Hello
seen this on the web
http://mustardgas.org/photos.htm
http://mustardgas.org/
===================================
http://www.lithgowmercury.com.au/ne...-phantom-war-reveals-its-secrets/1237570.aspx
Base's phantom war reveals its secrets
LEN ASHWORTH
07 Aug, 2008 07:56 AM
For more than 70 years the Marrangaroo military base has jealously guarded its wartime secrets, despite decades of Chinese whispers about the clandestine activities that took place there when the defence of Australia posed the prospect of a no holds barred conflict.
The activities were so top secret that few within the armed forces even knew what was going on behind the fences and the barbed wire.
Now the bushland within the base is finally giving up its secrets from the phantom war preparations a readiness for waging chemical warfare!
And the Defence Department wants the community, particularly the residents of Marrangaroo, to be fully informed of what is happening on the site.
In recent months there has been increasing publicity in the Lithgow Mercury, the Illawarra Mercury and in a well researched book by Geoff Plunkett finally revealing the role played by troops involved in chemical warfare ordnance at Marrangaroo and in the railway tunnels at Clarence, Glenbrook and Picton.
The Japanese were advancing relentlessly through the South Pacific and were known to be using chemical weapons, barred by the Geneva convention.
Australia decided at the highest level that it would be necessary to fight fire with fire and began importing under maximum secrecy supplies of phosgene and mustard gas bombs.
The bombs were stored in the disused railway tunnels at several locations, including Marrangaroo and Clarence.
There were other secret depots in Queensland.
But there was a Catch 22 angle to the operation; the function was so secret that few wartime records were kept and it took painstaking research by Plunkett to track down veterans to fill in some of the gaps in the information void.
This in turn provided the necessary leads for todays Army to launch the clean up of Marrangaroo seven decades after the last shots were fired in anger and with the chemical weapons never used. And this week the Defence Department invited the Mercury to an exclusive tour of the base for an update on the major operation now under way there.
--------- page 2
In charge of the rehabilitation program is Major Kevin Cuthbertson who was stationed at Marrangaroo in the late 1980s.
These days he is the Australian Defence Force Manager of Explosive Ordnance Disposal with the Joint Logistics Command and admits that he regrets being unable to spend more time on his farm at Dubbo.
Until recently the Army did not even know if stories were true about chemical warfare bombs being buried on the site at the end of the war.
It was well known that much of the stock had been destroyed in a rather haphazard manner by piling the bombs onto a blazing fire then puncturing them from a distance with Bren gun fire so that the contents would be incinerated.
Only recently it was confirmed that other bombs had been buried and only now are the burial sites being identified.
Now their surprisingly intact remains are being excavated from the burial pits.
Some of these are only a few hundred metres from homes in Reserve Road.
The Armys Incident Response Regiment has itself been digging up some sites and recovering mustard gas and phosgene aerial bombs, all of which so far have been found to be empty.
There have, however, been some bomb fuses uncovered that still had traces of explosives.
Now a civilian team of experts has been engaged to investigate and decontaminate the remainder of the site after metal detectors revealed other unknown objects under the ground.
All will be carefully excavated by hand with containment tents erected over the excavation sites.
They will be treated as potentially live until proved otherwise but authorities are confident that nothing posing a risk will be found.
Fire Brigade and ambulance authorities are being briefed on developments just in case!
Major Cuthbertson said that the base had been searched years ago for bomb burial sites but we were miles off. He said that until Geoff Plunkett managed to track down the evidence from veterans and from the meagre records the existence of the buried ordnance had over the years been nothing more than Chinese whispers.
---------- page 3
During the war the program was absolutely top secret.
The armourers were RAAF personnel who were given only five days rudimentary training in the handling of deadly chemicals before finding themselves on the job.
They did their on the job training at Marrangaroo before being transferred to other secret chemical dumps at Glenbrook, Picton and places north.
