New technology of the First World War. Russia. Military equipment of the First World
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Marienwagen - 4-track all-terrain chassis of the First World War. Also known as "Bremer-Wagen". An order for such a machine H.G. Bremer received in July 1915, and in October 1916 presented a prototype. According to the device, it resembled a conventional car with a front engine and a rear drive axle, but with the replacement of all wheels with caterpillar tracks, while only the rear pair of tracks remained driven. An order for 50 of these chassis began to fulfill the plant in Marienfeld on the outskirts of Berlin. The armament of the vehicle consisted of one 7.92 mm Maxim machine gun mounted in the turret.
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MERCEDES (ALSO BYLINSKY'S MERCEDES, BYLINSKY'S ARMORED CAR) is a cannon-machine-gun armored car of the Armed Forces of the Russian Empire. Developed in 1915 by staff captain Bylinsky on the basis of a Mercedes car. The composition and placement of weapons was originally decided. The artillery armament of the armored car was a rapid-fire 37-mm Hotchkiss cannon, located inside the hull. The gun was mounted in the middle part of the fighting compartment on a swivel pedestal and could fire on the sides of the armored car and back through the folding sheets of the side and aft armor. When the sides of the hull were closed, the presence of a cannon in an armored car was practically not given out. On the roof of the fighting compartment, above the cannon, there was a circular rotation tower with a 7.62-mm Maxim machine gun of the 1910 model. At the same time, the machine gun turret was attached to the gun pedestal, which significantly facilitated the rotation of the tower. In addition, two 7.62-mm Madsen submachine guns of the 1902 model were transported in addition to the stowage inside the hull. With such weapons, the crew of the armored car could conduct an almost circular fire, developing a very high firepower for such a vehicle. Artillery weapons, overall solid firepower, extremely high speed for armored vehicles and acceptable armor made these armored vehicles extremely useful combat weapons for their troops and dangerous opponents for the enemy. The scheme of booking and placement of weapons was successful, and the technically high-quality base of the Mercedes was an additional trump card for the armored car. The commission that tested armored vehicles noted: "... The stability of the cars is fully ensured, there are no design errors, the cars are easy on the go and can give more than 60 miles per hour ...". The combat use of armored vehicles also demonstrated their high efficiency. However, the use of the Mercedes base, which is extremely rare for the Russian army, resulted in a shortage of spare parts, which significantly reduced the service life of these armored vehicles.
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Mercedes (also Bylinsky's Mercedes, Bylinsky's armored car) is a cannon-machine-gun armored car of the Armed Forces of the Russian Empire.
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Rolls-Royce Armored Car - machine gun armored car of the British Armed Forces. Developed in 1914 by Rolls-Royce. In the period from 1914 to 1918, 120 copies of the armored car were produced. It was widely used by the British army in the battles of the First World War. At the end of the war, it underwent a number of upgrades and remained in service with the British army until 1944, taking part in the battles of the initial period of the Second World War and, thus, being a "long-liver" in a number of armored vehicles developed during the First World War. In addition to Great Britain, Rolls-Royce armored vehicles were in service with the armies of Ireland and Poland. A number of experts tend to consider the Rolls-Royce the most successful British armored car of the First World War.
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The first serial tank - "Big Willie" was created by engineer Tritton together with Lieutenant Wilson. The prototype appeared in the fall of 1915. This machine easily coped with the task assigned to it to break through the enemy's defenses, and the infantry had to go on the offensive after it. Initially, "Willy", like all other models, could not overcome wide ditches, which was due to the structure of the tractor caterpillar. However, a little later it was equipped with a diamond-shaped caterpillar, which made it possible to overcome a significant drawback. The model was equipped with a six-cylinder Riccardo engine that produced 150 hp. He was located in the stern of the car and had no protection. Exhaust gases flowed directly into the structure, which often led to the death of the crew, which consisted of 8 people. Armament was placed in half-towers on the sides of the structure, they were called sponsons. In its appearance, the car resembled a tank or cistern, which, by and large, gave it its name. She was called a tank, which is translated from English as "chan". Subsequently, this was the name of a new type of combat vehicles.
