Camp Detrick

While the U.S. has had biological weapons, it has not used them. The U.S. Army developed Camp Detrick, Maryland, into a site for biological research and development. The site manufactured anthrax and botulinum bombs in the event they were needed during World War n. After the war, knowing that biological weapons could become very important, the U.S. shielded Unit 731 from prosecution for war crimes in exchange for its research data and expertise. 

Hinshaw, W.R. Biological Department, Chemical Corps, Camp Detrick, Frederick, Maryland (3, 209)... 

Over the coming years the scientists at Camp Detrick and Porton Down would investigate almost every known fatal disease. While most would not be tested on humans, the Western researchers were nevertheless able to base much of their work upon a compendium of case studies which supposedly did not exist. 

The experiments were as horrific as any conducted by the Nazis, yet the Camp Detrick specialists dispassionately concluded in their summary of the report of BW Investigations of 12 December 1947 that the potential benefits of the research for the Western biological warfare programme far outweighed the demands of justice. If the... 

Fig. 2-40. The first biological warfare agent laboratory at Camp Detrick, Md. Photograph Chemical and Biological Defense Command Historical Research and Response Team, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md.

The biological warfare research facilities at Camp Detrick were expanded, and a biological warfare production facility was created at Pine Bluff Arsenal, Arkansas, in 1951. The first limited, biological warfare retaliatory capability was achieved when an anticrop bomb was developed, tested, and placed in production for the U.S. Air Force. Anticrop-agent production sites were carefully selected for safety with the coordination and approval of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This marked the first peacetime biological weapons production by the United States.11... 

Meanwhile, in 1942-3, the CWS constructed a BW facility at Camp Detrick (later renamed Fort Detrick), an army facility in Maryland, at a cost of 13 million. Operational in 1943, the facility at Camp Detrick employed approximately 4000 people. Other BW-related facilities included a 250-acre site near Dugway Proving Grounds (Utah) and a 2000 acre facility at Horn Island (Pascalouga, Mississippi), both of which were used for open-air testing. 

In the period following World War II, US BW production capacity was gradually reduced to laboratory scale research and development. In 1947-9, small-scale, open-air testing of simulants. Bacillus globigii and Serratia marcescens, was carried out at Camp Detrick. Pathogen tests began at Camp Detrick in 1949 in an enclosed, 1-million-liter steel sphere called the eight ball. ... 

Frank W. Putnam, Camp Detrick, Frederick, Md., and Department of Biological Chemistry, Loyola University School of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois... 

Through co-operation with the WRS, Dr. Baldwin secured the services of a formidable group of scientists and technicians. A site outside Frederick, Maryland, was selected for a biological warfare installation and construction of the future Camp Detrick was begun in the spring of 1943. This... 

This action by the Secretary of War led the Chief, CWS, in January 1944 to raise the Special Assignments Branch to the status of a division. The new division, known as the Special Projects Division, was headed successively by Cols. Martin B. Chittick, J. Enrique Zanetti, and H. N. Worthley. In carrying out the main responsibility for biological warfare preparations the division supervised the activities of some 3,900 persons, of whom about 2,800 were Army personnel, about 1,000 Navy, and nearly 100 civilians. The majority of these were stationed at Camp Detrick, and the remainder were divided among the headquarters of the Special Projects Division in Washington and the other BW installations. The approved organization chart for 16 September 1944 listed 9 Army officers and 8 civilians and 6 Navy officers and 7 Navy enlisted men in the headquarters... 

Mention has been made of the biological warfare installations established in World War II. ° Camp Detrick, the first and most important of those installations, was activated on 17 April 1943 under the command of Lt. Col. William S. Bacon. Bacon was succeeded by Cols. Martin B. 

Chittick and Joseph D. Sears. Actual construction of the camp, which came to occupy an area of more than five hundred acres, was not completed until June 1945. By then a small, self-contained city had been built containing more than 245 separate structures, including quarters for 5,000 workers. At the peak of operations in August 1945 there were at Camp Detrick 245 Army officers and 1,457 enlisted personnel, 87 Navy officers and 475 enlisted men, and 9 civilians, exclusive of civilian consultants. 

---