Wednesday, May 31, 2023
  • About us
    • Write for us
    • Disclaimer
    • Terms of use
    • Privacy Policy
  • RSS Feeds
  • Advertise with us
  • Contact us
DefenceTalk
  • Home
  • Defense News
    • Defense & Geopolitics News
    • War Conflicts News
    • Army News
    • Air Force News
    • Navy News
    • Missiles Systems News
    • Nuclear Weapons
    • Defense Technology
    • Cybersecurity News
  • Military Photos
  • Defense Forum
  • Military Videos
  • Military Weapon Systems
    • Weapon Systems
    • Reports
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Defense News
    • Defense & Geopolitics News
    • War Conflicts News
    • Army News
    • Air Force News
    • Navy News
    • Missiles Systems News
    • Nuclear Weapons
    • Defense Technology
    • Cybersecurity News
  • Military Photos
  • Defense Forum
  • Military Videos
  • Military Weapon Systems
    • Weapon Systems
    • Reports
No Result
View All Result
DefenceTalk
No Result
View All Result

From gas to submarines, Great War was crucible for deadly innovation

by Agence France-Presse
February 17, 2014
in Defense Geopolitics News
3 min read
0
From gas to submarines, Great War was crucible for deadly innovation
14
VIEWS

Fighter aircraft, tanks, submarines, heavy artillery: the horrors of warfare between 1914 and 1918 were a crucible for deadly technological innovation, including the poison gas that came to symbolize the barbarity of the conflict.

When World War I broke out in 1914, no European army was prepared for the heavily defensive conflict that was to define the coming years.

Faced with a wall of bullets from machine guns and a deluge of shells from above that German writer Ernst Junger later described as a four-year “storm of steel”, armies on all sides dug down into trenches and relied on a formidable array of defenses.

Barbed wire — invented in the United States for fencing cattle — became ubiquitous. Thousands of infantrymen lost their lives entangled in the wires, earning them the grim nickname of “clothes-line” among French veterans.

Britain and France made more attempts than Germany to break through enemy lines on the Western Front.

They focused on perfecting their heavy artillery. Previously packed with shrapnel, shells were now filled with high explosives that could flatten defenses and maximize casualties. Smoke shells and more accurate targeting became major priorities as the war progressed.

Tanks and poison gas

The British also unveiled a new caterpillar-tracked armoured vehicle — the tank — in 1914. Initially clumsy, plodding and prone to frequent break-downs, it was quickly perfected to become a key tool for penetrating enemy lines in the closing stages of the war.

In the early years, Germany was largely content to sit back and wait for attrition to take its toll on the enemy. Indeed, it carried out only one major attack on the Western front in 1915 — at Ypres in Belgium — and this only to test a brutal new weapon: chlorine poison gas.

Total war destroyed any moral inhibition in the development of weaponry. The French and Belgian soldiers at Ypres in April 1915 saw thick smoke rising, “then a cloud of green, about 10 meters high, particularly thick at the base, coming towards us, pushed by the wind. Almost immediately, we were suffocating,” recalled a French lieutenant, Jules-Henri Guntzberger.

Gas brought a previously unknown level of terror to soldiers on the front line. Panicked, blinded and choking, thousands died in agony.

The horror of poison gas would permanently scar the collective imagination, and forms the root of international condemnation directed against the Syrian regime’s chemical attacks against civilians in August 2013.

But it actually had a minimal impact on the outcome of World War I. Soldiers learned to cover their faces in wet handkerchiefs, soon supplanted by goggles, canvas masks and a medical antidote. The lethal effectiveness of gas was further blunted by the public revulsion it stirred on the home front. In the end, gas attacks caused less than one percent of the deaths in the war.

Combat aviation takes off –

Another danger came from the sky. Combat aviation was still in its infancy in 1914, but the war triggered a rapid industrial mobilization that meant France alone had some 3,700 aircraft by the end of hostilities.

Verdun, in eastern France, was host to the world’s first large-scale aerial battle.