Few people even in high places knew what was going on and the project was so secret that after the war old soldiers seeking assistance from Veterans Affairs were told you must be dreaming.
As far as officialdom was concerned this was a war initiative that never existed.
There was a record of the Marrangaroo railway tunnel being used for storage but no record of any such involvement at the Army Depot.
It seems that the servicemen who buried the phosgene and mustard gas bombs were later shipped off to Townsville overnight.
Such is the level of priority for the remediation that progress is being reported continuously to the Defence Minister and any finds have to be reported to the International Office For The Prohibition Of Chemical Weapons in The Hague.
The contractors will not only be cleaning up the legacy of a chemical war that thankfully never occurred but also the heavy metal contamination from conventional weapons.
The Mercury was shown a paddock that at a distance appeared to be carpeted in woodchip.
Up close the woodchip was revealed as literally thousands of rounds of exploded ammunition and casing shrapnel ranging from .303 calibre small arms ordnance to .50 calibre aircraft cannon shells.
At wars end it seems these too had been burnt in pits in one of the more remote areas of the base.
As they exploded the residue was scattered over a wide area of the paddock.
Major Cuthberson said some remediation was carried out in 2004-05 with the result that water leaving the base is cleaner than anywhere else in the region. The latest follow up program is the most comprehensive since the end of the war, made possible thanks to the recent information that came to light to qualify what in the past had been largely hearsay and those Chinese whispers.
--------- page 4
When the contractors get into full swing next month the Defence Department will organise a day for residents of Marrangaroo to be invited to the base to see for themselves what is going on and to receive an assurance that any risk that night have existed decades ago has now long passed.
FOOTNOTE: Major Cuthbertson will next week briefly leave the Winter chill of Marrangaroo for a short term assignment in the tropical Gilbert Islands.
He will be leading a team to dispose of a large amount of relics left behind by the Americans and Japanese on the island of Tarawa, a bloody battlefield of the Pacific War. Then it will be back to Marrangaroo to oversight the operation there then hopefully time on that farm at Dubbo.
==
.
seen this on the web
http://mustardgas.org/photos.htm
http://mustardgas.org/
===================================
http://www.lithgowmercury.com.au/ne...-phantom-war-reveals-its-secrets/1237570.aspx
Base's phantom war reveals its secrets
LEN ASHWORTH
07 Aug, 2008 07:56 AM
For more than 70 years the Marrangaroo military base has jealously guarded its wartime secrets, despite decades of Chinese whispers about the clandestine activities that took place there when the defence of Australia posed the prospect of a no holds barred conflict.
The activities were so top secret that few within the armed forces even knew what was going on behind the fences and the barbed wire.
Now the bushland within the base is finally giving up its secrets from the phantom war preparations a readiness for waging chemical warfare!
And the Defence Department wants the community, particularly the residents of Marrangaroo, to be fully informed of what is happening on the site.
In recent months there has been increasing publicity in the Lithgow Mercury, the Illawarra Mercury and in a well researched book by Geoff Plunkett finally revealing the role played by troops involved in chemical warfare ordnance at Marrangaroo and in the railway tunnels at Clarence, Glenbrook and Picton.
The Japanese were advancing relentlessly through the South Pacific and were known to be using chemical weapons, barred by the Geneva convention.
Australia decided at the highest level that it would be necessary to fight fire with fire and began importing under maximum secrecy supplies of phosgene and mustard gas bombs.
The bombs were stored in the disused railway tunnels at several locations, including Marrangaroo and Clarence.
There were other secret depots in Queensland.
But there was a Catch 22 angle to the operation; the function was so secret that few wartime records were kept and it took painstaking research by Plunkett to track down veterans to fill in some of the gaps in the information void.
This in turn provided the necessary leads for todays Army to launch the clean up of Marrangaroo seven decades after the last shots were fired in anger and with the chemical weapons never used. And this week the Defence Department invited the Mercury to an exclusive tour of the base for an update on the major operation now under way there.