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"VEZDEKHOD" is an all-terrain vehicle developed by designer Alexander Aleksandrovich Porokhovshchikov in Russia in 1914-1915. In the developments related to this machine, A. A. Porohovshchikov also considered the possibility of installing armor and weapons on it, which is why the Vezdekhod is often considered in Soviet and modern Russian literature as one of the first Russian tank (wedge) projects. Later, Porokhovshchikov improved his car, making it wheel-tracked: on the roads, the car moved on wheels and the rear drum of the caterpillar, when an obstacle was encountered in its path - the “all-terrain vehicle” lay down on the caterpillar and “crawled” over it. This was several years ahead of the tank building of that time. Porohovshchikov made the hull of the tank waterproof, as a result of which he could easily overcome water obstacles.
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Renault FT-17 is the first mass-produced light tank. The first tank to have a turret with a circular rotation (360 degrees), as well as the first tank of the classical layout (control compartment - in front, combat compartment - in the center and engine compartment - in the back). The crew of the tank consisted of two people - the driver and the commander, who was also involved in servicing the gun or machine gun. One of the most successful tanks of the First World War. Developed in 1916-1917 under the leadership of Louis Renault as an infantry close support tank. Adopted by the French army in 1917. Approximately 3500 copies have been produced. In addition, Renault FT-17 was produced under license in the USA under the name M1917 (Ford Two Man) (950 copies were produced) and in Italy under the name FIAT 3000. A modified copy was also produced in Soviet Russia under the name Renault Russian.
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At the start of the First World War, Russia had the largest air fleet in the world of 263 aircraft. Ilya Muromets is the common name for several series of four-engine all-wood biplanes produced in Russia at the Russian-Baltic Carriage Works during 1914-1919 under the leadership of I. I. Sikorsky. The aircraft set a number of records for carrying capacity, number of passengers, time and maximum flight altitude. It is the world's first serial multi-engine and passenger aircraft. For the first time in the history of aviation, it was equipped with a comfortable cabin separate from the cockpit, sleeping rooms and even a bathroom with a toilet. The "Muromets" had heating (exhaust gases from engines) and electric lighting. On the sides there were exits to the consoles of the lower wing. Bombs weighing about 80 kg were used, less often up to 240 kg. In the autumn of 1915, the experience of bombing the world's largest, at that time, 410-kilogram bomb was made.
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The Fokker D.VII is a single-seat, light, high-speed fighter. The plane is considered the best German fighter of the First World War. In the second half of 1918, Fokker D VII aircraft made up 75% of the fleet of German fighter squadrons. This fighter was so good that under the conditions of the First Compiegne Armistice of 1918, a clause was specifically introduced obliging the destruction of all Fokker D.VII aircraft. Despite this, the car was in service with a number of countries in the post-war period - Anton Fokker managed to secretly save many aircraft, and then secretly transport them by train to the neutral Netherlands, where they were updated and sold to the air forces of other countries; such as the Danish Air Force. Crew: 1 pilot Length: 6.95 m Wingspan: 8.9 m Height: 2.85 m Empty weight: 700 kg Normal takeoff weight: 850 kg Engine power: 1 x 180 hp With. (1 × 132 kW) Maximum speed: 200 km / h Flight duration: 1.7 hours Armament Small arms: 2 × 7.92 mm synchronous machine guns LMG 08/15 Spandau, 500 rounds of ammunition per barrel.
