British troops were involved in a secret plan to go into battle wearing women’s underwear, it has emerged.
The plan – recently declassified by the Public Records Office – was set up to protect World War II troops from mustard gas attacks.
Kilt-wearing soldiers in the Scots regiments were particularly at risk because their legs were exposed to the poisonous gas.
From the 1920s up until 1939, secret tests were carried out on volunteer soldiers dressed in long stockings and woollen bloomers.
Wearing underwear, soaked in protective chemicals dissolved in white spirit, volunteers were exposed to mustard gas.
The research and tests were carried out at Porton Down, the government-funded military research centre in Wiltshire.
Porton Down historian, Gradon Carter, said: “A great deal of attention was paid in those days to the impregnation of battle dress and socks with substances called impregnities.
“These were chemicals which could actually combine with mustard gas vapour to render them harmless.”
Although the tests showed the underwear did protect the volunteers, it was decided that the protective clothing would be too costly to supply to all Scots regiments.
As a result, the kilt was banned from the battlefield in 1940.
The Scottish Tartans Authority has decreed that refusing to put on underwear beneath a kilt is “childish and unhygienic”.
It also warned that “going commando” flies in the face of decency.
Tartans Authority director Brian Wilton said kilt wearers should have the “common sense” to realise they should wear underwear beneath their country’s national dress.
He said “The idea that you are not a real Scot unless you are bare under your kilt should be thrown into the same wastepaper basket as the idea that you’re not a real Scot unless you put salt on your porridge.
“People should not be browbeaten into believing that nonsense. Just because Highlanders wore nothing in the days before Y-fronts were invented doesn’t mean that we, in the 21st Century, should wear nothing too.
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