Technology during World War I
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Technology during World War I (1914–1918) reflected a trend toward
World War I weapons included types standardised and improved over the preceding period, together with some newly developed types using innovative
The earlier years of the First World War could be characterized as a clash of 20th-century technology with 19th-century military science creating ineffective battles with huge numbers of casualties on both sides. On land, the quick descent into trench warfare came as a surprise, and only in the final year of the war did the major armies make effective steps in revolutionizing matters of command and control and tactics to adapt to the modern battlefield and start to harness the myriad new technologies to effective military purposes. Tactical reorganizations (such as shifting the focus of command from the 100+ man company to the 10+ man squad) went hand-in-hand with armoured cars, the first submachine guns, and automatic rifles that a single individual soldier could carry and use.
Trench warfare
Much of the combat involved trench warfare, in which hundreds often died for each metre gained. Many of the deadliest battles in history occurred during World War I. Such battles include Ypres, the Marne, Cambrai, the Somme, Verdun, and Gallipoli. The Germans employed the Haber process of nitrogen fixation to provide their forces with a constant supply of gunpowder despite the British naval blockade.[3] Artillery was responsible for the largest number of casualties and consumed vast quantities of explosives.[4]
Trench warfare led to the development of the concrete pill box, a small, hardened blockhouse that could be used to deliver machine gun fire. Pillboxes could be placed across a battlefield with interlocking fields of fire.[5]
Because attacking an entrenched enemy was so difficult, tunnel warfare became a major effort during the war. Once enemy positions were undermined, huge amounts of explosives would be planted and detonated to prepare for an overland charge. Sensitive listening devices that could detect the sounds of digging were crucial for defense against these underground incursions. The British proved especially adept at these tactics, thanks to the skill of their tunnel-digging "sappers" and the sophistication of their listening devices.
During the war, the immobility of trench warfare and a need for protection from snipers created a requirement for loopholes both for discharging firearms and for observation.[6] Often a steel plate was used with a "key hole", which had a rotating piece to cover the loophole when not in use.[6]
Clothing
The British and German armies had already changed from
A type of raincoat for British officers, introduced long before the war, gained fame as the trench coat.
The principal armies entered the war under cloth caps or leather helmets. They hastened to develop new
Observation trees
Observing the enemy in trench warfare was difficult, prompting the invention of technology such as the camouflage tree, a man made observation tower that enables forces to discreetly observe their enemy.[7]
Artillery
Artillery also underwent a revolution. In 1914, cannons were positioned in the front line and fired directly at their targets. By 1917, indirect fire with guns (as well as mortars and even machine guns) was commonplace, using new techniques for spotting and ranging, notably, aircraft and the often overlooked field telephone.[8]
At the beginning of the war, artillery was often sited in the front line to fire over open sights at enemy infantry. During the war, the following improvements were made:
- Indirect counter-battery fire was developed for the first time
- Forward observerswere used to direct artillery positioned out of direct line of sight from the targets, and sophisticated communications and fire plans were developed
- Artillery sound ranging and flash spotting, for the location and eventual destruction of enemy batteries
- Factors such as weather, air temperature, and barrel wear could for the first time be accurately measured and taken into account for indirect fire
- The first "box barrage" in history was fired in the Battle of Neuve Chapelle in 1915; this was the use of a three- or four-sided curtain of shell-fire to prevent the movement of enemy infantry
- The creeping barragewas perfected
- The wire-cutting anti-personnelweapon
- The first anti-aircraft gunswere devised out of necessity
Germany was far ahead of the Allies in using heavy indirect fire. The German Army employed 150 mm (6 in) and 210 mm (8 in) howitzers in 1914, when typical French and British guns were only 75 mm (3 in) and 105 mm (4 in). The British had a 6-inch (152 mm) howitzer, but it was so heavy it had to be hauled to the field in pieces and assembled. The Germans also fielded Austrian 305 mm (12 in) and 420 mm (17 in) guns and, even at the beginning of the war, had inventories of various calibres of Minenwerfer, which were ideally suited for trench warfare.[9][10]
Field artillery entered the war with the idea that each gun should be accompanied by hundreds of shells, and armouries ought to have about a thousand on hand for resupply. This proved utterly inadequate when it became commonplace for a gun to sit in one place and fire a hundred shells or more per day for weeks or months on end. To meet the resulting Shell Crisis of 1915, factories were hastily converted from other purposes to make more ammunition. Railways to the front were expanded or built, leaving the question of the last mile. Horses in World War I were the main answer, and their high death rate seriously weakened the Central Powers late in the war. In many places the newly invented trench railways helped. The new motor trucks as yet lacked pneumatic tires, versatile suspension, and other improvements that in later decades would allow them to perform well.
