All encyclopedias say that chemical weapons were created by the Germans in the First World War, and they first used it on June 22, 1915, and then it became the most terrible weapon of the world war.
However, while working on the history of the Crimean War, I came across the Sevastopol diary of Rear Admiral Mikhail Frantsevich Reineke, a friend of Pavel Stepanovich Nakhimov. There, for May 13, 1854, there is an entry: “… today (to Sevastopol - A. Sh.) two stinking bombs were brought from Odessa, thrown into the city on April 11 (fir) from English (Li) and French (French) steamers. One of them began to be opened in Menshikov's courtyard in the presence of Kornilov, and before the sleeve was completely opened, the unbearable stench so badly poured over everyone that Kornilov felt sick; therefore, they stopped unscrewing the sleeve and gave both bombs to pharmacies to decompose their composition. The same bomb was opened in Odessa, and the gunner who opened it fainted, receiving violent vomiting; he was ill for two days, and I don’t know if he recovered.”
THE MORE DEADLY THE BETTER
So, it has been reliably confirmed that the British were the first in modern history to use chemical shells, moreover, against a peaceful city. Until 1854, there was no military port or coastal batteries in Odessa.
The effect of chemical shells turned out to be rather weak, and the British preferred not to use them anymore, and the Russian government did not want to use the fact of their use to carry out an anti-British campaign in European newspapers.
In 1854, the famous English chemist and manufacturer Mackintosh proposed to seize Sevastopol to bring special ships to the coastal fortifications of the city, which, with the help of devices invented by him, would spew out a large amount of substances that ignite from contact with oxygen, the consequence of which will be, - as Mackintosh wrote, - the formation of a thick black, suffocating fog or smoke, which embraces the fort or the battery, penetrating the embrasures and casemates and chasing the artillerymen and everyone inside”.
Macintosh developed the use of his inventions against the enemy located in the camp: "By firing my bombs and missiles, especially those filled with instantly igniting composition, it is easy to create a general fire and extermination of people and materials, turning the entire camp into a vast sea of fire."
The British Ministry of War tested the proposed projectiles, focusing on their use in operations on the ship, and issued a patent to Macintosh for his invention.
Already after the Crimean War, cynically telling about these "plans", the Mechanic's Magazine pointed out: "You can call the use of such shells inhuman and disgusting practices of an enlightened war, but … if, however, people want to fight, then the more deadly and destructive are the methods of war, all the better".
However, the British cabinet did not go to the use of toxic substances (OM) near Sevastopol.
"SOUL" CORE
In the annals of the history of Russian artillery, here and there, attempts are made to use "stinking" cannonballs back in the days of Ivan the Terrible. So, it is known for certain that among the ammunition that was in the Kiev fortress in 1674, there were "fragrant fiery cores", which included ammonia, arsenic and "assa fatuda". The latter may be distorted asa-fetipa - the name of a plant from the genus Ferula, which grows in Central Asia and has a strong garlic smell. It is possible that strong-smelling or toxic substances were introduced into the mixtures for incendiary nuclei in order to prevent the extinguishing of the kernels.
The very first real attempt to use chemical munitions was made in Russia after the Crimean War. In the late 50s of the XIX century, the Artillery Committee of the GAU proposed to introduce bombs filled with toxic substances into the ammunition of unicorns. For one-pound (196-mm) serf unicorns, an experimental series of bombs was made, equipped with an OM - cyanide cacodyl (the modern name is "cacodyl-cyanide").
The detonation of bombs was carried out in an open wooden frame of the type of a large Russian hut without a roof. A dozen cats were placed in the blockhouse, protecting them from shell fragments. A day after the explosion, members of the special commission of the GAU approached the log house. All the cats lay motionless on the floor, their eyes were very watery, but, alas, not one died. On this occasion, Adjutant General Alexander Alekseevich Barantsev wrote a report to the tsar, where he categorically stated that the use of artillery shells with toxic substances in the present and future is completely excluded.
From then until 1915, the Russian military department did not make any more attempts to create chemical munitions.
ATTACK ON IPR AND RUSSIA'S RESPONSE
On April 22, 1915, the Germans used poison gases for the first time on the Ypres River. The gases were fired from cylinders, but soon artillery shells and mortar mines filled with toxic substances appeared.
