Proto-chemical weapons in the US Civil War?

Saphroneth

Banned
@Saphroneth I meant I could make chlorine now, not an electric generator (although with time I could probably manage that).
Yes, I just mean "I could do it now" doesn't always hold in the past because the available equipment now wasn't available then. To take an example, these days it's largely cookbook chemistry to make guncotton, but in the 1700s they wouldn't know where to start.
 
Let us for a moment one side or the other can make chlorine. They still need a lot of it. The first gas attack at Ypres used 150 TONS of chlorine! In addition to the gas, you need to include the weight of the cylinders in which it was carried (and making lots of cylinders capable of holding chlorine under significant pressure is beyond the capability of the CSA). Let's say that makes the total load to be transported from the nearest rail head to the battlefield 200 tons. Let's say only about 1/3 of this amount has to be used, that' still about 75 tons that has to be transported from the nearest rail head - certainly doable but not trivial. OTL it took the Germans some time to set up the cylinders for the attack, and then they had to wait for the wind to be in the right direction.

Most of the CW battles, until the latter part of the war at Petersburg for example, were not long term sieges with fixed lines but more like Gettysburg, Shiloh, Antietam, etc where the armies came together for a relatively short period of a few days at the most and then moved on either in advance or retreat. These are not conditions where you can do the sort of Ypres gas attack. CW era artillery was almost always direct fire, which does not work with gas shells even if you can make them. On top of this weather forecasting during the CW era was limited at best, so you could only attack with gas if the wind was right at that moment, and hope it did not shift. Finally, if your troops are going to take advantage of a gas attack, they have to be equipped to operate in a contaminated environment - if not when the gas dissipates the enemy retakes the abandoned positions.

Neither side in the ACW had the industrial capacity to make the required amounts of chlorine and the pressure tanks to deploy it, even if small amounts of gas or a few tanks could be made. Long range indirect fire which is needed for gas attacks by artillery did not exist to any extent. Once off the rail net, transporting large numbers of gas cylinders becomes a significant logistical burden over bad roads with animal drawn wagons. Developing, and producing in the needed numbers, of adequate gas masks is absolutely beyond the capability of the CSA, as far as the Union goes maybe but the technology has not been invented yet. As opposed to the fixed battlelines of WWI with trench warfare, the vast majority of ACW battles large and small were battles of moving armies. The exceptions like Vicksburg, occurred where the CS forces had no access to the supply lines that would allow them to get enough gas to matter, or Petersburg, occurred too late in the war when the CSA had lost much of its limited industry and the rail net was shattered.

Even if the use of gas was considered morally acceptable, certainly the south and most likely the north, simply did not have the capacity to do it.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Even if the use of gas was considered morally acceptable, certainly the south and most likely the north, simply did not have the capacity to do it.
I don't think you'd see chlorine. I think you'd see irritants like sulphur-charcoal or the like, as I've cited.
Those are a bit more transportable.

The prevailing wind is an issue, though - but of course the best way to handle it would be to basically move in on the heels of the smoke as it dissipates, as the cloud is blown through the enemy defensive line and acts as a kind of short-term "chemical barrier" preventing the troops who've been driven out from coming back in.

This could be used to break through a fort line.
 
The last two threads underscore my initial premise of using sulfuric acid: unlike chlorine, it was readily made and could be transported in (sturdy) glass containers as a liquid. I'll admit it would be problematic to use as a weapon unless launched mechanically or perhaps even sprayed as a liquid from point-blank range.
 
Sulfuric acid is ineffective as a chemical weapon for "gas warfare". There is no way that CW technology or even close can weaponize it, or produce enough quantity. Hurling glass containers of this means only a short range effect, and really only a problem if you are splattered directly. Acjieving a high enough concentration in droplet form takes a lot of acid and a means to aeroslize it, not just a bursting glass container. At point blank range while you are busy aiming a hand bulb sprayer at the face of your opponent, as spraying it on his uniform is ineffective, he will be gleefully inserting a bayonet in your body.

While noxious smokes are doable in the ACW, achieving useful concentrations where and when you want them, and sparing your own troops would be a matter of sheer luck, if possible at all. Any effort the CSA makes to try this takes their very limited industrial and intellectual resources away from doing something useful. The Union might do better or not, of course they have more resources to waste.
 
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