Military Technology

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Military Technology

• Selected Themes

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Leave the Generals Alone

• A continuation of political activity by other
  means.
• Carl von Clausewitz

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Athena and Ares

• Athena goddess of Wisdom
• Usually portrayed as warrior
• Represents rational, purposeful action
• Ares god of War (Combat)
• Represents irrational action for own sake
• Represents brutality of combat

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Pre-gunpowder castles in Europe

• High curtain walls - defense against scaling
• Walls could be thin - curtain walls
• Crenellations - shields for archers
• Machicolations - "bay windows"
• Round towers
• Strong defensive advantage

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Typical Pre-Cannon Fort, 1200s, Istanbul
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Pre-Gunpowder Fort, Turkey
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Bronze Cannon, Istanbul
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Early Mortar, Germany
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Wooden Cannon, Germany
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Cannons and Castles

• Early firearms crude and weak (1300's)
• By 1400's, firearms were more powerful
• Curtain walls thickened, often faced with timber
  or earth
• Crenellations and Machicolations removed
  (voluntarily or by cannon fire)
• Moats widened

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Iron Cannonballs

• Iron is twice as dense as stone and doesnt
  shatter as easily.
• Iron cannonballs caused early cannon to burst due
  to the higher pressures in the barrels
• By 1450, better gunpowder and metallurgy made
  iron cannonballs usable

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Iron Cannonballs

• Curtain walls replaced by lower earthen
  structures
• Round towers modified to triangular to remove
  "dead spot," then to arrowhead shape or
  "Oreillon."
• Final result by 1500 - "star fort."

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The Blind Spot
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Oreillons
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Star Fort
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From Castle to Fort Wurzburg, Germany
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Fortification, Vatican
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Star Fort
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Fort McHenry, Maryland
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Fort Monroe, Virginia
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The Arms Trade, 1500

• Freelance engineers often went from town to town
  designing forts
• Same engineers were frequently hired in wartime
  as consultants by attackers.

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Fortified Town, Holland
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Fortified Town, Nicosia, Cyprus
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Fort Pulaski, Georgia
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Fort Pulaski, Georgia
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Cannon are no Use if They Dont Hit Anything

• Gunners Quadrant, 1537
• Triangulation-Frisius, 1533
• Plane-table, 1551
• Cross-staff for elevation
• Theodolite - Leonard Digges, 1571, first
  efficient surveying instrument horizontal and
  vertical circles.

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Artillery Survey Tools, 1700
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Stimuli to map-making

• Artillery technology
• Henry VIII seizes church lands, 1536 - stimulus
  to surveying in England
• Copper engraving makes better map printing
  possible
• Christopher Saxton - national atlas of England,
  1579 - first in W. Europe.
• Maps often made for military purposes, frequently
  classified

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Feeding the Troops

• Early Armies subsisted by foraging for food
• Problems with local population (Even in WWII
  there were famines in Holland and Greece caused
  by Nazi requisition of food supplies)
• Impractical with large armies
• Armies had to keep moving because they exhausted
  local food sources

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Napoleon offers prizes for better food
preservation

• Nicholas Appert, ca. 1800. Put food in champagne
  bottles, boiled
• In 1810 he was awarded a prize of 12,000 francs
  on condition he publish his method
• British introduce metal cans
• Cans in use by 1812 for military and exploration

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Cans Become Widespread

• Cans on sale in shops by 1830. Originally
  upper-class status symbols. (A single can cost
  2/3 of a week's rent on a house)
• No can openers yet! Cans had to opened with a
  chisel.
• Nobody knew yet why the process worked

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The First Modern War

• The U.S. Civil War (1861-1865)

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Technological weapons and innovations

• Telecommunications
• Photojournalism
• Aerial observation (Balloons)
• Submarines (C.S.S. Hunley)
• Steam and iron-clad ships
• Railroads
• Rapid-fire weapons

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C.S.S. Pioneer, New Orleans
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C.S.S. Hunley
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Other Modern Elements

• War of maneuver rather than pitched battles
  strategic planning
• First major war in which balance of power
  described in terms of technology
• War telescoped 19th century into four years
• Early battles would have been familiar to
  Napoleon,
• Ended with W.W.I style trench warfare.

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• I fear our people do not yet realize the
  magnitude of the struggle they have entered upon,
  nor its probable duration, and the sacrifices it
  will impose upon them... Their the Union's
  resources are almost without limit...They have
  also a navy that in a little while will blockade
  our ports and cut us off from the rest of the
  world. They have nearly all the workshops and
  skilled artisans of the country....We have no
  ships, few arms, and few manufacturers. We will
  not succeed until the financial power of the
  North is completely broken, and this can occur
  only at the end of a long and bloody war. The
  conflict will be mainly in Virginia. She will
  become the Flanders of America before this war is
  over...I wish I could talk to every man, woman
  and child in the State now, and impress them with
  these views.
• ---Robert E. Lee

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The Civil War
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The Last Ancient War

• World War I (1914-1918)

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WWI Technology quite advanced

• Radio
• Airplanes
• Tanks
• Chemical Weapons
• Machine Guns
• Submarines
• Radio

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Total failure to revise tactics to meet new
technology

• Mass charges against machine gun fire.
• Feeling that one more push or more willpower
  would earn victory.
• Allies lost more men on the Somme in one day than
  U.S. lost in Korea.
• Desperate attempts by soldiers in field to
  redefine old concepts of courage and valor.
• Cavalry charges
• Static trench warfare