Chemical Corps (United States Army)
Seal of the Chemical Corps
The Chemical Corps is the branch of the
United States Army tasked with defending
against Chemical, Biological, Radiological,
and Nuclear (CBRN) weapons. The corps was
founded as the Chemical Warfare Service
during World War I; it eventually became the
Chemical Corps in 1946.
History
Early history
The use of chemical weapons in an offensive
context by the United States military did not
actually begin until World War I but discus-
sion of the topic dates back to the American
Civil War. A letter to the War Department
dated April 5, 1862 from New York City res-
ident John Doughty proposed the use of
chlorine shells to drive the Confederate Army
from its positions. Doughty included a de-
tailed drawing of the shell with his letter. It is
unknown how the military
reacted
to
Doughty’s proposal but the letter was un-
noticed in a pile of old official documents un-
til modern times. Another American, Forrest
Shepherd of New Haven, also proposed a
chemical weapon attack against the Confed-
erates. Shepherd’s proposal involved hydro-
gen chloride, an attack that would have likely
been non-lethal but may have succeeded in
driving soldiers from their positions. Shep-
herd was a well-known geologist at the time
and his proposal was in the form of a letter
directly to the White House.[1]
The earliest predecessors to the United
States Army Chemical Corps owe their exist-
ence to the changing of military technology,
through the use of poison gas, early in World
War I. The United States War Department’s
first interest in providing individual soldiers
with personal protection against chemical
warfare came in 1915 and they tasked the
Medical Department with developing the
technology. Despite this early interest, troops
were neither supplied with masks nor trained
for offensive gas warfare until the U.S. be-
came involved in World War I in 1917.[2] By
1917 use of chemical weapons by both the Al-
lied and Central Powers had become com-
monplace along the Western, Eastern a