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Albatros D.III - German biplane fighter, one of the most successful fighters of the war. Albatros D.III aircraft began to operate in the first months of 1917. During air battles on the Western Front during 1917, Albatros D.III fighters showed their superiority over British and French aircraft. By the autumn of 1917, almost 500 Albatros D.III fighters were already in use. The famous aces of the First World War, the German Manfred von Richthofen, ("Red Baron") and the Austrian Godwin Brumowski piloted this biplane. Crew: 1 pilot Length: 7.33 m Wingspan: 9.04 m Height: 2.98 m Empty weight: 661 kg Normal takeoff weight: 886 kg Engine power: 1 × 175 hp (1 × 129 kW) Maximum speed: 175 km / h Flight duration: 2 hours Service ceiling: 5,500 m
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Aviation of the German Armed Forces is the second largest aviation in the world at the beginning of the First World War. Numbered about 220 - 230 aircraft. The Germans sought to secure air superiority by introducing technical innovations into aviation as quickly as possible (for example, fighter planes) and in a certain period from the summer of 1915 to the spring of 1916 practically held dominance in the sky at the fronts. Great attention was also paid by the Germans to strategic bombing. Germany was the first country to use its air force to attack the strategic rear of the enemy (factories, settlements, sea harbors). Since 1914, first German airships and then multi-engine bombers regularly carried out bombardments of the rear facilities of France, Great Britain and Russia. Germany made a significant bet on rigid airships. During the war, more than 100 rigid airships designed by Zeppelin and Schütte-Lanz were built. Before the war, the Germans mainly planned to use airships for aerial reconnaissance, but it quickly turned out that over land and in the daytime airships were too vulnerable. The main function of heavy airships was maritime patrolling, reconnaissance at sea in the interests of the navy, and long-range night bombing. It was the Zeppelin airships that first brought to life the doctrine of long-range strategic bombing, raiding London, Paris, Warsaw and other rear cities of the Entente. Although the effect of the application, excluding individual cases, was mainly moral, blackout measures, air raids significantly disrupted the work of the Entente, which was not ready for such an industry, and the need to organize air defense led to the diversion of hundreds of aircraft, anti-aircraft guns, thousands of soldiers from the front line.
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In early 1915, the British and French were the first to put machine guns on aircraft. Since the propeller interfered with the shelling, initially machine guns were placed on vehicles with a pusher propeller located at the rear and not preventing firing in the forward hemisphere. The first FIGHTER in the world was the British Vickers F.B.5, specially built for air combat with a machine gun mounted on a turret.
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Aviation combat tactics in the First World War In the initial period of the war, when two aircraft collided, the battle was fought from personal weapons or with the help of a ram. The ram was first used on September 8, 1914 by the Russian ace Nesterov. As a result, both aircraft fell to the ground. On March 18, 1915, another Russian pilot used a ram for the first time without crashing his own plane and successfully returned to base. This tactic was used due to the lack of machine-gun armament and its low efficiency. The ram demanded exceptional accuracy and composure from the pilot, so Nesterov's and Kazakov's rams were the only ones in the history of the war. In the battles of the late period of the war, aviators tried to bypass the enemy aircraft from the side, and, going into the tail of the enemy, shoot him with a machine gun. This tactic was also used in group battles, while the pilot who took the initiative won; causing the enemy to fly away. The style of air combat with active maneuvering and shooting at close range was called "dogfight" ("dog fight") and until the 1930s dominated the concept of air warfare.
Fighters and bombers, submarines and dreadnoughts, armored vehicles, tanks and other weapons - everything that today seems to us simple and ordinary for the First World War, was, in short, the last word in technology and scientific thought. This war really was the first. And not only in the fact that before it there were no such large-scale military conflicts, but also because during its course a lot was done for the first time.
Cars
Of course, cars for military needs were used even before the start of the First World War, but during the years of this confrontation, their transport capabilities began to be fully used. So, in 1914, finding themselves in a practically hopeless situation, when it was necessary to transfer a new soldier division to the Marne in order to stop the rapid advance of the German troops, the French command chose a car as a means of transfer. Then the Parisian taxis brilliantly coped with this mission.
But the British used their "proprietary" double-decker buses to transport the military.
A great help was the use of cars in many operations of that war. For example, in May 1915 in Galicia and later on the Styr River, Russian troops were provided with weapons in a timely manner only through the use of motor vehicles.
The so-called machine-gun vehicles were widely used - vehicles with machine guns mounted on them (the British first experienced such a system during the Boer War).
