Reading Dennis Edwards book, 'Luck of the Devil', it describes what may have been the first deployment of Nerve Gas by German forces. It is believed that Sarin was delivered by artillery fire and caused deaths on both sides fighting around a chateau in Normandy. Two days after this incident, Churchill called for plans to drop Mustard Gas and other agents on German Cities. Albert Speer remarked that this threat put Hitler off using gas anymore. Speer's claims were made in his book, published some time ago andhave recently been confirmed by the public release of the document detailing Churchills mustard gas plans. The dead soldiers at the Chateau were first thought to have been killed by blast, until two were found still holding a fan of playing cards and two germans were found dead, frozen in the act of re-loading their MG42. Anyone else heard about this? I cant remember the name of the chateau as i dont have the book with me...

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"Watch that Fu*ker, he'll 'ave someones eye out!" King Harold at Hastings 1066.

Don't get me wrong on this, but Nerve Gas does not do that to soldiers.

I am at the end of a long career in the armed forces and stuff like sarin does not freeze soldiers.

What it does initially is make you loose control of your body very very quickly, your nose will run and you can't control your actions, your pupils dilate.

The final stages are complete loss of bodily function. Therefore, men will not still be holding onto cards or be in the process of loading a machine gun.

Where did Mr Edwards get this info?

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If you are able,
Save for them,
A place inside of you.
And take one backward glance,
When you are leaving,
For the places than can,
No longer go.

In the back of the book there is an essay by some guy on it. I aint at home at the mo so I aint got the book with me, but I thought it sounded a bit odd and wondered if anyone else came across anything. I thought it would have just been blast from shells. By the way the book is well worth a read if you can get it.

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"Watch that Fu*ker, he'll 'ave someones eye out!" King Harold at Hastings 1066.

RedBaron

Neither Sarin nor Tabun would have created the effects described. You have to be VERY careful regarding sources for BCW attacks. There is the now infamoue Eastern Front case where for many years there was an assumed Turalemia attack in 1942 on the Germans near Stalingrad. This was taken up by experts such as Ken Alibek but has recently been debunked - it was a natural outbreak.

The shady area is China. The current court case in Japan outlines some, but not all, of Japan's activities particularly with biological weapons. Many Chinese villages are still suffering the after-effects today.

Britain did plan to use mustard gas, but my evidence points to 1940. Brooke wanted to drench the beaches with the suff as the Germans landed - the squadrons were already on standby to drop the cannisters.

Jumbo

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"Capital! We're nearly out of ammunition! Now we can get at them with the bayonet!" General Paddy Gough, 1st Sikh War

I have not heard of any actual use of gas. Gunner's Dream is correct, the after effects of gas would not have left those two soldiers in such a state. It would have been obvious that some kind of gas attack took place. Which brings me to believe that it was never used because it would be a propaganda gold mine for to be used against the perpertrator. Therefore, since we have not seen any such propaganda, we can say that it was in fact not used in the battlefield.

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American by birth, TEXAN by the grace of GOD!

When i get home i will post up the article.

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"Watch that Fu*ker, he'll 'ave someones eye out!" King Harold at Hastings 1066.

That I remember gas was not used (thank God) in WWII, except some little ocasions in Leningrad by the Germans to avoid casualties and by the Italians in Abissynia.

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"War is less costly than servitude, the choice is always between Verdun and Dachau." - Jean Dutourd, French veteran of both world wars

"A mon fils: depuis que tes yeux sont fermes les miens n’ont cessé de pleurir." - Mère française, Verdun

I heard a rumor that Churchill wanted to use gas on German cities...but the Americans (FDR, I suppose) overruled him. Can anyone say if this is true?

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"If your gonna buy the angel s**t, you might as well go for the zombie package as well."
-George Carlin

Das Reich that is in this article that I am rambling about... Im not at home so i aint got the damn book with me... As soon as I get back I will post it up!!!

Sorry lads.

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"Watch that Fu*ker, he'll 'ave someones eye out!" King Harold at Hastings 1066.

Hmmm, have not heard of that one. I have heard about the Italians using it in Ethiopia and the Japanese using it against the Chinese or is it Manchurians? Hitler was too afraid of it. Stalingrad? Have not heard of it used there. More info?

