Arsenal, as the Germans Left It

Capua Arsenal, as the Germans Left It. mortar parts for the Fifth Army. 

Chemical maintenance companies were not as extensively utilized in the Pacific war as they were in Europe. Only two maintenance companies got west of Hawaii, and one of these, the loth, ended the war 

The loth set to work to clear up as many of these defects as possible. There was no quick solution for the problem of pinholes in the cylinders. All that could be done was to repair those cylinders which were not excessively corroded and replace the rest, insofar as supplies permitted. In order to make it possible for troops to spot flame throwers with defective cylinders before attempting to use them in combat, pressure gages and adapters to fit all types of commercial pressure 

As a supply unit, the 8 th was responsible for seeing to it that all troops sent forward from Hawaii were properly equipped with CWS materiel. It kept subdepots and forward areas supplied. The unit sometimes found it necessary to handle bulk toxics in operations involving transfer from damaged containers, or from ton containers to drums. In the course of these handling operations, three enlisted men of the 8 th designed and built a handling cart for more expeditiously moving 150-pound cylinders.  

The 8th assisted the 43d Laboratory Company in manufacturing the first batches of the stabilized flame thrower fuel (napalm plus activated silica gel) developed by the latter unit in 1945. In the summer of that year the Hawaiian Chemical Warfare Depot built its own unit for the activation of the silica gel. The 8th had this unit operating at a rate of one ton per day during the last weeks of the war. Between May and August of 1945 the depot manufactured a total of 226,343 gallons of fuel.  

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