New Weapons And Testing

World War II Tank
Photo Source: Ken, About Facts Org

Weapons or war, which comes first? It is a known fact militaries all over the world love to try out new weapons and we are no exception. When a war starts if we have something new we think is a game changer or a terror weapon, we roll it out and give it a go. The question is are wars sometimes started to test new weapons? Off the top of my head I can’t think of any war started for this purpose, but I can think of plenty where new weapons were used as soon as they could be. Take World War I for instance, both sides were chaffing at the bit to get their new flying machines into the war. At first they were only used for observation then someone decided to drop hand grenades from one and the bomber was born. It wasn’t long before machine guns were mounted on them and they were rushed to the front so troops could be strafed, but soon planes on both sides were shooting at each other. Then the Germans developed a better system and rushed that to the front. They had synchronized their machine guns so they could fire through the propeller without hitting it. Prior to this many a prop had been shot off in error. The British countered with the first tanks and this was the answer to the stalemate of trench warfare. The Germans used their new gas technology. Not all necessarily in this order.

If one wants to go back further, we can go back to the American Civil War. Before that war, muskets had been the weapon of choice along with cannons and mostly cannon balls, but as weapons were being developed they also were rushed to the fighting. The South introduced a revolver named the LeMat which had two barrels. The top barrel was connected to a cylinder holding 9 bullets while the bottom one fired a 16 gauge shotgun shell. It was unreliable and heavy. The Northern white elephant of a revolver was the Walch revolver which fired 12 rounds and was discontinued after only 200 were manufactured. Rapid fire weapons were introduced into the war as soon as they were felt to be practical. About a dozen hand cranked guns were introduced during the war not just the most famous one the Gatling gun. The Agar Gun was also known as the Coffee Mill Gun. It sort of looked like a coffee mill with a hopper at the top and crank at the bottom. Lincoln was impressed with it in an 1861 demonstration and a total of sixty four were ordered during the war, but saw little action. This was probably because some of the top union generals had a bias against any weapon which they felt used up too much ammunition. Unfortunately for the Union Army one of the most prejudiced against repeating rifles and machine guns was the Chief of Ordnance, General James Wolfe Ripley. There were all sorts of designs and another was the Requa Gun. It had 25 barrels laid in a row and the ammo was loaded on a hinge. It was fired by just pulling one cord which ignited all the barrels and could be reloaded very fast. I won’t go into every rapid fire gun in the Civil War, but two more of note were the repeating rifle and the aforementioned Gatling gun.

I guess one would have to say World War II saw the most new weapons introduced. We could start on the smallest scale and talk about the first assault rifle. It was introduced by the Germans. The Germans as most of us know were decades ahead of us in weapons most of the war. They had fired ballistic missiles, built and used jet planes, rocket planes, developed guided missiles and radar controlled antiaircraft guns among other weapons. The allies were the first to deploy radar and the Americans were the inventors of the greatest weapon of the war, the nuclear bomb. The Germans had rebuilt their air force into a modern and large one by the start of the war. They had an estimated 5,500 planes and even when they took on both France then England there was on 1,560 antiquated French planes and only 1,100 British ones. The Japanese had developed submarines which could carry aircraft and one had the capacity to deliver five. They were launched with a catapult from a watertight hanger on the deck. Unfortunately for the Japanese pilots it was a one way trip, since they couldn’t land back on the sub. They had decided to build eighteen aircraft carrying submarines and attack the United States with a dirty bomb using nuclear material being shipped by sub from Germany. The nuclear material was to be wrapped around a conventional bomb and this would have contaminated a large area. The German sub never made it and only three aircraft carrier subs were built. There was also a rumor after the war stating the Japanese were ready to conduct a nuclear test on 12 August 1945. All sorts of new and improved weapons were used in the war by both sides.

If we go further back than we have so far we will find the concept of new and even experimental weapons being tested in wars still valid. In the American Revolutionary War we actually introduced submarines. The Turtle was invented by David Bushnell. The idea was to use it to attach explosives to British ships. Washington called it ungentlemanly, but allowed it to be used. It was sent out to destroy the HMS Eagle, but failed because it couldn’t secure the explosives to its hull. The Turtle was sent out on two other attacks, but failed on both. The Kentucky Long Rifle was rifled (contained grooves for rotating the ball when fired). This led to much more accurate shooting over a far longer range as opposed to the musket the British used. In those days the command was not ready, aim, fire, but ready, level, fire since there was no sense trying to aim a British musket which only was effective to a maximum range of fifty yards.

In ancient times advanced weapons were introduced and they no doubt changed battles. Can you imagine the impact the cross bow had somewhere around the 5th century B.C. when the Chinese introduced it? Suddenly here was a weapon which could pierce armor and anyone could quickly learn to fire it. It must have decimated the battlefield. The Chinese took it even further and created one which held a magazine of arrows and fired like an automatic weapon. When chariots first appeared they were more like ox carts, but they also must have been devastating. Suddenly your enemy had a mobile platform to crash through your lines, fire arrows from and cut down troops from.

We have continued this tradition of testing our new weapons during battles and there were reports of a science fiction type weapon being used by American tank forces in Iraq. It shot out something which looked like a lightning bolt, melted metal and reduced human to the size of babies as it killed them. This weapon left many an Iraqi soldier in shock. This weapon may be the rumored tactical high energy laser which was said to have been used there. We have also used our microwave weapons and particle weapons there to see how they would work.