How Did German Soldiers React To The First Ever Tanks? | Combat Machines | War Stories
this channel is part of the history hit Network the 20th century saw the dawn of a new type of warfare machines ruled the battlefield conventional infantry assault across no man's land was bound to fail Flesh and Blood simply could not get through that type of Defense a fierce arms race led to even more deadly weapons those Gunners on the tanks had rounds in their cannons and they were ready to execute if they were told to behind the lines the development of powerful and Innovative Vehicles meant the difference between Victory and defeat this is absolutely one of the unsung heroes of the second world war the Relentless pursuit of military Supremacy would lead to machines capable of destroying Humanity itself there are very few mistakes you could make that wouldn't have some kind of catastrophic consequence this time the Great Wall and how the deadly power of mechanized conflict is Unleashed on Humanity in the first six weeks of the war the French lost nearly half a million men they were moaned down in very large numbers by Duggan machine guns there was no doubt at all that weapons which could break up attacks kill large numbers of men they made new tactics vital year on year soldiers would be faced with new ever more lethal Combat Machines there's a count of people standing up in full view of each other just watching this amazing new Beast Slumber past nothing like this has been seen before foreign [Music] August 1914 World War one has begun the first shots have been fired Europe is torn apart [Music] allegiances are split between the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary and the Allies Russia France and Great Britain with the danger of fighting a war on two fronts against the Russians in the East and the French and British in the West Germany adopts the Schlieffen Plan Germany believed Russia to be the greater opponent the Russians could put 10 million men in the field therefore the objective was to knock the French out of war with a massive blow coming down through Belgium sweeping both east and west of Paris during the first weeks the Schlieffen Plan is successful and German forces rushed through Belgium and into northern France at the same time the French are trying to implement their own push and Advance into Germany called plan 17. in most nations in 1914 the attack was seen as the way to end a war quickly wars were won so they thought by the offensive knocked by the defensive however the Germans had also instructed their troops in defensive tactics [Music] French launched their attacks the Germans were ready Manning a formidable combat machine the machine gun this weapon too heavy for an offensive charge was perfect for defending a position throwing out an impregnable wall of bullets [Music] in the first six weeks of the war the French lost nearly half a million men in fruitless attacks called the battle of the Frontiers their Man attacking over open ground wearing their red pantaloons in their blue tunics just like they would have done in the war of 1870 they were moaned down in very large numbers by dug in machine guns the machine gun was invented by Sahara Maxim an American inventor living in Britain although his main interest was electricity he began working on a mechanized gun in the 1880s [Music] he's the one who devised to use the the combustion power of the shell being fired to make the gun operate and that was nothing had ever been done by 1884 the Maxim gun as it became known was in production various countries including Germany and Britain would produce the Maxim machine gun under license although the guns had different names they all operated using Maxim's revolutionary design [Music] this is the German mg-08 having a Maxim machine gun at this particular specimen was manufactured in 1915. the real revolutionary portion of this gun was this toggle action here this mechanism enables the rapid and automatic reloading and firing of bullets once the first bullet is fired a sequence of events is set in motion The Recoil energy unlocks the breach and pushes the breech block backwards pulling the spent cartridge out of the chamber and dropping it down out of the gun at the same time the breech block pulls another bullet from the cartridge belt which is being fed into the gun it drops down whilst a spring pulls the breech block back into the firing position placing the new cartridge into the chamber at the same time picking up the next one all this happens in a fraction of a second and is repeated until the trigger is released or the bullets run out previous Wars founded Infinity weapon was a smooth board flintlock musket which could fire maybe two or three rounds a minute you'd be unlucky to be killed at a distance greater than 50 meters the machine gun can fire 500 rounds a minute and kill you at 2 000 meters foreign before the start of World War One none of the major European powers had faced such a weapon however they had witnessed its potential during the russo-japanese war of 1905 when the Russians used it to decimate the enemy's troops the jurors came back the United States Britain Germany and they said this is a tremendous weapon we need to be aware of this well the Elan and the Romance of the Cavalry were still very strong particularly in Britain and it was pretty much met with the how dare you suggest such a thing that Cavalry is not the actual King of the battlefield anymore you're wrong and so when the war started the British only had 250 machine guns whereas the Germans had just under 5 000 maximum guns at the beginning of the first World War however all sides quickly grasped the devastating power of the Machine Gun there's a real step change in 1914 and 1915 when it becomes