Chemical Corps
The Chemical Corps is the branch of the United States Army tasked with defending against and using chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) weapons. The Chemical Warfare Service was established on 28 June 1918, combining activities that until then had been dispersed among five separate agencies of the United States federal government. It was made a permanent branch of the Regular Army by the National Defense Act of 1920. In 1945, it was redesignated the Chemical Corps.
For the offensive U.S. chemical weapons program, see U.S. chemical weapons program.United States Army Chemical Corps
1918–present
Cobalt blue and golden yellow
28 June (Organization Day)
History[edit]
Origins[edit]
Discussion of the topic dates back to the American Civil War. A letter to the War Department dated 5 April 1862 from New York City resident John Doughty proposed the use of chlorine shells to drive the Confederate Army from its positions. Doughty included a detailed drawing of the shell with his letter. It is unknown how the military reacted to Doughty's proposal but the letter was unnoticed in a pile of old official documents until modern times. Another American, Forrest Shepherd, also proposed a chemical weapon attack against the Confederates. Shepherd's proposal involved hydrogen chloride, an attack that would have likely been non-lethal but may have succeeded in driving enemy soldiers from their positions. Shepherd was a well-known geologist at the time and his proposal was in the form of a letter directly to the White House.[1]
World War I[edit]
The earliest predecessors to the United States Army Chemical Corps owe their existence to changes of military technology early in World War I. By 1915, the combatants were using poison gases and chemical irritants on the battlefield. In that year, the United States War Department first became interested in providing individual soldiers with personal protection against chemical warfare and they tasked the Medical Department with developing the technology. Nevertheless, troops were neither supplied with masks nor trained for offensive gas warfare until the U.S. became involved in World War I in 1917.[2] By 1917, the use of chemical weapons by both the Allied and Central Powers had become commonplace along the Western, Eastern and Italian Fronts, occurring daily in some regions.[3]
In 1917, Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane, directed the Bureau of Mines to assist the Army and Navy in creating a gas war program.[2] Researchers at the Bureau of Mines had experience in developing gas masks for miners, drawing poisonous air through an activated carbon filter.[4] After the Director of the Bureau of Mines, Van H. Manning, formally offered the bureau's service to the Military Committee of the National Research Council, the council appointed a Subcommittee on Noxious Gases.[2][4] Manning recruited chemists from industry, universities, and government to help study mustard-gas poisoning, investigate and mass-produce new toxic chemicals, and develop gas-masks and other treatments.[4]
Organization and mission[edit]
From 1952 until 1999 the Chemical Corps School was located at Fort McClellan. Since its closure due to Base Realignment and Closure in 1999, the Army's Chemical Corps and the United States Army Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) School are located at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. There are approximately 22,000 members of the Chemical Corps in the U.S. Army, spread among the Active, Army Reserve, and Army National Guard.
The school trains officers and enlisted personnel in CBRN warfare and defense with a mission is "To protect the force and allow the Army to fight and win against a CBRN threat. Develop doctrine, equipment and training for CBRN defense which serve as a deterrent to any adversary possessing weapons of mass destruction. Provide the Army with the combat multipliers of smoke, obscurant, and flame capabilities."
Regimental association[edit]
The Chemical Corps Regimental Association operates the "Chemical Corps Hall of Fame". The list includes soldiers from many different eras of the Chemical Corps history, including Amos Fries, Earl J. Atkisson, and William L. Sibert.[41] The organization conducts annual inductions, and the honor is considered the highest offered by the corps.[42]
Notable members[edit]
Baseball Hall of Fame baseball player, manager, and executive Branch Rickey served in the 1st Gas Regiment during World War I. Rickey spent over four months as a member of the CWS.[43] Other Hall of Famers also served in the CWS during World War I, among them Ty Cobb and Christy Mathewson; Mathewson suffered lung damage after inhaling gas in a training accident, which contributed to his later death from tuberculosis.[44][45] Robert S. Mulliken served in the CWS making poison gas during World War I, and he later earned the Nobel Prize in 1966 for his work on the electronic structure of molecules.