Chemical Warfare Committee Department

Haldane JS. The reflex restriction of respiration after gas poisoning. In Reports of the Chemical Warfare Committee, Medical Research Committee. London, England Chemical Warfare Department, Army Medical Service 1918 3-4. 

In another instance, the Secretary of the Chemical Warfare Committee and subsequently Controller, Chemical Warfare Research Department, Captain James Davidson Pratt (see Image 7), who came to play a highly influential and long-term role in Britain s chemical warfare prc ramme, gave Atkisson one of the Royal Navy s gas masks, with the proviso that no one is to know that we have received it, not even the War Office or the Admiralty . In summing up the arrangement,Atkisson remarked ... 

J. Davidson Pratt, Esq, OBE, MA, BSc, FIC Assistant Secretary of the Chemical Advisory and Chemical Warfare Committees, i August 1916—31 December 1918 Secretary, Chemical Warfare Committee Controller, Chemical Warfare Committee, i January 1919—30 June 1923 Controller, Chemical Warfare Research Department, i July 1923—31 December 1925 Chief Superintendent, Chemical Warfare Research Department, i January 1926—30 September 1928. Davidson Pratt was later promoted to Controller, Chemical Defence Development, in the MoS. 

Subordinated to the Chemical Warfare Department, Porton shared responsibility for chemical warfare research with a number of supervisory committees and organizations, including the Chemical Warfare Committee and university research facilities. 

During the prewar years and on into the first few months of the war the Chief, CWS, was under the direct jurisdiction of the Chief of Staff. There was constant consultation between the General Staff and the CWS staff over matters of policy. In March 1942, under a major War Department reorganization, another echelon of command was placed between the supply arms and services and the General Staff. That echelon, commanded by General Somervell, was the Services of Supply, or as it was later called, the Army Service Forces. Chart 4) From that time until after the close of the war, policy matters were usually formulated after consultation between ASF staff officers and their opposite numbers in the CWS. At times War Department General and Special Staff officers had direct contact with CWS personnel, as in the case of the United States Chemical Warfare Committee, but such contact was the exception rather than the rule. ... 

Old Porton Red Book 1918—officially known as Chemical Warfare Committee, Report Upon Certain Gases and Vapours and their Physiological Effects, Chemical Warfare Department, Ministry of Munitions of War, United Kingdom, 1918, Entry for Cyanogen Chloride, pp. XLVI-1, WO 142/238. 

Gates, M., Williams, J.W., Zapp, J.A. (1946). Arsenicals (Chapter 7). In NDRC (National Defense Research Committee), Chemical Warfare Agents and Related Chemical Problems, Vol. I, Parts I-VI. Summary Technical Report of Division 9, NRDC. Office of Scientific Research and Development, National Defense Research Committee. US Department of Commerce National Technical Information Service. PB158507 andPB158508. 

Paul Weiss is a noted scientist, experienced in research and research administration at both the University of Chicago and the Rockefeller Institute. He has often been called to serve in an advisory capacity to government agencies, professional societies, and the Department of State. He is at present a member of the Chemical Warfare and Biological Warfare Panel of the President s Advisory Committee on Science. 

Robert A. Beaudet is chair of the NRC Committee on Review and Evaluation of Alternative Technologies for Demilitarization of Assembled Chemical Weapons (I and II). He received his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Harvard University and has served on U.S. Department of Defense committees that address offensive and defensive chemical warfare. Dr. Beaudet was a member of the Army Science Board and chaired a committee that addressed chemical detection and trace gas analysis. He was chair of a series of Air Force technical workshops to develop master R D plans for... 

M. Meselson and J. Perry Robinson, Chemical Warfare and Chemical Disarmament , Scientific American, vol. 242, no. 4 (1980) p. 35 M. Meselson, statement included in Hearings before the Committee on Armed Services United States Senate, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1983, 97th Congress, second session (22 March 1982) p. 5062. 

C. J. Dick, ibid., p. 32 Lt-Col. G. M. Lovelace, Chemical Warfare , NATO s Fifteen Nations (Dec. 1981-Jan. 1982) p. 54 Dr T. S. Gold, statement in Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations House of Representatives, Department of Defense Appropriations for 1983,97th Congress, second session (23 June 1982) p. 263 Written answer, p. 4831. Yet the recent DoD report still gives the size of the force as 80 000 men, US DoD, Continuing Development, p. 17. 

Although responsibility for chemical warfare research rested with different departments, British scientists did not follow this division of labour in practice instead, they established informal networks and channels of communication which allowed them to coordinate, as best they could, their work throughout the war, and advance their professional careers thereafter. Appreciating the potential limitations of being integrated into the military and ministerial hierarchy, scientists used some of the newly created departments and expert committees on chemical warfare for the exchange of information and avoidance of duplication, for example at the War Office, the Ministry of Munitions, the Royal Society, and the Medical Research Committee, the predecessor of the Medical Research Council (MRC), founded under Royal Charter in 1920. ... 

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