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American by birth, TEXAN by the grace of GOD!

PzJgr

The Stalingrad accusation was that the Soviets used a Biological weapon on the Germans. This was Turalemia, a particularly unpleasant infection which was later developed by the Soviet military under Dr Alibek (for details read his book Biohazard - I did not sleep well after I read this) but there were rumours circulating that the Turalemia outbreak amongst the Germans around Stalingrad was deliberate rather than natural. There was never any documentary evidence. It has been studied a lot and recent work points to this being a natural outbreak caused by the conditions around the city.

The Japanese used Biologicals in China for testing. There are well documented cases of Chinese survivors, whole villages still bear the scars - one is called "Rotten Leg" village to give you some idea of what is going on. The current case in Japan has one former employee of the Japanese establishment that worked on this project giving detailed evidence.

I don't know whether they were used operationally.

As for Winston and his Mustard Gas, I've read this too, but then again Winston had all sorts of ill-thought-out ideas. Thankfully Brooke was there to filter out the bad ones leaving the (few) good ones to be implemented.

Jumbo

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"Capital! We're nearly out of ammunition! Now we can get at them with the bayonet!" General Paddy Gough, 1st Sikh War

Yeah, I've heard the rumours too about Stalingrad but there's no evidence, the place was full of disease anyway. have of von Paulus's army went down with some form of disease or sickness and that's were these things start.

The Japs had a couple of bio-warfare units set up in Manchuria, and they tested all sorts of lovely things on the poor chinese. They even infected a whole area with diseased fleas that killed thousands, but I don't think they used it against troops just civilians. Easier prey I guess.

Hitler didn't like gas warfare because he suffered through it during WW1, and he was scared that the allies would drop it on German cities.

Nerve gas does nasty things to people. Just look at what Saddam did to the Kurds with his stuff.

Here's something for you.

Found this in a reference file I have. the Germans never used nerve gas in combat although they had planned to in '44/'45. After the war the allies found about 100,000 shells and 1000 bombs loaded with Tabun gas intended for use against the soviets, but never was because the eastern front moved so quickly in the end they (thankfully) didn't ahve time.

And something else to ponder on...

After the invasion of Salerno in Italy, a US cargo ship was bombed in the harbour by the Luftwaffe. Unfortunately, unknown to anyone in the area that cargo ship was carrying US Army stocks of Mustard Gas. When the ship caught fire the gas was released, a lot of the crew died from the gas and some of their rescuers as well.

What was the US Army doing in Italy during the war with supplies of Mustard Gas ??????

Thanx to God they did´t use gas in large numbers. the sarins are awful stuff, just a little drop on the skin and you´re dead in minutes. instead the mustard gas is yoellow coloured, a heavy gas you can see closing in on you, so if you should use gas this was not the choice in WW2. there were instances in WW1 as the wind changed its direction and the gas would come upon your own men...very dangerous to everyone!

I believe that they didn´t use it for the fear everyone had it in stock. I don´t know if this is true, but in the end the war would have been even crueller than it was.

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Yes, I do think that Mr. Churchill wanted to do that. He was some times as ill as Hitler...

But yes, Hitler feared the gas very deeply. As well as all Europe. I have read my grandfather, Captain Jolly's diaries about the damned gas during WWI and it is one of the most horrendous weapons ever developed.

No, there are no records that they were used in Stalingrad. Just a little in Leningrad in 1942 or 1943...

The Japanesse dropped bombs with fleas on Manchuria and provoked a lot of cases of bubonic plague.

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"War is less costly than servitude, the choice is always between Verdun and Dachau." - Jean Dutourd, French veteran of both world wars

"A mon fils: depuis que tes yeux sont fermes les miens n’ont cessé de pleurir." - Mère française, Verdun

Sniper

A similar thing happened at Singapore when the British had to dump their stocks of Mustard Gas shells into the bay when the Japs were on top of them. Their orders were to row (!) the skiff out into the deep channel and dump them by hand. Under fire soldiers did what soldiers do and they dumped them as soon as they reasonably could; in the shallow bit out of range of Jap shelling.