Also, during the war years, the first Russian self-propelled anti-aircraft guns were successfully tested. A year before the start of the war, one of the engineers at the Putilov Arms Plant proposed installing swinging anti-aircraft guns on the platform of a powerful truck. The first prototypes of this technique were received for testing at the end of 1914. And a few months later they were already put into operation. So, in the summer, new machines have already successfully repelled an air attack by 9 German airplanes, and a little later they shot down two enemy planes.
In parallel, the development of armored vehicles went on. The first Russian armored cars, for example, were developed in Russia, but they were put on wheels at the Renault factories.
According to statistics, by the end of 1917, almost 92,000 vehicles had successfully landed in the French army, 76,000 in the British, more than fifty thousand in the German, and about 21,000 in the Russian.
tanks
Truly, the tank became an innovative technique on the fields of the First World War. In short, it was his debut. And a successful debut. Tanks first appeared on the battlefield in 1916. It was the British Mk I. The first tanks were produced in two versions. Some with cannon weapons, others with machine guns.
The thickness of the armor of the first tanks did not protect its crew even from armor-piercing bullets. The fuel system was also imperfect, which is why the first cars could stop at the most inopportune moment.
"Schneider SA 1" became the first French tank, which also received its baptism of fire on the fronts of the First World War. Compared to the English tank, he had several advantages, but he was far from perfect, in particular, he was absolutely not adapted to moving over rough terrain. But the French themselves, however, considered him a miracle of technology and were proud of their tank.
Seeing that the French and the British were successfully using new equipment in battle, the German designers also took care of creating their own masterpiece. As a result, in the fall of 1917, the German A7V appeared on the battlefields.
ships
The experience of previous wars at sea demonstrated the need to strengthen weapons and dictated new requirements for the equipment and construction of ships. As a result, in 1907, the first battleship of a new type, called the Dreadnought, was launched in Great Britain.
Increased displacement, power and speed, as well as enhanced armament made it more reliable and dangerous for the enemy.
Germany and England paid the greatest attention to the development of the fleet on the eve of the First World War. Actually, it was between them that the main rivalry at sea unfolded. It is worth noting that each of the countries approached equipping their fleet in different ways. The German command, for example, paid more attention to strengthening armor and increasing the number of guns. The British, in turn, made efforts to increase the speed of movement and increase the caliber of the guns.
Aircraft
Another technique that was used specifically for military purposes in the First World War, in short, was aircraft. At first they were used for reconnaissance, and then for bombing and destroying enemy air forces.
The Germans were the first to use aircraft to attack strategic rear targets of the enemy. It is worth noting here that by the beginning of the war, this country had the second largest air fleet. At the same time, almost all of his cars were outdated mail and passenger airplanes. However, already in the first war years, realizing the importance of aviation technology, Germany launched the production and equipment of newer and more modern aircraft. As a result, for a long time, German pilots literally reigned in the sky, causing significant damage to the allies of the Entente.
Russia, in turn, was the first country in the world in terms of the number of aircraft. By the beginning of the war, she even had 4 of the latest and only multi-engine aircraft in the world at that time. However, despite this, in general, the level of development of Russian aviation was lower than that of the British, French and Germans.
Great Britain was the first country to decide to install a machine gun on an airplane. And many innovations and inventions related to the improvement of the aircraft of the First World War belonged to the French.
Another country that intensively developed its fleet during the war years was Italy, which, along with Russia, began to use multi-engine aircraft.
On the one hand, in the last decades of the existence of the Russian Empire, the country was rapidly modernized. On the other hand, there was a technical backwardness, dependence on foreign technologies, imported components. With an impressive aviation fleet, for example, there was practically no production of aircraft engines. With the increased role of artillery, equipping the Russian army with guns and ammunition was clearly insufficient. While the Germans actively used an extensive railway network for the transfer of troops, our railways did not meet the needs of a huge country and its army. Having serious successes in the war with Germany's allies - the patchwork Austria-Hungary and the Turks, Russia lost almost all the big battles with the Germans and ended the war with territorial losses and the Brest peace imposed by the winners. Then Germany also collapsed, but quickly resurrected as a dangerous, well-armed and aggressive enemy. However, the lessons of the First World War were learned. It took the colossal effort of the first five-year plans for the USSR to be able to provide the energy base for a large military industry, build factories and create its own weapons systems in order to end the war in Berlin, albeit at the cost of colossal sacrifices.
