CHEMICAL WARFARE MATERIALS
The armistice and the order to begin demobilization played havoc for a time with the Chemical Warfare Service, for the first assumption was that the use of poisonous gases in warfare had originated and been developed in, and would end with, the World War. On November 29, 1918, the Director of the Chemical Warfare Service received an official notice that “the amount of such [chemical warfare] equipment for the needs of the Army after the passing of the present emergency will be zero.” The gas-mask production division of the Chemical Warfare Service was a highly organized and highly efficient body, and so rapidly did it work after the armistice that it succeeded in dismantling its gas-mask manufacturing plants and selling almost all the machinery before Congress blocked the plan and, with new legislation, made the Chemical Warfare Service a permanent branch of the regular military establishment. The gas production division of the Service, however, was not so precipitate, and it retained the facilities acquired during the war for the production of poison gases and chemicals.
The Gas Defense Division, which produced the gas masks and other defensive equipment, largely did its own manufacturing; but it contracted extensively for the materials used in the manufacture. On the day of the armistice its outstanding contracts amounted to $5,000,000. By the end of the year 1918, or less than eight weeks later, these contracts had been reduced by terminations to about $150,000. The sales of surplus materials brought in about $8,000,000. The termination of the production of gas masks at the two great plants on Long Island was guided entirely by the best interests of the thousands of employees, not one of whom was discharged until one of the official employment agencies had found a place for him in commercial life. In six months the demobilization of this branch of the Chemical Warfare Service was complete.
So far as the employees were concerned, the demobilization of the gas-making industry was not a difficult problem. All the plants were owned by the Government, and most of the operatives were enlisted men in uniform. Moreover, for nearly a month before the armistice there had been almost a complete suspension of the manufacture of war gas, due to a shortage of shell to be filled with gas.
The War Department’s equipment for making gas consisted of the Edgewood Arsenal and a number of subsidiary plants located in various parts of the country. The Edgewood Arsenal was retained, at first in stand-by condition, with all machinery cleaned and oiled, all outdoor equipment housed in safe storage, and all surfaces subject to deterioration painted. The subsidiary plants, buildings, and equipment, were sold, principally to manufacturers of chemicals and dyes. The sales were conducted by the auction method, and the Government received good prices.
Even some of the experts in the Chemical Warfare Service accepted the common, but, as it proved, erroneous, opinion after the armistice that the great quantities of war gases accumulated by this nation and others during the war would be a dangerous menace as long as they were in storage, and that they would have to be destroyed, presumably by being dumped into the sea. These poisons were supposed to be so corrosive in their action that no metal containers would hold them long. Since large quantities of the war gases on hand after the armistice were loaded into steel shell, it was assumed that these shell and their contents would be a dead loss, except, perhaps, for some slight salvage value.
Events after the armistice seemed to strengthen this impression. Leakage, for instance, was undoubtedly occurring in the gas shell stored in our shell dumps in France; and it was dangerous for unmasked men to work around some of these dumps. An even more convincing demonstration of the instability of loaded gas projectiles was given accidentally at Edgewood Arsenal after the armistice. Among the war stocks there declared surplus was one consignment of 500,000 hand grenades loaded with stannic chloride, a smoke-producing chemical. These had been returned from France, and they were undoubtedly in poor condition. On the voyage from France the chemical had begun to eat holes through the metal of the grenades, and several thousand of the grenades had had to be thrown overboard. The Chemical Warfare Service sold these grenades to a chemical company. When a locomotive backed down to couple to the cars containing the grenades, the slight jar exploded fully half the missiles, and nobody could go near that sidetrack for two or three days.
This incident apparently showed the impermanency of war gases. Actually it demonstrated the impermanency only of stannic chloride, which is highly corrosive to metal; and stannic chloride, in the quantities produced, was a relatively unimportant war chemical. Nevertheless, in the fear that other more highly toxic gases would also corrode and eat through their containers, the Chemical Warfare Service dumped into the ocean some twenty tons of phosgene and a large quantity of mustard-gas shell. This was probably sheer waste, as it proved, because subsequent experimentation established the fact that the most deadly of the war gases could be safely stored for years if all water moisture were driven from the chemicals themselves and all air exhausted from the containers, leaving only the pure chemicals in contact with the metal of the containers. Corrosion was found to be due to the presence of moisture within the containers.
