Chemical warfare by and against Italians?

[durb]

First I want to point out that this is not a war crime related topic and I´m not interested in moral issues here as there is much better section for them. I just hope to get reliable information about the possible chemical warfare by Italian Armed Forces and how it technically was realized. So few questions:

I have read that Italians used chemical weapons in Italian-Ethiopian war in 1935-1936. However I have come across to some sources which categorically deny this. Looking from the web I get several references to this matter, but not a convincing clear answer. So simply question is: were chemical weapons used in Italian-Ethiopian war or not?

If chemical weapons were used, how they were used - by aerial bombing by other method? Is there any knowledge about special units trained for chemical warfare and how did they cooperate with conventional units? How succesfull operations were?

Is there knowlegde if Italians used chemical weaponry or have been infected by it in other wars like WW1?

As far as I know, Italian forces did not use chemical weapons in Spanish Civil War or in WW2.

[Ironmachine]

For anybody interested in the matter, a full report is included in "La Campagna Italo-Etiopica 1935-1936" by Luigi Emilio Longo, published by the Italian Army General Staff Historical Office (volume 1, pages from 467 to 480), including a detailed list of each and evey chemical bomb dropped by the Regia Aeronautica during the campaign (volume 2, pages 829 and 830). So there is no logner any sort of mystery about italian chemical warfare during the Ethiopia Campaign. There is a full and clear documental evidence, and it shows that it was a very limited use (and, by the way, a ramarkably ineffective one).
In more accurate terms : 1100 x C500T and 132 x 21kgs bombs (for a total of 236 tons of mustard gas), 134 x 41kg bombs (loaded with fosgene, do not know what the warload was, probably about 2 tons), 1367 x artillery shells (total about 1.5 tons of Arsine). A grand total of about 240 tons. That is about 0.002% of what were used during WW1, over an area that was roughly 10 times larger, and the absolute majority of them were used to create "Sbarramenti C" (chemical barrages) to interdict the transit in chokepoints (gorges, fords, defiles etc).

http://www.comandosupremo.com/forums/to ... entry91877

[durb]

Thanks for info. No doubt of chemical warfare in Ethiopia as it is confirmed by Italian sources. The other thing is how succesfull it was. For example this paper - http://www.sipri.org/research/disarmame ... iopiapaper - claims that the use of chemical weapons was a considerable success. But the makers of paper did not use available Italian sources, which in my opinion should be included if one makes a serious study about this.

Looking the Italian evidence it seems that there was not really need to experiment with chemicals and it caused probably more propaganda damage than real military gains. The Italians would have won the war anyway by conventional methods as they had clear technical superiority and firepower advantage.

When it comes to somewhat controversial matters like this, too much is written based on onesided evidence or ignoring some sources which should be studied.