clear that the Germans and others are beginning to use machine guns on a significant scale and they're having a vast impact on the form of defensive Warfare of the period while the German defenses held up the French Advance German troops were pushing further into France getting closer to Paris meanwhile the British expeditionary Force arrived on the Western Front to support their allies they too could not halt the German advance and had to retreat by the end of August 1914 the Germans reached the river man the last natural line of defense before Paris Battle of the man September 1914 proved to be a turning point because this really was the unraveling of this leaf and plan the French and British counter blow on the river man caused the Germans to lose confidence in their whole strategy for the Western Front by the time the Germans reached the man they were tired and overstretched as well as confronting determined Allied troops they were faced with an array of formidable Firepower at the Forefront of which was the mighty artillery gun all nations would deploy them and all nations would suffer from their destructive force foreign World War one has been raging for two months Germany's Relentless progress has stalled French and British troops are successfully defending Paris counter-attacks at the man just outside the capital shock German Commanders not only have they underestimated the remaining strength of French and British forces but they are also losing men faster than expected field artillery guns are decimating troops a style art of previous battlefields by 1914 they've been given significant upgrades [Music] one of the most formidable is the British 18 pounder the 18 pounder was developed in the early 1900s and first came into service in 1904. it had the first really effective recall system on a British artillery piece the barrel of your 18 pounder which is about three and a quarter inches ball and this is your recoil system on top of the barrel we have two huge Great Big Springs in this portion here one which takes the recoil of the gun and then one which repositions the barrel back into its original pace now when this gun fires this Barrel will then recoil all the way back through to a length of 49 inches and then come and be reset without moving the carriage so you don't lose your point of aim as you fire and that will happen each time the gun fires before guns had effective recoil systems every time you fired the gun The Recoil the natural reaction to the Shell or the round leaving the gun would move the gun backwards in order to get the gun back on target the Gunners then had to re-maneuver the gun back in then whoever was sighting the gun had to check that the sights were back online in the 19th century with muzzle loading black powder type traditional cannons two three rounds a minute was the absolute maximum you could Fire by 1914 with modern artillery pieces on all sides you could fire anything from 6 to 20 rounds a minute foreign this rapid rate of fire was not only due to the recoil systems but also the single lever breach block which allowed the gun to be loaded and fired quickly as well as expelling the spent shell [Music] the 18 pounder also had massively improved accuracy it was fitted with a sight enabling its crew to aim directly like a rifle but instead of firing a bullet it sent a shrapnel shell that would dispense hundreds of metal pellets when it reached German infantry positions along the ma River it seemed impossible for us to break through that barricade of fire hundreds of shells were bursting every minute we were ordered to pass that hell singly and at a running pace we were lying on the ground and observed how the first of our men tried to get through some ran forward like mad not heeding the shells that were bursting around them and got through others were entirely buried by dirt dug up by the shells or were Torn to Pieces by shelf splinters the direct fire basically gives artillery complete Mastery of the battlefield direct fire and the extensive use of shrapnel rounds four soldiers to dig trenches to get underground to get away from that modern artillery gave a defending Army the upper hand it forced the Germans to retreat and to adopt a new approach they then fell back fairly rapidly from Paris and began digging in along the line of the shamander dam they dug in that was the beginning of trench warfare there was this realization now that the old style maneuver warfare using Cavalry and flying infantry columns wasn't working once one side dug in once they dug trenches once they set up machine guns once they had full artillery cover and they began throwing out belts of barbed wire infantry simply could not Advance against that kind of defenses and Cavalry were completely useless to avoid each other's defenses both the German and British forces began to try and outflank each other [Music] Hoovers repeatedly failed leading to what became known as the race to the Sea it's resulted in a line of trenches from the Swiss Alps to the North Sea creating a western front a massive 440 miles long 1950 is called the aristalemate the trench line early hardened at the end of 1914 so 1915 the Allied commanders were faced with a completely different type of movie situation there would be no mobile Warfare but the French obviously wanted the Germans expelled from their territory and therefore both the British and the French launched a series of offensives attacks against the German trench line tried to dislodge them and whilst there were minor local breakthroughs the reality was the trenched line was just too strong attacking in trench warfare was always going to be extremely difficult a man Undercover standing in trench was always going to be difficult to shift it was difficult to hit him