Britain completes destruction of old Chemical Weapon holding

With other events in the headlines we missed this:

I think the rest were dumped off Stranraer in the 1950s. My father saw a lot of RAOC guys with terrible blister wounds at the time. Both legs completely blistered out was one he described to me.

 

theres a BIG chunk of the Irish sea you dont want to go diving in.........

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaufort%27s_Dyke

 

http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/water/marine/uk/science/irishbristol/04.htm

I was surprised that this had been disclosed actually.

 

Yet another non story..

The last stockpiled CW was got rid of in the seventies. The final stock was a small quantity of Mustard which was used for decontamination training. We have not held offensive CW since the 50s..

Some CW has turned up from site remediation where stock was buried as a means of disposal. I suspect that this will never formally end as apparantly the records of where stuff was buried was never comprehensive.

So what exactly was Ingram announcing? Pretty soon we will be having announcements that the minister has changed his socks...

I sincerely hope that Porton does keep scientific quantities of CW agent so that the boffins are kept up to speed if ever we need them....

Stabby...

Dunno where you quotes come from mate, but I would check the sell by dates... Phosgene was never a nerve agent!

The main cause of "spillage" from the Beaufort Dyke seems to have been the skippers of the ships doing the dumping... apparantly they could'nt be arrsed to go the full distance to the dyke, so dumped stuff over the side as soon as they were out of sight of land...

Ain't contracting wonderful!

 

The skippers on the Beaufort Dyke disposal run were paid on a per-round-trip basis (allegedly), so it should come as no surprise if they took a few short-cuts.

 

Exactly what my father said.

 

When I was in EOD we was still digging the stuff up in the early 80's, Blister agent and Phosgene mainly, buried from WWII.

Using worn out NBC suits!

Regards
John

 

A slightly relevant post for this thread, has anyone here worked for the OPCW if so can you get in touch need tips.

As far as old stocks of CWs are concerned Germany has only just got rid of the last stockpiled old munitions, however there are still sites around the country that are known to contain intact munitions and agents it's just that they dont get registered until they are recovered, I would presume the same is the case in the UK.

 

The old Muensterlager Nord Area is still being dug up as its where lots of WW1 Chemical munmitions were buried; same for the Haltern Tariing Area. The Germans have just built the dogs bollox of a chemistry set in the Muenserlager area to deal with all sorts of nasties (less Nerve and WP).

 

I live near the Munster training area and have worked on the EOD side of things recovering the blinds from the impact areas and in my last job for the large destruction facility (dogs bollox of a chemistry set, I was head of lab there) that was built to destroy the old stocks and contaminated material.

 

Did they actually have chemical blinds there? I'll bet that was deep joy work on a hot summers day

 

Going back to the thing of offensive/defensive CW's what the heck is a defensive CW?

I recall being told in basic trg that UK didn't hold stocks of offensive only defensive but I don't know the difference, is it the same stuff but used differently?

Not a waah, serious question.

 

Under the CW convention only first use of CW agents is against the convention and international law. You are perfectly entitled to respond in kind if attacked I believe, hence the legallity of agents for defensive purposes. Also some stocks of agents are used in order to design defensive equipment to protect against the patho physiological effects of said agents.

As far as I'm aware UK policy was just to keep small stocks for purely defensive purposes.

 

Oh aye most have been cleared but there are still some to be found, mostly WW1 but also WW2 (was a testing area, including captured munitions) so basically just about everything that was manufactured up until 45 can be found there. Summer was ok ish (we were working in old soviet NVA suits or the Bundeswehr heavy Zodiak suits so you tend to sweat a tadge) what I thought was funny was getting given a pick-axe when the ground was frozen in winter (got chucked in the next bush).

 

What was said:

ie we still have a defensive capability in that we are trained to defend ourselves against chemical weapons.

There were defensive uses of chemical weapons, but that's a tactical concept not a different type of weapon.