Editing Smoke screen (section)

===History===
[[File:Troops coming ashore from a landing craft under a smoke screen during Combined Operations training at Inveraray, Scotland, 9 October 1941. H14597.jpg|thumb|British and Scottish soldiers disembarking from a [[landing craft]] under a smoke screen, 1941]]

The first documented use of a smoke screen was circa 2000 B.C. in the wars of ancient India, where incendiary devices and toxic fumes caused people to fall asleep.<ref>A History of Chemical warfare by Kim Coleman (2005) (978-1-4039-3459-8)</ref>

It was later recorded by a Greek historian, [[Thucydides]], who described that the smoke created by the burning of sulphur, wood and pitch was carried by the wind into Plataea (428 B.C.) and later at Delium (423 B.C.) and that at Delium, defenders were driven from the city walls.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=ffoulkes |first=Charles |date=1940 |title=Fire, Smoke and Gas |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/44219889 |journal=Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research |volume=19 |issue=75 |pages=144–148 |jstor=44219889 |issn=0037-9700}}</ref>

In 1622, a smoke screen was used at the [[Battle of Macau]] by the Dutch. A barrel of damp gunpowder was fired into the wind so that the Dutch could land under the cover of smoke.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.ohio.edu/news/2020/09/ohio-researchers-working-obscurants-modern-era#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20first%20recorded,landing%20under%20cover%20of%20smoke. | title=OHIO researchers working on obscurants for the modern era | date=28 September 2020 }}</ref>

Later, between 1790 and 1810, [[Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald]] (1775–1860), a Scottish Naval commander and officer in the [[Royal Navy]] who fought during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, devised a smoke screen created through the burning of sulphur which would be used in warfare after learning about the same methods used at Delium and Plataea.<ref>Lord Cochrane, Naval Commander, Radical, Inventor (1775-1860), A Study of His Earlier Career, 1775-1818 by John Sugden, July 1981. - https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/3466/1/290354.pdf</ref><ref>The Kalgoorlie Miner, Thu 11 Sep 1930 (Page 6)</ref>

[[Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald]]'s grandson, [[Douglas Cochrane, 12th Earl of Dundonald]], described in his autobiography how he spoke to [[Winston Churchill]] (who once galloped for him when he had a brigade at manœuvres in England) of the importance of using smoke-screens on the battleground, it would in turn be used in both [[WWI]] & [[WW2]].<ref>{{Cite book |last= |first= |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=khHGxwEACAAJ |title=My Army Life |date=1926 |publisher=Edward Arnold & Company |language=en}}</ref>