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Andrew Sangster exposes the American wartime cover-up of a chemical-warfare disaster.

To1ic Warfare

GAS IN WWII

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The use of poisonous gas as a weapon is mainly associated with the Great War. But its possible use in the Second World War was like a sword of Damocles forever hanging over the battlefields.

Everyone regarded gas as both horrific and frightening. The Italians had used gas 103 times in Ethiopia during 1935/6, and there was a genuine fear on both sides during the Second World War that this WMD might be deployed.

On one occasion, Mussolini suggested the use of gas, but such was the mutual fear that all sides resisted the temptation. It was gener-ally believed by Allied chemical experts that Hitler would not authorise its use because he had a personal antipathy to gas warfare (he had been temporarily blinded by British gas in the Great War). They also believed that the German High Command did not want to risk global condemnation, and in fact there was no Wehrmacht military training for gas warfare.

Even so, the Germans did hold stocks of toxic weapons. Particularly worrying was a substance designated spitzen K-stoff, which, an intelligence officer noted, presumably [meant] some especially important or virulent form of gas. In mid-April 1945, Ultra revealed that Hitler was retaining the right to order destruction of stocks of this substance or their removal to a safer place like the coast.

It was well known that, in an effort to circumnavigate the Versailles Treaty, the

Germans had cooperated with the Soviet Union in military matters. This included establishing a German/Russian joint stock company called Bersol to build a chemical fac-tory near Samara in order to make poison gas.

As it happened, the Germans never used gas, and they also advised the Italians against doing so. Although Himmler initiated biological warfare, by re-infesting the Pontine Marshes so that cases of malaria spiralled, mutual fear prevented resort to chemical warfare.

FRUSTRATION AND COMPLACENCY IN ITALYNevertheless, not wishing to be caught unawares, both sides built up their stocks of gas. And on one occasion, the Allies stockpiledchemicals so close to the Front that a disaster led to the deaths of a large number of their own personnel in the Italian port of Bari.

The Italian Campaign was conducted with considerable skill by the Germans, the geog-raphy and the nature of the weapons used making defence easier than attack. There was much frustration on the Allied side.

Logistically, the Allies had far better resources than the Germans. They had air- superiority, their landing operations were pro-tected by overwhelming naval gun-power, and the flow of American supplies seemed endless.

Naples became the main port for supplies, but Bari on the east coast of Italy was impor-tant for both army and air-force during the battles on the Gustav Line.

In late November 1943, Field-Marshal Albert Kesselring, the German Commander- in-Chief South, held a conference at his HQ in Frascati with von Richthofen and

The SS John Harvey was carrying mustard-gas bombs.

MAIN IMAGE The threat of biological warfare was ever-present during WWII, as demonstrated by this picture of a British soldier in 1940 wearing gas protective clothing.

BELOW Albert Kesselring was among the high-ranking Luftwaffe officers who devised the Bari raid at a conference in November 1943.

GAS IN WWII

other senior Luftwaffe officers. The discussion concerned ways of slowing down the inexorable Allied advance.

Von Richthofen argued for an attack on Bari because of the huge quantities of supplies passing through the port. Kesselring agreed.

The RAFs Air-Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham had claimed that the Luftwaffe was finished, stat-ing that I would regard it as a personal affront and insult if the Luftwaffe would attempt any significant action in this area.

Richthofens spies had reported that Allied confidence was such that Bari port was unloading at night with all the lights on. Sure enough, when it was attacked on the night of 2 December 1943, port and town were brightly illuminated as German aircraft came overhead.

LITTLE PEARL HARBORThe Luftwaffe raid was so successful that it became known as the Little Pearl Harbor or Second Pearl Harbor. The Germans man-aged to sink 17 ships and damage many oth-ers, along with the dockyards; there were five

BELOW A Liberty ship, similar in design to the SS John Harvey, at sea in 1941.

LEFT Eisenhower knew the gas bombs existed, but not where they were being stored.

American, five British, three Norwegian, two Italian, and two Polish ships lost, and seven other vessels seriously damaged.

Among these was a Liberty ship called the SS John Harvey (launched in North Carolina on 9 January 1943), captained by Elwin Knowles. The John Harvey was carrying mustard-gas bombs.

The port of Bari had been in a busy state of unloading, but Captain Elwin Knowles had not been able to ask for priority because of the secrecy around his cargo. He was to die with his entire crew.

Many of the crew had guessed the nature of the cargo because of the presence of an officer called Beckstrom, who led men trained in the handling of such weapons.

The SS John Harveys manifest remained a secret for many years afterwards, because she was carrying 2,000 M47A1 mustard bombs from Oran to Algeria. Each contained up to 100lbs of mustard gas, a toxin whose technical name is dichlorethyl sulphide.

TOXIC CARGOThe shipment had been authorised by President Roosevelt, even though the use

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of chemical weapons had been outlawed by the 1925 Geneva Protocol (although there was no actual ban on their manufacture and transportation until 1972).

It had been rumoured that the Germans were storing up to a quarter of a million tons of toxic munitions, including a new colourless and almost odourless gas called Tabun, possi-bly of Italian manufacture. Roosevelt had said that we shall under no circumstances resort to the use of such weapons unless they are first used by our enemies.

