by Bill Fawcett
By the start of the war, many of the major combatants, including France, England, Germany, and Italy, had aircraft designers and manufacturers among their populations, and naturally the efforts of those pioneers turned toward employing their machines in pursuit of national victory.
During the first year of the war, the airplane was used by both sides pretty much as a mobile observation platform. Pilots, often accompanied by observers, would fly over enemy positions, study the ground and the troops below them, and return to base with information that could be used by the generals as they worked toward the carnage that would eventually consume a generation of European manhood. For a time, these fliers remained aloof from the horrors of the ground war; there are many reports of German and French pilots cheerfully waving to each other as they flew off on their missions.
Still, men being men, it wasn’t long before a belligerent pilot or observer carried along a side arm, and started taking pot shots at the fliers on the other side. These little plunks were not terribly dangerous, though they undoubtedly had a dampening effect on the camaraderie among the aviators. As the war moved into its second year, airplanes got larger and more powerful, and those ingenious fliers came up with the idea of mounting .30 caliber machine guns on swivels, so that the observer (not the pilot) could take aim at other airplanes that were off to the side or behind the firing craft.
But this was an unsatisfactory (i.e., not very lethal) method of aerial warfare. Given the fact that both the shooting platform and the target were moving fast, and through three dimensions, most likely in different directions and at different altitudes, it was really, really difficult for the gunner to hit anything. What was needed, many pilots realized, was a gun that was lined up with the airplane’s course, so that, by aiming the airplane, the pilot could aim the gun at the same time. Such an orientation would, in effect, cut in half the movement variables between the firing platform and the target.
The seemingly insurmountable problem with this idea, however, was the airplane’s own propeller. It was spinning away right in front of the pilot’s face, a clear obstacle to a stream of machine gun bullets delivered out the front of the airplane. Not only was there no design that looked good on paper, but in fact the whole idea looked so bad on paper that no one was even willing to give it a try. (Of course, some airplanes had two engines, one mounted on each wing, but these planes were by definition too heavy, lumbering, and unmaneuverable to recommend themselves as fighter aircraft.)
A young, highly experienced French pilot named Roland Garros came up with an idea. Garros flew an advanced airplane made by Morane-Saulnier. It was a trim, fast monoplane (single winged aircraft) with the wing flush with the top of the fuselage. It was powered by a rotary engine, which is an engine that has the crankshaft anchored to the frame of the plane while the pistons themselves and basically the whole rest of the engine rotate in a dizzying fashion around the shaft, and spin the propeller with them. There was just enough room between the cockpit and the prop for a small machine gun to be installed. Of course, the stream of bullets would shoot through the circle of the rotating prop, and sooner or later (almost certainly sooner) the slugs would chew away the propeller, causing the plane to crash and the pilot to die.
But Garros was inventive, brash, brave, and intelligent—the virtual archetype of a fighter pilot—and he had an innovative idea. Enlisting help from engineers on the ground, he put his idea into effect: two steel plates were bolted to the propeller at the location where the bullets would strike it. The plates were canted at an angle to deflect the bullets away from the aircraft and the engine, and were carefully balanced to keep the propeller true.
After trying out his idea on the ground—it worked just as he thought it would—Garros took his plane into the skies. In a matter of weeks he had shot down five German airplanes, and became a true war hero in the eyes of the French public. The newspapers dubbed him an “Ace of a man,” introducing a term that is still used to describe a fighter pilot who has shot down five enemy planes in battle.
Unfortunately for Garros, even a modern World War I airplane was still a fairly primitive device. It was not his invention but simple engine failure that proved his undoing. Lacking power, he glided to a crash landing behind enemy lines. Realizing the importance of his invention, he tried to burn the aircraft, but the plane vexingly refused to catch fire.
