Weaponry: Lewisite — America’s World War I Chemical Weapon

MHQ  | 0 comments  |  Print This Post  |  Email This Post

In 1903 a young priest working on his doctoral degree at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., was studying the reaction of the gas acetylene and arsenic trichloride in the presence of aluminum chloride. When these compounds were mixed, the flask turned black, and after the mixture was poured into water, a black, gummy mass formed that had a penetrating odor and caused the priest to become seriously ill. He was hospitalized for several days while recovering from the toxic effects of the compound and decided to postpone indefinitely any further investigations of it. However, the priest, Father Julius Arthur Nieuwland, described the reaction in his 1904 dissertation. The toxic substance later became known as lewisite, one of the most deadly poison gases developed until well after World War I. Produced by the United States during the latter part of that war, it had also been independently discovered, although not manufactured, in Germany. During World War II, the United States, Great Britain, Germany, the Soviet Union, and Japan produced lewisite. Since that time other countries have manufactured the compound, including Iraq, North Korea, and perhaps Libya.

In the early evening of April 22, 1915, the first lethal poison gas attack of World War I occurred at Ypres, Belgium. German troops discharged approximately 160 tons of chlorine gas that slowly crept toward the Allied trenches with the aid of a gentle wind. French and Algerian soldiers first noticed two strange yellow clouds approaching, and soon men began to choke, cough, suffocate, and retreat in horror. Smoke and fumes made their panic worse because they could not see around them. Some soldiers buried their faces in the dirt, hoping to protect themselves from the unknown killer. A few officers who were educated in chemistry realized the value of urinating on a cloth and breathing through it to crystallize and neutralize the chlorine, and they instructed others to do so.

The unprecedented attack killed more than 5,000 men and injured 15,000 others. There were between 880,000 and 1,297,000 gas casualties during World War I, and gas warfare may have caused more than 26,000 deaths. American casualties from poison gas totaled almost 72,000, and of these more than 1,200 died. The Central Powers and then the Allies attacked with the weapon even though two separate prewar international conferences had banned the use of weapons and projectiles intended to diffuse asphyxiating, deleterious, or poisonous gases.

The United States did not declare war on Germany until April 2, 1917, but by then it had already begun research into chemical gases. The Bureau of Mines first conducted chemical warfare research early in 1917, under the direction of Van H. Manning. Founded in 1910 to investigate poisonous and asphyxiating gases in mines, the bureau offered its services to the Military Committee of the National Research Council (NRC) on February 8, 1917. On April 3, the committee formed the Subcommittee on Noxious Gases, composed of army and navy officers and members of the Chemical Committee of the NRC, and Manning was appointed as its chairman. George A. Burrell, who worked for the Bureau of Mines, became the director of research on war gases on April 7 and immediately began working on a suitable gas mask for American soldiers.

The need for more chemists quickly arose, and in May the Bureau of Mines was authorized to accept help from laboratories at twenty-one universities, three companies, and three government agencies. Furthermore, in July 1917 a central laboratory was established at American University in Washington, D.C. The weapons development and testing facility would become known as the American University Experimental Station. The War Department began suggesting in September 1917 that the labs at American be militarized, and ten months later, in June 1918, President Woodrow Wilson agreed, transferring the extensive work at the university to a newly formed army subdivision, the Chemical Warfare Service. Eventually, more than 10 percent of all the chemists in the United States became directly involved with chemical warfare research during World War I.

One of them was Winford Lee Lewis, who left Northwestern University in 1918, where he was an associate professor of chemistry, to become the director of the Offensive Branch of the newly formed Chemical Warfare Service unit at Catholic University. This unit, called Organic Unit No. 3, was given the task of developing and producing novel gases, especially compounds containing arsenic. In April 1918, following the suggestion of the Rev. John Griffin, who had been Julius Nieuwland’s chemistry adviser at Catholic, Lewis reviewed the priest’s dissertation and read about his experiments with arsenic trichloride. He further investigated and perfected its reaction with acetylene, with aluminum trichloride acting as a catalyst.