Poison gas
The widespread use of chemical warfare was a distinguishing feature of the conflict. Gases used included chlorine, mustard gas and phosgene. Relatively few war casualties were caused by gas,[11] as effective countermeasures to gas attacks were quickly created, such as gas masks. The use of chemical warfare and small-scale strategic bombing (as opposed to tactical bombing) were both outlawed by the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, and both proved to be of limited effectiveness,[12] though they captured the public imagination.[13]
At the beginning of the war, Germany had the most advanced chemical industry in the world, accounting for more than 80% of the world's dye and chemical production. Although the use of poison gas had been banned by the
The wind being unreliable, another way had to be found to transmit the gas. It began being delivered in artillery shells.
Chemical weapons were easily attained, and cheap. Gas was especially effective against troops in trenches and bunkers that protected them from other weapons. Most chemical weapons attacked an individual's respiratory system. The concept of choking easily caused fear in soldiers and the resulting terror affected them psychologically. Because there was such a great fear of chemical weapons it was not uncommon that a soldier would panic and misinterpret symptoms of the common cold as being affected by a poisonous gas.
Command and control
The introduction of
In the early days of the war, generals tried to direct tactics from headquarters many miles from the front, with messages being carried back and forth by runners or motorcycle couriers. It was soon realized that more immediate methods of communication were needed.
Radio sets of the period were too heavy to carry into battle, and field telephone lines laid were quickly broken. Either one was subject to eavesdropping,[15] and trench codes were not very satisfactory. Runners, flashing lights, and mirrors were often used instead; dogs were also used, but were only used occasionally as troops tended to adopt them as pets and men would volunteer to go as runners in the dog's place. There were also aircraft (called "contact patrols") that carried messages between headquarters and forward positions, sometimes dropping their messages without landing. Technical advances in radio, however, continued during the war and radio telephony was perfected, being most useful for airborne artillery spotters.[15]
The new long-range artillery developed just before the war now had to fire at positions it could not see. Typical tactics were to pound the enemy front lines and then stop to let infantry move forward, hoping that the enemy line was broken, though it rarely was. The lifting and then the creeping barrage were developed to keep artillery fire landing directly in front of the infantry "as it advanced." Communications being impossible, the danger was that the barrage would move too fast — losing the protection — or too slowly — holding up the advance.
There were also countermeasures to these artillery tactics: by aiming a counter barrage directly behind an enemy's creeping barrage, one could target the infantry that was following the creeping barrage. Microphones (
The impressive spread of telecommunications in the armed forces during the WWI - which extended commanders' command and control radius over forces and ships located far-away - also led to the Intelligence branch assuming an ever greater importance. The growth of military telephone and radiotelegraphic communications, encouraged all Intelligence Services to implement adequate techniques and layouts to extract the greatest amount of intel from the enemies’ communication systems, by relying on some inherent weaknesses of those media namely the relative ease of interception. Even the earliest episodes of the war showed, often surprisingly, what type of impact the eavesdropping and interpretation of the enemy’s transmissions could have on military operations. As such, this period witnessed significant developments in the intelligence category today commonly known as COMINT or ‘Communication Intelligence’.[16] Exploitation of intercepted Russian radio signals contributed to the German victory at Tannenberg in August 1914.[17] Even when messages could not be decoded, radio direction finding was used to track the motion of enemy units.[18][19]
Railways
Railways dominated in this war as in no other.
War of attrition
The countries involved in the war applied the full force of industrial mass-production to the manufacture of weapons and ammunition, especially artillery shells.
For a time, in 1914–1915, some hoped that the war could be won through an attrition of materiel—that the enemy's supply of artillery shells could be exhausted in futile exchanges. But production was ramped up on both sides and hopes proved futile. In Britain the Shell Crisis of 1915 brought down the British government, and led to the building of HM Factory, Gretna, a huge munitions factory on the English-Scottish border.