Chemical projectiles were divided into purely chemical ones, which were filled with a liquid poisonous substance and a small (up to 3% of the total weight) expelling charge of an ordinary explosive, and chemical fragmentation, which were equipped with a commensurate amount of conventional explosive and solid OM.
When a chemical projectile burst, the liquid OM was mixed with air, and a cloud was formed, moving in the wind. During the explosion, chemical fragmentation shells struck with fragments almost like ordinary grenades, but at the same time did not allow the enemy to be without gas masks.
After the Germans first launched a gas attack on the Eastern Front in 1915, Russian generals in GAU were forced to retaliate. However, it turned out that not only are there no own developments in the field of chemical weapons, but there are almost no factories that could produce its components. So, at first they wanted to produce liquid chlorine in Finland, and the Finnish Senate delayed negotiations for a year - from August 1915 to August 9 (22), 1916.
In the end, the Special Meeting on Defense decided to transfer the preparation of liquid chlorine to a special commission established by the Senate, and 3.2 million rubles were allocated for the equipment of the two factories. The commission was formed on the model of the Russian economic commissions with the participation of representatives from the Russian government - from the State Audit Office and from the Chemical Committee. Professor Lilin chaired the commission.
An attempt to obtain phosgene in Russia from private industry failed due to extremely high prices for liquid phosgene and a lack of guarantees that orders would be fulfilled on time. Therefore, the commission of the Supply Directorate at GAU established the need to build a state-owned phosgene plant.
The plant was built in one of the cities of the Volga region and put into operation at the end of 1916.
In July 1915, by order of the commander-in-chief, a military chemical plant was organized in the area of the Southwestern Front to produce chloroacetone, which causes lacrimation. Until November 1915, the plant was under the jurisdiction of the chief of engineering supplies of the front, and then it was placed at the disposal of the GAU, which expanded the plant, set up a laboratory in it and established the production of chloropicrin.
For the first time, the Russian army used poisonous substances from gas cylinders. Gas cylinders, as they were called in the service documentation, were hollow iron cylinders with bottoms rounded on both sides, one of which was welded tightly, and the other had a valve (tap) for starting gas. This tap was connected to a long rubber hose or metal tube with a disc sprayer at the end. The cylinders were filled with liquefied gas. When opening the valve at the cylinder, the poisonous liquid was thrown out, almost immediately evaporating.
Gas cylinders were divided into heavy ones, intended for positional warfare, and light ones, for mobile warfare. The heavy cylinder contained 28 kg of the liquefied poisonous substance, the weight of the cylinder in the ready-to-use state was about 60 kg. For the massive launch of gases, the cylinders were collected in dozens of pieces in "balloon batteries". A light tank for "mobile warfare" contained only 12 kg of OM.
The use of gas cylinders was complicated by many factors. Such, for example, as the wind, more precisely, its direction. Gas cylinders had to be delivered to the front lines, often under intense artillery fire.
FROM CYLINDERS TO PRODUCTS
By the end of 1916, there was a tendency towards a decrease in the use of gas cylinders and a transition to artillery firing with chemical projectiles. When firing chemical projectiles, it is possible to form a cloud of poisonous gases in any desired direction and in any place within the range allowed by the artillery gun, and almost regardless of the direction and strength of the wind and other meteorological conditions. Chemical projectiles could be fired from any artillery pieces of 75 mm and higher caliber that were in service without any structural changes.
True, to inflict significant losses on the enemy, a large consumption of chemical projectiles was required, but gas attacks also required a huge consumption of toxic substances.
Mass production of 76-mm chemical shells at Russian factories began at the end of 1915. The army began to receive chemical shells in February 1916.
In Russia, since 1916, chemical 76-mm grenades of two types began to be produced: suffocating (chloropicrin with sulfuryl chloride), the action of which caused irritation of the respiratory organs and eyes to such an extent that it was impossible for people to stay in this atmosphere; and poisonous (phosgene with tin chloride or vensinite, consisting of hydrocyanic acid, chloroform, chlorine arsenic and tin), the action of which caused general damage to the body and, in severe cases, death.
The gas cloud from the rupture of one 76-mm chemical projectile covered an area of about 5 square meters. m. The starting point for calculating the number of chemical projectiles required for shelling the areas was the norm: one 76-mm chemical grenade per 40 square meters. m area and one 152-mm chemical projectile per 80 sq. m area. Projectiles fired continuously in such a quantity created a gas cloud of sufficient combat concentration. Subsequently, to maintain the obtained concentration, the number of projectiles fired is halved.
