Heavy Artillery: This cover illustration shows a British 6-inch naval gun as adapted for field service in France in 1915, being drawn by a motorized tractor. Image: Scientific American, February 6, 1915
Siege Artillery: Two Austrians with a shell for the giant 30.5 cm (12-inch) siege howitzer made by the Skoda works. The shell is either the 633-pound high-explosive shell or the 847-pound armor-piercing round for use against stoutly built forts... Image: Scientific American, April 17, 1915
Armored Cars: Crude but useful, made by the Autocar Company of Pennsylvania and originally armed with Colt 1895 “potato digger” machine guns. The Canadian crews are shown training on Salisbury Plain in England; they arrived in France, in June 1915, as the 1st Canadian Motor Machine Gun Brigade... Image: Scientific American, January 2, 1915.
Gas Warfare: An early defense by the Allies against toxic chlorine gas came from chemical industries where workers were exposed to “atmospheres containing chlorine and sulphurous acid gases:” a simple liquid-soaked flannel breathing mask, with no eye protection... Image: Scientific American, June 12, 1915
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Observation Balloon, Arras, France, 1915: The French used this balloon to see what the Germans were doing and where artillery shells were falling. The painting and article are by Neal Truslow, an American civilian who went to France in June 1915... Image: Scientific American, August 28, 1915
Prisoners of War: There were 8 million POWs during World War I. These prisoners (possibly Serbians?) in a German POW camp are making baskets, work permitted under the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907.&.. Image: Scientific American, July 3, 1915
The Needs of Transport: Large quantities of food, ammunition and other supplies were needed by the “vast armies employed.” Here, a soldier uses an improvised raft pulled by two horses to move supplies over a river... Image: Scientific American, October 16, 1915
Useless Invention: The goal was to reduce casualties from machine guns. But there was no motor, so hauling this heavy steel contraption across a muddy churned-up battlefield would have been impossible—and would have attracted a lot of gunfire. ... Image: Scientific American, July 17, 1915
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Field Gun: A 60-pounder artillery gun having just been fired by troops from the British Royal Artillery, during a battle on the Gallipoli peninsula near Constantinople, 1915. Image: Scientific American, December 4, 1915
Primitive Warfare: Sometimes rocks were better than artillery. Here, Austro-Hungarian troops lever boulders off a mountainside downhill against a mass of attacking Italian troops in one of the many desperate battles in the Alpine region in 1915... Image: Scientific American, November 20, 1915
There were no longer any illusions that the war could be over by Christmas. Shortages of war supplies were acutely felt by the military, civilians were beginning to feel the pinch of wartime austerity. With the entry of the Ottoman Empire and Italy to the war (on opposite sides), it had become vast, all-encompassing, and immensely destructive.
On the battlefield, poison chroline gas began to be used on a wide scale. Initially it was successful but soon its effectiveness was blunted by workable gas masks. Artillery had proven itself as a potent force in the opening weeks of the war; but as troops dug themselves deeper into trenches, larger and more guns firing more shells became necessary to achieve any success. One persistant idea to counter heavy casualties on the battlefield was to somehow use heavy steel armor to protect troops. Armored cars could be useful, but it was not until September 1916 that tanks were deployed. Even if some weapons came from the forefront of science, sometimes the war was fought on a much more primitive level with clubs and rocks.
Reconnaissance had been given hi-tech wings and eyes with the airplane and the camera; captive balloons performed some of the same functions more cheaply. Traditional jobs such as transport and supply struggled to keep up with the urgent demands for moving vast armies and keeping them supplied.
Retaining men willing to fight became critical for waging war. One tactic for boosting morale was to award bravery medals, but it could be overused: the Germans awarded over five million iron crosses during the war, or one for every third soldier.
This article was originally published with the title "50, 100 & 150 Years Ago" in Scientific American 312, 5, (May 2015)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Dan Schlenoff
Dan Schlenoff was a contributing editor at Scientific American and edited the 50, 100 and 150 Years Ago column for one seventh of the magazine's history.
