Tags for this video have been changed from 'fifty, nee ner, alan davies, rich hall, clive anderson, wwII, japan' to 'fifty, nee ner, alan davies, rich hall, clive anderson, wwII, japan, fugo, balloon bombs' - edited by calvados

As I understand it, the decision to switch to fire-bombing came about because of the complete and utter ineffectiveness of high altitude bombing. They started out trying to bomb legitimate military targets like munitions factories and realized that the high altitude bombs simply weren't precise enough to hit the targets due to severe cross-winds. The decision then came to fly lower and drop a napalm payload that, even if it missed the intended target, would start a fire that would likely consume the target anyway. Unfortunately the fires, once started, continued to burn indiscriminately.

The argument has also been made that since the Japanese civilians basically supplied the manpower for the Japanese armies and the workforce for the War Machine itself that technically they were valid military targets.

It should also be noted that the Japanese tried to firebomb the U.S. by using high altitude balloons filled with napalm that floated on the jet stream to the West Coast (do a google search for FUGO balloon bombs). Fortunately, only a few of the balloons released actually landed on U.S. shores. At the time, the government covered it up because the idea that the U.S. mainland was vulnerable to attack was simply to terrifying a prospect to consider.