harbor pf Bari, on the Adriatic, Dec. 1943

On December 2, 1943 about fifty ships lay waiting at Bari, Italy for their cargoes to be unloaded. The harbor was so crowded that moored ships almost touched each other. Suddenly the German Luftwaffe thundered down out of a clear evening sky and laid waste to the busy port. In the span of twenty minutes, the raid became the worst bombing of Allied shipping since Pearl Harbor two years earlier. In fact this attack became known as Little Pearl Harbor. Seventeen Allied ships were destroyed. But the attack and destruction were only preludes of the horror to come. A U.S. Liberty ship laden with a top-secret cargo of mustard gas bombs received a direct hit and exploded, killing the entired crew and spreading its deadly toxic cargo across the water and through the air of Bari. The loss of life was appalling. More than one thousand Allied servicemen and more than one thousand civilians were…https://www.amazon.com/Nightmare-Bari-Liberty-Disaster-Coverup/dp/1889901210 Yes, it was covered up by the various militaries/governments and only revealed 10-20 years later. -r. similar to agent orange, to many other games. ……….. The birth of cancer chemotherapy: accident and research Natalia Godoy wrote the case study. Luis Gabriel Cuervo provided guidance and reviewed the case study. . This case-study was peer-reviewed by Dr Silvana Luciani and Dr Xavier Bonfill.  "Chance favors only the prepared mind" -Louis Pasteur Mustard gas is a vesicant chemical warfare agent synthesized by Frederick Guthrie in 1860 [2]. It was widely used as a weapon during WWI by both sides of the conflict with particularly harmful and deadly effects. It was responsible for 1,205,655 non-fatal casualties and 91,198 deaths [3]. The toxicity of this agent is dose-dependent [4]. The effects range from minor symptoms such as skin irritation and conjunctivitis to severe lung damage when inhaled…. The effects of mustard gas on blood cells and bone marrow were first reported by Dr Eward Krumbhaar in 1919 after treating exposed patients in France [6]. He noticed that even if the early clinical course of these patients was accompanied by an increase in the total number of white blood cells, those individuals who survived for several days developed a profound decrease in blood cells. During WWII the US Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) funded Yale University to conduct chemical welfare research in secrecy [2]. The research team was led by Dr Alfred Gilman, a pharmacologist and Dr Louis Goodman, a physician and pharmacologist. …on December 2, 1943 [2]. The SS John Harvey, a Liberty ship which was stationed on Italy's Bari harbor had a stockpile of 100 tons of mustard gas [4]. As a result of the bombardments of that night seventeen ships sank, including the SS John Harvey thus emitting the stockpile of mustard gas. Nobody aboard the SS John Harvey survived and as a consequence the townspeople of Bari did not know they were under mustard gas intoxication. In the days and weeks following this catastrophe the other military and civilian victims from the accident began to develop the familiar signs of mustard gas exposure. Lieutenant Colonel Stewart F Alexander, an American physician trained in chemical warfare confirmed the exposure to mustard gas based on autopsies of the victims that had profound medullar damage, particularly a low white blood cell count [4]. White blood cells are capable of rapidly dividing which prompted the attention that this chemical agent could be useful in killing rapidly dividing cancer cells as well. As a consequence, the event at Bari enhanced the suspicion that the effect of mustard gas on blood cells could have medical use. https://www3.paho.org/hq/index.php?option=com_content=&view=article=&id=9583=&lang=en …………….. Bari, on Italy’s Adriatic coast, was bustling. It was December 2, 1943. The British had taken Puglia’s capital in September, and though the front now lay just 150 miles to the north, the medieval city, with its massive cliffs cradling the sea, had escaped the fighting almost unscathed. Only a few miles outside of town, lines of women and children begged for black-market food, but here shop windows were full of fruit, cakes and bread. Young couples strolled arm in arm. Even ice cream vendors were doing a brisk trade. Bari was a Mediterranean service hub, supplying the 500,000 Allied troops engaged in driving the Germans out of Italy. Grand waterfront buildings were recently designated the headquarters of the United States Fifteenth Air Force. The liberating Tommies had already chased the Nazis from the skies over Italy, and the British who controlled the port were so confident they had won the air war that Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham announced that Bari was all but immune from attack. “I would regard it as a personal affront and insult if the Luftwaffe should attempt any significant action in this area,” he said that day at a press conference. Four days earlier, the American Liberty ship John Harvey had pulled in with a convoy of nine other merchantmen, and some 30 Allied ships were crammed into the harbor, packed against the seawall and along the pier. Their holds were laden with everything from food and medical gear to engines, corrugated steel for landing strips, and 50-gallon drums of aviation fuel. Visible on the upper decks were tanks, armored personnel carriers, jeeps and ambulances. Bright lights winked atop huge cranes that hoisted baled equipment up and out. At 7:35 p.m.