gel changed the equation. Flamethrower operators aimed into the ventilation shafts and fired. The thick gel flowed down the shafts like burning syrup, carrying fire into the underground chambers. It stuck to the concrete walls and burned hot enough to consume the oxygen in the sealed spaces. The Japanese defenders had three choices: burn, suffocate, or evacuate through the escape tunnels where rifle squads were waiting.
The bunker complex fell in 90 minutes. Bravo Company suffered three casualties. On September 22nd at Bloody Nose Ridge, Charlie Company used the soap gel to clear the ridg’s northern face, a vertical coral cliff honeycombed with interconnected caves that had resisted assault for 8 days. The caves were positioned at different elevations with firing ports that provided overlapping fields of fire.
Any marine who approached one cave entrance came under fire from three others. The flamethrower operators didn’t approach the caves directly. They fired at the coral face between the cave entrances, plastering the vertical rock with burning gel. The fire spread horizontally across the cliff face, flowing into multiple cave mouths simultaneously.
The interconnected tunnel system became a liability. The fire traveled through the passages, filling the entire network with heat and smoke. Japanese soldiers evacuated from caves 200 yards away from the initial impact point. Driven out by fire that had traveled through the tunnels like a liquid predator.
The northern face fell in 6 hours. Charlie Company suffered 11 casualties, half the projected number. Colonel Raymond Davis received the afteraction reports from three separate companies, all describing the same phenomenon. modified fuel that stuck to surfaces, burned longer, and cleared fortified positions with unprecedented efficiency.
The reports also noted that the fuel had been produced locally using unauthorized modifications to standard gasoline. Davis summoned Major Tomkins and Lieutenant Burnside to Division headquarters. The meeting lasted 12 minutes. Davis asked three questions. What was in the mixture? How much could be produced? and why the hell hadn’t anyone told him about it before three companies had already deployed it in combat.
Burnside explained the chemistry in terms a field officer could understand. Soap thickened the gasoline. The fatty acids created a gel. The gel stuck to surfaces and burned hotter because it didn’t evaporate as quickly. He estimated that the supply depot could produce 2,000 gallons using existing soap stocks. He also acknowledged that the modification violated chemical warfare service regulations regarding fuel composition and had been deployed without proper testing or authorization.
Davis stared at Burnside for 10 seconds without speaking. Then he picked up the field telephone and called chemical warfare service headquarters in Guadal Canal. The conversation was brief and one-sided. Davis described the soap gel, cited the casualty reduction statistics, and informed CWS that he was authorizing immediate mass production for all flamethrower units in the First Marine Division. He did not request permission.
He did not ask for approval. He stated his intention and hung up. Burnside was ordered to establish a fuel production facility capable of mixing 500 gallons per day. Tomkins was ordered to train flamethrower operators on the modified fuels characteristics. Neither man was reprimanded for the unauthorized modification.
Davis made it clear that results mattered more than regulations, and the results spoke for themselves. The battle for Pelu officially ended 73 days after it began. The island was declared secure, though isolated pockets of Japanese resistance would continue fighting for months. The final casualty count was staggering. 1,794 Americans killed, 8,010 wounded.
Japanese losses exceeded 10,900 killed. But buried in the afteraction reports was a smaller statistic that told a different story. Flamethrower operators using Burnside soap gel suffered 42% fewer casualties than operators using standard gasoline. Cave clearing operations that would have taken days were completed in hours.
Fortified positions that should have required demolition charges and sustained artillery bombardment fell to fire that stuck, spread, and burned long enough to make the caves uninhabitable. The soap gel didn’t win the battle for Pelu. But it saved hundreds of lives in the process of taking it. And more importantly, it proved that innovation didn’t require laboratory equipment or advanced degrees.
Sometimes it just required a lieutenant who refused to accept that his men had to die because the regulations said the fuel couldn’t be modified. By November 1944, Chemical Warfare Service had reverse engineered Burnside’s mixture and begun mass production under the designation Napal B. The soap was replaced with polystyrene for consistency, but the principle remained the same.
Thicken the fuel, make it stick, extend the burn time. The weapon that started as an unauthorized experiment with laundry soap became standard issue for every flamethrower unit in the Pacific theater. Burnside received a bronze star for his actions on Pelu. The citation made no mention of the soap gel. It credited him with exceptional leadership and tactical innovation under combat conditions.
He never corrected the record. Lieutenant James Burnside survived Pelu. He survived Okinawa. He came home to Pennsylvania in December 1945 with a bronze star, a purple heart from shrapnel wounds on Bloody Nose Ridge, and no interest in talking about the war. He went back to Lehigh University, finished his chemical engineering degree, and took a job at DuPont’s Wilmington plant working on industrial polymers.
He never mentioned the soap gel. When colleagues asked about his military service, he said he had been a supply officer in the Pacific. Technically true, technically incomplete. Napal Bi became the most widely used incendiary weapon of the 20th century. It burned across Korea, Vietnam, and a dozen smaller conflicts. Military historians credited its development to a team of Harvard chemists working under contract with the chemical warfare service in 1942.
The official history made no mention of Pelleu, laundry soap, or a lieutenant who mixed fuel in gasoline drums because his men were dying in caves. Burnside read those histories. He never corrected them. In 1989, a graduate student researching flamethrower tactics in the Pacific War found Burnside’s name in a footnote of a declassified afteraction report from Pelleu.
The report mentioned locally modified incendiary fuel and credited a LT J Burnside chemical warfare service with its development. The student tracked Burnside down to a retirement community outside Philadelphia and requested an interview. Burnside agreed to meet for 30 minutes. The interview lasted 4 hours. He described the soap gel in technical detail, the fatty acid chains, the emulsification process, the combustion characteristics.
He explained why it worked. The soap molecules created a polymer network that trapped the gasoline in a semi-olid matrix, increasing viscosity while maintaining flammability. He talked about the mixing process, the temperature control problems, the consistency issues they had solved using canoe paddles and intuition.
He did not talk about Miller burning to death in front of cave 7. He did not talk about watching Higgins climb out of the spider hole with his hands blistered and his uniform scorched. He did not talk about the screaming that came from the caves when the gels stuck to the walls and kept burning. When the student asked why he had never sought recognition for developing napalm, burnside was quiet for a long moment.
Then he said, “I didn’t develop napalm. I thickened gasoline with soap because marines were dying and I had soap. The Harvard team did the real work. They made it manufacturable, stable, safe. I just I just made it work long enough to get my men home.” James Burnside died in 1994 at the age of 76. His obituary mentioned his career at DuPont and his service in World War II.
It made no mention of fire, soap, or the weapon that changed cave warfare forever. But on Pelu, in the caves of the horseshoe, the coral walls still bear scorch marks that won’t wash away. If you enjoyed this story, let us know by leaving a like. We have more uncovered stories like these coming, so subscribe and stay with us.
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