The Project Gutenberg eBook, Inventions of the Great War, by A. Russell (Alexander Russell) Bond

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Title: Inventions of the Great War

Author: A. Russell (Alexander Russell) Bond

Release Date: April 3, 2014 [eBook #45269]

Language: English

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INVENTIONS OF THE
GREAT WAR

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INVENTIONS OF THE
GREAT WAR

BY
A. RUSSELL BOND

Managing Editor of "Scientific American,"
Author of "On the Battle-Front
of Engineering," etc.

WITH MANY
ILLUSTRATIONS

NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1919

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Copyright, 1918, 1919, by
The Century Co.

Published, June, 1919

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PREFACE

The great World War was more than two-thirds over when America entered the struggle, and yet in a sense this country was in the war from its very beginning. Three great inventions controlled the character of the fighting and made it different from any other the world has ever seen. These three inventions were American. The submarine was our invention; it carried the war into the sea. The airplane was an American invention; it carried the war into the sky. We invented the machine-gun; it drove the war into the ground.

It is not my purpose to boast of American genius but, rather, to show that we entered the war with heavy responsibilities. The inventions we had given to the world had been developed marvelously in other lands. Furthermore they were in the hands of a determined and unscrupulous foe, and we found before us the task of overcoming the very machines that we had created. Yankee ingenuity was faced with a real test.

The only way of overcoming the airplane was to build more and better machines than the enemy possessed. This we tried to do, but first we had to be taught by our allies the latest refinements of this machine, and the war was over before we had more than started our aërial program. The machine-gun and its accessory, barbed wire (also an American invention), were overcome by the tank; and we may find what little comfort we can in the fact that its invention was inspired by the sight of an American farm tractor. But the tank was a British creation and was undoubtedly the most important invention of the war. On the sea we were faced with a most baffling problem. The U-boat could not be coped with by the building of swarms of submarines. The essential here was a means of locating the enemy and destroying him even while he lurked under the surface. Two American inventions, the hydrophone and the depth bomb, made the lot of the U-boat decidedly unenviable and they hastened if they did not actually end German frightfulness on the sea.

But these were by no means the only inventions of the war. Great Britain showed wonderful ingenuity and resourcefulness in many directions; France did marvels with the airplane and showed great cleverness in her development of the tank and there was a host of minor inventions to her credit; while Italy showed marked skill in the creation of large airplanes and small seacraft.

The Central Powers, on the other hand, were less originative but showed marked resourcefulness in developing the inventions of others. Forts were made valueless by the large portable Austrian guns. The long range gun that shelled Paris was a sensational achievement, but it cannot be called a great invention because it was of little military value. The great German Zeppelins were far from a success because they depended for their buoyancy on a highly inflammable gas. It is interesting to note that while the Germans were acknowledging the failure of their dirigibles the British were launching an airship program, and here in America we had found an economical way of producing a non-inflammable balloon gas which promises a great future for aërial navigation.

The most important German contribution to the war—it cannot be classed as an invention—was poison gas, and it was not long ere they regretted this infraction of the rules of civilized warfare adopted at the Hague Conference; for the Allies soon gave them a big dose of their own medicine and before the war was over, fairly deluged them with lethal gases of every variety.

Many inventions of our own and of our allies were not fully developed when the war ended, and there were some which, although primarily intended for purposes of war, will be most serviceable in time of peace. For this war was not one of mere destruction. It set men to thinking as they had never thought before. It intensified their inventive faculties, and as a result, the world is richer in many ways. Lessons of thrift and economy have been taught us. Manufacturers have learned the value of standardization. The business man has gained an appreciation of scientific research.

The whole story is too big to be contained within the covers of a single book, but I have selected the more important and interesting inventions and have endeavored to describe them in simple language for the benefit of the reader who is not technically trained.