—a blinding flash followed by a terrific bang. The ancient port’s single antiaircraft battery opened fire. Then came an earsplitting explosion, then another, and another. German Junkers Ju-88s flew in low over the town, dropping bombs short of the harbor. Smoke and flames rose from the city’s winding streets. As incendiaries rained down on the harbor, turning night into day, gunners aboard the anchored ships scrambled to shoot down the enemy—too late. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/bombing-and-breakthrough-180975505 …………… History of Chemical and Biological Warfare: An American Perspective9 Chapter 2 HISTORY OF CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WARFARE: AN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE JEFFERY K. SMART, M.A., Command Historian, U.S. Army Chemical and Biological Defense Command, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland PRE–WORLD WAR I DEVELOPMENTS The chemical agents first used in combat during World War I were for the most part not recent discoveries. Most were 18th- and 19th-century discoveries. For example, Carl Scheele, a Swedish chemist, was credited with the discovery of chlorine in 1774. He also determined the properties and composition of hydrogen cyanide in 1782. Comte Claude Louis Berthollet, a French chemist, synthesized cyanogen chloride in 1802. Sir HumphryDavy, a British chemist, synthesized phosgene in1812. Dichloroethyl-sulfide (commonly known as mustard agent) was synthesized in 1822, again in 1854, and finally fully identified by Victor Meyerin 1886. John Stenhouse, a Scotch chemist and inventor, synthesized chloropicrin in 1848.3 Many biological agents were naturally occurring diseases thousands of years old. Others were generally discovered or recognized in the 19th and 20th centuries. For example, plague was recognized about 3,000 years ago. Smallpox was known in China as early as 1122 BC. Yellow fever was first described in the 1600s. Carlos Finlay, a Cuban biologist, identified mosquitoes as the primary carrier of yellow fever in 1881, while Walter Reed, a U.S. Army physician, proved the agent to be a virus. Casimir-Joseph Davaine isolated the causative organism of anthrax in 1863, followed by Robert Koch, a German scientist, who obtained a pure culture of anthrax in 1876. Koch also discovered the causative agent for cholera in 1883. Rocky Mountain spotted fever was first recognized in 1873; Howard T. Ricketts, an American pathologist,discovered the causative agent in 1907. Ricketts also identified the causative organism of typhus in1909. F. Loffler and W. Schutz identified glanders in 1882. Sir David Bruce, a British pathologist, discovered the causative organism of brucellosis (it was named after him) in 1887. Ricin toxin was identified in 1889. Tularemia was first described in Tulare County, California History of Chemical and Biological Warfare: An American Perspective 11 named), in 1911, and the causative agent was identified the next year.3Early Chemical Weaponization Proposals and Usage There are numerous examples of chemical weapons used or proposed during the course of a campaign or battle. The Chinese used arsenical smokes as early as 1000 BC. Solon of Athens put hellebore roots in the drinking water of Kirrha in 600 BC. In 429 and 424 BC, the Spartans and their allies used noxious smoke and flame against Athenian-allied cities during the Peloponnesian War. About 200 BC,the Carthaginians used Mandrake root left in wine to sedate the enemy. The Chinese designed stink-bombs of poisonous smoke and shrapnel, along with a chemical mortar that fired cast-iron stinkshells. Toxic smoke projectiles were designed and used during the Thirty Years War. Leonardo da Vinci proposed a powder of sulfide of arsenic and verdi-gris in the 15th century.3 During the Crimean War, there were several proposals to initiate chemical warfare to assist the Allies, particularly to solve the stalemate during the siege of Sevastopol. In 1854, Lyon Playfair, a British chemist, proposed a cacodyl cyanide artilleryshell for use primarily against enemy ships. The British Ordnance Department rejected the proposal as “bad a mode of warfare as poisoning the wells of the enemy.”4(p22) Playfair’s response outlined a different concept, which was used to justify chemical warfare into the next century:There was no sense in this objection. It is considered a legitimate mode of warfare to fill shells with molten metal which scatters among the enemy and produced the most frightful modes of death. Why a poisonous vapor which would kill men without suffering is to be considered illegitimate warfare is incomprehensible. War is destruction, and the more destructive it can be made with the least suffering the sooner will be ended that barbarous method of protecting national rights. No doubt in time chemistry will be used to lessen the sufferingof combatants, and even of criminals condemned to death.4(pp22–23) There were other proposals for chemical warfare during the Crimean War, but none were approved. During the American Civil War, John