The
In the end, the war ended through a combination of attrition (of men and material), advances on the battlefield, arrival of American troops in large numbers, and a breakdown of morale and production on the
Air warfare
Fixed-wing aircraft were first used militarily by the Italians in Libya on 23 October 1911 during the Italo-Turkish War for reconnaissance, soon followed by the dropping of grenades and aerial photography the next year. By 1914, their military utility was obvious. They were initially used for reconnaissance and ground attack. To shoot down enemy planes, anti-aircraft guns and fighter aircraft were developed. Strategic bombers were created, principally by the Germans and British, though the former used Zeppelins as well.[21] Towards the end of the conflict, aircraft carriers were used for the first time, with HMS Furious launching Sopwith Camels in a raid to destroy the Zeppelin hangars at Tønder in 1918.[22]
Manned observation balloons, floating high above the trenches, were used as stationary reconnaissance platforms, reporting enemy movements and directing artillery. Balloons commonly had a crew of two, equipped with parachutes,[23] so that if there was an enemy air attack the crew could parachute to safety. At the time, parachutes were too heavy to be used by pilots of aircraft (with their marginal power output), and smaller versions were not developed until the end of the war; they were also opposed by the British leadership, who feared they might promote cowardice.[24]
Recognised for their value as observation platforms, balloons were important targets for enemy aircraft. To defend them against air attack, they were heavily protected by anti-aircraft guns and patrolled by friendly aircraft; to attack them, unusual weapons such as air-to-air rockets were tried. Thus, the reconnaissance value of blimps and balloons contributed to the development of air-to-air combat between all types of aircraft, and to the trench stalemate, because it was impossible to move large numbers of troops undetected. The Germans conducted air raids on England during 1915 and 1916 with airships, hoping to damage British morale and cause aircraft to be diverted from the front lines, and indeed the resulting panic led to the diversion of several squadrons of fighters from France.[21][24]
While early air spotters were unarmed, they soon began firing at each other with handheld weapons. An arms race commenced, quickly leading to increasingly agile planes equipped with machine guns. A key innovation was the interrupter gear, a Dutch invention[25] that allowed a machine gun to be mounted behind the propeller so the pilot could fire directly ahead, along the plane's flight path.
Mobility
In the early days of the war, armoured cars armed with machine guns were organized into combat units, along with cyclist infantry and machine guns mounted on motor cycle sidecars. Though not able to assault entrenched positions, they provided mobile fire support to infantry, and performed scouting, reconnaissance, and other roles similar to cavalry.[26] After trench warfare took hold of major battle-lines, opportunities for such vehicles greatly diminished, though they continued to see use in the more open campaigns in Russia and the Middle East.
Between late 1914 and early 1918, the Western Front hardly moved. When the Russian Empire surrendered after the October Revolution in 1917, Germany was able to move many troops to the Western Front. With new stormtrooper infantry trained in infiltration tactics to exploit enemy weak points and penetrate into rear areas, they launched a series of offensives in the spring of 1918. In the largest of these, Operation Michael, General Oskar von Hutier pushed forward 60 kilometers, gaining in a couple weeks what France and Britain had spent years to achieve. Although initially successful tactically, these offensives stalled after outrunning their horse-drawn supply, artillery, and reserves, leaving German forces weakened and exhausted.
The mobile personnel shield was a less successful attempt at restoring mobility.[27] Several kinds of bullet-proof body armor were tested in use, but they more impaired movement than protected the body.
In the Battle of Amiens of August 1918, the Triple Entente forces began a counterattack that would be called the "Hundred Days Offensive." The Australian and Canadian divisions that spearheaded the attack managed to advance 13 kilometers on the first day alone. These battles marked the end of trench warfare on the Western Front and a return to mobile warfare.
After the war, the defeated Germans would seek to combine their infantry-based mobile warfare of 1918 with vehicles, eventually leading to blitzkrieg, or 'lightning warfare'.
Tanks
This section relies largely or entirely on a single source. (November 2023) |
Although the concept of the tank had been suggested as early as the 1890s, authorities showed little more than a passing interest in them until the trench stalemate of World War I caused reconsideration. In early 1915, the British Royal Navy and French industrialists both started dedicated development of tanks.
Basic tank design combined several existing technologies. It included
In Britain, a
In France, several competing arms industry organizations each proposed radically different designs. Smaller tanks became favored, leading to the
Although the tanks' initial appearance on the battlefield in 1916 terrified some German troops, such engagements provided more opportunities for development than battle successes. Early tanks were unreliable, breaking down often. Germans learned they were vulnerable to direct hits from field artillery and heavy mortars, their trenches were widened and other obstacles devised to halt them, and special anti-tank rifles were rapidly developed. Also, both Britain and France found new tactics and training were required to make effective use of their tanks, such as larger coordinated formations of tanks and close support with infantry. Once tanks could be organized in the hundreds, as in the opening assault of the Battle of Cambrai in November 1917, they began to have notable impact.