“The Great War may have been the quintessential land battle, but it also highlighted a strategic concept that would dominate conflicts in the 20th century: the importance of airpower as a prerequisite for any successful major ground attack,” wrote French historian Jean-Yves Le Naur.

Initially, the air was a place for surveillance, helped by improvements in mapping, aerial photography and communications. The dogfights — which alone in the conflict retained some vestige of the romantic warfighting of the past — were primarily geared towards denying the enemy these reconnaissance opportunities.

Bombardments emerged only gradually, most notably in the form of the German dirigible balloons named after their inventor, Graf von Zeppelin. They were first used to attack Antwerp in August 1914 and then deployed for night raids in the UK from January 1915.

By 1917, long-range German Gotha bombers were carrying out daylight raids in London, and the UK had developed its Royal Airforce for retaliatory attacks in the Rhine, but the technology’s deadly potential would not be realized until later.

The other major innovation came at sea. Germany had all but given up trying to compete with Britain above the waterline, but turned its attention to the U-boat that it started building after the outbreak of war.

Britain’s naval blockade in late 1914 triggered the first submarine warfare in the North Sea. By 1917, Germany had set itself a target of sinking 600,000 tonnes of shipping every month, and was at first successful. But the use of convoys to protect ships, produced in vast numbers in US factories, was able to overwhelm the U-boat strategy.

None of these weapons proved decisive. It was ultimately the involvement of the vast US industrial war machine that tipped the scales in favour of the West.

But the firepower and technologies that emerged during the Great War were to define most of the conflicts since then.

Tags: aircraftFighter AircraftGassubmarineswarworld warworld war i
Previous Post

Excavation at North Korea nuclear test site: US think-tank

Next Post

Small drones hit US regulatory turbulence

Related Posts

china third aircraft carrier PLAN

China sends warships and aircraft around Taiwan for second day

April 8, 2023

China sent warships and aircraft near Taiwan for a second day on Friday and insisted the island remains "an inseparable...

Japan defence ministry seeks $50 billion budget

Japan changes rules to allow aid to foreign militaries

April 6, 2023

Japan will begin offering aid to the militaries of "like-minded countries" under new rules announced Wednesday, as Tokyo builds a...

Next Post
Personal drones launch in your skies

Small drones hit US regulatory turbulence

Latest Defense News

China made third-largest air incursion this year, says Taiwan

China would gain swift air superiority over Taiwan, US leaks show

April 19, 2023
china third aircraft carrier PLAN

China sends warships and aircraft around Taiwan for second day

April 8, 2023
Japan defence ministry seeks $50 billion budget

Japan changes rules to allow aid to foreign militaries

April 6, 2023
Trump order targets Chinese internet giants TikTok, WeChat

TikTok hit with UK fine, Australia government ban

April 6, 2023
Finland gears up for historic NATO decision

Long NATO delay spells trouble for Sweden and alliance: experts

April 6, 2023
Russia says fired anti-ship missiles at mock target in Sea of Japan

Russia says fired anti-ship missiles at mock target in Sea of Japan

March 28, 2023

Defense Forum Discussions

  • What are you reading at the moment?
  • Huawei
  • Royal Australian Navy Discussions and Updates 2.0
  • Indo Pacific strategy
  • Indonesian Aero News
  • The Russian-Ukrainian War Thread
  • KFOR peacekeepers injured
  • Russian Army/Ground Forces Discussion and Updates
  • Indonesia: 'green water navy'
  • NATO
DefenceTalk

© 2003-2020 DefenceTalk.com

Navigate Site

  • Defence Forum
  • Military Photos
  • RSS Feeds
  • About us
  • Advertise with us
  • Contact us

Follow Us

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Defense News
    • Defense & Geopolitics News
    • War Conflicts News
    • Army News
    • Air Force News
    • Navy News
    • Missiles Systems News
    • Nuclear Weapons
    • Defense Technology
    • Cybersecurity News
  • Military Photos
  • Defense Forum
  • Military Videos
  • Military Weapon Systems
    • Weapon Systems
    • Reports

© 2003-2020 DefenceTalk.com