New technology of the First World War. History of the First World War

War is not the best engine of progress, said Sakamoto Ryoma, Japanese political figure middle of the 19th century. And yet the first World War, which claimed millions of lives and became the "grave of three empires", left something behind the survivors.

The caterpillar mover, invented for difficult terrain, began to be used in heavy military equipment and subjected to numerous improvements. During the four war years, airplanes evolved from wooden-framed "whatnots" to purpose-metal aircraft, as we are accustomed to seeing them.

As for the car, it started World War I already quite successful. The first breakthrough from self-propelled steam carriages to conveyor assembly in thousands of copies had already passed before sad events. During the years of his service in the army in 1914-1919, nothing radically new was introduced.

Military debut

Moreover, the first armed conflict involving a car began 15 years before the First World War - during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, also famous for another "innovation", although much more dubious - concentration camps for prisoners of war and civilians .

The Englishman F. Simms took the French car De Dion-Bouton (De Dion-Bouton), adapted the American machine gun of the Maxim system (a popular weapon at the turn of the century) to it and thus created the first in the world combat vehicle, which has all the attributes that have been preserved for many years: weapons, engine and wheels.

Of course, it was just a prototype, which, although it managed to ride around the battlefields, was not adopted for service and did not find wide application then. However, the author of the idea of ​​initiative did not diminish at all. Simms clearly understood that over time his invention would be appreciated, and therefore, in 1902, he created the world's first armored car.

This funny armored car never took part in a single battle. But in 1908, Henry Ford launched the first mass-produced Model T, and self-running carriages began to fill the cities. The war was only six years away.

The most interesting thing is that the first bloodshed happened with the direct participation of the car. Archduke Franz Ferdinand died in the interior of a 1910 Gräf & Stift Double Phaeton open limousine while driving in Sarajevo with the owner of the car and part-time friend Count Franz von Harrach.

Path to fame

Despite the fact that the conservative generals of all the warring parties at the beginning of the war were guided by the principles of the 1870s and stubbornly did not draft cars into the army, our four-wheeled friends often ended up at the front themselves and were used to transport those same generals.

After the first battles, the commanders quickly realized that a car was a completely reasonable replacement for a horse-drawn wagon and could carry the wounded, ammunition and even carry weapons just as well, and sometimes better than horses. At the same time, the first barriers against cars appeared on the roads - wire. And very soon - "anti-partisan" equipment for vehicles, which made it possible to cut or remove barriers from the road.

It also unexpectedly turned out that it was much more convenient to patrol the roads in a car than on horseback, and even more so than on foot. Therefore, private cars of officers, as well as cars captured from the enemy, quickly began to be exploited.

Another job for cars, mostly trucks, was found in the medical service. During the First World War, for the first time, they began to organize the production of vehicles for transporting the wounded. The apogee of this was the Opel of the medical service, captured by an unknown photographer, equipped with a field altar.

For combined arms needs in the First World War, even real road trains were used

We were a little cunning, saying that the war did not bring anything new to the auto industry. Still, there was something. In automobiles of the beginning of the century, tires made up a rather serious part of the cost, and in the conditions of war, the wheels became unusable first. Therefore, talented German engineers came up with the idea of ​​putting springs with steel lugs instead of an elastic rubber tire in order to move relatively calmly without fear of nails. But by the way, how many cars have you seen now with such wheels?

“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 out of 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 as powerful as ever, but deprived in a world where Britain ruled the seas, France owned vast colonies, and the huge 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 weapon. 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. Let's say formally military aviation and combat submarines appeared even before the war, but revealed their potential precisely in the battles of the First World War. During this period, air and submarine warships received 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 innovation was adopted by air Force countries of the Entente.

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 aircraft , which became the ancestor of both the UAV 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 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 those hiding in sea ​​depths warships. 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 a French engineer, and in the future public figure Paul Langevin, as well as the Russian engineer Konstantin Chilovsky, was created 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 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 forts and fortresses - those 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 losses 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 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 opened the era of the lung 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 genuine " business card» slaughter on the European theater of operations. It all started with tear and irritating gases: in the battle of Bolimov (the territory of modern Poland), the Germans used against Russian troops artillery shells with xylobromide.

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, near the same river Ypres german army used mustard gas. 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.

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 surprise anyone with 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 getting the better of 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 tirelessly 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.
German soldier polishes shells for the railway artillery piece 38 cm SK L/45 “Max”, 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 means of flashes. 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 German tank A7V to 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 English anti-aircraft installation, dead soldiers, empty ammo 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.
Captured and repainted by the Germans british tank Mark IV abandoned in the woods.
First american tank Holt, 1917

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, last word 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.
The use of cars in many operations of that war was a great help. 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 quite 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. Even a year before the start of the war, one of the engineers of the Putilov Arms Plant proposed installing swinging anti-aircraft guns on the platform of a powerful truck. First prototypes of this technique entered the test at the end of 1914. And a few months later they were already commissioned. 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 new type, called "Dreadnought".
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. First they were used for reconnaissance, and then for bombing and destruction. air force enemy.
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 September 10, 2015, the Russian Post in the long-term series "History of the First World War" puts into circulation four stamps dedicated to domestic military equipment. The stamps depict: Ilya Muromets bomber; 7.62 mm Mosin rifle; 76.2 mm field rapid-fire cannon; destroyer "Novik"

The years of the First World War were marked by the complication of combat tactics, the appearance and use of new types of weapons and equipment on the fronts - aviation, tanks, automatic weapons, powerful artillery.