Such firing with chemical projectiles is advisable only in those conditions when the wind is less than 7 m / s (complete calm is better), when there is no heavy rain and great heat, with solid ground near the target, which ensures the burst of the projectiles, and at a distance of no more than 5 km. The limitation of the distances was caused by the assumption of the need to ensure the projectile from overturning during flight as a result of the transfusion of a poisonous liquid, which does not fill the entire internal volume of the projectile in order to allow the liquid to expand when it inevitably warms up. The phenomenon of the overturning of the projectile could affect precisely at large firing distances, especially at the highest point of the trajectory.
Since the fall of 1916, the requirements of the current Russian army for 76-mm chemical projectiles were fully satisfied: the army received monthly five parks of 15 thousand shells each, including one poisonous and four suffocating ones.
In total, 95 thousand poisonous and 945 thousand suffocating shells were sent to the active army until November 1916.
CHEMICAL WEAPONS RACE
However, it should be noted that Russia used chemical weapons 20 or even 100 times less than Germany and the Western allies. So, in France alone during the war, about 17 million chemical projectiles were manufactured, including 13 million 75-mm and 4 million calibers from 105 to 155 mm. In the last year of the war, the Edgewood Arsenal in America produced up to 200,000 chemical shells a day. In Germany, the number of chemical shells in the artillery ammunition was increased to 50%, and in July 1918, when attacking the Marne, the Germans had up to 80% of chemical shells in ammunition. On the night of August 1, 1917, 3.4 million mustard shells were fired at a 10 km front between Neuville and the left bank of the Meuse.
The Russians at the front used mainly suffocating shells, the action of which received quite satisfactory reviews. The field inspector general of artillery telegraphed to the chief of GAU that in the May and June offensive of 1916 (the so-called Brusilov breakthrough) chemical 76-mm shells "did a great service to the army," since when they fired at them, the enemy batteries quickly fell silent.
Here is a typical example of Russian chemical shells firing at an enemy battery. “On a clear, quiet day, August 22, 1916, at a position near Lopushany in Galicia (in the Lvov direction), one of the Russian batteries fired at the enemy's trenches. An enemy battery of 15 cm howitzers, with the help of a specially sent aircraft, opened fire on the Russian battery, which soon became very real. By careful observation, smoke rings were found in the enemy's side, rising from one of the crests of the heights.
In this direction, one platoon of the Russian battery opened fire, but it was not possible to weaken the fire of the enemy battery, despite, apparently, the correct direction of the platoon's fire and the correctly determined angle of elevation. Then the commander of the Russian battery decided to continue shelling the enemy battery with chemical "suffocating" shells (the lower part of the body of a 76-mm grenade, filled with a suffocating substance, was painted red above the leading belt). Shooting with chemical 76-mm grenades was carried out in the area behind the ridge, behind which smoke was found from the shots of the enemy battery, about 500 m long, with rapid fire, 3 rounds per gun, in jumps through one division of the sight. After 7–8 minutes, having fired about 160 chemical shells, the commander of the Russian battery stopped firing, as the enemy battery was silent and did not resume fire, despite the fact that the Russian battery continued to fire on the enemy's trenches and clearly betrayed itself with the brilliance of the shots. ", - wrote in his book "Artillery of the Russian Army" Evgeny Zakharovich Barsukov.
At the end of 1915, chemical shells appeared in the navy. It would seem, why? After all, warships moved at a speed of 20-30 knots, that is, they could very quickly pass even the largest cloud of gas, and in addition, if necessary, the crew could quickly take refuge in sealed interior spaces.
Preparation of the first Russian gas launch by sappers of the 1st chemical team in the defense sector of the 38th division in March 1916 near Iksküle. Photo of 1916
It is clear that it is pointless to shoot shrapnel, and even more so with chemical shells, at sea targets. They were intended exclusively for shooting along the shore.
The fact is that in 1915-1916, in an atmosphere of the strictest secrecy, a landing in the Bosphorus was being prepared. It is not hard to imagine a plan of operation. Russian ships had to literally throw chemical shells at the fortifications of the Bosphorus. The silent batteries were captured by the landing party. And on the suitable field units of the Turks, the ships had to open fire with shrapnel.
In the summer of 1915, the chief of Russian aviation, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, also became interested in chemical weapons.