Lewis wrote that the resulting compound ‘…took on a nauseating odor and [caused] marked irritation effect to the mucous surfaces. The headache resulting persists several hours and the material seems to be quite toxic.’ The perfected product was named after him, christened lewisite. The government eventually ordered Lewis to stop working on the compound at Catholic University, under the pretext that it was ineffective. They did this, however, in order to trick German spies into believing that Lewis’ work had not been productive. In truth, other researchers continued evaluating and perfecting lewisite at nearby American University.

Lewis believed in gas warfare and defended its use throughout his life, saying that it would make wars more humane because it would shorten them and innocent civilians would suffer less. He also believed that ‘Providence’ would intervene and give the most advanced people the best gas. Lewis furthermore characterized the horrors of gas warfare as exaggerations and insisted that chemical battles are the most efficient and economical of all fights.

Nieuwland, who became a renowned professor of chemistry at the University of Notre Dame, held similar beliefs. When questioned in 1936 about his discovery of lewisite, he asserted that poison gas rendered warfare more humane:

By the introduction of gas and other modern instruments of warfare, a progressively small percentage of combatants have been killed. In biblical times, thousands of men met in the middle of a plain and slashed one another until only a few were left standing. Today, the primary aim is not to kill but to incapacitate. And poison gas is an ideal method of achieving that aim. If a man goes to a hospital suffering from gas, he is as useless as if he were dead and to care for him, several other persons must be kept out of the battle lines. The chances are that ultimately the victim will recover.

Lewisite, the chemical formula of which is C2H2AsCl3, was given the code names ‘Methyl’ and ‘G-34′ during World War I. Perhaps its most enduring pseudonym is ‘Dew of Death.’ General Amos Fries, commander of the American Expeditionary Forces’ Gas Service and later director of the Chemical Warfare Service, so named it because there were plans to spray lewisite over the enemy from airplanes, and the gas was thought to be so deadly that ten planes armed with it could eliminate every trace of life in Berlin.

After the war, many newspaper articles sensationalized lewisite, attaching properties to it that the poison gas did not have. The Cleveland Plain Dealer on June 15, 1919, reported that lewisite was seventy-two times more powerful than mustard gas, considered the king of war gases at that time, and that a single drop on the back of a hand was fatal. Also, on February 26, 1923, the San Francisco Journal stated that lewisite would sterilize the ground so that ‘nothing will grow upon it for at least two years and perhaps longer’ and that one drop of it on living flesh caused ‘mortification.’

Lewisite is primarily a vesicant (causing blisters). It secondarily irritates the lungs and is a systemic poison. Upon contact with the skin, it causes large, painful, fluid-filled blisters, especially on the extremities, back, and scrotum. It also acts as a toxic lung irritant by causing swelling, inflammation, and destruction of the lining of the airways. The lining may subsequently slough off and form an obstruction in the airway, making it difficult to breathe. It is a systemic poison because absorption of arsenic through the skin causes pulmonary swelling, diarrhea, restlessness, weakness, below-normal temperature, and low blood pressure. A victim feels its effects immediately.

Lewisite can be delivered as a vapor, an aerosol, or a liquid and is believed to be most damaging in low-temperature, low-humidity, and dry nonalkaline conditions. It can be fatal in as little as ten minutes when inhaled in high concentrations. Lewisite is also persistent, lasting up to six to eight hours in sunny weather and even longer in cold, dry climates. The poison vapor is about seven times heavier than air and will therefore hover along the ground and enter caves, trenches, and sewers.

Mustard gas, like lewisite, is a vesicant. The two chemicals have many of the same characteristics, but there are also important distinctions. Mustard agents can be composed of sulfur- or nitrogen-based compounds, whereas lewisite is composed of arsenic. Sulfur mustard was the compound used extensively during World War I, first by the Germans and later by the Allies. Similar to lewisite, it is effective as a liquid, vapor, or aerosol, but in contrast to lewisite, its effects are delayed for up to a few hours. They will both form large blisters on the skin, but mustard lesions take about two to three times as long to heal. Whereas lewisite has a lower freezing temperature than mustard agents, both compounds can persist for days, even months under certain conditions. Mustard gas accounted for almost 40 percent of the total gas casualties in World War I.

After lewisite’s transfer to the American University Experimental Station, Captain James Bryant Conant was ordered to find a method to manufacture it in large quantities. Formerly an instructor of chemistry at Harvard University, Conant directed the Organic Research Unit No. 1 of the Offense Research Section at American.

Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Weaponry

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.