The Dugway sheep incident, also known as the Skull Valley sheep kill, was a March 1968 sheep kill that has been connected to

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...

chemical and biological warfare programs at

Dugway Proving Ground Dugway Proving Ground (DPG) is a U.S. Army facility established in 1942 to test biological and chemical weapons, located about southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah, United States, and south of the Utah Test and Training Range. Location Dugway P ...

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...

. Six thousand

sheep Sheep or domestic sheep (''Ovis aries'') are domesticated, ruminant mammals typically kept as livestock. Although the term ''sheep'' can apply to other species in the genus '' Ovis'', in everyday usage it almost always refers to domesticated ...

were killed on ranches near the base, and the popular explanation blamed Army testing of

chemical weapon 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 ...

s for the incident, though alternative explanations have been offered. A report, commissioned by Air Force Press Officer Jesse Stay and first made public in 1998, was called the "first documented admission" from the Army that a

nerve agent Nerve agents, sometimes also called nerve gases, are a class of organic chemicals that disrupt the mechanisms by which nerves transfer messages to organs. The disruption is caused by the blocking of acetylcholinesterase (AChE), an enzyme that ...

killed the sheep at Skull Valley.

Background

Since its founding in 1941, much of the activity at

has been a closely guarded secret. Activities at Dugway included aerial

testing. According to reports from ''

New Scientist ''New Scientist'' is a magazine covering all aspects of science and technology. Based in London, it publishes weekly English-language editions in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. An editorially separate organisation publish ...

'', Dugway was still producing small quantities of non-infectious anthrax of a type used in the making of vaccines as late as 1998, 30 years after the United States renounced biological weapons.Hambling, David.
US army plans to bulk-buy anthrax
, ''New Scientist'', September 24, 2005. Retrieved November 27, 2007. There were at least 1,100 other chemical tests at Dugway during the time period of the Dugway sheep incident. In total, almost of nerve agent were dispersed during open-air tests. There were also tests at Dugway with other

weapons of mass destruction A weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or any other weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to numerous individuals or cause great damage to artificial structures (e.g., buildings), natu ...

, including 332 open-air tests of biological weapons, 74

dirty bomb A dirty bomb or radiological dispersal device is a radiological weapon that combines radioactive material with conventional explosives. The purpose of the weapon is to contaminate the area around the dispersal agent/conventional explosion with ...

tests, and eight furnace heatings of nuclear material under open air conditions to simulate the dispersal of fallout in the case of meltdown of aeronautic

nuclear reactor A nuclear reactor is a device used to initiate and control a fission nuclear chain reaction or nuclear fusion reactions. Nuclear reactors are used at nuclear power plants for electricity generation and in nuclear marine propulsion. Heat fr ...

Incident

In the days preceding the Dugway sheep incident the

conducted at least three separate operations involving nerve agents. All three operations occurred on March 13, 1968. One involved the test firing of a chemical artillery shell, another the burning of 160 U.S.

gallon The gallon is a unit of volume in imperial units and United States customary units. Three different versions are in current use: *the imperial gallon (imp gal), defined as , which is or was used in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Austr ...

s (600 liters) of nerve agent in an open air pit and in the third a jet aircraft spraying nerve agent in a target area about west of Skull Valley. It is the third event that is usually connected to the Skull Valley sheep kill. The incident log at Dugway Proving Ground indicated that the sheep incident began with a phone call on March 17, 1968, at 12:30 a.m. The director of the University of Utah's ecological and epidemiological contact with Dugway, a Dr. Bode, phoned Keith Smart, the chief of the

ecology Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overl ...

and

epidemiology Epidemiology is the study and analysis of the distribution (who, when, and where), patterns and determinants of health and disease conditions in a defined population. It is a cornerstone of public health, and shapes policy decisions and evide ...

branch at Dugway to report that 3,000

were dead in the Skull Valley area. The initial report of the incident came to Bode from the manager of a Skull Valley livestock company. The sheep were grazing in an area about from the proving ground; total sheep deaths of 6,000–6,400 were reported over the next several days as a result of the incident.Hoeber, Amoretta M. and Douglass, Jr. Joseph D. "The Neglected Threat of Chemical Warfare",
JSTOR
, ''International Security'', Vol. 3, No. 1. (Summer, 1978), pp. 55–82. Retrieved November 26, 2007. The Dugway Safety Office's attempt to count the dead sheep compiled a total of 3,843.Mauroni, Albert J. ''America's Struggle with Chemical-Biological Warfare'',
Google Books
, Praeger,

Westport, Connecticut Westport is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States, along the Long Island Sound within Connecticut's Gold Coast. It is northeast of New York City. The town had a population of 27,141 according to the 2020 U.S. Census. History ...

: 2000, p. 40, (). Retrieved November 26, 2007.

Possible causes

Previously obtained documents said a nerve agent demonstration occurred the day before the sheep deaths. On March 13, 1968, an

A-4 Skyhawk The Douglas A-4 Skyhawk is a single-seat subsonic carrier-capable light attack aircraft developed for the United States Navy and United States Marine Corps in the early 1950s. The delta-winged, single turbojet engined Skyhawk was designed ...

attack aircraft flew a test mission over the Dugway Proving Ground with chemical dispensers containing the nerve agent VX. One of the dispensers was not completely emptied during the test, and as the A-4 gained altitude after its bombing run, VX trickled out in a trail behind the aircraft, drifted into Skull Valley, north of the proving ground, and settled over a huge flock of sheep. One explanation in the aftermath of the incident was that a

chemical A chemical substance is a form of matter having constant chemical composition and characteristic properties. Some references add that chemical substance cannot be separated into its constituent elements by physical separation methods, i.e., w ...