Throughout the remainder of the war, new tank designs often revealed flaws in battle, to be addressed in later designs, but reliability remained the primary weakness of tanks. In the Battle of Amiens, a major Entente counteroffensive near the end of the war, British forces went to field with 532 tanks; after several days, only a few were still in commission, with those that suffered mechanical difficulties outnumbering those disabled by enemy fire.
Germany utilized many captured enemy tanks, and made a few of their own late in the war.
In the last year of the war, despite rapidly increasing production (especially by France) and improving designs, tank technology struggled to make more than a modest impact on the war's overall progress.
Even without achieving the decisive results hoped for during World War I, tank technology and
At sea
The years leading up to the war saw the use of improved metallurgical and mechanical techniques to produce larger ships with larger guns and, in reaction, more armour. The launching of HMS Dreadnought (1906) revolutionized battleship construction, leaving many ships obsolete before they were completed. German ambitions brought an Anglo-German naval arms race in which the Imperial German Navy was built up from a small force to the world's most modern and second most powerful. However, even this high-technology navy entered the war with a mix of newer ships and obsolete older ones.
The advantage was in long-range gunnery, and naval battles took place at far greater distances than before. The 1916 Battle of Jutland demonstrated the excellence of German ships and crews, but also showed that the High Seas Fleet was not big enough to challenge openly the British blockade of Germany. It was the only full-scale battle between fleets in the war.
Having the largest surface fleet, the United Kingdom sought to press its advantage. British ships blockaded German ports, hunted down German and Austro-Hungarian ships wherever they might be on the high seas, and supported actions against
Submarines
Germany deployed
The United Kingdom relied heavily on imports to feed its population and supply its war industry, and the German Navy hoped to blockade and starve Britain using
How much they feared our submarines and how wide was the agitation caused by good little U-9 is shown by the English reports that a whole flotilla of German submarines had attacked the cruisers and that this flotilla had approached under cover of the flag of Holland. These reports were absolutely untrue. U-9 was the only submarine on deck, and she flew the flag she still flies – the German naval ensign.
Submarines soon came under persecution by
This struggle between German submarines and British countermeasures became known as the "
Consolidating merchant ships into
Holland 602 type submarines and other Allied types were fewer, being unnecessary for the blockade of Germany.
Small arms
Before the war, the French Army studied the question of a light machine gun but had made none for use. At the start of hostilities, France quickly turned an existing prototype (the "CS" for Chauchat and Sutter) into the lightweight Chauchat M1915 automatic rifle with a high rate of fire. Besides its use by the French, the first American units to arrive in France used it in 1917 and 1918. Hastily mass-manufactured under desperate wartime pressures, the weapon developed a reputation for unreliability.[35]
Seeing the potential of such a weapon, the British Army adopted the American-designed
Early
The US military deployed
Grenades
The British entered the war with the long-handled impact detonating "
The major grenades used in the beginning by the
Hand grenades were not the only attempt at projectile explosives for infantry. A rifle grenade was brought into the trenches to attack the enemy from a greater distance. The Hales rifle grenade got little attention from the British Army before the war began but, during the war, Germany showed great interest in this weapon. The resulting casualties for the Allies caused Britain to search for a new defense.[42]
The
The Sauterelle was a grenade launching Crossbow used before the Stokes mortar by French and British troops.
Flamethrowers
The Imperial German Army deployed
See also
References
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Compare: ISBN 9781101216835. Retrieved 2017-01-24.
The First Industrial Revolution transformed warfare between the end of the Crimean War (1856) and the start of World War I (1914)
- ^ Tucker, Spencer C. (1998) The Great War: 1914-18. Bloomington: Indiana University Press; p. 11
- ^ Hartcup 1988.
- ^ Raudzens 1990, p. 421.
- ^ March, F. A.; Beamish, R. J. (1919), History of the World War: An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War, Leslie-Judge
- ^ a b Trench Loopholes, Le Linge
- ^ "The Journey Of The Camouflage Tree". Imperial War Museums. Retrieved 2022-04-22.
- ISBN 978-1-85109-732-6p. 444.
- ^ Mosier 2001, pp. 42–48.
- ISBN 978-1-86126-403-9.
- ^ Raudzens 1990.
- ^ Heller 1984.
- ^ Postwar pulp novels on future "gas wars" included Reginald Glossop's 1932 novel Ghastly Dew and Neil Bell's 1931 novel The Gas War of 1940.