and once he was in a trench he of course didn't want to come out because once you're exposed you were more likely to be killed this stalemate meant Siege tactics began to be used these would require even heavier guns in 1914 field guns have been intended as direct support for the Infantry and were often fired over open sites that is against targets you could actually see the problem is of course that the enemy can see you as well so therefore they're going to give you some of your own medicine and then once the soldiers have gotten down uh deep it's very hard to actually hit them in their trenches with direct fire weapons and so this is going to lead to the predominance of indirect fire in taking out enemy positions that's going to dominate the rest of the war indirect fire is where you can cite the gun which is out of sight of the target therefore the Target or the observers on the enemy side cannot see you and basically you fire that gun from a distance into an unknown location so the Gunners have got no idea whether their shells are hitting the target unless they're being directed by a third party so this is your direct fire telescope this is where you can see the Target and the Gunner can actually Target the gun like a rifle this is the indirect dial site this is what takes the mathematical solution that has been worked out with the control post applies it to the gun which enables it to reach a Target that the Gunners cannot see here we have the dials which direct the range or the elevation of the gun this is what enables it to find the distance to the Target and it's just controlled with this wheel here from this position here and over on this side we have the wheel which will actually control the direction of the gun on the platform fire to be effective it required accurate knowledge of enemy positions in order to obtain this information all sides turn to a technology that was still in its infancy in 1914. the airplane and in particular aerial reconnaissance before aircraft used your light Cavalry for recursors the center Cavalry ranging out across the countryside to pick up on enemy dispositions you can't do that on a trench time it's one long Great Wall of defenses the only way to see what's on the other side is by flying over it and the Germans being defensive Geniuses typically did not have their guns where they were viewable in many cases you could not see where the German guns were firing from because they were firing from behind Hills so you did need aircraft to actually Fly Above and take photographs aerial reconnaissance came about with the desire to merge the airplane with the camera during a reconnaissance mission you will want to capture troop movements you'll want to capture batteries where there are guns you'll want to capture where supplies are being brought in you want to bring all that intelligence back to your superiors and then they can prepare for their next moves merging the two technologies proved difficult at first the early aircraft were mostly open cockpit so right away people realized they couldn't take up small handheld cameras that had loose Bellows as many cameras did in those days because they would tear in the Airstream up there seeing the potential wealth of intelligence these cameras could provide efforts were made to create cameras that were directly attached to the plane in protective casings then the idea was to make them automatic and semi-automatic because you didn't want the Observer with his head down all the time he wanted him to be looking for enemy aircraft that might be coming in so then when you have an automatic camera that can take the photography while your Observer is either doing other observation or is defending the aircraft with a machine gun the rate of development of this new technology was staggering culminating in the tri-lens design by American topographic engineer James Bagley although his invention only saw service in the last months of the war in 1918.
it allowed Pilots to map a vast area of the battlefield the triland's camera has one vertical lens pointing straight down and then there are two side lenses that are at a 35 degree angle and the film passes directly behind these lenses and so it is all exposed at the same time and it produces a field of view that is wider than a single lens it can get a wider range so it takes less time and less amounts of fuel these images were then laid over existing maps in order to determine enemy positions and work out distances and elevations fourth lens was added to the camera to help align the photographs on the maps aerial reconnaissance made artillery fire more deadly and more accurate as the war progressed the quantity and size of guns increased in order to overcome hardened defenses as the Germans began using feral concrete bunkers to protect their trenches the weight of artillery that you need to bring down on that increases so as the war went on the British who had been desperately short of heavy guns in 1914. began to use Naval guns guns were taken from ships and mounted on land carriages and these were huge guns seven eight inch nine inch howitzers massive guns that could deliver tremendous Pudge because Wade at 10 or 15 Tons and took a tremendous amount of moving especially of a bad ground the heavier the guns and shells became the more horses were needed to move them and the worse the ground got a new solution was required the British turned to a vehicle that instead of having Wheels moved on tracks technology was having a huge impact on World War One forcing both sides on the Western Front to fight a new type of conflict a mechanized War in 1914 at the start of the war Motor Vehicles were rarely seen especially as Combat Machines military leaders were reluctant to invest in this relatively