Not yet Tuesday, but in a comment in his blog about gas mask accessories,
A Gustaf
, in a comment, asked me to elaborate on the snap-on filter to the German leather gas mask. The schnappdeckel. So, here is a little bit about that. I should mention that one of my snap-on filters came from Gus’s own collection.Now, gas warfare was never a pleasant business. From 1915 on, with the first successful gas attack made by the Germans, poison gas was used in immense quantities by everyone, and it was a continual race to develop more efficient and lethal gases, as well as to develop better protection.
At one point the British had a devilish idea! The German gas mask filters worked quite well against the lethal gas the British used. However, they came up with Diphenylchlorarsine. Now, Diphenylchlorarsine is toxic in itself, but it is also a powerful irritant. The big point about using it was that the chemical particles could manage to pass through the gas mask filter and into the mask.
Though not killing the person inside the mask, the irritant would get into the eyes, the mouth and lungs, causing excruciating pain. It would cause sneezing, vomiting, salivation, headache…
Nicknamed the maskenbrecher.
The point really wasn’t for the Diphenylchlorarsine to kill the enemy soldiers, it just made life inside the mask unbearable, making the man inside the mask want to claw at the mask and tear it off… And, as the chemical was not fired alone, but together with other gases, outside the mask the lethal gas was waiting, and that would kill the soldier…
So, a devilish invention indeed, adding to the suffering and death at the front. Please note, I am not saying the British were more brutal than the Germans, both sides raced to find better chemical ways of killing, and the Germans were the first to launch a successful gas attack.
The Germans had to come up with a solution, and quickly! So, they made the schnappdeckel. This is a snap-on cover that is fastened to the end of the filter to stop the Diphenylchlorarsine particles from getting through the filter. It is a rather simple invention, it consists of a steel frame with a layer of a porous paper like fabric and a fine mesh steel net inside to hold the fine filter in place. Three steel springs keep it in place on the filter proper.
So, here they are. The mask on the left has the schnappdeckel, the mask on the right does not. The last pictures are of the schnappdeckel itself.