- ^ Fries, Amos (1919). "Gas in Attack and Gas in Defense" (PDF). United States Army. Archived (PDF) from the original on December 21, 2019.
- ^ a b Graphics, WSJ com News. "World War I Centenary: Telecommunications". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2021-04-24.
- ISBN 9788898185412. Retrieved 27 November 2023.
- ^ Douglas L. Wheeler. "A Guide to the History of Intelligence 1800–1918" (PDF). Journal of U.S. Intelligence Studies.
- ^ "Marconi Direction Finding at Goldhanger". www.churchside1.plus.com. Retrieved 2023-12-02.
- ^ "Computer Conservation Society". www.computerconservationsociety.org. Retrieved 2023-12-02.
- ISBN 978-0-306-81213-2.
- ^ a b Cross 1991
- ^ Cross 1991, pp. 56–57.
- ^ Winter 1983.
- ^ a b Johnson 2001
- ^ "No. 1369: Fokker's Interrupter Mechanism". www.uh.edu.
- ^ "Motor Machine-gun units". Via Wayback Machine. 2008-06-22. Archived from the original on 2008-06-22. Retrieved 2018-11-28.
- ^ Gougaud, p.110
- ^ Raudzens 1990, pp. 421–426.
- ^ Price 1980
- ^ Lawrence Sondhaus, The Great War at Sea: A Naval History of the First World War (2014).
- ^ Hartcup 1988, pp. 129, 130, 140.
- ^ Bull, Stephen (2002) World War 1 Trench Warfare; (1): 1914-16. Oxford: Osprey Publishing; pp. 9-10
- ^ Ellis, John (1989) Eye Deep in Hell: trench warfare in World War 1. London: Pantheon Books, Random House; p. 69
- ^ Bull, Stephen (2002) World War 1 Trench Warfare; (1): 1914-16. Oxford: Osprey Publishing; pp. 11-12
- ^ ]
- ^ P. Griffiths 1994 Battle Tactics of the Western Front p130
- ^ ]
- ^ Persons, William Ernest (1920). Military science and tactics. Vol. 2. p. 280.
- ^ Blain, W.A. (November–December 1921). "Does the Present Automatic Rifle Meet the Needs of the Rifleman?". The Military Engineer. 12–13. Society of American Military Engineers: 534–535.
- ^ Landing-Force Manual: United States Navy. U.S. Government Printing Office. 1921. p. 447.
- ^ a b c Bull, Stephen (2002) World War 1 Trench Warfare; (1): 1914-16. Oxford: Osprey Publishing; p. 27
- ^ Bull, Stephen (2002) World War 1 Trench Warfare; (1): 1914-16. Oxford: Osprey Publishing; p. 29
- ^ Duffy, Michael (2000-07) "Safe Surf". http://www.firstworldwar.com/weaponry/mortars.htm
Bibliography
- Cross, Wilbur L. (1991). Zeppelins of World War I. New York: Paragon Press. OCLC 22860189.
- ISBN 978-0-08-033591-9.
- Heller, Charles E. (1984). Chemical warfare in World War I: the American experience, 1917–1918. Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: Combat Studies Institute. OCLC 123244486. Archived from the originalon 4 July 2007.
- OCLC 45991828.
- Mosier, John (2001). "Germany and the Development of Combined Arms Tactics". Myth of the Great War: How the Germans Won the Battles and How the Americans Saved the Allies. New York: Harper Collins. ISBN 978-0-06-019676-9.
- Price, Alfred (1980). Aircraft versus Submarine: the Evolution of the Anti-submarine Aircraft, 1912 to 1980. London: Jane's Publishing. hydrophones
- Raudzens, George (October 1990). "War-Winning Weapons: The Measurement of Technological Determinism in Military History". The Journal of Military History. 54 (4): 403–434. JSTOR 1986064.
- Winter, Denis (1983). The First of the Few: Fighter Pilots of the First World War. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-005256-5.
External links
- Johnson, Jeffrey: Science and Technology , in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
- Historical film documents on technology during World War I at www.europeanfilmgateway.eu.
- Zabecki, David T.: Military Developments of World War I , in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
- Audoin-Rouzeau, Stéphane: Weapons , in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
- Pöhlmann, Markus: Close Combat Weapons , in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
- Watanabe, Nathan: Hand Grenade , in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
- Storz, Dieter: Rifles , in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
- Cornish, Paul: Flamethrower , in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
- Storz, Dieter: Artillery , in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
- Cornish, Paul: Machine Gun , in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.