The earliest modern flamethrowers were used by infantry in the First World War, first used by German troops against entrenched French troops near Verdun in February 1915. They were later successfully mounted on armoured vehicles in the Second World War.
Incendiary bombs were dropped by Axis and Allies during the Second World War, notably on Coventry, Tokyo, Rotterdam, London, Hamburg and Dresden; in the latter two cases firestorms were deliberately caused in which a ring of fire surrounding each city was drawn inward by an updraft caused by a central cluster of fires. The United States Army Air Force also extensively used incendiaries against Japanese targets in the latter months of the war, devastating entire cities constructed primarily of wood and paper houses. The incendiary fluid napalm was used in July 1944, towards the end of the Second World War, although its use did not gain public attention until the Vietnam War.