1. Aircraft "Ilya Muromets"
On the eve of the First World War, Russia had an impressive fleet of military aircraft (about 250 units), but these were mostly models assembled under foreign licenses from foreign components. Despite the general weakness of the domestic aviation industry of those years, Russia built an aircraft that broke many records. "Ilya Muromets" designed by I.I. Sikorsky became the world's first serial multi-engine aircraft and the first heavy bomber.
2. Battleship "Sevastopol"
The defeat in the Russo-Japanese War seriously weakened the Baltic Fleet, from which squadrons were formed for the Pacific theater of operations. Russia made great efforts to restore its potential in the Baltic on the eve of the First World War. One of the important steps in this direction was the laying of four battleships of the Sevastopol type at the shipyards of St. Petersburg. These ships, modeled after the English dreadnoughts, had great firepower, armed with twelve 305 mm guns in four three-gun turrets.
3. Revolver "Nagant"
"Nagant" became a mass weapon of the Russian army as a result of the rearmament campaign organized by the government of the Russian Empire at the end of the 19th century. A competition was announced in which mainly Belgian gunsmiths competed. The competition was won by Leon Nagant, however, under the terms of the competition, he had to simplify his model and remake it in 7.62 mm - the caliber of the "three-ruler". In Russia, an "officer" version (with a double platoon system) and a soldier's (simplified) version were produced.
4. "Three-ruler" 1891
In the last third of the 19th century, Europe began to switch to magazine rifles, which made it possible to increase the rate of fire of weapons. Russia also joined this process in 1888, creating a special commission for rearmament. Sergei Mosin, head of the workshop of the Tula Arms Plant, was a member of the commission. Subsequently, the “three-ruler” he created competed with the Leon Nagant rifle, but the Russian design demonstrated greater reliability and was put into service.
5. 76-mm gun model 1902
The rapid-fire field gun, one of the most common light guns in the Russian army, was developed at the Putilov plant in St. Petersburg by designers L.A. Bishlyak, K.M. Sokolovsky and K.I. Lipnitsky. The infantry division included an artillery brigade of two three-battery battalions of these guns. Sometimes the "three-inch" was used as an anti-aircraft gun: in the photo it is installed for firing at airplanes.
6. 122 mm field howitzer
The army corps, which had two infantry divisions, had a division of light howitzers in the amount of 12 guns. Interestingly, two models of guns of this type were adopted at once - one developed by the French company Schneider (with a piston breech, model 1910), the other by the German company Krupp (with a wedge breech, sample 1909) . In addition, the Russian army was armed with heavy 152-mm howitzers.
7. Machine gun "Maxim"
The legendary British machine gun was at first an exclusively imported product and fired a 10.62-mm cartridge from a Berdan rifle. Subsequently, it was converted under the 7.62-mm "Mosin" cartridge, and in this modification it was put into service in 1901. In 1904, the machine gun began to be mass-produced at the Tula Arms Plant. One of the drawbacks of the machine gun was a heavy carriage, which was sometimes replaced by a lighter platform in the troops.
When European armies went to the front in 1914, they still had horses and bayonets in their arsenal, and by the end of the war, no one could be surprised by machine guns, aerial bombardments, armored vehicles and chemical weapons. The weapons inspired by the spirit of romance were replaced by gaseous chlorine, huge shells with a flight range of more than 30 kilometers and machine guns spitting out bullets like from a fire hose. Each of the parties to the conflict actively used modern technologies and invented new methods in the hope of gaining the upper hand over the enemy. Armored vehicles made armies invulnerable to small arms, tanks made it possible to go on the offensive right along barbed wire and trenches, telephones and heliographs made it possible to transmit information over long distances, and planes relentlessly sowed death from the sky. Thanks to scientific developments, the enemy armies have become more powerful, but at the same time more vulnerable. American soldiers use an acoustic locator on wheels. Acoustic locators were actively improved during the First World War, but fell into disuse with the advent of radar in the 1940s. 
