The company was also responsible for the manufacture of civilian gas masks for the British population during the Second World War - a manufacturing operation on an almost unprecedented scale, before or since. Military Gas Mask ProductionĪccording to the market leader in military gas mask production - Avon Protection, a subsidiary of Avon Rubber plc, - even though outlawed by the United Nations, these devastating weapons still exist so preparation and training is vital And the relative ease of manufacturing these weapons or sourcing them from dubious vendors means they are increasingly likely to be used by terrorist organisations or stockpiled by rogue states.Īvon has been building and manufacturing respiratory protection equipment, including gas masks, since World War One - nearly 100 years. As this knowledge spreads throughout developing countries, the increased possibility of chemical warfare becomes a harsh reality. The technology needed to produce these chemicals is similar to that used to make plastics, fertilizers, and detergents. Many nations now have a considerable variety of lethal and incapacitating chemical agents and the means to deliver them. While more recently, Sadam Hussein used chemical weapons against both the Iranians and the Kurds in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. Mussolini used mustard gas during the Abyssinian war of 1938. During the Sino-Japanese War in the late ‘30s, gas weapons, such as phosgene, chlorine, Lewisite and mustard gas (yellow) were used against Chinese troops. Not surprisingly, the British government believed that some form of poison gas would be used by Nazi Germany on the civilian population during the Second World War and by 1940 they had had issued 38 million gas masks!Įven though chemical warfare was not used by Germany against the British population, there have been more military and civilian chemical assaults during the last century than many people realise. The predominant chemical agents then used were mustard gas (a blister agent) and chlorine gas (a choking agent) and it is calculated that over 100,000 soldiers died and many thousands more injured and blinded in gas attacks on both sides. Toxic gases were seen as a way to bring an end to the stalemate on the Western Front. Suffering in later years from chemically-induced illnesses and disabilities, they would sometimes fight unsuccessfully to have medical claims approved, having failed to document their injuries at the time.Gas masks are not new to the military and were first employed en masse during the First World War to protect soldiers from gas attacks. Many soldiers never reported their multiple minor gassings, which, at the time, were not immediately debilitating. There were approximately one million gas casualties to all armies during the war, 12,000 of them Canadian. In the last year of the war, soldiers of all armies struggled across battlefields often choked with gas. It attacked the skin and blinded its victims, thereby defeating existing gas masks and respirators.īy the Armistice, chemical shells made up 35 percent of French and German ammunition supplies, 25 percent British and 20 percent American. The Germans unleashed mustard gas in the summer of 1917. Phosgene, introduced in late 1915, was nearly invisible and much more lethal than chlorine. By 1917, chemical shells, projectors, and mortars could deposit dense gas barrages on enemy lines, or behind them on supply routes, reserve trenches, or gun batteries. Fighting on the Chemical Battlefieldĭeadlier gasses and more reliable delivery systems were introduced later in the war. The British responded with their own chlorine attacks in September 1915, during which a change in wind direction resulted in more than 2,000 British soldiers being gassed by their own chemicals. But the introduction of increasingly effective gas masks and other precautions helped counter the German advantage. With the introduction of poison gas, many contemporaries feared that the Germans had discovered a war-winning weapon. After several days of chaotic and brutal fighting, the Ypres position remained in Allied hands. The gas shocked but, while some troops fled in panic, the Canadians held their ground. ![]() With the wind blowing over the French and Canadian lines on 22 April, they released the gas, which cooled to a liquid and drifted over the battlefield in a lethal, green-yellow cloud. Results of Gas at YpresĪt Ypres, Belgium, the Germans had transported liquid chlorine gas to the front in large metal canisters. The first large-scale use of lethal poison gas on the battlefield was by the Germans on 22 April 1915 during the Battle of Second Ypres.
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