Louis Fieser’s quotations are from Louis F. Fieser, The Scientific Method: A Personal Account of Unusual Projects in War and in Peace （New York: Reinhold, 1964）。
For more information about the birth of napalm, see Robert M. Neer, Napalm: An American Biography （Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2015）。
“After some considerable…for London”： Charles L. McNichols and Clayton D. Carus, “One Way to Cripple Japan: The Inflammable Cities of Osaka Bay,” Harper’s Magazine 185, no. 1105 （June 1942）： 33.
For more information about the tests at Dugway, see Standard Oil Development Company, “Design and Construction of Typical German and Japanese Test Structures at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah” （1943）， available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eiqYwvJNSY-ZpUsNQozwBISyQv_z4Uzb/view.
For the NDRC’s analysis of incendiary weapons, see National Defense Research Committee, Summary Technical Report of Division 11, vol. 3, Fire Warfare: Incendiaries and Flame Throwers （Washington, DC, 1946）， available at https://www.japanairraids.org/?page_id=1095.
“The main component…toward the target”： M-69 Incendiary Bomb, Department of Defense combat bulletin no. 48, PIN 20311, 1945, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPteVZyF4U0.
“Boys. It’s tough…doing well” and “I don’t agree…operation will fail”： Transcript of Interview with Major General J. B. Montgomery, Los Angeles, CA, August 8, 1974, Clark Special Collections Branch, McDermott Library, US Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, CO.
“an urgent requirement for planning purposes”： Charles Griffith, The Quest: Haywood Hansell and American Strategic Bombing in World War II （Montgomery, AL: Air University Press, 1999）， 182.
“Every important building…the next day”： William W. Ralph, “Improvised Destruction: Arnold, LeMay, and the Firebombing of Japan,” War in History 13, no. 4 （2006）： 517, doi:10.1177/0968344506069971.
Chapter Eight: “It’s all ashes. All that and that and that.”
Many of the primary sources cited in this chapter and elsewhere are available at Japan Air Raids （https://www.japanairraids.org/）， a bilingual historical archive run by David Fedman, assistant professor of East Asian history at the University of California at Irvine, and Cary Karacas.
“How many times…we’ll go” and “Suddenly, in the air…piercing the air”： Curtis E. LeMay with MacKinlay Kantor, Mission with LeMay: My Story （New York: Doubleday, 1965）， 13–14, 351.
“And there was just a gasp…low-altitude [flight profile]” and “Frankly, when those…fire that big”： David Braden, interview by Alfred F. Hurley, Dallas, TX, February 4, 2005, University of North Texas Library, Denton, TX, available at https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc306702/?q=david%20braden.
“I have been asked…personal decision”： Haywood Hansell, talk at the United States Air Force Academy, April 19, 1967, Clark Special Collections Branch, McDermott Library, United States Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, CO.
Curtis LeMay’s quotations in this chapter, unless otherwise noted, are from Reminiscences of Curtis E. LeMay: Oral History, 1971 （Air Force Academy Project, Columbia Center for Oral History, Columbia University Libraries, New York, NY）。
“Colonel LeMay…very inaccurate”： First U.S. Raid on Germany, Reuters, British Pathé newsreel, 1943, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgO6DX_9z0I.
“It worked out…but it worked” and “War is a mean…quick as possible”： Curtis LeMay oral history interview, March 1965, Air Force Historical Research Agency, Montgomery, AL.
“Ralph, you’re probably…much better”： Emily Newburger, “Call to Arms,” Harvard Law Today, October 1, 2001, available at https://today.law.harvard.edu/feature/call-arms/.
St. Clair McKelway’s quotations are from St. Clair McKelway, “A Reporter with the B-29s: III—The Cigar, the Three Wings, and the Low-Level Attacks,” The New Yorker, June 23, 1945, 26–39.
“We had a good mission…grocery bill for a month”： Letter from Curtis LeMay to Helen LeMay, March 12, 1945, in Benjamin Paul Hegi, From Wright Field, Ohio, to Hokkaido, Japan: General Curtis E. LeMay’s Letters to His Wife Helen, 1941–1945 （Denton, TX: University of North Texas Libraries, 2015）， 330.
“There were a couple…that kind of thing”： Jane LeMay Lodge, interview by Barbara W. Sommer, San Juan Capistrano, CA, September 10, 1998, Nebraska State Historical Society, available at http://d1vmz9r13e2j4x.cloudfront.net/nebstudies/0904_0302jane.pdf.