unproven technology but by 1915 conditions on the Western Front forced a rethink in Belgium Flanders the water table was very close to ground level so as soon as you started to dig or as soon as shells landed they tended to fill with water a landscape like this that was semi-swamp and consisted of holes and minuscule Hills was really inaccessible to horses and not very good for any sort of wheel transport the trapped vehicle was seen as an answer to some of these problems the British military had conducted tests with British Hornsby tractors before 1914. however a reluctance to adopt them in large numbers meant that when an acute need Rose during the war they had no time to build their own instead they purchased American halt tractors which were already being mass produced [Music] foreign tractor is a military adaptation of commercial tractor that would have been available for agricultural or industrial purposes at the time what makes this a little different from the civilian model is that this has armor attached primarily around the engine the British will be the first major user they will order several hundred starting in 1960-1917 they use them for moving Heavy Artillery pieces not your typical field guns but your heavier pieces like 60 pounder Siege core level artillery that would require a huge horse train this could pull up to ten thousand pounds one tractor could do the work of 100 to 200 horses and they don't need to be fed they can be just refueled re-oiled and so it does reduce the logistical requirements the whole tractor had a significant advantage over the horse they could continue to move even in deep mud but they also had another Advantage because horses being Flesh and Blood were easy victims to shrapnel and bullets tractors were much more durable although other motorized vehicles were used on the Western Front most drove on wheels it was the halt's tracks that made it so useful and what makes the track vehicle really effective for things like pulling artillery pieces is that its heavy weight is spread more evenly over those plates and these Treads as you can see they're heavy steel but they spread the weight out on soft grounds so this is going to give it an immense amount of traction for a much lower weight per square foot square inch on the ground which will means this can Traverse much softer more difficult terrain than a wheeled vehicle or a horse can by 1916 1 000 halt tractors were working on the front line moving vast artillery guns into position by the end of the war in 1918 10 000 of them were in use by the allies by the end of 1915 the war on the Western Front was at an impasse neither the Allies nor the Germans could significantly shift their front lines the British decided a change in command might bring better results they replaced commander-in-chief John French with Douglas Hague at the same time the Germans were also looking for a solution to the stalemate in 1916 they decided to attack Verdan in Northwestern France Vander marked yet another strategic and tactical shift in the war Eric Von falkenheim the German commander-in-chief he decided that France was no longer the dominant Force among the Allies that Britain was becoming the dominant Force he therefore thought he would weaken Britain by knocking France out of the war what he wanted to do was to force the French to fight for Verdun he believed the German artillery was so Superior the French would be forced to fight for Verdun because it had symbolic significance it would just feed their army into this huge mincing machine and then be annihilated it looked like the German plan would succeed so the Allies decided to relieve the pressure on Verdun to draw German troops away they planned their own offensive along the River Song [Music] by the time of the battle of the Somme Warfare has become a much more complicated business than it was in 1914. you've not only got machine guns you've got artillery of many different sorts you've got aerial observation you've got aerial photography this battle became one of the most planned for and photographed by aerial photography they recorded everything prior to and then during the battle when Hague was planting the back of the song it was his intention to Deluge the German Frontline tractors with a massive artery bombardment greater than any bomb that had ever been seen before over a million shells would be fired in that week the objective was firstly to destroy the German barbed wire in front of the trenches so trips could Advance secondly to knock out the German trenches because in some cases were protected by Pharaoh concrete bunkers hoping the week-long bombardment had sufficiently destroyed German defenses the order to attack was given on the 1st of July 1916. the
battle of the Somme was underway foreign but the artillery shells did not have their desired effect The Barrage was spread too thin the German defenses held that meant that when the British troops went over the top the first of July at 7 30 everything they'd hoped for in terms of destroyed German defenses had not happened they were completely exposed [Music] we didn't get 50 yards I couldn't measure time but I would think the whole attack was finished in half an hour the Germans were above us and that made it easy for and with their machine guns rattling we were just targets German machine Gunners sat out the artillery bombardment in their bunkers once the shelling stopped they retook their positions the Germans had these heavy mgo8 guns and they were next to each other with intersecting fields of fire meaning they could cover each other German military scientists had worked out the most effective way to use this combat machine was not to fire straight at the enemy but to position two or more guns to fire at either