The Tank Had an Interesting Role in World War One. the Tank Was First Used at the Little

TANK

The tank had an interesting role in World War One. The tank was first used at the little known Battle of Flers. It was then used with less success at the Battle of the Somme. Though the tank was highly unreliable – as one would expect from a new machine – it did a great deal to end the horrors of trench warfare and brought back some mobility to the Western Front.

The idea of the tank came from a development of farming vehicles that could cross difficult land with ease by using caterpillar tracks. However, the British army’s hierarchy was dominated by officers from the various cavalry regiments that existed. At the start of World War One, the first engagement between the British and Germans had involved cavalry near Mons. This seemed to emphasise the importance of such regiments. However, trench warfare had made the use of cavalry null and void. Cavalry engagements fought in mud proved very costly and from a military point of view, hopeless. Despite this seemingly obvious fact, senior military commanders were hostile to the use of armoured vehicles, as they would have challenged the use of cavalry in the field.

The leading light in support of the tank was Lieutenant-Colonel Ernest Swinton. In 1914, he had proposed the development of a new type of fighting vehicle. In fact, it is a common misconception that no fighting vehicles existed in August 1914. The Germans, British, Austrians, Russians and French all had armoured fighting vehicles that could fight on ‘normal’ terrain. But these vehicles could not cope with trenches that were soon to dominate the Western Front. Caterpillar tracked vehicles were already in France as the British used them as heavy gun tractors.

Swinton had received some support from those in authority but many in the army’s General Staff were deeply suspicious. Swinton needed an example of the machine that he believed would alter warfare on the Western Front. By June 9th 1915, agreement was made regarding what the new weapon should be. It should:

Have a top speed of 4 mph on flat land

The ability to turn sharply at top speed

The ability to climb a 5-feet parapet

The ability to cross an eight feet gap

A working radius of 20 miles

A crew of ten men with two machine guns on board and one light artillery gun.

SUBMARINES

Technical developments from 1914 to 1918 greatly boosted the submarine as a weapon of war and as World War One developed, so the impact of the submarine become greater.

Submarines near to or on the surface were an obvious target for attack. The development of a crude underwater listening device, therefore, was of huge significance for a submarines crew.

The Fessenden oscillator, developed by Reginald Fessenden, below left, was first produced in 1915 and it allowed submarines to give and receive messages and also to detect ships while the submarines stayed submerged. A heavy diaphragm operated underwater by an electric current made it possible to send Morse code messages for up to 30 miles.

However, the Fessenden oscillators were non-directional so any ship could pick up the messages! Also the clarity of any message being received by the submarine was masked by engine noise or by the sound shadow cast by the submarine. The sound wave produced by the oscillator also varied depending on the density of the water – dense water impeded the motion of sound waves and, therefore, limited the distance they travelled.

Submarine wirelesses were constantly improved throughout the war and a major development was the invention of the telescopic masts. These allowed a submarine to surface and crash dive without having to send out crewmen to dismantle the mast in an emergency. The mast could be raised and lowered by compressed air and the lowering could be done underwater.

The invention of the gyro compass was invaluable to a submarine’s captain. Prior to this, navigation had been notoriously difficult. The gyro compass showed a true direction of travel at all times (in theory!). The compasses fitted to British submarines could detect a lag of ¼º thus enabling a correct course to be steered at all times. In 1914, the 'US Naval Proceedings' stated that a 2º lag represented one mile out of course for every thirty miles travelled – a considerable distance for a submarine. However, the gyro compass was not foolproof. Rough seas could upset its delicate mechanism.

POISON GAS

Poison gas was probably the most feared of all weapons in World War One. Poison gas was indiscriminate and could be used on the trenches even when no attack was going on. Whereas the machine gun killed more soldiers overall during the war, death was frequently instant or not drawn out and soldiers could find some shelter in bomb/shell craters from gunfire. A poison gas attack meant soldiers having to put on crude gas masks and if these were unsuccessful, an attack could leave a victim in agony for days and weeks before he finally succumbed to his injuries.

It is generally assumed that gas was first used by the Germans in World War One. This is not accurate. The first recorded gas attack was by the French. In August 1914, the French used tear gas grenades containing xylyl bromide on the Germans. This was more an irritant rather than a gas that would kill. It was used by the French to stop the seemingly unstoppable German army advancing throughout Belgium and north-eastern France. In one sense, it was an act of desperation as opposed to a premeditated act that all but went against the 'rules' of war. However, while the French were the first to use a gas against an enemy, the Germans had been giving a great deal of thought to the use of poison gas as a way of inflicting a major defeat on an enemy.