Eisenhower was aware of the presence but not the whereabouts of the gas bombs, know-ing that they would only be used in reprisals. The general expectation was that they would not be needed. The Axis had not used any toxic agents in any theatre of war so far. The Americans had trained their combatants in their use, but few of the trainees took the schooling very seriously.

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Some historians claim that over a thousand soldiers and sailors died.

ABOVE President Roosevelt authorised the shipment of mustard gas aboard the SS John Harvey, even though the use of chemical weapons had been banned by the 1925 Geneva Protocol.

HE DISASTERWhen the SS John Harvey exploded, themustard gas infiltrated the water, the air,and the oil that soaked many of the peopleighting for their lives in the harbour area.n the Great War, gas had been breathed in

as a vapour; on this occasion, it was mixedwith oil and water with effects that hadnot been seen before.

Many commented on the strange smellof garlic, but there was uncertainty over how totreat the victims. Many were left in their originalcontaminated clothes, so they continued tobreathe in dangerous fumes; those who strippedand washed increased their survival chances.

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A Captain Denfield, a medical doctor, was suspicious, but faced a wall of silence until a stevedore sergeant told him that chemicals were sometimes in the holds.

A Lieutenant-Colonel Stewart Alexander flew in and confirmed that gas had leaked. Alexander was an expert from Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland, the US equivalent of Britains Porton Down. It still took medical teams a considerable time to realise that the main problem was men going blind and experiencing extreme pain.

Some historians claim that over a thou-sand soldiers and sailors died, as well as many Italian civilians, from the release of mustard gas. Other sources are a more conservative, but even the lowest estimates are of 628 military casualties, 83 of them fatal, and hundreds of civilian deaths from the gas vapour that seeped into the town.

The HMS Bicester rescued some 30 survivors, but the ship had to be towed to Taranto because of damage during the attack; in Taranto, it was found that many of the crew

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Axis Sally was soon broadcasting, I see you boys are getting gassed by your own poison gas.

BELOW Ships burning in Bari Harbour. Hundreds of soldiers and civilians were killed by the blast and by the subsequent release of mustard gas.

LEFT A US Army gas identification poster from the Second World War. When the SS John Harvey exploded in Bari, civilians in the nearby town commented on the strange smell of garlic.

were suffering from chemical burns and blindness.

GERMAN BOMBS?At first it was mooted that the Germans had dropped mustard-gas bombs; they had, it was pointed out, been the first to use them in the Great War. It was not until a damaged M47A1 shell was found that it was realised that Allied munitions were responsible.

Some of the Allied commanders had worried that a retaliatory raid might be made by mistake before the rumour was discounted. There is no doubt that for several hours the issue was precariously balanced.

The British port authorities at first refused to acknowledge the existence of the mustard-gas bombs. So did Churchill, who claimed that the symptoms were not right, finally demand-ing that the causes of the protracted deaths be put down as NYD (not yet diagnosed) dermatitis or burns caused by enemy action.

Churchill was concerned about public opinion, and keen not to let the enemy know of the existence of such toxic weapons. But the German spy network was efficient, and soon Axis Sally sometimes known as the Berlin Bitch was broadcasting, I see you boys are getting gassed by your own poison gas.

The statistics of the disaster were grim: only 2% of men hospitalised for gas injuries in WWI had died; the proportion of fatalities was 13% at Bari in 1943. (Ironically, as a result of pathological tests carried out post-war on those who had died, medical research found among these toxins assistance towards curing some forms of Hodgkins disease and various forms of leukaemia.)

KEEPING IT SECRETThe port was out of action for many months, and the disaster was not given any publicity because of the censors. The event was well-known by those who were there, but it waskept out of the public eye in America, andonly de-restricted in 1959.

The secrecy cost Italian lives because thecivilian hospitals were kept in the dark. TheWashington Post mentioned the attack, but didnot mention gas or the extent of the damage.Eisenhower wrote in his post-war memoirsthat fortunately the wind was offshore andthe escaping gas caused no casualties. Had the

wind been in the opposite direction, however, great disaster could well have resulted.

Churchill also had the records purged, and the whole incident remained obscure until the late 1960s. Only in 1986, according to The Times, were some 600 contami-nated British seamen awarded back-dated war pensions.

The Luftwaffe air-raid put the port of Bari out of commission for a long time. It had been the second greatest shipping disaster for the Allies of the entire war, and the raid had a serious impact on the Allied campaign. Not least among the problems was lack of supplies to the air-base of the 15th Air Force at Foggia, which had been dependent on Baris imports. The raid thus prevented Mediterranean Allied Air Forces from attacking German airfields prior to the amphibious landing at Anzio.

For the Germans it was an outstanding success, but only because the Allied air com-mand had been over-confident and mistakenly thought the Luftwaffe was finished. Allowing the lights to stay on through the night just a few miles from enemy lines is almost beyond belief, especially with so many valuable mer-chant vessels parked side-by-side. .Andrew Sangster holds his doctorate in 20th-century

history, and this April his book Field-Marshal Kesselring: great commander or war

criminal? is being published by Cambridge Scholars.

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xRIGHT Churchill was keen to keep the Bari disaster under wraps, and had all records of the incident purged.