Austrian armored train, circa 1915. 
An armored train car from the inside, Chaplino, modern Dnepropetrovsk region, Ukraine, spring 1918. The carriage contains at least six machine guns and many boxes of ammunition. 
German signalmen pedal a tandem to generate power for a radio station, September 1917. 
Entente advance on Bapaume, France, circa 1917. The soldiers follow the tanks. 
A soldier on an American Harley-Davidson motorcycle, circa 1918. During World War I, the United States sent more than 20,000 Indian and Harley-Davidson motorcycles to the front. 
British Mark A Whippet tanks advance along a road near Achiie-le-Petit, France, August 22, 1918. 
A German soldier polishes shells for a 38 cm SK L/45 “Max” railroad artillery gun, circa 1918. The gun could fire 750-kilogram shells at a distance of up to 34 kilometers. 
German infantrymen in gas masks and Stahlhelm helmets in positions in the course of communication on the Western Front. 
The false tree is a disguised British observation post. 
Turkish soldiers using a heliograph, 1917 A heliograph is a wireless optical telegraph that transmits signals by flashes of sunlight, usually in Morse code. 
An experimental Red Cross transport designed to protect wounded soldiers from the trenches, circa 1915. 
American soldiers put on gas masks in a trench. A signal flare takes off behind them. 
German trench digging machine, January 8, 1918. Thousands of kilometers of trenches were dug by hand, and only a small part with the help of machinery. 
German soldiers with a field telephone. 
Loading a German A7V tank onto a railway platform on the Western Front 
An example of a false horse behind which snipers were hiding in no man's land. 
Welders at Lincoln Motor Co. In Detroit, Michigan, circa 1918. 
The tank goes to the flamethrower, circa 1918. 
Abandoned tanks on the battlefield in Ypres, Belgium, circa 1918. 
A German soldier with a camera near a wrecked British Mark IV tank and a dead tanker, 1917. 
The use of gas masks in Mesopotamia, 1918. 
American soldiers set up a 37mm automatic cannon near a trench in Alsace, France on June 26, 1918. 
American soldiers in French Renault FT-17 tanks head to the front line in the Argonne Forest, France, September 26, 1918. 
German pilot's suit, equipped with an electrically heated mask, vest and fur boots. During the flight on aircraft with an open cockpit, pilots had to withstand sub-zero temperatures. 
British Mark I tank, foot soldiers, horses and mules. 
Turkish soldiers with a German 105mm howitzer M98/09. 
Irish Guards wearing gas masks during an exercise on the Somme, September 1916. 
A temporary wooden bridge on the site of a destroyed steel bridge across the Scheldt River in France. British tank that fell into the river when the previous bridge was destroyed serves as a support for the new bridge 
Telegraph in room 15 of the Elysee Palace Hotel in Paris, France, September 4, 1918. 
German officers near an armored car in Ukraine, spring 1918. 
Soldiers from the 69th Australian Squadron attach firebombs to an R.E.8 aircraft at an airfield northwest of Arras, France. 
Six machine gun brigades preparing to leave for France, circa 1918. The brigade consisted of two people: a motorcycle driver and a machine gunner. 
New Zealand soldiers in a trench and a Jumping Jennie tank in Gomkur, France, August 10, 1918. 
The German military look at the broken British anti-aircraft installation, dead soldiers, empty cartridge boxes. 
American soldiers training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, circa 1918. 
German soldiers are charging gas-guns. 
Front in Flanders. Gas attack, September 1917. 
French sentinels at the post in a trench entwined with barbed wire. 
American and French photographers, France, 1917. 
Italian howitzer Obice da 305/17. Less than 50 such howitzers were produced. 
The use of flamethrowers on the Western Front. 
French army mobile radiology laboratory, circa 1914. 
A British Mark IV tank, captured and repainted by the Germans, is abandoned in the forest. 
The first American tank Holt, 1917.