In October 1914, the Germans attacked Neuve Chapelle. Here they fired gas shells at the French that contained a chemical that caused violent sneezing fits. Once again, the gas was not designed to kill rather than to incapacitate an enemy so that they were incapable of defending their positions.

This took place against a background of a war in the west that was still mobile. Once trench warfare had literally dug in, all sides involved in the conflict looked for any way possible to bring movement back into their campaigns. One of the more obvious was to develop a weapon that was so appalling that it would destroy not only an enemy frontline but also the will to maintain troops on that frontline. Poison gas might even provoke a mass mutiny along a frontline thus causing it to collapse. In other words, poison gas was the answer for the war's lack of mobility.

Armies quickly produced gas masks that gave protection as long as sufficient warning was given of a gas attack. Soldiers also used make-shift gas masks if they were caught in the open without a gas mask during a gas attack - cloth soaked in their own urine and placed over the mouth was said to give protection against a chlorine attack. By the end of the war, relatively sophisticated gas masks were available to soldiers in the trenches on the Western Front.

MACHINE GUN

Machine guns inflicted appalling casualties on both war fronts in World War One. Men who went over-the-top in trenches stood little chance when the enemy opened up with their machine guns. Machine guns were one of the main killers in the war and accounted for many thousands of deaths.

Crude machine guns had first been used in the American Civil War (1861 to 1865). However, tactics from this war to 1914 had not changed to fit in with this new weapon. Machine guns could shoot hundreds of rounds of ammunition a minute and the standard military tactic of World War One was the infantry charge. Casualties were huge. Many soldiers barely got out of their trench before they were cut down.

This British Vickers machine gun is being fired by a team of two who are wearing early gas masks in case of a gas attack. To ensure that the machine gun's barrel did not overheat, the weapon was cooled using a large water cooling jacket. An ammunition belt fed it bullets. This machine gun could shoot 450 rounds a minute. As well as the Vickers machine gun, the British used the Hotchkiss and the Lewis gun.

At the start of the war, senior British army officers were less than sure about the effectiveness of the machine gun. Therefore most battalions were only issued with two.

This was a lot less than the Germans who were much more sure as to the effectiveness of the machine gun. The Germans placed their machine guns slightly in front of their lines to ensure than the machine gun crews were given a full view of the battlefield. At the Battle of the Somme, their efficiency lead to the deaths of thousands of British troops within minutes of the battle starting.

This still above was taken from film as British troops 'went over the top' at the start of the Battle of the Somme. Within a few strides from their own trench, these men were almost certainly the victim of German machine gun fire.

FIGHTER PLANES

In the summer of 1914, the airplane was less than eleven years old. Aviation was a fledgling technology that fascinated many but still generated skepticism when it came to practical applications. Most airplanes of the time were slow, flimsy contraptions with barely enough power to lift a single pilot and perhaps one passenger. While numerous countries had shown an interest in military aviation, the concept of using airplanes to wage war was still a fairly radical idea. All that changed during the course of World War

As aerial reconnaissance became more common, so did the need for ways to stop enemy observation planes. One way was by firing upon them from the ground, which was ineffective until guns could be better adapted for the purpose. The other way was to develop a means for one aircraft to attack another. The first such attempts were made using the observation aircraft themselves, as pilots and observers attempted to shoot at other planes using rifles and even pistols—a method that quickly proved hopeless. Some pilots tried throwing hand grenades, bricks, or even long ropes with grappling hooks at planes below them. The ideal solution was the machine gun, which could fire a continuous stream of bullets, significantly increasing the chance of hitting a target.

Machine guns tended to be large and heavy, however, and only a few were small and light enough to be practicable for use on an airplane. Another problem was that firing sideways seriously decreased accuracy, while firing forward meant that the airplane’s propeller would be in the way. The problem was not solved until mid-1915, when a Dutch aircraft designer named Anton Fokker developed the “interrupter gear,” a timing mechanism that synchronized the machine gun with the moving propeller blades.

On August 1, 1915, German pilots Oswald Boelcke and Max Immelmann became the first pilots to shoot down another aircraft using Fokker’s new method. This development gave the Germans a strong advantage for several months until French and British designers succeeded in adapting the device for their own use about one year later.