SS John Harvey on fire on 2 December 1943, at Bari | |
History | |
---|---|
United States | |
Name | John Harvey |
Namesake | John Harvey |
Operator | Agwilines Inc |
Builder | North Carolina Shipbuilding Company, Wilmington, North Carolina |
Yard number | 56 |
Way number | 2 |
Laid down | 6 December 1942 |
Launched | 9 January 1943 |
Completed | 19 January 1943 |
Fate | Bombed in Bari, 1943. Scrapped 1948. |
General characteristics | |
Class and type | Type EC2-S-C1 Liberty ship |
Displacement | 14,245 long tons (14,474 t) [1] |
Length | |
Beam | 57 ft (17 m) [1] |
Draft | 27 ft 9 in (8.46 m) [1] |
Propulsion |
|
Speed | 11 knots (20 km/h; 13 mph) [1] |
Range | 20,000 nmi (37,000 km; 23,000 mi) |
Capacity | 10,856 t (10,685 long tons) deadweight (DWT) [1] |
Crew | 81 [1] |
Armament | Stern-mounted 4 in (100 mm) deck gun for use against surfaced submarines, variety of anti-aircraft guns |
SS John Harvey was a U.S. World War II Liberty ship. This ship is best known for carrying a secret cargo of mustard gas and whose sinking by German aircraft in December 1943 at the port of Bari in south Italy caused an unintentional release of chemical weapons.
The John Harvey was built by the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company in Wilmington, North Carolina, and launched on 9 January 1943. Her Maritime Commission Hull Number was 878, and she was rated as capable of carrying 504 soldiers. She was operated by Agwilines Inc. [2]
In August 1943, Roosevelt approved the shipment of chemical munitions containing mustard agent to the Mediterranean theater. On 18 November 1943 the John Harvey, commanded by Captain Elwin F. Knowles, sailed from Oran, Algeria, to Italy, carrying 2,000 M47A1 mustard gas bombs, each of which held 60–70 lb of sulfur mustard. After stopping for an inspection by an officer of the 7th Chemical Ordnance Company at Augusta, Sicily on 26 November, the John Harvey sailed through the Strait of Otranto to arrive at Bari.
Bari was packed with ships waiting to be unloaded, and the John Harvey had to wait for several days. Captain Knowles wanted to tell the British port commander about his deadly cargo and request it be unloaded as soon as possible, but secrecy prevented his doing so.
On 2 December 1943 German aircraft attacked Bari, killing over 1,000 people, and sinking 28 ships, [3] including the John Harvey, which was destroyed in a huge explosion, causing liquid sulfur mustard to spill into the water, mixing with oil from the sunken ships, and a cloud of sulfur mustard vapor to blow over the city. [4] Nearly all crewmen of John Harvey perished in the sinking; this prevented the rescuers from knowing the real nature of the danger until an M47A1 bomb fragment was retrieved from the wreckage.
A total of 628 military victims were hospitalized with mustard gas symptoms, and by the end of the month, 83 of them had died. The number of civilian casualties, thought to have been even greater, could not be accurately gauged since most had left the city to seek shelter with relatives. [5]
Chemical warfare expert Dr. Stewart Francis Alexander found out about the mustard gas and gave the medics a correct treatment. While examining tissues collected on autopsied victims, he found out that mustard gas destroys white blood cells and other kinds of rapid dividing cells. This discovery was further investigated by pharmacologists, Louis S. Goodman and Alfred Gilman who used a mustard gas related agent, mustine, as the first chemotherapy treatment. [5]
In order to try to cover-up the in-theater possession of chemical weapons by the Allies, the deaths were attributed to "burns due to enemy action". [5] Reports were purged or classified but, since there were too many witnesses to keep the secret, in February 1944, the U.S. Chiefs of Staff issued a statement admitting to the accident and emphasizing that the U.S. had no intention of using chemical weapons except in the case of retaliation. [6] U.S. records of the attack were declassified in 1959 and the British government admitted the poison gas release and harm caused to the surviving victims.
