I can only imagine how awful those suits were to wear in the California desert, even in March. My wife tells me that even the modern-day chemical warfare suits are terrible.
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“SOMEWHERE IN CALIFORNIA — Even deadly mustard gas holds no qualms for these soldiers in the chemical warfare service who are ready to fight poisonous, skin-burning gas by wearing clothes–treated in a secret solution–which resist and neutralize any dangerous vapor. They’re shown here decontamination a jeep which was sprayed with mustard gas. 03-19-42”
Those suits look rubber. I can’t imagine wearing one. The ones we wore and I assume Brenda did too were charcoal suits. They were sweat factories too b
For EOD work we had a different setup than the standard MOPP suits for chemical agent work. We wore TAP (Toxicological Agent Protective) suits. They were butyl rubber outer suits with beeswax impregnated cotton undergarments. From the picture it doesn’t appear that the suits changed much from the 1940s to the late 1990s. They were hot and miserable. You were already drenched with sweat long before you even put your mask on. We had MOPP suits too but they were less effective for the type of work we’d be doing for chemical weapons responses.
Joe, they sound miserable!