biological agent A biological agent (also called bio-agent, biological threat agent, biological warfare agent, biological weapon, or bioweapon) is a bacterium, virus, protozoan, parasite, fungus, or toxin that can be used purposefully as a weapon in bioterroris ...

had escaped from the Dugway Proving Ground. Circumstantial evidence seemed to support this assertion; the

admitted to conducting open-air tests with VX in the days preceding the sheep kill. The Army intimated that a spray nozzle had malfunctioned during the test causing an aircraft to continue spraying VX as it climbed to higher altitudes. Regis, Edward. ''The Biology of Doom: The History of America's Secret Germ Warfare Project'',
Google Books
, Owl Books, 2000, p. 209, (). Retrieved October 10, 2008. It was reported that a small amount of VX was found in the tissue of the dead sheep. Other information contradicted the initial assumptions. One contradiction to nerve agent exposure as a cause came in the symptoms of some of the sheep following the incident. Several sheep, still alive, sat unmoving on the ground. The sheep refused to eat, but exhibited normal breathing patterns and showed signs of internal hemorrhaging. Regular breathing and internal hemorrhaging are inconsistent with nerve agent exposure, and "no other animals of any type, including cows, horses, dogs, rabbits, or birds, appeared to have suffered any ill effects, a circumstance that was hard to explain if VX had in fact caused the sheep deaths."

Aftermath

The incident affected the Army, and U.S. military policy within a year. The international infamy of the incident contributed to President

Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...

's decision to ban all open-air chemical weapon testing in 1969. The sheep incident was one of the events which helped contribute to a rise in public sentiment against the U.S. Army Chemical Corps during and after the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam a ...

.Mauroni, Al.
The US Army Chemical Corps: Past, Present, and Future
", ''Army Historical Foundation''. Retrieved October 10, 2008. Ultimately, the Chemical Corps was almost disbanded as a result. Following the incident, the Army and other state and federal agencies compiled reports, some of which were later characterized as "studies". A report which remained classified until 1978 and unreleased to the public until nearly 30 years after the incident was called the "first documented admission" by the Army that VX killed the sheep. In 1998, Jim Woolf, reporting for '' The Salt Lake Tribune'', made the content of the report public for the first time.Norrell, Brenda.
Skull Valley's Nerve Gas Neighbors
,
LexisNexis
, ''Indian Country Today'' (

Rapid City, South Dakota Rapid City ( lkt, link=no, Mni Lúzahaŋ Otȟúŋwahe; "Swift Water City") is the second most populous city in South Dakota and the county seat of Pennington County. Named after Rapid Creek, where the settlement developed, it is in western So ...

), October 26, 2005. Retrieved November 26, 2007. The report described the evidence that nerve agent was the cause of the sheep kill as "incontrovertible". The 1970 report, compiled by researchers at the U.S. Army's

Edgewood Arsenal Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) (sometimes erroneously called Aberdeen Proving ''Grounds'') is a U.S. Army facility located adjacent to Aberdeen, Harford County, Maryland, United States. More than 7,500 civilians and 5,000 military personnel work a ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...

, stated that VX was found in both snow and grass samples recovered from the area three weeks after the sheep incident. The report concluded that the "quantity of VX originally present was sufficient to account for the death of the sheep."Woolf, Jim.
Army: Nerve Agent Near Dead Utah Sheep in '68; Feds Admit Nerve Agent Near Sheep
,
LexisNexis
, ''The Salt Lake Tribune'', January 1, 1998. Retrieved November 26, 2007. Even after the report surfaced, the Army maintained that it did not accept responsibility for the incident and did not admit negligence. As late as 1997, one year before the report went public,

U.S. Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD or DOD) is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government directly related to national secur ...

officials stated that "the reason it (the report) was never published is because it wasn't particularly revealing.""DoD news briefing – Mr. Kenneth Bacon, ASD (PA)",
Lexis Nexis
, ''M2 Presswire'', April 8, 1997. Retrieved November 26, 2007. ''Deseret News'' reported in June 1994 that Ray Peck, who owned the sheep that were killed, was outside working during the May 13, 1968, incident; members of his family developed nervous-system illnesses that were similar to those reported by people exposed to low levels of VX in lab experiments. Also, the probe showed that medical tests the Army had used to claim humans were not affected are now considered inconclusive, and the Pecks had shown other signs of low-level VX exposure.
By Lee Davidson, Correspondent ''Deseret News'' Sunday, June 5, 1994 Retrieved July 2, 2012

In popular culture

This incident formed the basis for the 1972 motion picture '' Rage'', directed by and starring George C. Scott. The incident inspired Stephen King's novel ''

The Stand ''The Stand'' is a post-apocalyptic dark fantasy novel written by American author Stephen King and first published in 1978 by Doubleday. The plot centers on a deadly pandemic of weaponized influenza and its aftermath, in which the few survivin ...

''. Author

Richard Kadrey Richard Kadrey (born August 27, 1957) is a San Francisco-based novelist, freelance writer, and photographer. Kadrey was born in New York City, New York. Fiction Kadrey has written fifteen novels, including ''The New York Times'' Best Seller ...

used the incident as inspiration for the name of a fictional metal band, Skull Valley Sheep Kill, in his ''Sandman Slim'' novel series.

References

External links

* Biewin, John
"Sheep Kill"
(

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, February 8, 1998, accessed October 10, 2008. * Cianciosi, Scott
"The Sheep Incident"
''DamnInteresting.com'', March 17, 2008, accessed October 12, 2008. {{DEFAULTSORT:Dugway Sheep Incident 1968 in Utah 1968 in military history 1968 animal deaths 20th-century history of the United States Army March 1968 events in the United States Chemical warfare Non-combat military accidents Military in Utah Sheep farming in the United States Military scandals Chemical weapons of the United States