WW1 Chemical warefare, different agents=different colour?

[Pandur]

ok, i think i know a lot bout this topic compared to the average person becouse i read a pretty smart book about it( ), and there arent soo many of them all in all.

but when i talk about it with people and they ask me if for example mustard gas was "yellow", i honestly can not answer this. my book doesnt touch this, maybe becouse its a silly question but i dont know. only thing i could find is that you can see the gas in high concentrations, like with a rolling gas cloud. it looks somewhat "misty" by my book. i didnt read it a long time but thats what i remember out of my head. nowhere it was mentioned that different agents have different coulours.

even worse, one of my friends is a person picking up some tiny little pice of information somewhere and making up his own big and almighty theories about it without being able to prove it, however in this case i can not prove him wrong there, means hes right as long as i cant prove him wrong.

i know mustard gas is somehow attributed the colour yellow, in diagrams showing the use of it in certain places, these areas are coloured yellow on maps. buw why, was it really yellow or yellowish?

anyone here can help me with this one? i was going through several hundred pages of this book but couldnt find a answer there

[JonS]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorine_gas

Yes, Mustard Gas was/is yellow. That's at least part of the reason it was called "mustard" gas (rather than capsicum gas, or sumfink), and also why chem contamination is - to this day - marked in yellow.

[Pandur]

argh, i didnt asked for chlorine but thats fine! i see its yellow too. at the chlorine page i found the wiki link to mustard gas and it said;

Pure sulfur mustards are colorless, viscous liquids at room temperature. However, when used in impure form as warfare agents they are usually yellow-brown in color and have an odor resembling mustard plants, garlic or horseradish, hence the name.

thanks JonS! i should have come up with wiki myself...well that wasnt too smart of myself. but i got the answer, i was wrong

[__Yossarian0815[jby]]

Mustard gas is not chlorine gas.

Chorine gas is yellowish/greenish and was marked green by the Germans in WWI.

Mustard gas (marked yellow) is actually a colurless liquid if pure. Wiki sez mustard gas is yellow/brown due to impurities, which I think technically is the dispersed liquid, not really the gas (because its decomposes if boiled).

edit: Posted too slowly I see

[Pandur]

Chorine gas is yellowish/greenish and was marked green by the Germans in WWI.

the marking, green tip and/or green cross (Grünkreuz) was only used for arty shells i think and they surely did not used pure chlorine in shells, only out of bottles as rolling cloud.

they used different agents in shells for grünkreuz. at least i remember phosgen and chlorpikrin, which are the german names for the agents. possibly others too.

i still wonder if one could actually see the colour of the agents when dipersed in the air and not haveing it neatly and in liquid form in a bottle.

[__Yossarian0815[jby]]

I don´t think you could see the greenness of chlorine on the battlefield. I´ve seen it in the lab and it is quite a faint greenness.

[Stalins Organ]

Dunno if this is also relevant, but some gases picked up names based on German shell markings.

Mustard gas had a yellow cross on the shells,

diphenylchloroarsine - Adamsite - had a blue cross, as did it's replacement diphenylcyonoarsine. A less powerful replacement for these was ethyldichloroarsine which had both gold and blue cross.

These were all temporary irritants (as far as I can tell)

chloropircin had a green cross and "green cross" was used a descriptor for other gasses that were primarily lung injuriants - chlorine, phosgene, diphosgene, and chloropicrin. they were considered "very harmful"

[souldierz]

In Canadian military History, Canadians faced the mustard gas in WW1 and it had serious and severe effects on the soldiers at the time, because they didn't know of it.Many horrible Canadian war stories emerged from it and were passed down and most speak of the color yellow.The gas would later lose its value and would not cause as many casualties, because the allies were now prepared for it, but even to this day, everyone fears a chemical attack.

Here's a little quote of the color of gas some troops saw at Ypres.

"During the morning of 22 April the Germans poured a heavy bombardment around Ypres, but the line fell silent as the afternoon grew. Towards evening, at around 5 pm, the bombardment began afresh - except that sentries posted among the French and Algerian troops noticed a curious yellow-green cloud drifting slowly towards their line."

They thought it was to mask a German infantry assault that was behind the cloud, so they got up and into ready positions.From there the gas went into the Allied trench's and the horror stories now emerge.It was devastating and the allies had to flee the area or die a horrible death.It was said the Germans did not push on and did not take advantage of the gap the Gas created, and the allies later would recover.