Nearly 1,400 tons of phosgene, chlorpicrin, mustard, and other deadly gases made during the war are now stored at Edgewood; and to-day, nearly three years after the armistice, their containers are still in almost perfect condition. It is estimated that they will not deteriorate in storage for at least ten years, a fact indicating that poison gases are as durable in storage as smokeless powder. There are also stored at Edgewood large quantities of loaded gas shell manufactured during the war. These are frequently inspected and tested, and the tests show that they are keeping well. The experts now estimate that loaded gas shell will exist in good condition as long as a battleship can give service, from the time of commissioning the ship to the time when it is declared obsolete.
Other reserves of chemical warfare equipment now stored at Edgewood include 51,000 Livens projectors, 88 trench mortars, 3,000,000 unfilled gas shell, and 700,000 unfilled hand grenades. There are also in storage over 2,000,000 gas masks and 1,000 tons of activated charcoal for use as a gas absorbent in the mask canisters. The masks are stored in hermetically sealed boxes, a method of preservation which, it is hoped, will protect the rubberized fabric from deterioration for years to come. Other stored supplies include protective suits, protective ointment, and gas alarm devices.
Such chemicals as the Chemical Warfare Service did sell after the armistice brought good prices. The prices of many chemicals went up after the armistice, and the Chemical Warfare Service profited accordingly. The Service made a profit of 100 per cent on the phosgene it sold and also found a good market for its chlorine.
Among the reserves stored at Edgewood was a considerable quantity of the felt which was developed by Americans as a protection against arsenical smoke, a deadly chemical never given a trial in the field of battle, but regarded as an inevitable development in the expected campaign in 1919. The production of toxic smoke was one of the most interesting phases of the history of chemical warfare in the World War. The candles which projected this smoke were perhaps the most appalling weapon devised by any of the belligerents during the conflict, and the armistice interrupted an Anglo-American project, well under way, to asphyxiate the Germany Army with them in the spring of 1919. This development was one of the deepest military secrets both in England and the United States. Except for the French, not even the other Allies were admitted to the secret.
The smoke candles employed an arsenical compound known as diphenolchlorarsine. In the laboratory this was not a new substance—in fact, none of the war gases actually used in the field was a new development; and of projected poisons, so far as is known, only the deadly Lewisite, the invention of Captain W. Lee Lewis in the Chemical Warfare Service’s laboratory in Washington, was a new chemical creation evolved specifically for use in war.[11] The other war gases had all been known to organic chemistry, some of them for many years. So with diphenolchlorarsine. It was first produced in Germany in the last century, and the Germans also originated its use as a military weapon.
The Germans produced and used diphenolchlorarsine as a solid. The substance was put into glass bottles, which, in turn, were inserted in the T. N. T. filler of shell. The explosion pulverized the chemical into a fog which had the advantage of being able to pass through the cotton baffles in the canister of an ordinary gas mask. This fog was highly irritating to the membrane of the nose and throat and caused sneezing, which prevented a soldier gassed with it from putting on his mask, so that he was left a victim to more lethal gases fired simultaneously.
The British secured “dud” shell containing diphenolchlorarsine and at once recognized this chemical as potentially much the most fatal substance yet brought out in chemical warfare. But it was evident that the German was not using it properly, in such a way as to release its full toxic effect. The question was how to atomize diphenolchlorarsine much more finely. British chemists and mechanical engineers eventually succeeded in producing the substance in candles which burned and cast out dense smoke. This smoke was diphenolchlorarsine so finely divided that the American gas mask, the most effective mask of all, was utterly powerless against it. The smoke particles passed freely through the baffles; and, since the particles were minute solids and not true gas at all, they were unaffected by the gas-absorbing charcoal and lime of the mask canister.
