Britain's Secret CW History

From the dusty drawers of history comes this story about chemical warfare research during World War II. There were no holds barred in the hunt for offensive measures to keep the Germans off of British soil. So here's one attempt:

Research scientists thought clouds of poison darts, blasted from canisters high above the battlefield, could be even more lethal against enemy troop concentrations than high-explosive shells.

Mustard gas compounds in the needles would ensure anyone whose skin was broken would die a swift and horrible death, or at least have terrible injuries.

Assessing the effectiveness of the darts one report notes: "If penetrating into the flesh, will cause death if not plucked out within 30 seconds.

"If plucked out within this time, will cause disablement by collapse.

"Collapse occurs within one to five minutes, and death within 30 minutes."

A hand-written comment written next to this observed: "I doubt whether the darts can be plucked out. The paper tail would come off."

I have heard of research that attempted to make poisoned flechettes for artillery rounds or aerial bombs, but the logic fails when the operational commander says "So if I can hit them with arty or bombs, why not use high explosive instead? So much easier and less complicated." I am not sure that mustard agent would have been the preferred agent - the Allies didn't have nerve agent, but mustard agent was around. I just don't know if a small dose of subdural injected mustard would be so quickly lethal. But then again, I'm not up on medical effects.

Hat tip to Ray!

Comments

[Dr. Vil Mirzayanov]

By Vil S. Mirzayanov, PhD Chemical Science

It is a very encouraging sign that President Obama wants to work once more for the global abolition of nuclear weapons. At the same time, there is a lot of unfinished business in the field of chemical weapons (CW). We need to take some measures to eliminate the flaws built into the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (CWC), which were strategically crafted by the former Soviet rulers during the negotiations of that treaty. Their goal was to eliminate the old obsolete weapons while keeping the new generation of CW codenamed Novichok out of treaty control.
The Novichok agents developed by Petr Kirpichev are 5-8 times more potent than those known before. [deleted by editor].
This opened up a real Pandora’s Box[deleted by editor] Two relatively harmless components can be mixed in flight to produce a deadly chemical agent end product. Also binary weapons eliminate most of the expense and danger of the production and storage of chemical agents.
After his nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize and after Russia signed the Agreement on the Nonproduction and Elimination of CW on September 23, 1989, President Mikhail Gorbachev signed Resolution 844-186 thirteen days later, sanctioning the start up of the binary weapons program. Already a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Gorbachev awarded the Lenin Prize on April 23, 1991 to the leaders of the military chemical complex for the successful development, testing and production of binaries based on Substance 33, which is somewhat similar to VX gas. The following year, Gorbachev was going to award the Lenin Prize for the development and production of binaries [deleted by editor], but he ran out of time, when the Soviet Union collapsed.
Despite the fall of the Communist regime, the Novichok program continued up until the end of 1992, and possibly after that. I witnessed these events firsthand as the Chief of the Department of Foreign Technical Counterintelligence at the State Scientific Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology (GosNIIOKhT), the main developer of chemical weapons in Russia. All documentation on the development and production of chemical weapons was entirely falsified, and a special effort was made to mislead the West.
Under these circumstances I stopped participating in these illegal activities and appealed to the world community to pay attention to this problem. During 1991 and 1992, I wrote a few vague articles and gave interviews, and I was sent to prison twice for that. In 1994 my case was dropped for lack of evidence, but more likely it was the support of the international scientific community that helped the most. Nevertheless, the Russian expert commission assigned to my case clearly confirmed the veracity of the development, production and testing agents of the Novichok series and the binary weapons based on one of them. It also corroborated their high toxicity and incurability after poisoning.
Eventually I immigrated to the United States, and I became a proud US citizen. I supported ratification of the CWC by the US Senate in 1996, hoping that amendments would be made to this Convention to put the Novichok agents of Russia under its control.

[Dr. Vil Mirzayanov]

(continuation)
I waited in vain for 12 years and nothing happened. These dangerous chemical agents were never declared by Russia and were never placed in the Control List of the OPCW, the body that administers the CWC. The US and the Russian governments simply ignored the situation.
These agents entirely satisfy the criteria of the “Guidelines for Schedules of Chemicals” of the CWC for crafting an amendment. There is no longer any necessity for long negotiations with the Russian Government to disclose them. To help expedite the process, I decided to publish [deleted by editor] my memoir, “State Secrets: An Insider’s Chronicle of the Russian Chemical Weapons Program” (Outskirts Press, Denver Co., 2008). Now the US Government can accomplish the next step in its mission to rid the world of chemical weapons by officially proposing an amendment to the CWC listing these agents.
After that, it seems that the logjam blocking the “challenge inspections” could be broken by agreeing to allow inspections at known CW development and production centers in both Russia and the US. For now, there is no need to burden civilian chemical industry with these inspections, creating the possibility of lawsuits, which claim the loss of commercial secrets.

[J.]

With no disrespect intended toward Dr. Mirzayanov, I was not comfortable with the level of information he placed in the comments. While I agree with his sentiments, I would rather not have the burden of dealing with the sensitive issues related this subject in a public forum.