Terrible Gas

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 38, 15 February 1937, Page 7

Terrible Gas

Death Follows in Ten Minutes SEALED ROOMS OF LITTLE USE United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright. LONDON, February 12. Simultaneously with a sudden overnight blackout test at Bedford, which was chosen as an important strategic industrial town, while R.A.F. bombers carried out a realistic raid which seems to have awakened everybody, Victor Gollnnez published a book describing the Cambridge gas tests. He discloses that gas penetrated bricks, plaster, cracks covered with brown paper, sealed doors and fireplaces in one room. Gas which was outside would be fatal in 2£ minutes and would kill persons indoors in ten minutes. Scientists tested incendiary bombs and discovered the official remedy of spreading sand useless. Even welding thermite,’ which was comparatively mild incendiary, ourned under wuter through the metal sand. Completely gas tight rooms could only be constructed by experts at great expense. The test of the 17s Od civilian gas mask showed that it would protect against chlorine for four hours, but did not solve the problem of protection against mustard gas, which attacks the whole bodv.

The Daily Herald and the Daily Mirror recently detailed accounts of secret tests which have been carried out during the past two years bv a dozen scientists in a room at the biochemical laboratory at Cambridge with sealed windows and chimneys, revealing that deadly gases cannot bo kept out. und that even wearers of gas-masks/ there were susceptible to the influence] of the gases used. ANTI-GAS TRAINING SYDNEY, Feb. 13. The New South Wales Railways Department is co-operating with tho Defence Department in teaching the procedure to be adopted in gas attacks. By the end of 1937 jt is expected that nearly (KXX) railway employees will he capable of giving skilled assistance to the military in tho event of a gas attack. The Defence Department is erecting chambers for gas experiments for the military at llandwick and for the Navy at Garden Island. There will be specially sealed rooms in which men wearing masks will be placed while gas is released about them. Instructors, through) sealed window's, observe the progress of the experiments.