Doughty, a New York City school teacher, was one of the first to propose the use of chlorine as a chemical warfare agent. He envisioned a 10-in. artillery shell filled with 2 to 3 qt of liquid chlorine that, when released, would produce many cubic feet of chlorine gas. If the shell should explode over the heads of the enemy, the gas would, by its great specific gravity, rapidly fall to the ground: the men could not dodge it, and their first intimation of its presence would be by its inhalation, which would most effectually disqualify every man for service that was within the circle of its influence; rendering the disarming and capturing of them as certain as though both their legs were broken.5(p27) As to the moral question of using chemical weapons, he echoed the sentiments of Lyon Playfair a decade earlier: As to the moral question involved in its introduction, I have, after watching the progress of events during the last eight months with reference to it, arrived at the somewhat paradoxical conclusion, that its introduction would very much lessen the sanguinary character of the battlefield, and at the same time render conflicts more decisive in their results.5(p33) Doughty’s plan was apparently never acted on, as it was probably presented to Brigadier Gen-eral James W. Ripley, Chief of Ordnance, who was described as being congenitally immune to new ideas.5 A less-practical concept, proposed the same year by Joseph Lott, was to fill a hand-pumpedfire engine with chloroform to spray on enemy troops.6 The 1864 siege of Petersburg, Virginia, generated several chemical warfare proposals. Forrest Shepherd proposed mixing hydrochloric and sulfuric acids to create a toxic cloud to defeat the Confederates defending Petersburg.5 Lieutenant Colonel William W. Blackford, a Confederate engineer, designed a sulfur cartridge for use as a counter-tunnelling device.7 The Confederates also considered using Chinese stink bombs against the Union troops. Elsewhere, the same year, Union Army Captain E. C. Boynton proposed using a cacodyl glass grenade for ship-to-ship fighting.5 Other than possibly Blackford’s cartridge, none of the proposals were used on the battlefield. Two wars at the turn of the century also saw limited use of chemical weapons. During the Boer War British troops fired picric acid–filled shells, although to little effect.8 During the Russo–Japanese War, which was closely observed by those who would plan World War I, Japanese soldiers threw arsenal rag torches into Russian trenches.3 … Hannibal hurled venomous snakes onto the enemy ships of Pergamus at Eurymedon in 190 BC. Scythian archers used arrows dipped in blood and manure or decomposing bodies in 400 BC. The use of dead bodies as the carrier of the biological agent proved particularly effective against an enemy’s water supply. Barbarossa used this tactic at the battle of Tortona in 1155. De Mussis, a Mongol, catapulted bubonic plague–infected bodies into Caffa in 1346. The Spanish tried wine in-fected with leprosy patients’ blood against the French near Naples in 1495. One of the more unique attempts at biological warfare was initiated in 1650 by Siemenowics, a Polish artillery general, who put saliva from rabid dogs into hollow spheres for firing against his enemies. The Russians cast plague-infected bodies into Swedish-held Reval, Estonia,in 1710. The proposed use of biological weapons was notlimited to Europe and Asia. In 1763, during Pontiac’s Rebellion in New England, Colonel Henry Bouquet, a British officer, proposed giving the Indians at Fort Pitt, Pennsylvania, blankets infected with smallpox. The disease, whether purposely disseminated or not, proved devastating to the Native American population. A similar plan was executed in 1785, when Tunisians threw plague-infected clothing into La Calle, held by the Christians. The 19th-century wars continued the same trend. In 1861, Union troops advancing south into Maryland and other border states were warned not to eat or drink anything provided by unknown civilians for fear of being poisoned. Despite the warnings, there were numerous cases where soldiers thought they had been poisoned after eating or drinking. Confederates retreating in Mississippi in1863 left dead animals in wells and ponds to denywater sources to the Union troops. A more carefully planned use of biological weapons was attempted by Dr. Luke Blackburn, a future governor of Kentucky, who attempted to infec tclothing with smallpox and yellow fever and then sell it to unsuspecting Union troops. At least one Union officer’s obituary stated that he died of smallpox attributed to Blackburn’s scheme. Yellow fever, however, could not be transferred in this manner. Since more soldiers died of disease during the Civil War than were killed on the battlefield, the effectiveness of Blackburn’s work was difficult to judge. Biological agents were also considered for anti-animal weapons during the 19th century. Louis Pasteur, the French chemist and biologist usually recognized for his humanitarian accomplishments, also experimented with the use of salmonella as an agent to exterminate rats. Others successfully used chicken cholera to exterminate rabbits and dysentery to kill grasshoppers. https://ke.army.mil/bordeninstitute/published_volumes/chembio/ch2.pdf ……….