Destroyer "Novik"- joined the Baltic Fleet in October 1913. Its creation and the construction of subsequent ships of this type is one of the brightest pages in the history of domestic military shipbuilding. In history Russian fleet it was the first turbine warship. Set a world speed record. The destroyer could take on board 50 anchor mines. By the start of the First World War, he was the best ship in its class, served as a world model in the creation of destroyers of the military and post-war generation. None of the newest German destroyers could compete with the Novik. The destroyer "Novik" and subsequent ships of this series have passed a glorious battle path, showing an enviable longevity. After the end of the civil war, the Noviki, along with other warships, became part of the Soviet Navy. The Novik itself was named Yakov Sverdlov. With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War joined the fight against the fascist fleet. "Yakov Sverdlov" died on August 28, 1941, blown up by a mine, during the transition of warships and transports from Tallinn to Kronstadt. In total, ten of the seventeen Noviks died during the war.

"Ilya Muromets"- the common name for several series of four-engine all-wood biplanes produced in Russia at the Russian-Baltic Carriage Works during 1913-1918. The aircraft set a number of records for carrying capacity, number of passengers, time and maximum flight altitude. The aircraft was developed by the aviation department of the Russian-Baltic Carriage Works in St. Petersburg under the leadership of I. I. Sikorsky. "Ilya Muromets" became the world's first passenger aircraft. By the beginning of World War I, 4 Ilya Muromets were built. By September 1914 they were transferred to the Imperial Air Force. For the first time, the squadron aircraft flew on a combat mission on February 14 (27), 1915. During the war years, 60 aircraft entered the troops. The squadron made 400 sorties, dropped 65 tons of bombs and destroyed 12 enemy fighters. At the same time, during the entire war, only 1 aircraft was directly shot down by enemy fighters (which was attacked by 20 aircraft at once), and 3 were shot down. On November 21, 1920, the last sortie of Ilya Muromets took place. On May 1, 1921, the Moscow-Kharkov postal passenger airline was opened. One of the mail planes was handed over to the aviation school (Serpukhov), where about 80 training flights were made on it during 1922-1923. After that, the Muromets did not rise into the air.

Field rapid-fire gun model 1902, also known as the “three-inch”, was developed at the Putilov plant in St. Petersburg by designers L. A. Bishlyak, K. M. Sokolovsky and K. I. Lipnitsky, taking into account the experience in the production and operation of the first Russian gun of this caliber. Actively used in the Russo-Japanese War, World War I, civil war in Russia and other armed conflicts with the participation of countries from the former Russian Empire (Soviet Union, Poland, Finland, etc.) Modernized versions of this gun were used at the beginning of World War II. For its time, the gun included many useful innovations in its design. These included recoil devices, horizontal and elevation guidance mechanisms, precision sights for firing from closed positions and direct fire. According to its characteristics, it was at the level of French and German guns similar to it and was highly appreciated by Russian gunners. In some cases, the gun was used as an anti-tank weapon.

7.62 mm rifle model 1891(Mosin rifle, three-ruler) - a repeating rifle adopted by the Russian Imperial Army in 1891. It was actively used from 1891 until the end of the Second World War, during this period it was modernized many times. The name "three-ruler" comes from the caliber of the rifle barrel, which is equal to three Russian lines (an old measure of length equal to one tenth of an inch, or 2.54 mm - respectively, three lines are equal to 7.62 mm). The Russian Mosin rifle received its first baptism of fire during the suppression of the uprising of Chinese boxers in 1900. The rifle proved to be excellent during the Japanese war of 1904-1905. It was distinguished by relative simplicity and reliability, range of aimed fire. The rifle was issued the Soviet army almost until the very end of the war and was in service until the end of the 1970s.

Issue form: in sheets with decorated margins (3×4) of 11 stamps and a coupon
Stamp size: 50×37mm
Sheet size: 170×180 mm
Circulation: 396 thousand copies of each stamp (36 thousand sheets each)

The First Day Cancellation will take place on September 10, 2015 in Moscow and St. Petersburg

In addition to the release by the Russian Post, an art cover was published, inside - stamps and efficiency.
For release by the company Peterstamps prepared maximum card and stamp card

maximum cards issued by Prtrerstamps

Stamp card issued by Peterstamps