WAR ACHIEVEMENTS OF APPLIED CHEMISTRY. 
A Note on two War Achievements of Applied 
Chemistry and their Significance 
for Australia. 
By A. E. LEIGHTON, F.I.C., Member of Council, Chairman, 
Board of Administration, Government Factories. 
The sufferings of the British Forces early in the war due to shortage 
of ammunition cannot be forgotten; the strenuous effort that was made 
to put matters right and the eventual triumphant success are widely 
known. In this success the chemist played a substantial part, for it 
was his knowledge and resource that led to the great production of the 
two most important constituents of ammunition—cordite, which propels 
the shell from the gun, and the high explosives, or T.N.T., which bursts 
the shell. These two substances are the forms of potential energy 
which make the shell—itself a piece of dead iron—into a moving and 
rending force. 
When the war broke out in 1914 the total capacity of the British 
cordite factories did not greatly exceed 100 tons per week, though not 
so much was actually made. At the end of the war their capacity had 
reached something over 2,000 tons per week. As for high explosives 
required to fill the shell, it is doubtful whether the whole of the plants 
in Britain at the opening of the war could have produced more than 10 
tons per week, whilst the amount actually made. was very small. At 
the end of the war British factories could produce more than 1,500 
tons of T.N.'T. per week. To a very large extent the increased capacity 
for making these two forms of explosive was locked up in two factories 
—Gretna and Queensferry. These two factories were in many ways 
extraordinary. ‘They were entirely war creations, and were not mere 
extensions of already existing works. ‘Their design, of course, followed 
conventional lines, and it may be of interest to learn that these plants 
required each week :— 
2,300 tons of sulphuric acid. 
2,000 tons of nitrate of soda. 
2,000 tons of oils and fats. 
360 tons of cotton. 
600 tons of alcohol. 
300 tons of toluene. 
There is romance in these figures if one pictures the sulphur and sul- 
phides coming from Norway, Spain, and Mexico, nitrate from Chili, 
rum from the Indies, cotton from America, Egypt, India, and oils and 
fats from all ovér the world. That list of supplies will suggest 
the intimate relation between industrial organization and prepared- 
ness for war. The supremacy of Germany in the line of organic 
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