![]() ![]() ![]() The most frequently used chemicals during World War I were tear-inducing irritants rather than fatal or disabling poison. See also: Weapons of World War I 1914: Tear gas Widespread horror and public revulsion at the use of gas and its consequences led to far less use of chemical weapons by combatants during World War II. The use of poison gas by all major belligerents throughout World War I constituted war crimes as its use violated the 1899 Hague Declaration Concerning Asphyxiating Gases and the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare, which prohibited the use of "poison or poisoned weapons" in warfare. The widespread use of these agents of chemical warfare, and wartime advances in the composition of high explosives, gave rise to an occasionally expressed view of World War I as "the chemist's war" and also the era where weapons of mass destruction were created. In the later stages of the war, as the use of gas increased, its overall effectiveness diminished. Gas was unlike most other weapons of the period because it was possible to develop countermeasures, such as gas masks. The killing capacity of gas was limited, with about 90,000 fatalities from a total of 1.3 million casualties caused by gas attacks. This chemical warfare was a major component of the first global war and first total war of the 20th century. The types of weapons employed ranged from disabling chemicals, such as tear gas, to lethal agents like phosgene, chlorine, and mustard gas. They were primarily used to demoralize, injure, and kill entrenched defenders, against whom the indiscriminate and generally very slow-moving or static nature of gas clouds would be most effective. The use of toxic chemicals as weapons dates back thousands of years, but the first large-scale use of chemical weapons was during World War I. The war showed this rational to be entirely wrong and rifles and bayonets became much shorter after the war, and after WW2 much shorter again.Contains Chlorine, phosgene (a choking agent) and mustard gasĪ French gas attack on German trenches in Flanders, Belgium (1917). They were made that length so that an infantryman or artilleryman could use it to fight a cavalryman who was using a sword from horse back. ![]() But not produced as a module attached to the face piece until after the war.įor a great deal of WW1 equipment - its a case of looking at it and asking "why did they make it like that ?" and frequently the answer is, what to us is the obviously better design was simply not identified and introduced until after the war. A very good design - simple, reliable, robust, minimal number of parts and very cheap to make. ![]() The valve will give minimal flow resistance as the wearer exhales but will automatically seal closed when the wearer inhales. This round cover will be protect a circular "flutter valve", a soft rubber disk held I place by a stud through the centre of the disk and resting on a seat like a tap seat. Very hard to tell from the photo, but to me the cover of the exhaust valve is stamped, tinplate sheet steel not plastic. To allow the wearer to breathe more easily, the mask was reduced in size to lessen the volume of air within, and the mask's filter plate was therefore noticeably reduced in diameter. Known as the Rahmenmaske, it was introduced sometime around the spring to late summer of 1916 (sources don't agree on this point). The mask shown on the right is the third model Gummimaske. An example of this mask, shown below left, retains the early 11-11S three layer filter. The second model Gummimaske, known as the Bandmaske, was the first gas mask to have a screw-in filter, which meant it could be replaced during a gas attack. Due the short period of time that they were manufactured and used, and the fact that the early single layer filter proved unsuccessful, they are exceptionally rare. This version was known as the Linienmaske. The very first version of the Gummimaske was introduced sometime between August and September 1915. I'll start a separate thread on the later M17 leather gas masks. I thought I'd start a thread on German rubberized cloth gas masks (Gummimasken) and their carriers, and share some examples that I've found over the past 8 years. ![]()
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