The Germans recognized the plane, and quickly called in famed Dutch airplane manufacturer Anthony Fokker to study the feature and see if he could duplicate it. Though there is some controversy regarding exactly who thought of this idea or that idea, and who did what first, the practical outcome was that Fokker came up with a better system: He synchronized the position of the propeller to the firing pin on the machine gun, so that the gun wouldn’t shoot when the prop was right in front of the barrel. He mounted his new device on another monoplane, one of his own design called the Fokker Eindecker—which was much like Garros’s Morane Saulnier. The plane went on to dominate aerial combat for the next ten months, a period of the air war that became known as the Fokker Scourge.
Garros, meanwhile, escaped from a German POW camp and returned to action. By that time, the Allied powers had discovered Fokker’s secret and incorporated it into their own aircraft. Garros returned to action, flying a Spad with two forward-firing machine guns synchronized to avoid the propeller. He was killed in action two months before the war ended in November 1918. The idea of synchronized machine guns continued through several generations of aircraft development, and several more wars, until advances in jet propulsion finally rendered it unnecessary.
“Any community’s arm of force—military, police, security—needs people in it who can do necessary evil, and yet not be made evil by it. To do only the necessary and no more. To constantly question the assumptions, to stop the slide into atrocity.”
—Lois McMaster Bujold, Barrayar (1991)
A Battle Strategy That Will Take Your Breath Away
Brian M. Thomsen
World War I had become quite boring.
The Germans and the Allies found themselves in a face-to-face showdown across France. Unable to make progress through the deadly hail of enemy fire, each side continuously bombarded the other from their positions in fortified trenches and embedded artillery positions, quickly turning everything between into a barren wasteland. Despite the ferocity of the attacks, the battle became a drawn-out stalemate.
It soon became clear that a new factor had to be introduced to disrupt this status quo—but what could it be? They needed “a weapon so appalling that it would destroy not only an enemy frontline but also the will to maintain troops on that frontline.”
Such a weapon would force the enemy to abandon their secured positions—perhaps even cause them to turn tail and run—and revolt against the high command that tried to keep them in place. Once they had left, their positions could be supplanted and eventually victory would be achieved by breaking the stalemate.
The enemy needn’t be killed, just incapacitated—and if this could be achieved without even having to get up close, so much the better.
But what weapon would provide this solution?
An answer was devised—poison gas.
There is still a considerable amount of debate as to who used “poison gas” tactically first. What is not in dispute is the effect that the gas had on those who came in contact with it.
At a minimum, those targeted had only seconds to don their gasmasks and cover-ups in hopes that they could sufficiently protect themselves during the onslaught. Such protections were quite cumbersome, restricting both mobility and vision and making the actual waging of war quite difficult. Even those thus protected from the gas were largely knocked out of the fight.
And it was critical to gain protection from the effects of the gas. The poison-gas solution provided both sides of the conflict with numerous painful or deadly options.
The most common poison, mustard gas, was primarily a blistering agent. While its ef
fects might not be immediately felt by the inflicted, the resulting damage could be far reaching. Exposure often caused surface blistering on exposed skin, severe eye irritation that could result in eventual blindness, and worst of all, lung scarring from inhalation. Exposure of over fifty percent of one’s body was considered fatal, and inhalation could also lead to pulmonary edema. Worse, men who were not involved in the actual attack could still be affected. The insidious gas clung to the primary victims, then often spread to anyone who tried to render aid. Most of these men did not even realize they had been exposed until the later onset of symptoms.
Despite the horrors of mustard gas, it was often survivable. Other gases, such as chlorine-based phosgene, were decidedly more deadly. When inhaled, these gases caused permanent lethal scarring to the lungs usually resulting in an expedient yet painful death. Phosgene’s distinctive odor and the gray-green colored cloud it formed upon dispersal made it easy to detect, spreading dread as the entrenched victims became aware of its approach.
But while phosgene was more deadly than mustard gas, it was also more easily neutralized. Instead of a cumbersome suit, sometimes a damp kerchief was sufficient to prevent the gas from entering one’s nose and throat. (It was rumored that human urine worked better than water as a dampening agent, as many believed its ammonia content would chemically cancel out the chlorine content—this however proved to be mostly an old soldier’s tale as its efficacy is scientifically doubtful at best.)
