Over the next three months, Schieber and the six German chemical engineers came to Loucks’s home in Heidelberg every other Saturday for all-day work sessions. Loucks met periodically with one of the Germans who spoke excellent English to keep track of how the work was progressing. The scientists prepared a detailed report on the Sarin production process at Falkenhagen that was illustrated with numerous drawings and charts, including a manning table and a complete list of equipment and materials. Loucks sent the finished report to Washington for review by Chemical Corps officials. Although the engineers at Edgewood benefited from the information, they insisted on making extensive modifications to the German manufacturing process at a cost of about $1 million. For example, instead of using silver-lined reactors and pipes, they built the production apparatus out of other corrosion-resistant materials that were available in the United States but not in Germany.
In addition to Schieber, EUCOM hired about thirty German chemical warfare experts, some of whom were later transferred to Edgewood Arsenal to continue their work on American soil. This recruitment effort, initially code-named Operation Overcast, was part of the postwar competition among the victorious Allies for the cream of Nazi Germany’s scientific and industrial brainpower. In September 1946, President Harry Truman authorized the expanded recruitment of German scientists and engineers in areas deemed vital to U.S. national security. The program was dubbed Project Paperclip because the files of German scientists who were of interest to the U.S. government were marked with paper clips. The War Department’s Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) conducted background investigations on the chosen scientists. In February 1947, JIOA director Bosquet Wev submitted the first set of personnel files to the Departments of State and Justice for review. When several of the recruited German scientists turned out to be former Nazi Party members, in violation of federal immigration policy, JIOA simply cleansed their files of Nazi references. The U.S. government provided each Paperclip scientist brought to the United States with a house, a car, and a generous salary.
Parallel to and partially in coordination with Project Paperclip, the British government ran Operation Matchbox, under which German scientists and technicians were identified and recruited for defense work to enhance Britain’s military potential at Germany’s expense. Three German chemists who had played key roles in the development and production of nerve agents—Eric Traub, Max Gruber, and Friedrich “Fritz” Hoffmann— were offered research positions at Porton Down. Gruber was known to have been an ardent Nazi, and Hoffmann had synthesized poison gases for the Chemical Warfare Laboratories at the University of Würzburg and the Luftwaffe’s Technical Research Institute near Berlin. In some cases, British intelligence offered the German scientists immunity from war-crimes prosecution in exchange for their knowledge. On September 18, 1945, Britain invited Australia to participate in Operation Matchbox, and between 1946 and 1951, the Australian government recruited at least 127 German scientists and technicians, including thirty-one known Nazi Party members.
Several of the German chemical weapons specialists recruited by Porton Down later moved to the United States, where they were granted U.S. citizenship and prominent scientific positions. At Edgewood, Paperclip scientists conducted research on nerve agents, including tests on laboratory animals and human volunteers, and developed new gas masks, protective clothing, and antidotes. Fritz Hoffmann went to Edgewood in 1947 and was initially assigned to work on organophosphate insecticides, but the next year the Chemical Corps allowed him to start a classified research program on nerve agents. According to a former colleague, Hoffmann was a large, gentle man who spoke softly in a thick German accent and had an encyclopedic knowledge of organophosphorus chemistry. Another German chemist and former Nazi Party member, Theodor Wagner-Jauregg, arrived at Edgewood in 1948. For his part, Walther Schieber continued to work for the Chemical Division of EUCOM in Heidelberg. Despite growing suspicions that he was involved with arms smugglers, fugitive Nazi war criminals, and Soviet spies, he remained on the U.S. government payroll until 1956.
DURING HIS TOUR in Germany, Colonel Loucks also established close ties with his counterparts in the French Army. Although France had ratified the Geneva Protocol in 1926, it had reserved the right to use chemical weapons in retaliation and therefore maintained an offensive development program at the Poudrerie Nationale du Bouchet, near the town of Vert-le-Petit outside of Paris. On April 1, 1945, the arsenal was attached to the French Army’s Chemical Warfare Service (Service de l’Arme Chimique) and was renamed the Research Center du Bouchet (Centre d’Études du Bouchet, or CEB). After the end of World War II, a team of chemists at CEB analyzed Tabun obtained from seized German weapons. In 1948, French scientists succeeded in synthesizing Tabun, ensuring an ample supply of the agent for testing purposes.
