Railway to Hell

The Thai–Burma railway was built in 1942–43 to supply the Japanese forces in Burma, bypassing the sea routes which had become vulnerable when Japanese naval strength was reduced in the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway in May and June 1942. Aiming to finish the railway as quickly as possible the Japanese decided to use the more than 60 000 Allied POWs who had fallen into their hands in early 1942. A particular stretch called the Konyu Cutting was the deepest and the most dramatic of the many cuttings and clearings to make way for the railway lines. Groups of men worked around the clock for 16-18 hours to complete excavation of the 17 metre deep and 110-m long cutting through solid limestone and quartz rock. Sixty nine men were beaten to death by Japanese guards in the six weeks it took to build the cutting, and many more died from cholera, dysentery, starvation, and exhaustion. Forced to work at night, Konyu Cutting was nicknamed X because of the mixture of hammering noise, lighting from fires, oil fired bamboo torches and carbide lamps that created an eerie illumination that looked like the fires of hell.

Sticky Fire *Sounds Interesting*

Use of fire in warfare has a long history. Greek fire, also described as "sticky fire" is believed to have had a petroleum base. The development of X was precipitated by the use of jellied gasoline mixtures by the Allied forces during World War II. The supply of latex that had been used in these early forms of incendiary devices became scarce in the Pacific Theater of Operations, since natural rubber was almost impossible to obtain after the Japanese army captured the rubber plantations. X was developed in 1942 in a secret laboratory at Harvard University by a team led by chemist Louis Fieser. Its first recorded use was in the European theatre of war during World War II. It is believed to have been formulated to burn at a specific rate and to adhere to surfaces to increase its stopping power. During combustion, X rapidly deoxygenates the available air and generates large amounts of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. On 4 July 1942, the first test occurred on the football field near the Harvard Business School. When used as a part of an incendiary weapon, X can cause severe burns (ranging from superficial to subdermal), asphyxiation, unconsciousness, and death. One of the main anti-personnel features of X is that it sticks to human skin, with no practical method for removal of the burning substance.