“I never understood why it was necessary to fight,” American bard Bob Dylan once sang about the First World War. It is necessary or not necessary, but the first high-tech conflict in the history of mankind began exactly a hundred years ago, claimed millions of lives and radically changed the course of history in the Old World, and throughout the world. Scientific and technological progress for the first time with such incredible power has shown that it is capable of being deadly and dangerous for civilization.
By 1914, Western Europe had lost the habit of big wars. The last grandiose conflict - the Franco-Prussian War - took place almost half a century before the first salvos of the First World War. But that war of 1870 directly or indirectly led to the final formation of two large states - the German Empire and the Kingdom of Italy. These new players felt more powerful than ever, but left out in a world where Britain ruled the seas, France owned vast colonies, and the vast Russian Empire had a serious influence on European affairs.
The great massacre for the redivision of the world was brewing for a long time, and when it nevertheless began, politicians and the military did not yet understand that wars in which officers ride horses in bright uniforms, and the outcome of the conflict is decided in large, but fleeting battles of professional armies (such as big battles in the Napoleonic Wars) are a thing of the past.
The era of trenches and pillboxes, field uniforms of camouflage color and many months of positional "butting" came, when soldiers died in tens of thousands, and the front line almost did not move in either direction. The Second World War, of course, was also associated with great progress in the military-technical field - what is worth only the missile and nuclear weapons that appeared at that time. But in terms of the number of all kinds of innovations, the First World War is hardly inferior to the Second, if not superior to it.
In this article, we will mention ten of them, although the list could be expanded. For example, formally military aviation and combat submarines appeared before the war, but they revealed their potential precisely in the battles of the First World War. During this period, air and submarine warships acquired many important improvements.
The plane turned out to be a very promising platform for placing weapons, but it didn’t immediately become clear how exactly to place it there. In the first air battles, the pilots fired at each other with revolvers. They tried to hang machine guns from below on belts or put them above the cockpit, but all this created problems with aiming. It would be nice to place the machine gun exactly in front of the cockpit, but how to shoot through the propeller?
This engineering problem was solved back in 1913 by the Swiss Franz Schneider, but a truly working firing synchronization system, where the machine gun was mechanically connected to the engine shaft, was developed by the Dutch aircraft designer Anthony Fokker. In May 1915, German aircraft, whose machine guns fired through the propeller, entered the battle, and soon the air forces of the Entente countries adopted the innovation.
The firing synchronizer allowed the pilots to conduct aimed fire from a machine gun through the propeller blades.
This is not easy to believe, but the First World War also includes the first experience of creating an unmanned aerial vehicle, which became the ancestor of both UAVs and cruise missiles. Two American inventors - Elmer Sperry and Peter Hewitt - developed in 1916-1917 an unmanned biplane, whose task was to deliver an explosive charge to the target. No one heard of any electronics then, and the device had to withstand the direction with the help of gyroscopes and an altimeter based on a barometer. In 1918, it came to the first flight, but the accuracy of the weapon left so much to be desired that the military abandoned the novelty.
The first UAV took off in 1918, but never made it to the battlefield. The accuracy failed.
The flourishing of underwater operations forced engineering thought to actively work on the creation of means for detecting and destroying warships hidden in the depths of the sea. Primitive hydrophones - microphones for listening to underwater noise - existed in the 19th century: they were a membrane and a resonator in the form of a bell-shaped tube. Work on listening to the sea intensified after the collision of the Titanic with an iceberg - it was then that the idea of active sound sonar arose.
And finally, already during the First World War, thanks to the work of the French engineer and future public figure Paul Langevin, as well as the Russian engineer Konstantin Chilovsky, sonar, based on ultrasound and the piezoelectric effect - this device could not only determine the distance to the object, but also indicate the direction to it. The first German submarine was detected by sonar and destroyed in April 1916.
The hydrophone and sonar were a response to the successes of the German submariners. Submarine stealth suffered.
The fight against German submarines led to the emergence of such weapons as depth charges. The idea originated within the walls of the Royal Naval Torpedo and Mine School (Britain) in 1913. The main task was to create a bomb that would explode only at a given depth and could not damage surface ships and ships.
