Livens Projector

The Livens Projector is a British chemical weapon delivery device designed by British Army officer William Howard Livens and introduced in 1917, consisting simply of a smoothbore steel tube buried at an angle in the ground, into which a crew dropped a large drum filled with poison gas or, less commonly, incendiary material, fired electrically in large coordinated batteries of dozens or even hundreds of tubes to deliver a sudden, massed cloud of gas onto an enemy position with far less warning than the earlier method of releasing gas from cylinders and letting the wind carry it across no man's land. Because Livens projector batteries could be fired all at once on a signal rather than depending on favorable wind conditions over an extended release, they allowed British forces far greater tactical flexibility and surprise in chemical attacks than earlier gas cylinder releases had permitted, and the weapon became the primary British method of delivering gas attacks for the remainder of the First World War after its introduction. The Livens projector's basic principle, a simple, cheap, mass-produced tube for launching a gas-filled projectile in large coordinated batteries, influenced chemical weapons delivery doctrine among multiple combatant nations for the rest of the war.