They were never all recovered after the war.

The officer in charge of the detatchment with the responsibility for dumping advises that nobody should go swimming off Singapore...

Jumbo

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"Capital! We're nearly out of ammunition! Now we can get at them with the bayonet!" General Paddy Gough, 1st Sikh War

Some information on the nerve gases:

Sarin, a colorless and odorless gas, has a lethal dose of 0.5 milligram for an adult. It is 26 times more deadly than cyanide gas and is 20 times more lethal than potassium cyanide. Just 0.01 milligram per kilogram of body weight a pinprick sized droplet will kill a human. The vapor is slightly heavier than air, so it hovers close to the ground. Under wet and humid weather conditions sarin degrades swiftly, but as the temperature rises up to a certain point, sarin’s lethal duration increases, despite the humidity.

Among the most dangerous chemical weapons are the so called nerve gasses or nerve agents, nerve agents have entirely dominated chemical warfare since the Second World War. Nerve agents acquired their name because they affect the transmission of nerve impulses in the nervous system. All nerve agents belong chemically to the group of organo-phosphorus compounds. They are stable and easily dispersed, highly toxic and have rapid effects both when absorbed through the skin and via respiration. Nerve agents can be manufactured by means of fairly simple chemical techniques. The raw materials are inexpensive and generally readily available. This makes them even more dangerous as they can be made by any irresponsible mind with a decent laboratory.

Cause of death
In the absence of treatment, death is caused by anoxia resulting from airway obstruction, weakness of the muscles of respiration and central depression of respiration.
Respiration is shallow, laboured, and rapid and the casualty may gasp and struggle for air. Cyanosis increases. Finally, respiration becomes slow and then ceases.
Unconsciousness ensues. The blood pressure (which may have been transitorily elevated) falls. Cardiac rhythm may become irregular and death may ensue.
If assisted ventilation is initiated via endotracheal tube and airway secretions are removed by postural drainage and suction and diminished by the administration of atropine, the individual may survive several lethal doses of a nerve agent. However, if the exposure has been overwhelming, amounting to many times the lethal dose, death may occur despite treatment as a result of respiratory arrest and cardiac arrhythmia.
When overwhelming doses of the agent are absorbed quickly, death occurs rapidly without orderly progression of symptoms.

This was taken from the following site

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/7050/

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As I was going through the Speer book I found some interesting stuff. It seems that they did have the sarin and tabun figured out late in 1944 (!) but Speer might have prevented its use??
I mean why if they probably would have used the A-bomb if it could have been used?
Those gases would have emptied the two fronts from enemies and after a while they could have walked to Moscow and Paris, well sort of. Mustard gas is nowhere near the effectiveness of these gases so they had a huge weapon in their hands!!

On Speer:

German chemists had made in secrecy two never gases, Tabun and Sarin.Speer:

" Both of these gases were totally effective.There were no gas masks or other protection against them.Soldiers could not protect themselves and death would come in seconds or minutes. We had three factories, totally undisturbed by the bombings, and going for full capacity from November 1944"

" I stopped the production of the two gases in November 1944. "
he had written to Hitler that sources of cyanid and metanol, both needed for these gases as well as medicine matters, were low.Hitler ordered them to be used for these gases but Speer ignored these orders (!!?).
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A factory for production of this first nerve agent was built and a total of 12 000 tonnes of tabun were produced during the years three years (1942-1945). At the end of the second world war the Allies seized large quantities of this nerve agent and other nerve agents that Schrader and his co-workers has synthesised. They synthesised about 2 000 new organo-phosphorus compounds, including sarin (1938). The third of the "classic" nerve agents, soman, was first produced in 1944. These three nerve agents are known as G agents in the American nomenclature. The manufacture of sarin never started properly and up to 1945 only about 0.5 tonne of this nerve agent was produced in a pilot plant

From
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaver...0/history.html

http://www.corax.org/revisionism/doc...0621sarin.html

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171 Chemical weapons. Spandau was the centre of research into Tabun and Sarin. The manufacturing centre of chemical weapons was at Dyhernfurth in Silesia, some forty kilometre from Breslau. Norman Davies (Microcosm, p.26, n.40) suspects that supplies of Tabun from the chemical works at Dyhernfurth were used against Soviet troops during the siege of Breslau. A raid on the chemical works complex at Dyhernfurth led by Major General Max Sachsenheimer was mounted on 5 February to seize the premises and empty the tanks of Tabun into the Oder before the Red Army identified their purpose and took samples of the liquid away for analysis. (see Duffy, pp.129-132).