Another quote

"As we gazed in the direction of the bombardment, where our line joined the French, six miles away, we could see in the failing light the flash of shrapnel with here and there the light of a rocket. But more curious than anything was a low cloud of yellow-grey smoke or vapour, and, underlying everything, a dull confused murmuring."

Oh and on another note, all of life's answers do not come from a single book:D,Expand your search past the one book you hold:D.But from most stories I heard growing up.Yellow was the common color of Mustard Gas.Now if your friend is wrong you can now school him.

[Pandur]

chloropircin had a green cross and "green cross" was used a descriptor for other gasses that were primarily lung injuriants - chlorine, phosgene, diphosgene, and chloropicrin. they were considered "very harmful"

i think you slightly mixed things up there; the "mask breaker"(literaly translated from maskenbrecher) was the bluecross/blaukreuz. it was used befor or in conjunction with lung agents. it was no gas but ultra fine particles which passed through the particle filter of the masks of that time. you started sneezing and coughing, sometimes up to pukeing into your mask and sooner or later had to take it off and at that point you where vulnerable to the lung agents. later in the war blue and greencross was as good as never used alone, always together. this was called buntschiessen/coloured shooting as both agents alone did not have the nessesary effects against a gas protected enemy anymore.

the mustard gas/yellowcross was more used to deny areas, especially at the time the germans had shortages of it...it was also not used in gas form but was scattered around the area in liquid form. it was sticking to the ground and plants and whatnot and so was about to deny areas for up to 48 houers or longer in good weather. especially rain decreased the effect dramaticly. but often engouh it was also used in ways so to spash the enemy soldiers directly with the liquid with yellowcross-HE(Gelbkreuzbrisanz) shells, mostly on entente side as they had huge amounts of mustard gas and no shortages whatsoever, so its not only reserved to deny areas to the enemy but it was its primary function at least for germany.

@souldierz

i got a lot of first hand accounts writen down in the book here. all in german though. if you guys are interested i could translate some of them. they where written down at times the impressions where still "fresh". the foreword of the 2nd revised edition is from 1927 and the foreword of the 3rd revised edition i got is from 1936. means the original was written verry short after the war and got revised 2 times.

EDIT: most they are accounts of how different attacks where carried out put together by first hand accounts and literature on french/british and german side. so they are not "pure" eyewitness accounts or just very few of them.

Oh and on another note, all of life's answers do not come from a single book,Expand your search past the one book you hold.But from most stories I heard growing up.Yellow was the common color of Mustard Gas.Now if your friend is wrong you can now school him.

problem in this case there are not many books on this matter at all, and many modern books just copy what the old books say in this reagard

[souldierz]

That last part was just a light hearted joke.That was the reply I got growing up when I said 'I didn't see that it in the book'.It is hard to find new and solid proof of events, because no new stories emerge.

If you have any accounts on the Canadians in your book,I wouldn't mind reading a few short paragraphs or stories if you translated them.I heard about the mustard gas attack every Remembrance Day growing up,and even wore the nasty smelling gas mask the soldiers in WW1 wore when I was a kid.I'll never forget that.Right there at that point when the mask covered my face and I inhaled, I knew war was a dirty and very uncomfortable business.It would be interesting to see what kind of stories made it out of Canada, and what other people hear in other Countries.

[JonS]

There is a very good article - "Dying like so many rats in a trap" by Tim Cook - in The Army Doctrine and Training Bulletin, Vol.5, No.4, Winter 2002-2003. This is a Canadian publication. (Copy here)

As I recall, there is also a pretty good section or sections in Paddy Griffith's "Battle Tactics of the Western Front: The British Army`s Art of Attack, 1916-18"

[Stalins Organ]

i think you slightly mixed things up there; the "mask breaker"(literaly translated from maskenbrecher) was the bluecross/blaukreuz. it was used befor or in conjunction with lung agents. it was no gas but ultra fine particles which passed through the particle filter of the masks of that time.

I know that diphenylchloroarsineis not a gas, but it is normally lumped in with them.

I don't know what yuo think I was mistaken about - diphenylchloroarsine was not the only blue cross agent, and one of its replacements was diphenylaminechloroarsine, dispersed as an aerosol and also known as Adamsite. It was also used as a riot control agent by the USA in the 1920's & early 30's.