flank of the approaching Army the two intersecting fields of fire would create a curtain of bullets Killzone on the 1st of July 1916 the first day of the psalm offensive there were 60 000 British casualties as these huge losses for relatively small gains that has led to Fierce criticism of the British High command however military leaders such as Britain's General Hague were desperately trying to figure out how to fight a war unlike any other the fact was that technology was moving so fast a whole new means of waging Warfare new weapons and the commander schooled in this 19th century style of warfare found almost impossible to keep up with the potential of this technology the technology was driving the war making it bigger and bloodier year on year the generals really were fighting or they didn't understand however that began to change as the war progressed commanders adapted their tactics to the new realities chillery and machine guns which could break up attacks kill large numbers of men they made new tactics not only desirable but vital ultimately this would lead to men fighting in smaller groups the adoption of different weapons and attacking not so much in a linear way but in groups and general Hague was about to receive a combat machine that would further change the nature of the war on the 15th of September two and a half months after the start of the battle of the psalm 49 mysterious machines made their way across the battlefield it caused a tremendous Stir It terrified the Germans who were confronted by them there's accounts actually from the British side as well as the Germans of people standing up in full view of each other just watching this amazing new Beast Lumber past nothing like this has been seen before all of a sudden a gigantic Iron Dragon came rattling and wheezing forward reeling like a drunkard but crossing the shell holes and all of the uneven ground with ease like some mythical anti-diluvian monster the British battle wagon seemed to breathe fire from its mouth nose and eyes and whenever it detected a German position it would proceed to spray it with bullets and small caliber shells from its machine guns and Rapid Fire Cannon even the bravest amongst us were stricken with horror we were seeing and meeting this enemy for the first time and we were literally paralyzed machine gun fire and rifle fire were useless and grenades just bounced off but when the germs saw these monsters these leviathans coming out them they panicked oh why wouldn't you no one's ever seen anything like this before you've got the huge grinding noise of the thing your machine gun bullets are bouncing off it's firing machine guns or Cannon backing you and it just seems Unstoppable like like some kind of fantasy monster a new type of warfare armored Warfare was about to begin tanks had joined the battle after nearly two years of brutal fighting on the Western Front the British introduced a combat machine they hoped would tilt the war in their favor the arrival of British Mark 1 tanks on the front line near the French Village of flair corsolet on the 15th of September 1916 marked the beginning of this armored Warfare though the tanks had little impact on the battle of the Somme they made a big impression on General Hague now those 49 tanks they don't achieve an awful loss on that day a number of them get lost some even fire on their own men we think only about nine of them actually progress to the German front line or even through the German front line but the important thing was one or two of those tanks did such outstanding actions that Hague realized their potential and he orders a thousand of them just on the performance of that one battle [Music] so the tank is the answer to a problem in the first world war Germany's invaded France and Belgium they've dug this fantastic fortified defense system barbed wire machine gun this they're occupying the best land what's left of the Belgian Army the French Army and the British are going to have to push them out this is a new type of Siege Warfare there's no flanks no edges to go around so very quickly in Britain they start thinking can we come up with some form of mechanical answer to the problem the idea of a vehicle that was armored that was armed and could move across the battlefield was actually quite an old one but it was only with the Advent of trench warfare that what was an interesting idea became a crying need and even before 1914 was out men like Ernest Swinton had put forward ideas which would later be adopted British Colonel Ernest D Swinton suggested the idea of an armed version of the halt tractor because of its proven ability to master tough Terrain few gave the idea much thought but the first Lord of the admiralty Winston Churchill encouraged and promoted the idea a series of tests resulted in the first prototype Little Willy it was codenamed tank with resemblance to a large water tank [Music] what they're really looking for is something that can cross the battlefield which is by this time is going to be churned up it's got to be able to crush down German barbed wire emplacements because that's what's holding up the Allied Forces advances and hopefully it should be able to cross a German trench early in the war about six foot wide so can it cross a trench and hopefully continue so it needs to be able to have some form of Mobility some form of protection so the guys inside are protected and hopefully as well some form of Firepower during Little Willy's first tests they realized its design would cause the tank to nose dive into a trench to solve this problem the engineers came up with the iconic rhomboid shape allowing the tank to crush barbed wire and cross trenches [Music] the tank would undergo a number of improvements in 1917 the next one to be