In July 1915, Colonel Gronov and Lieutenant Krasheninnikov, attached to GAU, presented to the chief of GAU, General Manikovsky, drawings of "choking gas bombs" equipped with special valves for equipping and ensuring the necessary tightness. These bombs were loaded with liquid chlorine.
The drawings were received by the Executive Commission under the Minister of War, which on August 20 agreed to manufacture 500 pieces of such ammunition. In December of the same year, at the plant of the Russian Society for Manufacturing of Shells, bodies of chemical aerial bombs were manufactured and in the city of Slavyansk at the factories of the Lyubimov, Soliev and Co and Electron companies, they were equipped with chlorine.
At the end of December 1915, 483 chemical bombs were sent to the active army. There, the 2nd and 4th aviation companies received 80 bombs each, the 8th aviation company received 72 bombs, the Ilya Muromets airship squadron received 100 bombs, and 50 bombs were sent to the Caucasian front. That was the end of the production of chemical aerial bombs in pre-revolutionary Russia.
CHEMICALS IN THE CIVIL WAR
At the end of 1917, the Civil War began. All parties to the conflict - red, white, invaders and even separatists - had chemical weapons. Naturally, in 1918-1921, there were dozens of cases of the use or attempts to use chemical weapons.
Already in June 1918, Ataman Krasnov appealed to the population with an appeal: “Meet your Cossack brothers with a bell ringing … If you put up resistance, woe to you, here I am, and with me 200,000 selected troops and many hundreds of guns; I brought 3000 cylinders of suffocating gases, I will strangle the whole region, and then all living things will perish in it."
In fact, Krasnov then had only 257 balloons with OV.
By the way, I am at a loss how to introduce Lieutenant General and Ataman Krasnov. Soviet historians considered him an inveterate White Guard, and Anton Ivanovich Denikin considered the state formation “Don-Caucasian Union” created by him under the protectorate of the German Empire as “further dismemberment of Russia”.
The invaders used chemical weapons systematically. So, on April 12, 1918, a German armored train near Mitava (now Jelgava) fired more than 300 shells with phosgene at parts of the 3rd brigade of the 2nd Soviet Latvian division. As a result, there were poisoned, although in general the attack failed: the Reds had gas masks, and the damp weather weakened the effect of the gases.
In October 1919, the artillery of the North-Western Army of General Prince Avalov fired chemical shells at Riga for several weeks. An eyewitness later wrote: “In places where such shells fell, the air was covered with wild black smoke, poisoning with which people and horses who were on the street died. Where such shells were exploded, the stones of the pavement and the walls of houses were painted with light green paint”.
Alas, there is no reliable data on the victims of the chemical attacks in Riga. And again, I don't know how to present the Northwest Army and Prince Avalov. It is difficult to call him Red, but he never fought with the Reds, and beat only Latvian nationalists and Anglo-French invaders. His real name and surname is Pavel (Peisakh) Rafailovich Bermont, his father is a Jew, a Tiflis jeweler. During the Great War, Bermont rose to the rank of staff captain, and then promoted himself to the rank of lieutenant general. He received the title only after adoption by some petty Georgian prince Avalov. It is curious that in the army of Avalov, Captain Heinz von Guderian learned to fight.
On October 5, 1920, Wrangel's Caucasian army, trying to break through to Astrakhan, used chemical shells against the Soviet 304th regiment in the Salt Zaymishche region. However, the battle ended with the retreat of White.
AND AGAIN FORGED ENGLISH
The British used chemical weapons most intensively on the Northern Front. On February 7, 1919, in his circular, Secretary of War Winston Churchill ordered "to use chemical missiles to the fullest extent both by our troops and by the Russian troops that we supply."
On April 4, the commander of the royal artillery, Major Delaguet, distributed the received ammunition, including chemical shells, among the guns. It was supposed to have them for a light 18-pound gun - 200 pieces, for a 60-pound gun - from 100 to 500, depending on the area, for a 4.5-inch howitzer - 300, two 6-inch howitzers in the Pinezhsky region were released 700 chemical shells.
On June 1-2, 1919, the British fired at the village of Ust-Poga with 6-inch and 18-pounder guns. In three days, it was fired: 6-dm - 916 grenades and 157 gas shells; 18-lb - 994 frag grenades, 256 shrapnel and 100 gas shells. The result was that the whites and the British were forced to retreat.