In addition to conducting laboratory research on the German nerve agents, the chemical armaments division of the Technical Service of the French Army performed field trials with captured German munitions at an open-air testing site in Algeria, which was then a French colony. The Algerian site had been established in 1935 for large-scale experiments with chemical warfare agents that could not be performed for safety reasons in metropolitan France. Shortly before World War II, the French Foreign Legion had expanded the testing facilities in Algeria. In 1945, immediately after the war, the French Army began to conduct trials there of confiscated German munitions containing Tabun.
Known as the Seasonal Experiment Station (Centre d’Expérimentations Semi-Permanent), the French chemical weapons testing complex in Algeria conducted open-air trials during the winter and early spring, in annual campaigns. It consisted of a support base at Beni Ounif code-named “B1,” and a proving ground code-named “B2-Namous,” located near the valley of Oued Namous about 100 kilometers east of the Moroccan border. With the exception of a few nomadic herders, this part of the Algerian desert was uninhabited and largely denuded of vegetation, making it ideal for the testing of chemical weapons. Despite the area’s remoteness, Beni Ounif was easily accessible by military aircraft and was on the rail line from Oran to Colomb Béchar.
In early 1949, the French Army invited Colonel Loucks to visit the chemical weapons testing site in Algeria, and he made arrangements through the U.S. military attaché in Paris. On February 23, having received his travel orders only that morning, Loucks traveled to the French air base at Wiesbaden and boarded a C-47 with a pilot and a crew of six, which took off at about 1:00 p.m. The plane made a refueling stop at Istres in southern France and then flew on to Maison Blanche Airport in Algiers, where Loucks spent the night. The next morning, after breakfast in the French officers’ mess, he made a courtesy call on the base commandant.
Around 11:00 a.m., a three-propeller Junker arrived from Beni Ounif. Loucks was introduced to the pilot, Captaine Holl, a French chemist who spoke fairly good English. As soon as the plane had been refueled and loaded with boxes of technical supplies, fresh vegetables, and other cargo, the two men took off. After flying for four and a half hours, they landed on the air strip at Beni Ounif, an oasis about 100 kilometers north of Colomb Béchar. When the Junker had rolled to a stop on the landing strip, several French officers came out to greet them, including the base commander, Lieutenant Colonel Bonnard. Because the desert air was quite cold, the French officers wore bernouses made of heavy red or white flannel over their uniforms, and the commander arranged for Loucks to receive one as well. They then enjoyed a cup of hot tea, made a brief inspection tour of the experiment station, and sat down for an excellent dinner with a total of nineteen people—seventeen officers and two civilians.
Lieutenant Colonel Bonnard explained to Loucks that the elevation of the testing site, at 800 meters above sea level, gave the area a temperate climate remarkably similar to that of the potential battlefields of central Europe. Although the desert heat was intense in the summer months, the temperature during the first third of the year was cool during the day and quite cold in early morning—the optimal time fo
r open-air testing because of the stability of the atmosphere. During the annual testing campaigns, a large number of French personnel traveled to Beni Ounif and lived under fairly rustic conditions. The staff included chemists, physicians, nurses, toxicologists, mathematicians, meteorologists, mechanics, construction crews, laboratory assistants, and maintenance workers. The base also had a garrison of French troops, who secured the testing site before each open-air trial to prevent nomadic Bedouins from wandering into the exclusion zone, which covered more than 6,000 square kilometers. In one unfortunate incident, a herd of camels had accidentally been killed by a toxic cloud.