A. Russell Bond

New York, May, 1919

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CONTENTS

href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@45269@[email protected]#Page_3" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">3 II Hand-Grenades and Trench Mortars 20 III Guns that Fire Themselves 41 IV Guns and Super-Guns 62 V The Battle of the Chemists 85 VI Tanks 107 VII The War in the Air 123 VIII Ships that Sail the Skies 148 IX Getting the Range 169 X Talking in the Sky 184 XI Warriors of the Paint-Brush 209 XII Submarines 232 XIII Getting the Best of the U-Boat 253 XIV "Devil's Eggs" 276 XV Surface Boats 298 XVI Reclaiming the Victims of the Submarines 310   Index 339

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@45269@[email protected]#ip_53" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">53 Comparative diagram of the path of a projectile from the German super-gun 60 One of our 16-inch coast defence guns on a disappearing mount 61 Height of gun as compared with the New York City Hall 61 The 121-mile gun designed by American ordnance officer 68 American 16-inch rifle on a railway mount 69 A long-distance sub-calibered French gun on a railway mount 76 Inside of a shrapnel shell and details of the fuse cap 77 Search-light shell and one of its candles 77 Putting on the gas-masks to meet a gas cloud attack 84 Even the horses had to be masked 85 Portable flame-throwing apparatus 85 Liquid fire streaming from fixed flame-throwing apparatus 92 Cleaning up a dugout with the "fire-broom" 93 British tank climbing out of a trench at Cambrai 112 Even trees were no barrier to the British tank 113 The German tank was very heavy and cumbersome 113 The speedy British "Whippet" tank that can travel at a speed of twelve miles per hour 120 The French high-speed "baby" tank 120 Section through our Mark VIII tank showing the layout of the interior 121 A Handley-Page bombing plane with one of its wings folded back 128 How an object dropped from the Woolworth Building would increase its speed in falling 129 Machine-gun mounted to fire over the blades of the propeller 136 Mechanism for firing between the blades of the propeller 136 It would take a hundred horses to supply the power for a small airplane 137 The flying-tank 144 An N-C (Navy-Curtiss) seaplane of the type that made the first flight across the Atlantic 145 A big German Zeppelin that was forced to come down on French soil 148 Observation car lowered from a Zeppelin sailing above the clouds 149 Giant British dirigible built along the lines of a Zeppelin 156 One of the engine cars or "power eggs" of a British dirigible 156 Crew of the C-5 (American coastal dirigible) starting for Newfoundland

to make a transatlantic flight 157 The curious tail of a kite balloon 160 Observers in the basket of an observation balloon 160 Enormous range-finders mounted on a gun turret of an American warship 161 British anti-aircraft section getting the range of an enemy aviator 176 A British aviator making observations over the German lines 177 Radio headgear of an airman 192 Carrying on conversation by radio with an aviator miles away 192 Long distance radio apparatus at the Arlington (Va.) station 193 A giant gun concealed among trees behind the French lines 212 Observing the enemy from a papier-mâché replica of a dead horse 213 Camouflaged headquarters of the American 26th Division in France 220 A camouflaged ship in the Hudson River on Victory Day 221 Complex mass of wheels and dials inside a German submarine 240 Surrendered German submarines, showing the net cutters at the bow 241 Forward end of a U-boat 256 A depth bomb mortar and a set of "ash cans" at the stern of an American destroyer 257 A depth bomb mortar in action and a depth bomb snapped as it is being hurled through the air 260 Airplane stunning a U-boat with a depth bomb 261 The false hatch of a mystery ship 268 The same hatch opened to disclose the 3-inch gun and crew 268 A French hydrophone installation with which the presence of submarines was detected 269 Section of a captured mine-laying U-boat 272 A paravane hauled up with a shark caught in its jaws 273 A Dutch mine-sweeper engaged in clearing the North Sea of German mines 288 Hooking up enemy anchored mines 289 An Italian "sea tank" climbing over a harbor boom 300 Deck of a British aircraft mothership or "hush ship" 301 Electrically propelled boat or surface torpedo, attacking a warship 304 Hauling a seaplane up on a barge so that it may be towed 305 Climbing into an armored diving suit 320 Lowering an armored diver into the water

class="tdr">320 A diver's sea sled ready to be towed along the bed of the sea 321 The sea sled on land showing the forward horizontal and after vertical rudders 321 The diving sphere built for deep sea salvage operations 324 The pneumatic breakwater 325

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INVENTIONS OF THE GREAT WAR

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CHAPTER I
The War in and Under the Ground

For years the Germans had been preparing for war. The whole world knew this, but it had no idea how elaborate were their preparations, and how these were carried out to the very minutest detail. When the call to arms was sounded, it was a matter of only a few hours before a vast army had been assembled—fully armed, completely equipped, ready to swarm over the frontiers into Belgium and thence into France. It took much longer for the French to raise their armies of defense, and still longer for the British to furnish France with any adequate help. Despite the heroic resistance of Belgium, the Entente Allies were unprepared to stem the tide of German soldiers who poured into the northern part of France.

