Britain capability

Other examples of trends come from Great Britain, where the emission of industrial smoke was reduced from 1.4 million tonnes per year in 1953 to 0.1 million tonnes per year in 1972 domestic smoke emission was reduced from 1.35 million tonnes per year in 1953 to 0.58 million tonnes per year in 1972 and the number of London fogs (smogs) capable of reducing visibility at 9 AM to less than 1 km was reduced from 59 per year in 1946 to 5 per year in 1976. 

George Franklin, Britain s Anti-Submarine Capability 1919-1939 (London Frank Cass, 2003). 

The likelihood that British strategy would place less emphasis on the deterrent was increased by the appointment in 1959 of Mountbatten as CDS, given the doubts he had expressed the previous year about whether the West would ever use nuclear weapons. The 1961 Defence White Paper pointed out that many of Britain s most important responsibilities were not concerned with direct deterrence of nuclear war but rather with the checking of small conflicts that might develop into one. There was a need for rapid-reaction forces capable of dealing with a whole spectrum of possible aggression and military threats. The 1962 Defence White Paper stressed the need for NATO forces and strategy to be balanced and flexible, and noted the re-equipment of the army with... 

There were probably no better-equipped forces in respect of anti-gas defence than those of the United Kingdom in the late 1930s. Britain had emerged from the First World War with a primitive respirator and basic techniques for gas-proofing dugouts, and little else. At the end of the 1930s, superior-quality anti-gas equipment was available to the armed forces to cater for all known hazards and a cheap, but efficient, respirator had also been developed for the civilian population.48 However, as far as offensive capabilities were concerned, investment had been limited and production had been minimal in terms of agents and weapons due to political unease and uncertainties. By 1938 the international situation was such that offensive research and development and the production of war reserve stocks of mustard gas were authorised by the British Cabinet, albeit that it was realised that a useful production output could not be obtained for at least 12-18 months. 

There is no doubt that by the middle of the war the Nazis had acquired vast, hidden armouries of chemical weapons and the Wehrmacht still found millions of marks to pump into the testing and production of poison gas. Indeed, the effort put by the Germans into chemical warfare research was considerable with them employing double the number of scientists than Britain,12 and their twenty factories were capable of producing about 12,000 tons of poison gas a month.13 Indeed, the Allies believed, in a report issued after the war, that the Germans had about 70,000 tons of poison gas stockpiled at various... 

If ethene is compressed to about 1000 atm pressure with a trace of oxygen present as a catalyst, it polymerises to poly(ethene), or Polythene (the trade name). This discovery was made by accident just before the Second World War. Pofythene was for some years a secret, as it was the only material capable of insulating the very high voltage cables used in the early radar systems which helped to win the Battle of Britain. 

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