The gases were usually released by aerosol or bomb/grenade of some sort where the “gasser” would initially dispense the gas and let the wind currents do the rest, carrying it into enemy territory and into the fortified trenches.
Many of the British high command were appalled at the prospect of such a weapon. Commander Ferguson of the British Expeditionary Forces said: “It is a cowardly form of warfare which does not commend itself to me or other English soldiers. We cannot win this war unless we kill or incapacitate more of our enemies than they do of us, and if this can only be done by our copying the enemy in his choice of weapons, we must not refuse to do so.”
Eventually, though, Ferguson’s contemporaries embraced this weapon as well. But even the careful British, who were slightly late in the gas strategy game in World War I, lacked the necessary control and foresight to avoid the complications of their new weapon. They forgot the old adage of the boy who spit into the wind.
Consider what occurred during the Battle of Loos. General Douglas Haig and the British First Army engaged the Germans in France at what was referred to as the Second Battle of Artois on September 25 through 28 in 1915. Previous to this engagement the British had experienced a certain bit of success at clearing the lines before them through the release of chlorine gas. They would release the gas, which drifted forward over the German trenches and foxholes, thus clearing the way for the Anglo-French forces to proceed onward.
According to the records at hand on the first day of battle, the British followed the German tactic and used chlorine gas to launch their attack starting at around 5:50 a.m. Unfortunately the wind had not been informed of the battle plan and failed to propel the noxious cloud forward. Moreover, on the left side of the British ranks there appeared to be a change in the weather—or more precisely the wind direction. Indeed the breeze happened to change course, turning to propel the gas cloud back from whence it came, towards the British, who were ill prepared for the onslaught.
The remaining force continued forward, oblivious to this development. The main attack began at 6:30 a.m.
Weighed down by heavy packs, the British troops tired quickly against their unseen enemy. The field was soon filled with discarded gear as the soldiers struggled to advance against the gas. Reserves failed to arrive. As a result the British that day lost one-sixth of their forces. Indeed, more Brits died in battle on September 25 than in the entire three years of the Boer War.
Even a fearsome weapon such as poison gas only works when it can be controlled—and then only when Mother Nature is willing to cooperate.
“Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men.”
—General George Patton, Jr.
Tanks a Lot
Bill Fawcett
Among the many areas where excess meant disaster, the armored vehicle, the tank, has been the one most open to abuse. Some designs can be explained by a sharp learning curve, some only looked good on paper.
The Char d’Assault St. Chamond
Bigger is often better in war machines. But a case of tank envy (the Brits had them) by the French Army in 1917 led to the creation of the massive Char d’Assault St. Chamond. Large tanks with crews of a dozen men were doing well in the no-man’s land between the trenches and often succeeded in breaking through the German trench and machine gun lines. So the French devised an even bigger tank, almost 27 feet long and close to 9 feet wide, mounting numerous machine guns and one of their superb 75mm guns. The real problem lay not in the armament or the huge size, but in the fact that the treads moving this behemoth were only about 16 feet long, leaving the front and rear of the tank hanging out far beyond them. This meant that the St. Chamond hung up on any deep shell hole or trench. Once they hit the front lines these large and expensive armored vehicles were quickly turned into slow but well armored ammunition carriers.