Depth charges. The hydrostatic fuse measured the water pressure and was activated only at a certain value.
Whatever happened at sea and in the air, the main battles were fought on land. The increased firepower of artillery, and especially the spread of machine guns, quickly discouraged fighting in open spaces. Now the opponents competed in the ability to dig as many rows of trenches as possible and dig deeper into the ground, which more reliably protected from heavy artillery fire than the forts and fortresses that were in vogue in the previous era. Of course, earthen fortifications have existed since ancient times, but only during the First World War did giant continuous front lines appear, carefully excavated on both sides.
Endless trenches. Artillery and machine-gun fire forced the opponents to dig into the ground, resulting in a positional stalemate.
trench lines the Germans supplemented them with separate concrete firing points - the heirs of the fortress forts, which later received the name of pillboxes. This experience was not very successful - more powerful pillboxes, capable of withstanding heavy artillery strikes, appeared already in the interwar period. But here we can recall that the giant multi-level concrete fortifications of the Maginot Line did not save the French in 1940 from the impact of the Wehrmacht tank wedges.
Military thought has gone further. Burrowing into the ground led to a positional crisis, when the defense on both sides became so high quality that it turned out to be a devilishly difficult task to break through it. A classic example is the Verdun meat grinder, in which numerous mutual offensives each time choked in a sea of fire, leaving thousands of corpses on the battlefield, without giving a decisive advantage to either side.
Pillboxes strengthened the German defensive lines, but were vulnerable to heavy artillery attacks.
Battles often went on at night, in the dark. In 1916, the British "delight" the troops with another novelty - tracer bullets.303 Inch Mark I leaving a greenish glowing trail.
Tracer bullets made it possible to shoot accurately at night.
In this situation, military minds focused on creating a kind of battering ram that would help the infantry break through the rows of trenches. For example, the “barrage of fire” tactic was developed, when a shaft of explosions from artillery shells rolled ahead of the infantry advancing on the trenches of the enemy. His task was to "clear" the trenches as much as possible before they were captured by infantrymen. But this tactic also had disadvantages in the form of casualties among the attackers from "friendly" fire.
A light automatic weapon could become a definite help for the attackers, but its time has not yet come. True, the first samples of light machine guns, submachine guns and automatic rifles also appeared during the First World War. In particular, the first Beretta submachine gun Model 1918 was created by designer Tulio Marengoni and entered service with the Italian army in 1918.
The Beretta submachine gun ushered in the era of light automatic weapons.
Perhaps the most notable innovation that was aimed at overcoming the positional impasse was tank. The firstborn was the British Mark I, developed in 1915 and launched an attack on German positions at the Battle of the Somme in September 1916. Early tanks were slow and clumsy and were the prototypes of breakthrough tanks, armored objects relatively resistant to enemy fire that supported advancing infantry.
Following the British, the Renault FT tank was built by the French. The Germans also made their own A7V, but they were not particularly zealous in tank building. In two decades, it will be the Germans who will find a new use for their already more agile tanks - they will use tank troops as a separate tool for rapid strategic maneuver and stumble over their own invention only at Stalingrad.
Tanks were still slow, clumsy and vulnerable, but they turned out to be a very promising type of military equipment.
Poison gases- another attempt to suppress defense in depth and a true "calling card" of the massacre in the European theater. It all started with tear and irritant gases: in the battle of Bolimov (the territory of modern Poland), the Germans used artillery shells with xylobromide against Russian troops.
Combat gases caused numerous casualties, but they did not become a superweapon. But gas masks appeared even in animals.
Then it's time for gases that kill. On April 22, 1915, the Germans released 168 tons of chlorine on French positions near the Ypres River. In response, the French developed phosgene, and in 1917, the German army used mustard gas near the same Ypres River. The gas arms race went on throughout the war, although chemical warfare agents did not give a decisive advantage to either side. In addition, the danger of gas attacks led to the flowering of another pre-war invention - gas mask.