Gas warfare and Zeppelins

Anyone know if there is evidence of zeppelins dropping gas canisters, shells or other gas weapons?...and did London ever consider it a threat?

[leo]

I am sure it was contemplated. Why it wasn't done may have been technical reason or perhaps a matter of weight. I have never read of any attempt to do so.

leo

leo

From what I've read, they seemed indeed to be a threat. Those monsters were sort
of like the WW II VIs and V2 rocket bombs---a terror weapon.
Capt. Max Pruss and Capt. Ernst
Lehmann Commanders of the Hindenburg were
once Zeppelin commanders on bombing
missions to London in World War I.

[leo]

I wonder if it might have been a matter of air pressure which prevented the Germans fron using gas from the Zeps. They operated at some pretty impressive heights and perhaps that would cause the pressurized shells or bombs to leak.

[rammjaeger]

I guess the dropping of gas bombs by Zeppelins would not be able to reach the necessary concentration of poison gas for killing a lot of people (given WWI conditions).

Late in the war the German military was thinking about bombing New York - and this threat was realistic but without military value.

I could - like Leo - also imagine that technical problems were preventing gas bombing activities.

One of the "technicalities" was that at the time of the zep raids, the Germans released poison gas from tanks by turning valves. Refer to any standard military book on trench warfare.

[Graeme]

Certainly the first deployment of poison gas was by the use of cylinders of gas but gas shells were first used during 1916; Zeppelins were therefore quite able to have carried these as "cargo" had they been required to do so. I think that one of the major factors holding them back was the potential for retaliation upon their own civilian population by the Allies (the British had been manufacturing mustard gas since early 1915).

Agreed. The Germans were not prepared to open a Pandora's box by releasing poison gas on a civilian population. The consequences were obvious.

By 1918, they had developed a small incendiary bomb for use in Zeppelins or Gothas that was designed to be dropped in massive numbers over the wooden dockyard and related areas of London, and that would almost certainly have caused massive damage. They elected not to do so for the same reasons.

Consider this: Hitler never used poison gas during WW2--not even against soldiers, let alone civilian populations--even though he was fully expected to (remember all the gas masks issued to the citizens of London, and carried as standard equipment on soldiers?). Given his ethical standards, especially as the war was being lost, are you surprised that it wasn't used by Zeppelins or Gothas during the first war?

In the book "A Higher Form of Killing" (a great book on gas and biological warfare including a great story of US use of insects in WW2 vs. Germany) mentions that except in use against unprepared troops gas is ineffective as a miltary weapon, but is an excellent terror weapon. Gas/biological agents are not great miltary weapons but great terror weapons (much like the V2 of WW2, too inaccurate for precision use, but a good civilian terror weapon). Fortunately in WW1 no gas was delivered by bombing and no gas was used in WW2. It is interesting to note the reason why Hilter did not use gas in WW2. The Germans noting a lack of published articles about DDT concluded wrongly that the US was making nerve gas. This scared the Germans, who actually had delvoped several nerve agents (Sarin among them).

Why would the zeps have carried artillery shells? Have you ever seen the bomb racks in a zep? Have you ever seen an artillery shell? I suggest you replay "Hell's Angels" or "Zeppelin" and take a good look at the bomb racks that are shown in both movies. How you gonna get an artillery shell in a bomb rack like that? And even if you did, such a shell always drops sideways, due to air resistance on the descent, never nose first, and it would be a rare thing if the nose fuse ignited from that position...it would have to skid and strike something solid. More often than not, it would hit base first in a skid. You might as well drop a cannister and hope the impact knocks off the valve. And, good luck standing at the observer's car hatch and manually dropping it without going overboard yourself.