Detrick Field

In April 1943, a little more than two weeks after the Army began construction at Detrick Field, Camp Detrick was formally activated. The Horn Island installation, with its 2,000 acres of sand dunes and scrub, began operations in October 1943. These were restricted to preliminary small-scale experiments because the island was only ten miles away from the mainland and because it was belatedly discovered that for two-thirds of the year the prevailing winds blew toward the mainland. 

This article is a brief report on the state of knowledge in certain aspects of the field, selected literature citations, a resume of some of our recently published articles (22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59), and summary statements relating to unpublished work by one or both of the authors at the University of California, at Ft. Detrick, Maryland, and at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. 

Daniels, J.I. 1990. Lewisite. Pp. 6-1 to 6-22 in Evaluation of Military Field Water Quality, Vol. 4. Health Criteria and Recommendations for Standards, Part 2. Interim Standards for Selected Threat Agents and Risks from Exceeding these Standards. UCRL-21008 DTIC AD-A241523. Prepared by Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, University of California, Livermore, Calif., for the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Comand, Fort Detrick, Frederick, Md. 

Dacre, J.C. and Burrows, W.D. (1988). Recommended field drinking water criteria for chemical agent sulfur mustard. Technical Report 8816, AD A221745. U.S. Army Biomedical Research and Development Laboratory, Fort Detrick, MD Fredrick, MD. 

Young, J.Y., Field exposure of infantry soldiers to hexachloroethane and colored smoke during a Military Operation-Urban Terrain training, US Army Biomedical Research and Development Laboratory, Fort Detrick, Frederick, MD, 1992. 

Young, J.Y., Smart, D.A., Allen, J.T., Parmer, D.L., Rosencrance, A.B., Brueggeman, E.E., and Broski, F.H., Field exposure of chemical school students and cadre to fog oil and hexachloroethane (HC) smokes. Technical Report 8908, US Army Biomedical Research and Developmental Laboratory, Fort Detrick, Frederick, MD, 1989. 

While the CIA scoured the world in search of little-known poisons, its British and Canadian counterparts appear to have devoted their energies to refining poisons already discovered. Little is known of the exact nature of allied research in this field, although a report to the American House of Representatives did reveal that scientists at Fort Detrick had collaborated with Canadian counterparts in the early 19 5 os in attempts to isolate the paralytic poisoning in man often caused by eating toxic clams and mussels .32 By 1954, the two groups of scientists had extracted the poison in a relatively pure form . 

Horn Island, off the Mississippi coast, was selected as a field test site in early 1943, and construction got under way in June. No special structures, such as necessary at Camp Detrick, were required on the island aside from quarters for the test personnel and technical buildings adjacent to the grid area of the test site. The one unusual feature of the installation was an eight-mile narrow-gauge railroad which had to be constructed because building roads on the sandy island was not practicable. Track, locomotive, and wooden cars were shipped from Fort Benning, Georgia, and installed by a company of Seabees. 

By January 1944 the CWS had already begun operations at Camp Detrick and at the field test station on Horn Island in Mississippi Sound, and was constructing the Granite Peak test installation, adjacent to Dug-way Proving Ground, Utah, and the Vigo plant in Indiana. 

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