Japanese Village was the nickname for a range of residential houses constructed in 1943 by the U.S. army in the
Dugway Proving GroundDugway Proving Ground is a US Army facility located approximately 85 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah in southern Tooele County and just north of Juab County...
in Utah, roughly a 100 kilometres (62.1 mi) southwest of Salt Lake City.
Dugway was a high-security testing facility for chemical and biological weapons. The purpose of the replicas of Japanese homes, which were repeatedly rebuilt after being intentionally burned down, was to perfect the use of incendiary bombing tactics, the fire bombing of Japanese cities during
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
The principal architect for Japanese village was
Antonin RaymondAntonin Raymond, or , born: was a Czech architect, who lived and worked in the USA and Japan...
who had spent many years building in Japan. Boris Laiming, who had studied fires in Japan, writing a report on the 1923 Tokyo fire, also contributed.
The most successful bomb to come out of the May–September 1943 tests against the mock-up Japanese homes was the
napalmNapalm is a thickening/gelling agent generally mixed with gasoline or a similar fuel for use in an incendiary device, primarily as an anti-personnel weapon...
-filled
M-69 Incendiary cluster bombThe M-69 incendiary cluster bomb was used to target Japanese cities during World War II. They were nicknamed 'Tokyo Calling Cards'.The bomb used napalm as an incendiary filler, improving on earlier designs which used thermite or magnesium fillers that burnt more intensely but were less...
. Contenders had been the M-47 (containing coconut-oil, rubber, and gasoline) and the M-50 (a blend of magnesium and powdered aluminum and iron oxide). Unimplemented was an idea for a lightweight "bat incendiary" that was to have been attached to live bats.
For the tests B-17 and B-24 bombers were used operating at normal bombing altitude, and the effects on the villages were meticulously recorded.
See also
- German Village
German Village was the nickname for a range of residential houses constructed in 1943 by the U.S. Army in the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, roughly a hundred kilometers southwest of Salt Lake City....
- Fire bombing
- Terror bombing
External links