--------- page 2
In charge of the rehabilitation program is Major Kevin Cuthbertson who was stationed at Marrangaroo in the late 1980s.
These days he is the Australian Defence Force Manager of Explosive Ordnance Disposal with the Joint Logistics Command and admits that he regrets being unable to spend more time on his farm at Dubbo.
Until recently the Army did not even know if stories were true about chemical warfare bombs being buried on the site at the end of the war.
It was well known that much of the stock had been destroyed in a rather haphazard manner by piling the bombs onto a blazing fire then puncturing them from a distance with Bren gun fire so that the contents would be incinerated.
Only recently it was confirmed that other bombs had been buried and only now are the burial sites being identified.
Now their surprisingly intact remains are being excavated from the burial pits.
Some of these are only a few hundred metres from homes in Reserve Road.
The Armys Incident Response Regiment has itself been digging up some sites and recovering mustard gas and phosgene aerial bombs, all of which so far have been found to be empty.
There have, however, been some bomb fuses uncovered that still had traces of explosives.
Now a civilian team of experts has been engaged to investigate and decontaminate the remainder of the site after metal detectors revealed other unknown objects under the ground.
All will be carefully excavated by hand with containment tents erected over the excavation sites.
They will be treated as potentially live until proved otherwise but authorities are confident that nothing posing a risk will be found.
Fire Brigade and ambulance authorities are being briefed on developments just in case!
Major Cuthbertson said that the base had been searched years ago for bomb burial sites but we were miles off. He said that until Geoff Plunkett managed to track down the evidence from veterans and from the meagre records the existence of the buried ordnance had over the years been nothing more than Chinese whispers.
---------- page 3
During the war the program was absolutely top secret.
The armourers were RAAF personnel who were given only five days rudimentary training in the handling of deadly chemicals before finding themselves on the job.
They did their on the job training at Marrangaroo before being transferred to other secret chemical dumps at Glenbrook, Picton and places north.
Few people even in high places knew what was going on and the project was so secret that after the war old soldiers seeking assistance from Veterans Affairs were told you must be dreaming.
As far as officialdom was concerned this was a war initiative that never existed.
There was a record of the Marrangaroo railway tunnel being used for storage but no record of any such involvement at the Army Depot.
It seems that the servicemen who buried the phosgene and mustard gas bombs were later shipped off to Townsville overnight.
Such is the level of priority for the remediation that progress is being reported continuously to the Defence Minister and any finds have to be reported to the International Office For The Prohibition Of Chemical Weapons in The Hague.
The contractors will not only be cleaning up the legacy of a chemical war that thankfully never occurred but also the heavy metal contamination from conventional weapons.
The Mercury was shown a paddock that at a distance appeared to be carpeted in woodchip.
Up close the woodchip was revealed as literally thousands of rounds of exploded ammunition and casing shrapnel ranging from .303 calibre small arms ordnance to .50 calibre aircraft cannon shells.
At wars end it seems these too had been burnt in pits in one of the more remote areas of the base.
As they exploded the residue was scattered over a wide area of the paddock.
Major Cuthberson said some remediation was carried out in 2004-05 with the result that water leaving the base is cleaner than anywhere else in the region. The latest follow up program is the most comprehensive since the end of the war, made possible thanks to the recent information that came to light to qualify what in the past had been largely hearsay and those Chinese whispers.
--------- page 4
When the contractors get into full swing next month the Defence Department will organise a day for residents of Marrangaroo to be invited to the base to see for themselves what is going on and to receive an assurance that any risk that night have existed decades ago has now long passed.
FOOTNOTE: Major Cuthbertson will next week briefly leave the Winter chill of Marrangaroo for a short term assignment in the tropical Gilbert Islands.
He will be leading a team to dispose of a large amount of relics left behind by the Americans and Japanese on the island of Tarawa, a bloody battlefield of the Pacific War. Then it will be back to Marrangaroo to oversight the operation there then hopefully time on that farm at Dubbo.
==
.
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