Fort Detrick
Fort Detrick is located in Frederick, Maryland. Fort Detrick was the center of the U.S. biological weapons program from 1943 to 1969. Since the discontinuation of that program, it hosted most elements of the United States biological defense program.
As of the early 2010s, Fort Detrick's campus supports a multi-governmental community that conducts biomedical research and development, medical materiel management, global medical communications and the study of foreign plant pathogens. The lab is known to research pathogens such as Ebola and smallpox.
Fort Detrick is also a U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command installation, with its bio-defense agency, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. It also hosts the National Cancer Institute Frederick Campus, Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research and is home to the National Interagency Confederation for Biological Research, National Interagency Biodefense Campus, National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center, and the National Center for Medical Intelligence.
In August 2019, its deadly germ research operations were shut down following serious safety violations, in particular relating to the disposal of dangerous materials.
Fort Detrick is the largest employer in Frederick County, Maryland.
History
Five farms originally constituted what is today known as "Area A" with, or the main post area of Fort Detrick, where most installation activities are located. "Area B" – known as "The Farm" and consisting of nearly – was purchased in 1946 to provide a test area west of Rosemont Avenue, then called Yellow Springs Pike. In addition, the post's water and waste water treatment plants comprise about on the banks of the Monocacy River.Detrick Field (1931–43)
Fort Detrick traces its roots to a small municipal airport established at Frederick, Maryland, in 1929. It was operated by a single person and the field was one of a string of emergency airfields between Cleveland, Ohio, and Washington, D.C., until 1938. The field was named in honor of squadron flight surgeon Major Frederick L. Detrick who served in France during World War I and died in June 1931 of a heart attack. The first military presence there was the encampment, on 10 August 1931, of his unit: the 104th Observation Squadron of the 29th Division, Maryland National Guard. The Squadron flew de Havilland observation biplanes and Curtiss JN-4 "Jennies".A concrete and tarmac airfield replaced the grass field in 1939, and an upgraded Detrick Field served as a Cadet Pilot Training Center until the country's entry into World War II. Detrick Field was formally leased from the City of Frederick in 1940. The last airplanes departed Detrick Field in December 1941 and January 1942 after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. All aircraft and pilots in the 104th and the cadet program were reassigned after the Declaration of War to conduct antisubmarine patrols off the Atlantic Coast. The 2nd Bombardment Squadron, U.S. Army Air Corps was reconstituted at Detrick Field between March and September 1942, when it deployed to England to become the nucleus of the new Eighth Air Force headquarters. Thereafter, the base ceased to be an aviation center. The airfields buildings, runway and tarmac have all disappeared which ran along today's Hamilton Street from Beasley Drive to about Neiman Street.
Camp Detrick (1943–56)
On 9 March 1943, the government purchased encompassing the original and re-christened the facility "Camp Detrick". The same year saw the establishment of the U.S. Army Biological Warfare Laboratories, responsible for pioneering research into biocontainment, decontamination, gaseous sterilization, and agent purification. The first commander, Lt. Col. William S. Bacon, and his successor, Col. Martin B. Chittick, oversaw the initial $1.25 million renovation and construction of the base.World War II and Biological Warfare research (1943–45)
During World War II, Camp Detrick and the USBWL became the site of intensive biological warfare research using various pathogens. This research was originally overseen by pharmaceuticals executive George W. Merck and for many years was conducted by Ira L. Baldwin, professor of bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin. Baldwin became the first scientific director of the labs. He chose Detrick Field for the site of this exhaustive research effort because of its balance between remoteness of location and proximity to Washington, D.C. – as well as to Edgewood Arsenal, the focal point of U.S. chemical warfare research. Buildings and other facilities left from the old airfield – including the large hangar – provided the nucleus of support needed for the startup. The of Detrick Field were also surrounded by extensive farmlands that could be procured if and when the BW effort was expanded.The Army's Chemical Warfare Service was given responsibility and oversight for the effort that one officer described as "cloaked in the deepest wartime secrecy, matched only by … the Manhattan Project for developing the Atomic Bomb". Three months after the start of construction, an additional $3 million was provided for five additional laboratories and a pilot plant. Lt. Col. Bacon was authorized 85 officers, 373 enlisted personnel, and 80 enlisted Women's Army Auxiliary Corps members under two WAAC officers. At its peak strength in 1945, Camp Detrick had 240 officers and 1,530 enlisted personnel including WACs.