delivered to the front line was the mark IV [Music] so if we look at a mark IV as the example of a tank you've got guns what they're in things called sponsors it's a naval term they put on the side male tanks have six pounder gun female tank just have machine guns now to man that vehicle you need eight crewmen inside four are needed just to drive it so you've got two at the front the commander and the driver two at the back are called the gearsman and basically what they have to do is they disengage the engine with levers stop the track turning on one side if the other side keeps turning that means you push the vehicle around the corner the other four crew members are Manning the guns on the side but operating inside this armored Beast came with its own dangers the exhaust systems were not effective so the cabs filled up with exhaust fumes the crew could only stay in the tank for about 45 minutes otherwise they'd be gassed effectively when the Germans shot at the tanks the plates were riveted the boats wouldn't come through but they dislodged the rivets the rivets would fly around the inside of the tank like wet hot fireflies they had to wear chain male face masks to stop their faces being lacerated by flying rivets so it was a rather unpleasant experience being inside a tank you can see it was better than being outside the tank although the battle of the Somme would end with neither side winning the Germans decide to pull back March 1917 they Retreat to their purpose-built and formidable defensive position the Hindenburg line French wanted to win the first world war they would have to find a way to penetrate the seemingly impregnable German defensive war known as the Hindenburg line British Field Marshal Douglas Hague devised a plan that would utilize his new combat machine now arriving at the front in large numbers Germans have retreated to their Hindenburg line they've built this fantastic new fortification system but the ground in front of it especially around an area called kombre is very firm that's where they decide to do a raid one thing that was a large-scale tank rate to break through this huge German defensive network if tanks could breach that line that would be sufficient Victory but he got ambitious he needed a victory he actually builds the raid into a full-blown attack the tank uses about 470 Vehicles they do one massive tank attack in one Fell Swoop first thing in the morning of November the 21st that cuts about a three mile hole through the German front line now the Germans very quickly do a counter-attack and they take back background that was won at combri but still psychologically they realized that actually tanks in large numbers like this can have a huge impact however deep your fortifications foreign by March 1918 Russia had pulled out of the war allowing German troops to move to the Western Front but with more and more American soldiers arriving in France to support the allies Germany decided to mount one last push to win the war the Germans in a series are what are called kaiserslak the Kaiser's battles from March 1918 to July 1980. they poached a fist into the Allied lines driving in some places the British Back 40 miles but the British the French lines never actually broke and by July 1980 the Germans had literally run out steam they hadn't broken through and it exhausted their resources August 1918 was the beginning of the end unceasing Allied counter-attacks using new combined arms tactics pushed the Germans back these were tanks to spearhead the attack and the IDE must fully coordinate your artery with your inventory Lily tanks with your aircraft all of those technological lessons and the Tactical lessons finally coalesced [Music] this sense of does the tank win the war no it doesn't it's a very small part of a massive struggle that's going on what is important though is that sense of in 1918 when the tank is turning up on the battlefield the Germans feel that's the last straw that gives the excuse to Frontline soldiers to pull up their hands and surrender because it's just like we've done our best this is something we really can't fight against that psychological impact that's the thing that really counts with the tank by the latter part of the first world war the conflict had become a form of technological race however it wasn't just technology it was the ability to manufacture these new things these new instruments of death and that part of the equation was always going to be won by the British French and the Americans because they had such big reserves of men of raw materials and of Industry the Germans didn't win the war quickly so they could never win it [Music] on November 11 1918 with their losses mounting the Germans agreed to the Allied terms of surrender and signed an armistice World War one was at an end [Music] the introduction of machines to the battlefield had had devastating consequences on the Western Front alone over 8 million were wounded and 3 million had lost their lives [Music] [Music] the war changed everything nothing would ever be the same again after 1918. the development of Technology fueled by the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century completely changed the dynamic of war and from then on till now industry technology dominates the battlefield in ways that our ancestor couldn't be believed foreign fields in France and Belgium bear the scars of a war long past those men that fell are remembered in countless cemeteries each stone slab one human being [Music] there is little to betray betray the raw destructive power these metal machines Unleashed on bodies of Flesh and Blood a war that was hoped to be the war to end all wars would instead give rise to more conflicts and to more deadlier Combat Machines [Music]
2022-11-12 21:09