So easy did the march to Paris seem, that the Germans grew careless in their advance and then suddenly they met with a reverse that sent them back in full retreat. However, the military authorities of Germany had studied not only how to attack but also how to retreat and how to stand on the defensive. In this, as in every other phase of the conflict, they were far in advance of the rest of the world, and after their defeat in the First Battle of the Marne, they retired to a strong position and hastily prepared to stand on the defensive. When the Allies tried to drive them farther back, they found that the German army had simply sunk into the ground. The war of manœuver had given way to trench warfare, which lasted through long, tedious months nearly to the end of the great conflict.

The Germans found it necessary to make the stand because the Russians were putting up such a strong fight on Germany's eastern frontier. Men had to be withdrawn from the western front to stem the Russian tide, which meant that the western armies of the kaiser had to cease their offensive activities for the time being. The delay was fatal to the Germans, for they had opposed to them not only brave men but intelligent men who were quick to learn. And when the Germans were ready to resume operations in the West, they found that the Allies also had sunk into the ground and had learned all their tricks of trench warfare, adding a number of new ones of their own.

The whole character of the war was changed. The opposing forces were dead-locked and neither could break through the other's lines. The idea of digging into the ground did not originate with this war, but never before had it been carried out on so extensive a scale. The inventive faculties of both sides were vainly exercised to find some way of breaking the dead-lock. Hundreds of new inventions were developed. The history of war from the days of the ancient Romans up to the present time was searched for some means of breaking down the opposing lines. However, the dead-lock was not broken until a special machine had been invented, a traveling fort. But the story of that machine is told in another chapter.

At the outset the Allies dug very shallow ditches, such as had been used in previous wars. When it was found that these burrows would have to be occupied for weeks and months, the French and British imitated the Germans and dug their trenches so deep that men could walk through them freely, without danger of exposing their heads above ground; and as the ditches grew deeper, they had to be provided with a firing-step on which the riflemen could stand to fire over the top of the trenches. The trenches were zig-zagged so that they could not be flanked, otherwise they would have made dangerous traps for the defenders; for had the enemy gained one end of the trench, he could have fired down the full length of it, killing or wounding every man it contained. But zig-zagging made it necessary to capture each turn separately. There were lines upon lines of these trenches. Ordinarily there were but three lines, several hundred feet apart, with communicating trenches connecting them, and then several kilometers1 farther back were reserve trenches, also connected by communicating trenches with the front lines.

Men did not dare to show themselves out in the open near the battle-front for a mile or more behind the front-line trenches, for the enemy's sharp-shooters were always on the watch for a target. The men had to stay in the trenches day and night for two or more weeks at a time, and sleeping-accommodations of a very rough sort were provided for them in dugouts which opened into the trenches. The dugouts of the Allies were comparatively crude affairs, but the Germans spent a great deal of time upon their burrows.

UNDERGROUND VILLAGES

When the French first swept the Germans back out of their trenches along the Aisne, they were astonished to find how elaborate were these underground dwellings. They found that the ground was literally honeycombed with rooms and passageways. Often the dugouts were two stories in depth and extended as much as sixty feet below the level of the ground. In fact, all along this part of the front, the Germans had a continuous underground village in which thousands of men were maintained. The officers' quarters were particularly well fitted up, and every attention was given to the comfort of their occupants. There were steel door-mats at the entrances of the quarters. The walls were boarded and even papered. The bedrooms were fitted with spring beds, chiffoniers, and wash-stands, and all the rooms were lighted with electric lamps. There were spacious quarters for the men, with regular underground mess halls and elaborate kitchens. There were power-plants to furnish steam for the operation of pumps and for the lighting-plants and for other purposes.

