Rhydymwyn Mustard Gas Plant

The Claim

Churchill was going to bomb the south coast of England with mustard gas

Now the claim sounds much more shocking than it actually is, though he did actually seem to intend to do this, but it was only supposed to be used in a defensive situation.

After the First World War, the Geneva Convention banned the use of “asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases and bacteriological methods of warfare” in 1925 due to the manner of deaths they caused, and mustard gas was most certainly included under this description.

The gas itself is a sulphur-based gas that smells of rotting eggs and causes huge blisters on the skin, and also destroys lung tissue, causing people to drown in their own blood. It was a horrific weapon, and everyone was happy to agree to the banning of it at the Geneva Convention of 1925.

This, however, didn’t stop people from making it; several countries began to create some kind of chemical weapon, and as for England, Churchill ordered it to be produced at an appropriate site.

A site was chosen in the small town of Rhydymwyn in north Wales, and on the 27th August, the British treasury approved £546,000 for the site to develop and store chemical weapons. The actual production site was called Rhydymwyn Valley Works and was kept in the highest secrecy.

It was also the site of the British attempt to research how to make an atomic bomb, but its main purpose was the production and storage of chemical weapons, and none seemed more effective in the First World War than mustard gas.

When the site became operational in 1941, it consisted of a huge network of underground tunnels and bombproof storage rooms and was initially used to store mustard gas produced at a nearby facility in Runcorn. In 1942, construction began on 5 new buildings to make the gas themselves, though for various reasons, only 2 of these ended up actually making any.

In 1943, there were over 100 operational buildings at the site with 2200 staff members, all sworn to secrecy. The exact amount of gas produced isn’t known publicly, as this was a top-secret site making something the country had agreed not to use, so information is sketchy, but most estimates put the total weight of gas produced at around 1500 tons.

So was Churchill going to bomb the south coast of England with mustard gas?

It seems so, but only in the event of a major German invasion that the manned defences couldn’t repel. The public story is that the gas was produced purely as a deterrent to stop other countries using it against England, which seems fair as the UK never used the gas in Europe at any point during the war in attack or defence, but the situation where it was said to be planned to be used never presented itself.

The idea was that in the event of a major German invasion, they could expect the south coast to be the target. The crossing from Europe is the shortest, and also they wouldn’t risk sending a fleet up the East or West coast, as it would be susceptible to land and air defences, so a direct assault on the south was the only expected situation.

If the coastal defences fell and the British front line was pushed back, the Germans would be able to establish free landing sites and invade the whole country, but in this event, the gas would be dropped by plane across parts of the south coast on which they landed.

It’s a very fortunate thing that this situation never happened, as the gas flows with the wind, and should it have been blowing north at the time it was dropped, all that would have happened is the next few miles of English defences would have died horribly.