5050 WWEAPONSEAPONS TTHATHAT CCHANGEDHANGED WWARFAREARFARE By William Weir Author of 50 Battles That Changed the World NEW PAGE BOOKS A division of The Career Press, Inc. Franklin Lakes, NJ Copyright © 2005 by William Weir All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher, The Career Press. 50 WEAPONS THAT CHANGED WARFARE EDITED BY KATHRYN HENCHES TYPESET BY EILEEN DOW MUNSON Cover design by Foster & Foster, Inc. Black Hawk photo credit: Richard Zellner/Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. Printed in the U.S.A. by Book-mart Press To order this title, please call toll-free 1-800-CAREER-1 (NJ and Canada: 201- 848-0310) to order using VISA or MasterCard, or for further information on books from Career Press. The Career Press, Inc., 3 Tice Road, PO Box 687, Franklin Lakes, NJ 07417 www.careerpress.com www.newpagebooks.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Weir, William, 1928- 50 weapons that changed the world / by William Weir. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-56414-756-8 (pbk.) 1. Military weapons—History. I. Title. U800.W395 2005 355.8’2—dc22 2004055961 Dedication For Emma. May she grow up to a world in which warfare is only history. Acknowledgments Any work of history owes a huge debt to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of persons the author does not know and may not have even heard of. That’s especially true if the subject is invention, even invention of weapons. And it should be noted that inventors of these bloody devices were not necessarily bloody-minded. Many inventors of weapons, such as Hiram Maxim, with his machine gun, and Alfred Nobel, with dynamite, thought their inventions were so powerful they would make war too horrible, and the world would try to settle disputes in a more peaceful way. The inventor of the spear probably considered it nothing more than a way to bring more meat to the family cave. The inventors of riding and the composite bow aimed to make it easier to herd cattle and sheep and protect them from predators, not to make it easier for Genghis Khan to con- quer most of the known world. Like the inventors of barbed wire, they were thinking of the cattle business, not the battle business. The Wright brothers were mainly interested in soaring through the air with wings, like birds. They may have had some thoughts about faster transportation, possibly also the use of planes in war. But it is most unlikely that they had any inkling of the way their invention would be used in World War II. Other inventors, of course, knew very well what their innovations would do. Callinicus knew that his “Greek fire” would annihilate enemy fleets and enemy sailors, but his object was not killing people but saving Christian civilization. David Bushnell, who built the first submarine used in combat, was interested only in freeing his country from British domination. It should also be said that new weapons have made war different, but not necessarily more horrible. Genghis Khan, in the course of a few years, managed to kill 20 million people, which in the 13th century was quite chunk of human- ity. And he did this primarily with bows, arrows, and swords. In addition to the inventors, anyone writing about the development of weap- ons over the last million or so years had to rely on the testimony of writers who have seen them and seen their effects. Finding those writers would have been impossible without the research staff at the Guilford, Connecticut, public li- brary and their librarian colleagues around the country and around the world. That’s just the work involved in writing the book. To produce what you’re reading took the efforts of another team: Mike Lewis, my editor at Career Press/New Page Books and his colleagues in the editorial and production de- partments. Mike had the concept of a list of 50 weapons that changed warfare, and my agent, John White, convinced him I could handle the project. Finally, and most important, there’s my wife, Anne, who not only put up with me hog- ging the family computer, but read every chapter and contributed much helpful criticism. If, after all this help, you find any mistakes, there’s only one place to lay the blame: on the evil spirits that inhabit my computer. —Guilford, Connecticut, November, 2004 Table of Contents Introduction 7 Chapter 1 Getting to the Point: The Spear 9 Chapter 2 Death at a Distance: The Bow and Arrow 13 Chapter 3 The Symbol of War: The Sword 17 Chapter 4 The First Warship: The Galley 21 Chapter 5 To Foil All Weapons: Body Armor 27 Chapter 6 Horses Change the Battlefield: The Chariot 33 Chapter 7 More Horses: The Stirrup 37 Chapter 8 The Most Secret Weapon: Greek Fire 43 Chapter 9 Quiet Cannons: Mechanical Artillery 47 Chapter 10 The Big Bang: Gunpowder 51 Chapter 11 Digging Down and Blowing Up: Mines 55 Chapter 12 The Walls Came Tumbling Down: Siege Guns 59 Chapter 13 Seizing the Seas: The Sailing Man of War 63 Chapter 14 Guns That Roll: Mobile Artillery 67 Chapter 15 Power in the Hands: The Matchlock 71 Chapter 16 The Spark of Genius: Flint and Steel 75 Chapter 17 A Knife Doubles Firepower: The Bayonet 79 Chapter 18 Little Bombs With Big Results: Hand Grenades 83 Chapter 19 “Bombs Bursting in Air”: Explosive Shells 89 Chapter 20 The Spinning Ball: The Minie Rifle 93 Chapter 21 Sailing Into the Wind: The Steam Powered Warship 97 Chapter 22 Iron Floats . and Sinks: Armored Ships 101 Chapter 23 “Damn the Torpedoes!”: Naval Mines 105 Chapter 24 Hidden Gunmen: The Breech-Loading Rifle 109 Chapter 25 The Ultimate Horse Pistol: The Revolver 113 Chapter 26 David as a Tin Fish: The Modern Torpedo 119 Chapter 27 10 Shots a Second: The Machine Gun 125 Chapter 28 Block that Kick!: Quick-Firing Field Pieces 129 Chapter 29 The 1st Stealth Weapon: The Submarine 135 Chapter 30 Bigger (and Cleaner) Bangs for the Buck: 141 Smokeless Powder and High Explosives Chapter 31 Big Bertha and Her Cousins: The Super Siege Guns 147 Chapter 32 Winged Victory: The Airplane 153 Chapter 33 Sticky Situations: Barbed Wire 157 Chapter 34 Trouble in the Air: Poison Gas 161 Chapter 35 Artillery Up Close and Personal: The Trench Mortar 165 Chapter 36 Traveling Forts: Armored Vehicles 169 Chapter 37 Air Power on the Sea: The Aircraft Carrier 173 Chapter 38 A Machine Gun for Every Man: 181 Submachine Guns and Assault Rifles Chapter 39 Hidden Death: Land Mines 187 Chapter 40 Less is More—A Lot More: The Shaped Charge 191 Chapter 41 Red Glare Everywhere: Small Rockets 197 Chapter 42 Firing a Cannon Like a Rifle: Recoilless Guns 201 Chapter 43 Eyes and Ears: Sonar and Radar 205 Chapter 44 The Fires of War: 209 Thermite, Napalm, and Other Incendiaries Chapter 45 Jumping and Coasting Into War: 213 The Parachute and the Glider Chapter 46 From Sea to Shore: Landing Craft 219 Chapter 47 Shooting Across Oceans: ICBMs and Cruise Missiles 223 Chapter 48 Straight Up: The Helicopter 229 Chapter 49 The Ultimate Weapon?: Nuclear Weapons 233 Chapter 50 High Tech and Low: The Future of Warfare? 237 Honorable Mentions 243 Bibliography 249 Index 255 About the Author 261 Introduction For the last few thousand years, wars have been fought with weapons. For long stretches of time, they have been fought with the same, or similar, weapons. For example, flintlock smoothbore muskets were the basic infantry weapons for more than a century. When, in the early 19th century, they were replaced by percussion smoothbore muskets, soldiers got a more reliable weapon, but they didn’t have to change their tactics. A little later, they were given percussion rifled muskets. The musket looked almost the same. It had a percussion lock, and it was a muzzle-loader. About the only difference was the rifling grooves in the barrel. Generals didn’t see why they should change their tactics. That’s why the American Civil War is the bloodiest war in our history. Most of the weapons that change warfare eventually become obsolete. The weapons that replace them may further change warfare, or they may not. The muzzle-loading rifle was quickly replaced by the breech-loading rifle, and the breech-loading single-shot by the breech-loading repeater. The repeater let troops fire faster. The muzzle-loading rifle had taught infantry the need to disperse and take cover. The breech-loader made firing from cover much easier, which meant that infantry opposing it had to move faster and in smaller groups. That was a substantial change. When the repeating rifle replaced the single-shot breech-loader, soldiers could still fire from cover, but they fired much faster. That should have required infantry opposing them to move faster and in smaller groups. Troops in the Second Boer War and the Russo-Japanese War learned that the hard way, but most European generals at the beginning of World War I hadn’t even learned the lessons of the American Civil War. But then the machine gun appeared as a major weapon. In World War I, Hiram Maxim’s brainchild demonstrated that tactics needed a drastic revision. The machine gun is still with us, but thanks to the tank it no longer owns the battlefield.