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There was a chalk formation here in which were many large natural caves. One enormous cave was said to have held thirty thousand soldiers, and in this section the Germans kept large reserve forces. By digging far into the ground, the German troops secured protection from shell-fire; in fact, the horrible noise of battle was heard only as a murmur, down in these depths. With characteristic thoroughness, the Germans built their trench system for a long stay; while the Allies, on the other hand, looked upon their trenches as merely temporary quarters, which would hold the enemy at bay until they could build up armies large enough to drive the invaders out of the country. The construction of the trenches along some parts of the battle-line was particularly difficult, because of the problem of drainage. This was especially true in Flanders, where the trenches in many cases were below water-level, and elaborate pumping-systems had to be installed to keep them dry. Some of them were concrete-lined to make them waterproof. In the early stages of the war, before the trenches were drained, the men had to stand in water for a good part of the time, and the only way they could get about at all in the miry trenches was by having "duck-boards" in them. Duck-boards are sections of wooden sidewalk such as we find in small villages in this country, consisting of a couple of rails on which crosspieces of wood are nailed. These duck-boards fairly floated in the mud.

Some of the trenches were provided with barbed wire barriers or gates calculated to halt a raiding-party if it succeeded in getting into the trench. These gates were swung up out of the way, but when lowered they were kept closed with a rather complicated system of bolts which the enemy would be unable to unfasten without some delay; and while he was struggling to get through the gate, he would be a target for the bullets of the defenders.

HIDING RAILROADS IN DITCHES

Because of the elaborate system of trenches, and the distance from the front line to that part of the country where it was safe to operate in the open, it was necessary to build railways which would travel through tunnels and communicating trenches to the front lines. These were narrow-gage railroads and a special standard form of track section was designed, which was entirely of metal, something like the track sections of toy railroads. The tracks were very quickly laid and taken up at need. The locomotives had to be silent and smokeless and so a special form of gasolene locomotive was invented to haul the little cars along these miniature railroads to the front lines. Usually the trench railroads did not come to the very front of the battle-line, but their principal use was to carry shell to the guns which were located in concealed positions. Railroad or tramway trenches could not be sharply zig-zagged but had to have easy curves, which were apt to be recognized by enemy airplanes, and so they were often concealed under a covering of wire strewn with leaves.

PERISCOPES AND "SNIPERSCOPES"

But while the armies were buried underground, it was necessary for them to keep their eyes upon each other so that each might be ready for any sudden onslaught of the other. Snipers were always ready to fire at any head that showed itself above the parapet of the trench and so the soldiers had to steal an idea from the submarines and build them periscopes with which they could look over the top of their trenches without exposing themselves. A trench periscope was a very simple affair, consisting of a tube with two mirrors, one at the top and one at the bottom, set at such an angle that a person looking into the side of the tube at the bottom could see out of the opposite side of the tube at the top.

Observation posts were established wherever there was a slight rise in the ground. Sometimes these posts were placed far in advance of the trenches and sometimes even behind the trenches where it was possible to obtain a good view of the opposing lines. Sometimes a tunnel would be dug forward, leading to an outlet close to the enemy's lines, and here an observer would take his position at night to spy with his ears upon the activities of the enemy. Observers who watched the enemy by day would often not dare to use periscopes, which might be seen by the enemy and draw a concentrated fire of rifles and even shell. So that every manner of concealment was employed to make the observation posts invisible and to have them blend with their surroundings. Observers even wore veils so that the white of their skin would not betray them.

Snipers were equally ingenious in concealing themselves. They frequently used rifles which were connected with a dummy butt and had a periscope sighting-attachment. This attachment was called a "sniperscope." The rifle-barrel could be pushed through a loophole in the parapet and the sniper standing safely below the parapet could hold the dummy butt to his shoulder and aim his rifle with perfect accuracy by means of the periscope. It was next to impossible to locate a sniper hidden in this way. One method of doing it was to examine rubbish, tin cans, or any object that had been penetrated by a bullet and note the direction taken by the bullet. This would give a line leading toward the source of the shot, and when a number of such lines were traced, they would cross at a spot where the sniper or his gun was stationed, and a few shell would put the man out of business. Dummy heads of papier mâché were sometimes stuck above the parapet to draw the fire of enemy snipers and the bullet-holes which quickly appeared in them were studied to discover the location of the snipers.