The Technology of War

THE TECHNOLOGY OF WAR

Deadly Inventions

The four years and four months of war that consumed Europe from the summer of 1914 until the armistice of 11 November 1918 redirected the focus of much science and technology. The death struggle in Europe slowed the progress of the pure sciences, but technology, at least insofar as it supported the war effort, flourished. Many European and American scientists and engineers served in the war effort. New products were developed for the war, including plastics, rayon, cellulose acetate (for film), and aluminum alloys. The machine gun, invented in the mid nineteenth century and substantially improved and refined by Hiram Maxim during the 1880s, became one of the most deadly weapons of World War I. Col. I. N. Lewis developed a lightweight machine gun that was a significant improvement over those in use, and within a year of entering the war in 1917 the United States was outproducing every other country in the manufacture of machine guns and grenades. Tanks were developed in Britain with the support of Winston Churchill, then first lord of the admiralty. The vehicle's code name during its development was "water tank," a name that was used both to confuse the enemy as to the secret weapon's actual purpose and to appease officials within the government who otherwise might have questioned the propriety of a land-based vehicle being over-seen by the admiralty office. Brought into production in Britain in 1915, the tank was first deployed at the Battle of the Somme in September 1916,

U.S. Engineers' Wartime Efforts

A small contingent of U.S. troops arrived in France along with Gen. John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, in June 1917. By that time the war in Europe had dragged on for nearly three years, and the soldiers and weapons of both the Allied forces and Central Powers were wearing thin. The American technological ability to make high explosives and gunpowder as well as field artillery was crucial in the final year of the war. In Nashville, Tennessee, the largest explosives factory in the world turned out more than one hundred thousand pounds of explosive powder daily, and there were scores of smaller plants across the country dedicated to similar pursuits. Technological innovations—such as a centrifugal method for drying finished powder and a cyanamide process for making nitric acid—were developed by American scientists. Incendiary bombs, flamethrowers, and colored rockets were invented or improved upon. University of Chicago professor of astronomy Forest Ray Moulton designed a more aerodynamic artillery shell. Heavy guns mounted on railroad cars—an innovation first used by Americans during the Civil War—were shipped to France. Trucks and Caterpillar tractors were also shipped overseas. Combatant and noncombatant engineers were used in every aspect of the U.S. war effort. Some helped build roads, bridges, and lightweight railroads, while others worked in electrical and mechanical repair.

Sea and Air

U.S. submarines were filled from bow to stern with new technologies. Among their innovations were electric engines that allowed U.S. subs to remain submerged longer than German U-boats. Utilizing radio technology, scientists William D. Coolidge and Max Mason developed long- and short-range listening devices, which helped to fix the range of enemy guns. Ford Motor Company produced "Eagle boats" as submarine chasers, and though only a few dozen were in use before the war ended, Ford engineers and laborers were hailed for their efficiency in production. Naval engineers, led by Ralph C. Browne, invented an improved sea mine. The novelty of their invention was the use of a long copper wire running out from the mine that, when coming into contact with the metal hull of a passing ship, closed an electrical circuit and detonated the explosion. In 1917 the U.S. Army had only fifty-five airplanes and thirty-five pilots, but by war's end the United States had forty-five squadrons of planes and more than seven hundred pilots. On 4 July 1917 the first "Liberty engine" for an aircraft was delivered at Washington, D.C., and was soon in widespread production and use. Not a single U.S.-made aircraft ever made it to the front, as all aerial combat was conducted in French or British planes.

The Scientists' War

Trench warfare and modern science combined to make World War I the most costly war ever fought. A report in 1915 noted that each step in the "methods of destruction.…is a further application of scientific knowledge. Indeed, in the present European war the application of such knowledge seems to be reaching the utmost limit of ingenuity. It may almost be called a chemist and physicist war with its application of physics in aerial navigation and its use of submarines, of telephones, wireless telegraphy, searchlights, and range-finders, and the application of chemistry in the manufacture of its many explosives, the manufacture of hydrogen for airships, its illuminating bombs and flares and latest of all in the manufacture of poisonous gases to be used for tactical purposes."

Gas Warfare

For much of the war mustard gas was the chemical weapon of choice. A greenish-yellow gas with a pungent odor, its high density meant that it could be especially effective against soldiers hunkered down in trenches on a windless day. The gas would stay suspended just above the ground, sink into the trenches, and torment victims through the agonizing process of burning the mucous membranes of their lungs and eyes until they collapsed in searing pain and died. Though the Germans had initiated the use of poison gas in April 1915, the Allies soon followed suit, and by the end of the war U.S. chemists had experimented with more than two dozen deadly gases for use in the war.

Sources:

John Batchelor and Bryan Cooper, Fighter: A History of Fighter Aircraft (New York: Scribners, 1974);

Ezra Bowen and others, Knights of the Air (Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Books, 1980);

"Chlorine Gas on the Battlefield," Scientific American (15 May 1915): 452;

Charles G. Grey, The History of Combat Airplanes (Northfield, Vt.: Norwich University, 1942);

S. L. A. Marshall, World War I (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1964).