The M34 cluster bomb was the first mass-produced

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 ...

weapon meant to deliver the chemical agent sarin (GB). A large stockpile of M34s was destroyed between 1973 and 1976.

History

As the

United States Army Chemical Corps The Chemical Corps is the branch of the United States Army tasked with defending against chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) weapons. The Chemical Warfare Service was established on 28 June 1918, combining activities that unti ...

focused its efforts on the weaponization of sarin

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 ...

(GB) during the 1950s the M34 cluster bomb was the first such weapon mass-produced by the Army.Smart, Jeffery K.
Medical Aspects of Chemical and Biological Warfare
'': Chapter 2 — History of Chemical and Biological Warfare: An American Perspective,
PDF
pp. 41-42), ''

Borden Institute The Borden Institute is a U.S. Army “Center of Excellence in Military Medical Research and Education”. In 1987, U.S. Army Colonel Russ Zajtchuk conceived the idea for a “Center of Excellence in Military Medical Research and Education,” u ...

'', Textbooks of Military Medicine, PDF via Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base, accessed December 10, 2008. The weapon was the United States' first major nerve agent weapon after World War II.

Specifications

The M34 had a diameter of and a length of . This particular cluster bomb was designed to carry a total weight of of sarin nerve agent, the weapon's total weight was . The M34 cluster bomb held 76 M125 bomblet sub-munitions, each of the sub-munitions held of GB. The weapons also contained a parachute, an opening delay, fuze, and a burster which held of

tetryl 2,4,6-Trinitrophenylmethylnitramine commonly referred to as tetryl ( C7 H5 N5 O8) is an explosive compound used to make detonators and explosive booster charges. Tetryl is a nitramine booster explosive, though its use has been largely superseded ...

.Mauroni, Albert J. ''Chemical Demilitarization: Public Policy Aspects'',
Google Books
, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003, p. 19, ().

Storage and disposal programs

When Operation Cut Holes and Sink 'Em (CHASE) was cancelled the Army had to scrap a plan to dump more than 20,000 M34 cluster bombs at sea. In 1972 there were still more than 21,000 M34 cluster munitions stored at the

Rocky Mountain Arsenal The Rocky Mountain Arsenal was a United States chemical weapons manufacturing center located in the Denver Metropolitan Area in Commerce City, Colorado. The site was completed December 1942, operated by the United States Army throughout the late ...

, near

Denver Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the wes ...

. Between 1973 and 1976 the Army began destroying these munitions under the auspices of Project Eagle. To dispose of the munitions the Army drained the Sarin from the bomblets, mixed it with a caustic inside a reactor chamber, and spray-dried the brine. Project Eagle resulted in the demilitarization and destruction of about of Sarin and of the spray-dried salt. The salt was stored in 18,000 steel and

fiberboard Fiberboard (American English) or fibreboard (British English) is a type of engineered wood product that is made out of wood fibers. Types of fiberboard (in order of increasing density) include particle board or low-density fiberboard (LDF), med ...

drums and placed in a toxic storage site at Rocky Mountain Arsenal.Natural Resource Trustees for the State of Colorado. ''Hazardous Materials and Waste Management Division Natural Resource Damage Assessment for the Rocky Mountain Arsenal Commerce City, Colorado'',
Site Description
, October 24, 2007, p. 9, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, accessed December 10, 2008.

References

{{U.S. chemical weapons Chemical weapon delivery systems Cluster munition Chemical weapons of the United States Military equipment introduced in the 1950s

History

Specifications

Storage and disposal programs

See also

References