Shells, chemical mustard

Fig. 2-7. Filling 75-mm artillery shells with mustard agent at Edgewood Arsenal, Md. Facilities designed to fill shells with chemical agents were notoriously hazardous. Anecdotal reports from mustard shell-filling plants indicated that over several months, the entire labor force could be expected to become ill. These workers apparent nonchalance to the hazards of mustard would not be tolerated by the occupational medicine standards of a later era (see Figure 2-31). Photograph Chemical and Biological Defense Command Historical Research and Response Team, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md.

Especially in recent years, many newspaper articles and televised reports have covered the problems related to the CW dumped into the Baltic and the North Sea, and an alarm has been sounded as to the risk of an environmental catastrophe if the chemical warfare agents are released from the corroded ammunition. Not all the information presented has been serious or truly scientifically based. It should also be remembered that in 1992 reports appeared that in the vicinity of the Danish island Bornholm, where artillery shells containing mustard gas and tabun were dumped, a large gas bubble composed of warfare agent gas had formed on the bottom of the Baltic Sea. This was soon dismissed by experts as scientifically unfeasible. ... 

Field Experiment No. 275, part 2, Ground Contamination Shoot with [Redacted] 4.2. Inch CM Shell Charged Mustard Gas, 18 July 1945 Final Report Complaints Concerning Chemical Agent Testing during World War II, February 2004... 

Minute quantities of sulfur mustard are used by various military and contract laboratories for defense research purposes, and for verification of Chemical Weapons Convention comphance. Bulk quantities of sulfur mustard are no longer manufactured in the USA. Military stockpiles of sulfur mustard are awaiting destruction or are in the process of being destroyed. Some sulfur mustard may also be found buried or abandoned at former defense sites. Sulfur mustard was frequently loaded into artillery shells and aerial bombs (often with lewisite). Various quantities of sulfur mustard also exist in other countries. Large amounts of sulfur mustard have been disposed of at sea. 

Hanaoka, S., Nomura, K., Wada, T. (2006). Determination of mustard and lewisite related compounds in abandoned chemical weapons (yellow shells) from sources in China and Japan. J. Chromatogr. A 1101 268-77. 

Fig. 1.31 From left to right a Livens container (phosgene), a 4 Stokes (Mortar Bomb (chloropicrin) and a 6" shell (mustard gas), found buried at Bramley in 1987 (reproduced with permission of the Chemical Defence Establishment, Porton Down). They all exhibit an advanced state of corrosion.

Mustard Gas is not really a gas, but a liquid comprised of several manufactured chemicals thaat is not likely to change into a gas immediately if released at room temperature. As a pure liquid, it is colorless and odorless, but when mixed it becomes brown and has a garlic, horseradish or apple-like smell. It generaly requires an explosion, such as an artilery shell, or another powerful force, to vaporise the liquid into it s deadly gasseous form. 

Mustard Gas was first used by the German Army in 1917. The most employed of all the chemical weapons used during the war by either side. Yperite was so powerful that only small amounts had to be added to high explosive shells to be effective. Once in the soil, mustard gas remains active for several weeks, esspecially in cold weather and forms stiff floating clumps in water that can remain deadly for years. Mustard Gas is still used by some Third-World Dictators, Warlords and Terrorists, especially in the Middle-East. 

Armstrong GC, Wells HB, Wilkes AE et al. (1928). Comparative Test with Mustard Gas (HS) Lewisite (Ml), Methyldicloroarsine (MD) and Methyldiflu-orarsine (MD2) in 75 mm Shell Fired Statically in Collaboration with Chemical Division. EAMRD 95. Edgewood Arsenal, MD, USA Department of the Army, Medical Research Division. 

Sulphur mustard may be used as a chemical warfare agent in a number of ways. It may be delivered by artillery shell, rocket, bomb or aircraft spray. The agent is persistent and under cold conditions long-term contamination of ground may occur. Adequately protected troops would be expected to withstand well an attack with mustard gas. Precautions should be taken to ensure that protected troops do not carry mustard, for example on boots, into designated clean areas . 

Porton Down made use of this logic between 1919 and 1939 to carry out a mass of offensive research, developing gas grenades and hand contamination bombs a toxic air smoke bomb charged with a new arsenic codenamed D M was tested anti-tank weapons were produced and Porton developed an aircraft spray tank capable of dispersing mustard gas from a height of 15,000 feet. At the same time the weapons of the First World War — the Livens Projector, the mortar, the chemical shell and even the cylinder - were all modified and improved. 

After a time, the statistics of the size and scope of the American poison gas programme begin to glaze the eye.27 Pine Bluff alone, at its peak, employed 10,000 men and women it even made use of the labour supplied by a nearby prisoner of war camp. From 31 July 1942 when it first went into production, through to 1945, the Arsenal produced literally millions of grenades, bombs and shells filled with chemical agents, as well as thousands of tons of chlorine, mustard gas and Lewisite. At the end of the war most of it had to be dumped in the sea its manufacture had cost the American taxpayer 500 million. 

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