Edgewood Depot

During the first year of war the CWS concentrated on the procurement of end items and paid little attention to the procurement of spare parts. The procedure for procuring parts was simply to divert a portion of components to the Indianapolis Depot or in certain instances to the Edgewood Depot or to one of the chemical sections of the War Department depots. The quantity of materiel being set aside as spare parts proved entirely inadequate so that by the spring of 1943 the Office of the Chief,... 

Greater emphasis on maintenance of materiel was a feature of the campaign to bring procurement and distribution into balance. In the period between the wars the quantity of chemical warfare supplies was extremely limited and consequently maintenance was not much of a problem. Most CW supplies were stored at the Edgewood Depot, which had access to the shops at the arsenal to do required maintenance. In the field the CW sections in division and company headquarters were responsible for first and second echelon maintenance while repair shops near the posts or at Ordnance Department depots carried on the higher echelon repairs. The CW sections normally consisted of one officer and several enlisted men. 

Checkai RT et al., Transport and Fate of Nitroaromatic and Nitramine Explosives in Soils from Open Burning Open Detonation Operations at Anniston Army Depot, ERDEC-TR-135, Edgewood Research Development and Engineering Center, Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD, 1993. 

In the March 25,1934, budget of the Chemical Warfare Service, there is a description of Project 22, the Edgewood Chemical Warfare Depot (Bush River Project) ... 

Curtis Bay, near Edgewood, MD Nansemond, near Norfolk, VA Charleston, SC Rock Island, IL Wingate, NM Erie Proving Ground, OH Columbus General Supply Depot, OH New Cumberland General Depot, PA Schenectady General Depot, NY... 

From factories and plants, gas munitions and containers had to be transported to the battlefield. For example, from the Edgewood arsenal (Aberdeen Proving Ground) the gas was transported by railroad to docks on the Bush River. Such depots and loading facilities could be expected... 

As is reported, the first 150 tons of Lewisite was shipped by railroad to Edgewood Arsenal—probably to the Bush River Depot— to be shipped overseas. The train was described as a train like no other. Apparently, it only had an engineer on it and the rest of the crew were soldiers. It went no faster than 10 miles an hour and took four days to get to Edgewood. The Armistice came while the train was en route. Various news stories report that the load was taken out to sea and dumped, 50 miles from Baltimore. It is unclear whether that means Chesapeake Bay or just off the coast of Delaware. However, the San Francisco Journal on February 19, 1923, reported that Lewisite was dumped in Chesapeake Bay. Photos 13, 14,15, 17, and 18 in the center photo section show some of the ocean dumping of Lewisite and other chemical munitions. 

CMA. 2006. Director s Programmatic Performance Based Incentive (DPPBI) 1 October 2005-30 September 2006. Edgewood, Md. CMA. NRC (National Research Council). 1997. Risk Assessment and Management at Deseret Chemical Depot and the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility. Washington, D.C. National Academy Press. 

The 43d Chemical Laboratory Company, activated at Edgewood Arsenal on 26 August 1942, was ordered to Hawaii in December of 1943. Upon its arrival it was assigned to theater headquarters (Central Pacific Area) and stationed at Schofield Barracks, where the theater chemical officer, Colonel Unmacht, had laboratory facilities (manned by 8th Chemical Depot Company personnel) already in operation. The 43d took over the existing laboratory functions, added its own equipment, and set to work. The immediate tasks were predominantly within the intelligence portion of the mission—the study and descrip-... 

Originally the depots located at CWS arsenals had the same name as the arsenals, which led to confusion in the mails. In July 1943, therefore, the names of those depots were changed as follows Edgewood Chemical Warfare Depot to Eastern Chemical Warfare Depot, Huntsville Chemical Warfare Depot to Gulf Chemical Warfare Depot, and Pine Bluff Chemical Warfare Depot to Midwest Chemical Warfare Depot. The latter two depots were under the jurisdiction of the commanding officers of the arsenals to which they were attached. While not officially designated as a depot, a storage area at Rocky Mountain Arsenal was used to store items not shipped immediately to ports of embarkation. 

Three of the CWS depots. Eastern, Midwest, and Gulf, were closely associated with Edgewood, Pine Bluff, and Huntsville Arsenals, respectively, and were faced with identical problems of personnel procurement. The outstanding need at depots, as at arsenals, was for skilled labor. Skilled workers were just not available, and it was necessary to train apprentices on the jobs. It took some time before a satisfactory staff of foremen was functioning at most of the depots. As at arsenals, many women were hired and trained to do jobs formerly handled by men, and many Negro workers were also brought in. 

Seven smoke generator, 1 depot, 11 processing, and 1 composite-service companies were trained at Camp Siberc and Edgewood and are included in both columns. 

An excellent detector kit proved to be the M9, developed with NDRC help in the CWS laboratories at Edgewood and MIT and standardized in July 1943. The Army considered this compact, efficient, and widely used kit one of the significant developments of the CWS defensive research program. Any soldier could learn to operate it after brief training, and it proved itself during the war in the inspection of chemical munitions at U.S. Army depots at home and abroad. 

Not all of the bombs, however, remained in storage. On 24 Febmary 1942, the Eastern Chemical Warfare Depot at Edgewood Arsenal received orders to ship forty-eight 500-pound clusters of AN-M54 bombs to Benicia Arsenal, California, for reissue to Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle. The men who filled the order and handled the clusters had no idea of their ultimate destination. Shortly after noon on April 18 a B-25 bomber commanded by Doolittle roared over Tokyo and unloaded some of these... 

With the activation of the new depots the CWS depot system consisted of five branch depots—Eastern (Edgewood), Gulf (Huntsville), Midwest (Pine Bluff), Indianapolis, and Deseret—and live chemical sections of Army Service Forces depots—Atlanta, Memphis, New Cumberland, San Antonio, and Utah. The missions of these installations varied considerably. The Indianapolis Depot became in effect (and eventually in name) a national control point for CWS spare parts. The other branch depots had in common a responsibility for reserve storage of CWS gen-... 

A sixth branch depot, Northeast, was activated in mid-1944 near Niagara Falls, N.Y., to serve as an ammunition subdepot of Edgewood. 

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