After the defeat of Japan, the researchers working at Unit 731 were given immunity from prosecution. In return, director Shirō Ishii provided "8,000 slides of tissue from human and animal dissections" from the experiments, which were reportedly stored at Fort Detrick.
Post-war years (1946–55)
The elaborate security precautions taken at Camp Detrick were so effective that it was not until January 1946, four months after VJ Day that the public learned of the war-time research in biological weapons.In 1952, the Army purchased over more of land located between West 7th Street and Oppossumtown Pike to expand the permanent research and development facilities.
Two workers at the base died from exposure to anthrax in the 1950s. Another died in 1964 from viral encephalitis.
There was a building on the base, Building 470, locally referred to as "Anthrax Tower". Building 470 was a pilot plant for testing optimal fermentor and bacterial purification technologies. The information gained in this pilot plant shaped the fermentor technology that was ultimately used by the pharmaceutical industry to revolutionize the production of antibiotics and other drugs. Building 470 was torn down in 2003 without any adverse effects on the demolition workers or the environment. The facility acquired the nickname "Fort Doom" while offensive biological warfare research was undertaken there. 5,000 bombs containing anthrax spores were produced at the base during World War II.
From 1945 to 1955 under Project Paperclip and its successors, the U.S. government recruited over 1,600 German and Austrian scientists and engineers in a variety of fields such as aircraft design, missile technology and biological warfare. Among the specialists in the latter field who ended up working in the U.S. were Walter Schreiber, Erich Traub and Kurt Blome, who had been involved with medical experiments on concentration camp inmates to test biological warfare agents. Since Britain, France and the Soviet Union were also engaged in recruiting these scientists, the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency wished to deny their services to other powers, and therefore altered or concealed the records of their Nazi past and involvement in war crimes.
Testing performed on Seventh-day Adventists (1940–1974)
The U.S. General Accounting Office issued a report on September 28, 1994, which stated that between 1940 and 1974, DOD and other national security agencies studied hundreds of thousands of human subjects in tests and experiments involving hazardous substances.The quote from the study:
Many experiments that tested various biological agents on human subjects, referred to as Operation Whitecoat, were carried out at Fort Detrick, Maryland, in the 1950s. The human subjects originally consisted of volunteer enlisted men. However, after the enlisted men staged a sitdown strike to obtain more information about the dangers of the biological tests, Seventh-day Adventists who were conscientious objectors were recruited for the studies.
The Army purchased an additional in 1946 to increase the size of the original "Area A" as well as located west of Area A, but not contiguous to it, to provide a test area known as Area B. In 1952, another were purchased between West 7th Street and Oppossumtown Pike to expand the permanent research and development facilities.
Jeffrey Alan Lockwood wrote in 2009 that the biological warfare program at Ft. Detrick began to research the use of insects as disease vectors going back to World War II and also employed German and Japanese scientists after the war who had experimented on human subjects among POWs and concentration camp inmates. Scientists used or attempted to use a wide variety of insects in their biowar plans, including fleas, ticks, ants, lice and mosquitoes – especially mosquitoes that carried the yellow fever virus. They also tested these in the United States. Lockwood thinks that it is very likely that the U.S. did use insects dropped from aircraft during the Korean War to spread diseases, and that the Chinese and North Koreans were not simply engaged in a propaganda campaign when they made these allegations, since the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of Defense had approved their use in the fall of 1950 at the "earliest practicable time". At that time, it had five biowarfare agents ready for use, three of which were spread by insect vectors.