The next morning, February 25, 1949, everyone awoke at five, when the sky was still dark. Loucks shivered in the cold air, and an Arab servant brought him a basin of hot water to wash with. After breakfast, they climbed into jeeps and drove 70 kilometers on a heavily potholed dirt road out to the proving ground at B2-Namous. The vast, desolate plateau had a flat desert floor pockmarked with millions of smooth stones. Loucks was shown an artillery battery from which the chemical shells were fired. The impact zone had been demarcated with a circular grid pattern drawn over 1,800 square kilometers. The grid lines farthest out from the center were spaced one kilometer apart, but as one approached the target zone where the chemical cloud was most concentrated, the distance between the lines shrank to a hundred meters and then to ten meters.
During the early trials of Tabun after the war, the French technicians had limited open-air testing to small-scale releases because they were uncertain how the German nerve agent would behave in the atmosphere. By 1949, however, trials of Tabun-filled munitions had become routine. The French tested German 150 mm shells, American 105 mm phosphorus shells that had been emptied and recharged with German nerve agents, and artillery rockets, a type of delivery system that was particularly well suited to chemical attacks.
Loucks was taken to the observation post to observe the firing of Tabunfilled shells. Watching from a safe distance, he saw the shells burst on the target grid, releasing white clouds that faded into invisibility as they exposed a series of sheep and pigs tethered at various distances downwind. Loucks was disappointed by the test results, which were not as dramatic as he had expected. Because a large proportion of the nerve agent was destroyed by the explosion, only the animals positioned within a few hundred feet of the explosion received a lethal dose.
The next morning, February 26, Loucks inspected the laboratory at Beni Ounif. Then, after a hearty lunch of couscous and michoui washed down with red wine, Loucks, Bonnard, and five other French officers took off in the Junker for the short flight to Colomb Béchar, a frontier-style town in the desert. After spending the night, Loucks returned to Germany.
DESPITE THE CLOSE collaboration between Porton and Edgewood, the British government did not want to become overly dependent on the United States in an area it considered vital to its national security. As an “insurance policy” against the emerging Soviet chemical threat, London decided to acquire an independent Sarin production capability. The first step was to build a pilot plant to test manufacturing techniques, produce enough Sarin for offensive and defensive research, and preserve the option to acquire a deterrent stockpile in the future.
Although Porton Down was responsible for laboratory R&D, a second British government–owned facility known as the Research Establishment at Sutton Oak specialized in process development for the manufacture of chemical warfare agents and the filling of munitions. Founded in the early 1920s, Sutton Oak was located near the city of Saint Helens in Lancashire, a heavily industrialized part of northern England. At the request of the British Ministry of War, Sutton Oak began to develop an improved production process for Sarin. Because the Research Establishment was located in a densely populated area, any production of nerve agent beyond the laboratory scale raised obvious safety concerns. The pilot plant would therefore have to be built in an isolated area where any accidental release of the lethal agent would not endanger the local population.
The British Ministry of Supply, which was responsible for the development, testing, and production of chemical weapons, began in September 1947 to look for a safer location. This search was based on several criteria, including remoteness, the prevailing winds, and the availability of electricity, water, and a local labor force. Gradually, fourteen candidate sites were narrowed down to two. The best option appeared to be a Royal Air Force (RAF) base on Anglesey, an island off the northern coast of Wales that had served during the war as a filling station for mustard bombs. Not only was Anglesey close to the peninsula where Sutton Oak and most of the British chemical industry were located, but an offshore site was desirable for safety reasons. The other promising location was a disused RAF base called Portreath, near the village of Nancekuke on the north coast of Cornwall. The 800-acre base was at the top of a coastal cliff, so that any toxic gases released accidentally would be blown out to sea. Nancekuke had one major drawback, however: it was located near the southwestern tip of England, whereas Sutton Oak and the chemical industry were in the north.
The deciding factor turned out to have nothing to do with logistics. Nancekuke was fifteen miles from Saint Ives, a famous artists’ colony, and the wife of the director-designate of the Sarin pilot plant was a painter who had her heart set on living in Saint Ives. Her preference apparently won out, and in February 1949, the British Ministry of Supply approved the founding of the Chemical Defence Establishment at Nancekuke. Ironically, most of the staff were transferred from Sutton Oak and spoke with North country (Lancashire) accents.
