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Updated: June 13, 2025
Once alive to its great importance, they must have strained all efforts to obtain an efficient method of using it at the front. Phosgene was remarkable for its peculiar "delayed" effect. Relatively small quantities, inhaled and followed by vigorous or even normal exercise, led to sudden collapse and fatal effects sometimes more than twenty-four hours after the attack.
Similar discharges were made against the French on two occasions in December, and against the Lens sector on December 30th. The compounds used in the bombs were phosgene and a mixture of phosgene and chlorpicrin. These attacks increased in number during the ensuing months. German Projector Improvements.
The French had equipped their troops with protection against chlorine, but had provided no protection against phosgene," "the results of Green Cross ammunition were recognised by the troops. During the big operations before Verdun, however, the enemy did their very utmost to substitute the gas mask M2 for the respirator XTX. Gas mask M2 was a protection against Green Cross.
The successful development of the phosgene cloud probably arrived too late for the Ypres attacks, and a variety of reasons must have led to the postponement of its use until such time as it might once again give Germany the real initiative.
There are also marked references to the surprise nature of our gas attacks, which are an unconscious tribute to the successful tactical developments which have already been referred to, and also numerous other references to the "delayed" action of phosgene.
The question of entirely new war chemicals is of general interest. The first main group of substances with which we were faced during the war contained such types as chlorine and phosgene, whose chief line of attack was directed towards the respiratory system. Specific protection rapidly developed and, once obtained, led to violent attempts to penetrate it or "break it down."
Chlorine was important, nor only as a raw material for most of the known chemical warfare products, but also, in the liquid form, for cloud attack. Owing to the development of protection, the use of liquid chlorine for the latter purpose became obsolete. Phosgene.
Thus, before the use of phosgene by the Germans at the end of 1915, definite reports reached the Allies regarding the projected use of at least ten new gases by Germany, which were described not only chemically, but as being colourless, odourless, powerful, blinding, and instantaneously deadly! No such volume of propaganda was experienced before the first German cloud attack at Ypres.
Indeed, Germany probably held up the use of phosgene until her own protection against it was developed, although Schwarte's book claims that the German mask issue in 1915 was mainly a protection against chlorine.
It became known as the "Tube Helmet" when fitted with a mouthpiece for exhaled air, and, in this form, countered the formidable enemy phosgene attack in December, 1915. The later addition of hexamine, suggested from Russia, greatly improved the efficiency against phosgene and led to the P.H. helmet, which was issued from January, 1916.
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