From

http://www.antonybeevor.com/Berlin/berlinerrata2.htm

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Adolf Hitler experienced the effects of mustard gas use during World War I and was a twice and highly-decorated war hero. He abhorred, as did Franklin Roosevelt, the idea of using poison gas during warfare. Of the "great leaders", only Churchill (a drunk) and Stalin (a convicted criminal) rubbed their hands in glee over such prospects. Stalin didn't have the means and Churchill was opposed by the British Cabinet, at least, in part. Churchill, forever the war's most eloquent liar, described in a statement his desire, and vision, of Germans dying by the thousands in city after city. He wanted to "anthrax" the entire European continent but had to be satisfied with only a tiny island off the coast of Scotland for experimental purposes. Today, that island is still uninhabitable.

From

http://www.corax.org/revisionism/misc/sarin.html

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Kai :

You mentioned that cargo ship off the coast of Italy filled with gas. There is a book written on this very battle, and I cannot think of the name of it. The Geschwader Kommodore of the attacking Ju 88 Bomber unit was tipped off that there were undefended munitions ships just sitting in the harbor so they went for it ! Was this at Udine ? I do not know Italy well enough....also have you heard of the chemical Tepp ? This used to be diluted for ground applications on orchard crops here in Oregon. In the un-diluted form 3 drops will kill you in less than 15 seconds, man am I glad for the ban on that.... !

E

Did you know that Bayer was the main producer of Zyklon-B during the war? They did not produce only aspirins during the war...

Hitler was a wise man on that matter of the gas. My other grandfather, captain Jolly tells in his diaries that the most horrendous and terrifying weapon back there in the trenchers was the bloody gas... The most horrible death there was.

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"War is less costly than servitude, the choice is always between Verdun and Dachau." - Jean Dutourd, French veteran of both world wars

"A mon fils: depuis que tes yeux sont fermes les miens n’ont cessé de pleurir." - Mère française, Verdun

Erich, thanks for the tip! Learning all the time...
It was Bari and December 1943.Check this and the site:

With so much gas stockpiled, accidents were likely to happen. On 2 December 1943, the merchantman SS JOHN HARVEY was waiting its turn to be unloaded at the harbor of Bari in southern Italy. Unknown to almost everyone, JOHN HARVEY was carrying 2,000 45 kilogram (100 pound) bombs full of mustard gas. Even most of the JOHN HARVEY's crew did not know about the gas bombs.

A few days earlier, the Allied high command announced they had obtained complete air superiority over southern Italy. They hadn't informed the Luftwaffe, and that evening a hundred Ju-88 bombers swept in and raised hell for 20 minutes. The German raid was a stunning victory. They sank 17 ships, badly damaged 8 more, killed a thousand men, and injured 800. Gas bombs on the JOHN HARVEY ruptured, and as the ship sank a layer of mustard gas and oil spread over the harbor, while mustard gas fumes swept ashore in a billowing cloud. Many civilians died during the raid and later.

The officers in charge of the gas bomb shipment on the JOHN HARVEY had been killed while they frantically tried to scuttle the vessel, and nobody else knew about the gas bombs. Sailors were taken ashore to a hospital where they were wrapped in blankets and given tea. The next morning 630 of them were blind and developing hideous chemical burns. Within two weeks, 70 of them died.

The crew of a British escort vessel, the HMS BISTERIA, picked up survivors during the raid and escaped to sea. During the night almost the entire crew went blind, and many developed burns. The vessel managed to limp into Taranto harbor with great difficulty.

At first, the Allied high command tried to conceal the disaster, since the evidence that gas was being shipped into Italy might convince the Germans that the Allies were preparing to use gas, and provoke the Germans into preemptively using gas themselves. However, there were far too many witne