Details of the attack were given in a 1967 article in the US Navy journal Proceedings, and in a 1976 book by Glenn B. Infield, Disaster at Bari. [7]
Bari is the capital city of the Metropolitan City of Bari and of the Apulia region, on the Adriatic Sea, southern Italy. It is the first most important economic centre of mainland Southern Italy. It is a port and university city as well as the city of Saint Nicholas. The city itself has a population of 315,284 inhabitants, and an area of over 116 square kilometres (45 sq mi), while the urban area has 750,000 inhabitants. The metropolitan area has 1.3 million inhabitants.
Mustard gas or sulfur mustard are names commonly used for the organosulfur chemical compound bis(2-chloroethyl) sulfide, which has the chemical structure S(CH2CH2Cl)2, as well as other species. In the wider sense, compounds with the substituents −SCH2CH2X or −N(CH2CH2X)2 are known as sulfur mustards or nitrogen mustards, respectively, where X = Cl or Br. Such compounds are potent alkylating agents, making mustard gas acutely and severely toxic. Mustard gas is a carcinogen. There is no preventative agent against mustard gas, with protection depending entirely on skin and airways protection, and no antidote exists for mustard poisoning.
Chemical warfare (CW) involves using the toxic properties of chemical substances as weapons. This type of warfare is distinct from nuclear warfare, biological warfare and radiological warfare, which together make up CBRN, the military acronym for chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear, all of which are considered "weapons of mass destruction" (WMDs), a term that contrasts with conventional weapons.
The use of toxic chemicals as weapons dates back thousands of years, but the first large-scale use of chemical weapons was during World War I. They were primarily used to demoralize, injure, and kill entrenched defenders, against whom the indiscriminate and generally very slow-moving or static nature of gas clouds would be most effective. The types of weapons employed ranged from disabling chemicals, such as tear gas, to lethal agents like phosgene, chlorine, and mustard gas. These chemical weapons caused medical problems. This chemical warfare was a major component of the first global war and first total war of the 20th century. Gas attack left a strong psychological impact, and estimates go up to about 90,000 fatalities and a total of about 1.3 million casualties. However, this would amount to only 3-3.5% of overall casualties, and gas was unlike most other weapons of the period because it was possible to develop countermeasures, such as gas masks. In the later stages of the war, as the use of gas increased, its overall effectiveness diminished. The widespread use of these agents of chemical warfare, and wartime advances in the composition of high explosives, gave rise to an occasionally expressed view of World War I as "the chemist's war" and also the era where weapons of mass destruction were created.
The United States is known to have possessed three types of weapons of mass destruction: nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. As the country that invented nuclear weapons, the U.S. is the only country to have used nuclear weapons on another country, when it detonated two atomic bombs over two Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. It had secretly developed the earliest form of the atomic weapon during the 1940s under the title "Manhattan Project". The United States pioneered the development of both the nuclear fission and hydrogen bombs. It was the world's first and only nuclear power for four years, from 1945 until 1949, when the Soviet Union produced its own nuclear weapon. The United States has the second-largest number of nuclear weapons in the world, after the Russian Federation.
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USS Menkar (AK-123) was a Crater-class cargo ship, converted from a Liberty Ship, commissioned by the U.S. Navy for service in World War II. She was first named after John White, a settler among those who sailed with Richard Grenville, to present-day North Carolina, in 1585, to found the Roanoke Colony. White acted as artist and mapmaker to the expedition. He became the governor, in 1587, of the colony, and his granddaughter, Virginia Dare, was the first English child born in the Americas. She was renamed and commissioned after Menkar, the second-brightest star in the constellation of Cetus. She was responsible for delivering troops, goods and equipment to locations in the war zone.
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The air raid on Bari was an air attack by German bombers on Allied forces and shipping in Bari, Italy, on 2 December 1943, during World War II. 105 German Junkers Ju 88 bombers of Luftflotte 2 surprised the port's defenders and bombed shipping and personnel operating in support of the Allied Italian Campaign, sinking 27 cargo and transport ships, as well as a schooner, in Bari harbour.
A chemical weapon (CW) is a specialized munition that uses chemicals formulated to inflict death or harm on humans. According to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), this can be any chemical compound intended as a weapon "or its precursor that can cause death, injury, temporary incapacitation or sensory irritation through its chemical action. Munitions or other delivery devices designed to deliver chemical weapons, whether filled or unfilled, are also considered weapons themselves."
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