Every masked experimenter gassed by this smoke declared that a mask was worse than no protection at all. It is notable, too, that every one gassed, without knowing that he was merely reiterating what others before him had said, declared that, if he had not been able to escape quickly from the concentration, he would have shot himself rather than endure the agony longer. As to the persistence and diffusibility of the smoke, at one demonstration when two candles were burned in a desolate spot in England, civilians were slightly gassed in a village several miles away.
So much for the substance which outdid any of the horrors of the most horrible of all wars. But the weapon was useless unless protection against it could also be developed. America invented the protection—thick felt which was a textile triumph in that it absolutely caught and held the smoke particles, yet permitted fairly easy breathing through itself. The plan was to issue this felt in small pieces which the soldiers could wrap around their canisters, in order that all inhalation should be through the felt. The felt-wrapped canister would then be placed back in its knapsack. In the joint project, we were to produce the protective felt and the British the candles. The British had ordered several million of these and were actually producing them in large quantities at the time of the armistice. By that date the American mills were turning out the felt by thousands of yards, and our Chemical Warfare Service was also planning a factory in which to produce diphenolchlorarsine candles. All this activity was an intense secret in both countries. The program was being directed at a certain week in the spring of 1919, when, at a favorable hour, the troops on our side having quietly been protected against the smoke, it was proposed to fire the candles everywhere along the front. The gas warfare organizations of Great Britain and America confidently expected that when that lethal infusion had disappeared, the German Army would practically have ceased to exist, and the war would be over.
There is reason to believe that the German also realized the inefficiency of diphenolchlorarsine when fired in shell and had followed an independent line of development which led him to the production of candles. It is asserted that such candles were made in Germany before the armistice. It is doubtful, however, whether the German succeeded in developing a protection against the smoke.
After the armistice our Chemical Warfare Service continued an independent development of arsenical smoke. The problem was a mechanical one. The chemical is driven off as smoke by means of heat. If the heat is too great, the substance will burn and be changed into non-toxic compounds. If the heat is too mild, the smoke will not be thrown off efficiently. This problem we have solved.
Mention should be made also of that other chemical secret of the war, Lewisite. In one sense Lewisite can be termed a development of mustard gas, for the laboratory process of making mustard suggested to Captain Lewis certain analogous chemical reactions, out of one of which came the hitherto unknown liquid which was named after him. Like mustard, Lewisite is a so-called vesicant, a substance which blisters the skin, but it is much more powerful; for, whereas mustard gas merely burns, Lewisite is absorbed through the skin into the system. Three drops of this chemical placed on the belly of a rat will kill the animal in two or three hours, and it is believed that this would be the effect of a similar quantity sprinkled on the skin of a man. Like mustard, too, Lewisite gives off fumes slowly, and these fumes have a burning, deadly effect.
Before and since the armistice there have been other developments of war gases in this country, and for some of these, as well as for some of the better known gases, there is, or can be, civilian use. Believing that chemical warfare has come to stay as long as there shall be wars, the Chemical Warfare Service has sought since the armistice to develop peace-time uses for war gases in order that there may be a continuous production of them, with a simultaneous training of chemists on whom the Government can rely in time of war. A new tear gas which has been developed is called chloracetophenone. The presence of a minute quantity of this gas in the air has a blinding lachrymatory effect upon the eyes of one caught in it; yet the gas is non-toxic. Various metropolitan police forces are experimenting with this gas to determine its effect in dispersing mobs. Another distressing, but not dangerous, gas bears the staggering chemical name of diphenylaminechlorarsine. It is temporarily blinding and causes nausea and vomiting, but it is not regarded as a lethal gas. It is proposed to use this in protecting vaults in which valuables are stored. Phosgene is used in making brilliant dyes, and it can also be used to exterminate rats. Chlorine is a widely used disinfectant. With other war gases it is proposed to exterminate numerous sorts of weevil and other insect pests which annually cause great damage to American crops.[12]