White Fire

From the battlefronts last week came new praise for the versatile 4.2 rifled mortar (TIME, Nov. 15). Developed by the Chemical Warfare Service to throw smoke and gas shells, it also lobs 24-lb. shells which carry more than 8 lb. of high explosives. But it owes its new and fearsome fame among Germans and Japs to its white phosphorus smoke shells. Originally used to cloak troops or positions with harmless white clouds, WP (white phosphorus) has become one of the great anti-personnel weapons of the war.

When a WP shell bursts in a spectacular flower of smoke (see cut), it scatters flaming phosphorus particles over a wide area. The rain of fire sticks to clothing, cannot be brushed off. Larger particles burn through to produce burns particularly painful and hard to heal.

Said one report from the front: "The Germans are very allergic to [it]. We would root them out of their foxholes with well-placed rounds of phosphorus and when we had them above ground we plastered them with HE [high explosive]. We killed large numbers of them in that way and they sure dreaded the mortars. . . . Letters taken from prisoners have shown that the Germans fear WP. . . ."

And the Germans and Japs cannot apparently retaliate in kind. White phosphorus is made from phosphate rock. With the occupation of North Africa, the last big deposits were taken from Axis hands.

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