Construction of the Sarin pilot plant at Nancekuke began in August 1951 and was completed two years later. The design provided for continuous rather than batch manufacturing and included innovations in automatic process control that enabled the plant to operate largely unmanned. Production capacity was about one ton of Sarin per week, or two and a half tons when operated on a three-shift basis. This output provided enough of the agent for experimental purposes and to build up a small stockpile. Nancekuke also had research laboratories, service buildings, engineering workshops, stores, and welfare facilities.
Meanwhile, the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was intensifying, bringing with it competition in all categories of armament, including the German nerve agents.
CHAPTER SEVEN
BUILDING THE STOCKPILE
AS THE COLD WAR DEEPENED, the United States relied heavily on its nuclear monopoly to deter a Soviet invasion of Western Europe or Japan. Because U.S. policy makers viewed nuclear weapons as a panacea for America’s security problems, the Army Chemical Corps went into decline. Its budget was slashed by nearly two thirds in 1947, and there was even a short-lived proposal to downsize Edgewood Arsenal and move it to Camp Siebert, Alabama.
Nevertheless, development of the nerve agents continued. Researchers at Edgewood Arsenal evaluated several members of the so-called G series— Sarin (GB), Soman (GD), Ethylsarin (GE), Cyclosarin (GF), Isopentylsarin (GH), and other structural analogues. The Edgewood scientists sought to identify the agent with the best combination of militarily useful characteristics, including high toxicity, stability, nonflammability when explosively dispersed, ease of decontamination, availability of antidotes or protective drugs, and feasibility and economy of production.
A debate ensued over whether Sarin or Soman should be chosen as the standard U.S. nerve agent. An Edgewood chemical engineer, Benjamin L. Harris, did a study of Soman and determined that it was superior to Sarin in both toxicity and persistence. The synthesis of Soman required only a minor alteration in the manufacturing process for Sarin, namely the replacement of one alcohol with another. Still, whereas the production of Sarin used ordinary isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol, which was cheap and widely available, Soman required pinacolyl alcohol, which was difficult and costly to produce. Since no large-scale manufacturing facility for pinacolyl alcohol existed, a dedicated plant would have to be designed and built at considerable expense. Despite this hurdle, Harris a
rgued to Edgewood technical director Seymour Silver that the military advantages of Soman outweighed the drawbacks.
Saul Hormats, a weapons developer, disagreed. He noted that Sarin was not only easier to manufacture than Soman but was superior for attacking enemy troop concentrations because it evaporated more readily to form a lethal vapor. Another drawback of Soman was the lack of a reliable antidote. The agent inactivated (“aged”) cholinesterase irreversibly within two minutes of exposure, making it hard to treat friendly troops who might be exposed accidentally. Unless and until an improved antidote was developed, Hormats argued, Soman would be too dangerous to produce, transport, and handle. In view of these considerations, in May 1948 the Chemical Corps Technical Committee endorsed the adoption of Sarin as the standard U.S. nerve agent.
Meanwhile, tensions in Europe were rising. On June 24, 1948, after the three Western powers had introduced a new currency, the deutsche mark, in their occupation zones, the Soviet Union cut off all land and rail traffic to West Berlin in an effort to starve the western enclave into submission. Over the next year, a massive U.S. and British airlift kept the city’s population supplied with food and other vital goods, ultimately leading Stalin to lift the blockade on May 12, 1949. At the same time, however, Moscow tightened its grip over the rest of Eastern Europe. U.S. intelligence agencies estimated that the Soviet Union had a large numerical edge in conventional forces in Europe and was modernizing its chemical arsenal, even as it worked feverishly to develop a nuclear weapon. According to a top secret assessment in January 1949 by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “The Soviet Union possibly possesses limited stockpiles of German nerve gases, and has the ability to produce them, but probably could not engage in large-scale nerve gas warfare before mid-1950.”
War of Nerves Page 15