A curious summary of the 6th Army in the Shenkur region: “Our losses in the 160th regiment for the battle on September 1 - killed command staff 5, 28 Red Army men, wounded 5 command personnel, 50 Red Army men, shell-shocked command personnel 3, 15 Red Army men, gassed 18 Red Army men, without news is missing 25. Nine prisoners were captured, one of them was an Englishman …
On September 3, the enemy fired artillery fire at our left-bank outpost, firing 200 chemical shells each. We have gassed 1 instructor and 1 Red Army soldier."
Note that the British fired hundreds of chemical shells, while the Reds did not have a single lethal outcome.
British officers suggested using 4-inch (102-mm) Stokes chemical mortars in the North. However, Churchill forbade doing this for reasons of secrecy and thus slowed down the development of mortar business in the USSR for 10 years.
Our engineers continued to remain in the dark about the Stokes mortar, created according to the scheme of an imaginary triangle (that is, the first mortar of the modern type in history) and continued to stamp mortars according to a dull scheme, that is, on a large base plate. It was only in December 1929 that the first captured mortars of the Stokes-Brandt system, taken from the Chinese during the conflict on the Chinese Eastern Railway, arrived in Moscow.
Naturally, the command of the Red Army also tried to use chemical weapons.
For example, chemical weapons were used by sailors of the Upper Don Flotilla in May 1918. On May 28, a detachment of red ships consisting of the Voronezh tugboat armed with one machine gun, a barge with two 3-inch (76-mm) field guns of the 1900 model and a steam boat with two machine guns left Kotoyak and set off down the Don.
The detachment walked along the river and periodically fired at the Cossack villages and individual groups of Cossacks, who, as it were assumed, belonged to the rebels who had rebelled against the Soviet regime. Both fragmentation and chemical shells were used. Thus, on the farmsteads of Matyushensky and Rubezhnoye, fire was fired exclusively with chemical shells, as the report says, "in order to find the enemy battery." Alas, it was not possible to find it.
In October 1920, it was planned to use chemical weapons in the assault on Perekop. A chemical company was formed, GAU began collecting cylinders and shells left over from the Russian army, after which they were sent to the Southern Front.
However, Soviet bureaucracy and the unwillingness of whites to seriously defend Perekop ruined this project. Chemical weapons were delivered a few days after the fall of Crimea.
ANOTHER MYTH OR FORGOTTEN FACT
But for the past two decades, the domestic media have been writing about the use of chemical weapons by Mikhail Tukhachevsky during the rebellion of Alexander Antonov in the Tambov region. Thousands and even tens of thousands of peasants suffocated with gas appear in the articles.
In parallel, dozens of researchers at the end of the twentieth century interviewed many old people who witnessed the suppression of the rebellion. But, alas, none of them heard anything about chemical weapons.
In the 1980s, I myself often talked with an old woman who, as a 15-year-old girl, found herself in the thick of battles in the Tambov region. She told many interesting details of the uprising, but she also had not heard of chemical ammunition.
It is clear that in the works of sensationalists, no data on the type or number of chemical munitions used in the Tambov region, or on the losses of the rebels during the use of warfare agents, is given anywhere.
I know quite well the military-technical literature of the 1920s. Then no one was ashamed to admit the use of chemical weapons in the Great and Civil Wars. And any case of a serious use of toxic substances in the Tambov region would have been sorted out to the bone in the military-technical literature, and not necessarily in a closed one (I repeat, we are talking about the 1920s - early 1930s, later the complete classification of everything and everything that associated with the weapons of the Red Army).
What really happened? Tukhachevsky, not very familiar with the use of chemical weapons, ordered the release of several tens of 3-inch (76-mm) chemical grenades at the bandits who were in an area of hundreds of hectares, and those villains did not even notice anything.
Brief summary. The First World War showed the effectiveness of chemical weapons in trench warfare, subject to massive use. We are talking about thousands and even tens of thousands of 76-152-mm projectiles (the use of large-caliber projectiles is unprofitable) or bombs (50-100 kg) at a 1-3 km front.
Well, the Civil War showed the ineffectiveness of these weapons in a mobile war, where it is even technically impossible to ensure the massive use of chemical weapons.
In my opinion, chemical weapons in World War II were not used in combat solely because of their low effectiveness, and not out of humane considerations, the prohibitions of the Geneva Convention, etc., and so on.
