War nuts
Question: An entry in the local school logbook for the village of Nash in
north Buckinghamshire, dated 9 November 1917, states 鈥淟etter of thanks received
from the Director of Propellant Supplies for chestnuts gathered for the making
of munitions鈥�.
We have had visions of chestnut shrapnel, but this can鈥檛 be right, can it? So
what were chestnuts used for and what is their link with propellants?
Answer: This question was asked in the February 1987 issue of Chemistry
in Britain, the Royal Society of Chemistry鈥檚 monthly magazine. Subsequent
correspondents gave the answer that the chestnuts were used in the First World
War for the production of acetone which, in turn, was needed for the production
of cordite, the smokeless powder used as propellant in small arms ammunition and
artillery.
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Smokeless powders such as cordite had changed the face of battle. They
offered longer range than 鈥渂lack powder鈥�, better known as gunpowder. Producing
only a faint blue-grey haze, they permitted machine guns to fire without
obscuring the gunner鈥檚 view and they permitted snipers to operate without
revealing their position. Cordite is a mixture of the explosives guncotton (65
per cent), nitroglycerine (30 per cent) and petroleum jelly (5 per cent),
gelatinised with the aid of acetone before being worked into threads for
use.
Prewar techniques for large-scale acetone manufacture were inadequate to meet
the demand during the First World War. As minister of munitions, David Lloyd
George appointed Chaim Weizmann, a chemist who had emigrated from mainland
Europe in 1904, to increase acetone production using a process of his own
invention involving the bacterial fermentation of maize starch. Factories at
Poole in Dorset and King鈥檚 Lynn in Norfolk produced up to 90 000 gallons of
acetone a year. When supplies of maize ran short, it was supplemented as a
source of starch with horse chestnuts, collected by schoolchildren. Since the
factory locations were withheld for the sake of security, the schools addressed
their parcels to government offices in London, but workers at the General Post
Office apparently knew to send them directly to the factories.
This is how Lloyd George鈥檚 acetone problem left traces in school record
books. It also left, in his own words, 鈥渁 permanent mark on the map of the
world鈥�. Lloyd George was so grateful to Weizmann, an ardent Zionist, that on
becoming prime minister he gave Weizmann direct access to the foreign secretary,
A. J. Balfour. The result was the famous and controversial 鈥淏alfour Declaration鈥�
of 2 November 1917 stating that the British government viewed with qualified
favour 鈥渢he establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish
people鈥�. When the state of Israel came into existence, Weizmann was elected as
its first president in 1948 and held that position until his death in 1952.
Michael Goode
Harwell, Oxfordshire
Tony Cross, who is the curator of the Curtis Museum in Alton, Hampshire, drew
our attention to similar school records from his own area and to an explanation
he received for them from the Imperial War Museum. The answer below summarises
that explanation鈥擡d
Answer: During the First World War some 258 million shells were used by the
British Army and the Royal Navy. The basic propellant used to fire these shells,
and for a whole host of other military purposes, was cordite. The solvents used
in manufacturing cordite were acetone and ether-alcohol.
Acetone was produced almost entirely by the destructive distillation of wood,
for which the world market was dominated by the great timber-growing countries.
Before the war acetone was mainly imported from the US. In 1913 a modern factory
was established in the Forest of Dean but, by the outbreak of war in August
1914, the stocks of acetone for military use stood at only 3200 tons. It was
soon apparent that production would not meet the rapidly growing demand. When it
was discovered that acetone could be produced from potatoes and maize, new
factories were erected to undertake this work.
By 1917, however, the German submarine offensive in the Atlantic had caused a
shortage of freight which threatened to cut off supplies of North American
maize. With the possibility of a serious maize shortage, experiments began to
find a substitute and it was discovered that the horse chestnut could be used as
an alternative in acetone production. Vast quantities of horse chestnuts were
collected, but only 3000 tons reached the King鈥檚 Lynn plant. Collection was
restricted by transport difficulties, and letters in The Times
tell of piles of rotting horse chestnuts at railway stations.
After initial production difficulties the King鈥檚 Lynn factory began
production of acetone from horse chestnuts in April 1918. Work was hampered by
the fact that the horse chestnut was a poor-quality material from which to
produce acetone. The plant was eventually closed in July 1918.
This week鈥檚 questions
Up in the air: While discussing holiday flying arrangements, a friend and I
began to speculate on how many people throughout the world, on average, are
flying in an aircraft at any one time. What proportion of the world鈥檚 population
does this represent?
Ian Postlethwaite
Southport, Merseyside
Foxy fable: A folk tale suggests that foxes get rid of fleas by swimming with
a mouthful of sheep鈥檚 wool taken from a hedgerow. The story goes that the fox
enters the water and the fleas quickly migrate to its head to stay above the
surface. The fox dips its head under the water, the fleas move onto the wool,
and the fox then releases the wool and swims ashore, minus fleas. Is there any
evidence to support this story?
Gillian Coates
Bodfan, Anglesey
The charcoal burners: In the 1930s Robert Byron wrote in The Road to
Oxiana that he had seen charcoal-powered cars being road-tested. Does
anybody have any information on charcoal as a fuel for automobiles, and were
such vehicles ever produced in any numbers?
Brian Robinson
Brentwood, Essex
Period living: Why do groups of women living in the same household have
synchronous menstrual cycles?
Hilary Els
St Austell, Cornwall
Received pronunciation: How do accents develop and change? More specifically,
how do new accents form, such as those that arose in Australia and New Zealand?
Presumably these are no more than 200 years old.
Ciaron Linstead
Plymouth, Devon