Sturmpanzerwagen A7V
The French were not alone in the bigger and dumber tank competition. Even the German Army succumbed to a design that seemed good on paper but was tragically flawed. The Allies had used tanks with great success and the German engineers felt the need to do them one better. The purpose of the tank in World War I was to break through the barbed wire and silence the machine guns so that your infantry could advance. This meant they had to travel over very rough ground and even cross deep trenches. This fact seems to have been lost on the designers of the A7V. The 26 by 10 by 11-foot tank held six machine guns and a 57mm gun that was quite sufficient for blasting apart those annoying machine gun nests. What this vehicle also had was a ground clearance of 1.5 inches. Yep, that is not a typo, the distance between the bottom of the tank and the ground was a tiny inch and a half. This meant that the entire bottom of the tank constantly ground itself against the dirt and debris below it except when running on the smoothest and firmest flat surfaces. (Maybe the German tank testing area was paved.) That scraping in turn meant the A7V was slowed to a crawl and was often stopped by even shallow depressions. There being a lack of fully paved battlefields in World War I, the Germans found that their new and expensive tank was effectively incapable of actually reaching the enemy and could not keep up with even walking infantry on an unpaved road. The program was dropped after only twenty of these awkward giants were made.
T-35, M11, and T-100
In the period between the wars an arms race for tanks began. Rather than bigger, it was decided what was needed were tanks with guns and more guns. The logic must have been that if one large caliber gun was effective, two, three, or even five would be better. The result was the creation of several multi-turreted tanks. The problems of weight and actually manning the guns soon doomed all these efforts, but several actually made it into production.
The Russians had two multi-gun monstrosities made in 1933 and 1939 and the Italians one in 1939. The first of these was the T35 Heavy Tank, and we do mean heavy, which featured three turrets: one raised and two below facing forward and back. It was quickly found that the top turret had to be armed only with a short barreled (and so less effective) gun to keep its fire from damaging the two lower turrets. Also the weight of the turrets meant that the armor on the T-35 could be no thicker than 30mm anywhere and 10mm in most places. At 10mm a good machinegun could punch through it. Eventually the few that were sent to active armor units proved so useless than no more were made.
But the idea of more guns was hard to resist and in 1939 the Russian T-100 and Italian M11-39 tanks were created. This T-100 was heavier, but at least somewhat better armored than the T-35. It also had two guns, with
a second gun set below the turret in the hull. Just for good measure four machine guns were also added. The tank was too heavy for most terrain and needed a crew more than twice that of any other Russian tank. A few were actually sent to fight in Finland, where they proved useless. The few that were made did see combat in the 1941 defense of Moscow. Dug in like metal pillboxes, they might have actually been of some use.
Being unable to put enough armor on a tank that had multiple large and heavy guns or a very heavy gun was a problem for anyone who designed tanks. It became an even worse problem when the Italians tried to do this with a lighter, medium tank. The result was the M11/39. This tank only had one gun, but to allow the smaller tank to carry a heavier gun this weapon was built, like the T-100, into the hull of the tank and so had only a limited traverse. This meant it could only fire at targets that the tank was facing. The turret then carried two 30mm machine guns. In order to fit the main gun lower required that the entire hull be heightened, giving the tank a high, flat appearance (easy to hit and easier to penetrate). Further weight was conserved by the M11/39 having a maximum of only 30mm of armor. These tanks, whose gun could only fire forward and which were tall and easy targets, were eventually sent to fight in North Africa. The British destroyed them in droves and by the time the Afrika Korps and Rommel arrived to bail the Italians out, there were none left.
The Sig 33 and Sherman DD
In war you sometimes have to improvise. Two armored vehicles that actually saw combat were very much a case of trying to solve a problem with what seemed to be a good idea but wasn’t. The Germans’ style of mobile warfare created a need in 1940 for artillery that could keep up with their panzers. Not only was artillery slow to move, but it had to be set up in each location for use. So it must have seemed a stroke of genius to literally put each gun in its own mobile platform and fire from it. This combination of armored platform and artillery piece was the SIG 33. Basically the armored vehicle was a tank chassis onto which was placed a thin metal shield and a 150mm gun. Now the gun was not installed or mounted into the Sig 33, but rather simply fastened on top of the vehicle, wheels and all. The entire hybrid was heavy, slow, vulnerable, and when the gun fired it bounced around on the chassis. The design was quickly dropped when true mobile artillery appeared.