World War I became a war where the latest tactics and types of weapons coexisted with archaic, proven centuries, and sometimes millennia, types of weapons and methods of destroying the enemy. So, in one place there was a dashing cavalry attack with peaks, in another hand-to-hand combat, and very close to the trenches a yellow cloud of poisonous gas or an armored monster armed with cannons and machine guns was advancing ... But more often everything was intertwined together, embodied in strange hybrids of the old and the new . Such as bulletproof armor-transformers or catapults for throwing hand grenades. However, many of these inventions were the product of people who have experienced all the "charms" of a new type of war.
But for those who were far from the front line, confusion reigned in their heads. And very many of them continued to believe that war is a slender column of stately grenadiers marching to the drum and flute, from time to time issuing a coordinated volley in the direction of the enemy ... they considered very innovative, tried to help the front.
As usual, in the forefront were active amateurs and self-taught inventors. Hundreds of rationalization proposals filled up the Main Military-Technical Directorate (GVTU) of the Imperial Army. Representatives of all classes and social strata of society sent their projects: from peasants to professional engineers. Many really sensible, interesting proposals were made, but there were also such that one could only envy the endurance and patience of the officers of the GVTU. After all, in addition to studying the invention, they were obliged to send their conclusion to the author by mail, made in a polite and correct form.
"Pulehod" Shovkoplyas
This machine was a huge bullet on wheels or, alternatively, on rollers, containing many soldiers. A machine gun of an outlandish multi-barrel design stuck out of the back wall of the miracle machine and poured a hail of bullets at the enemy. Why from the back? Apparently because, according to the author of the project, a peasant of the Yenisei province Roman Ivanovich Shovkoplyas, it was impossible to stop his “bullet-walker”. Having easily overcome the enemy's fortifications, this machine will leave enemy soldiers far behind it, and this is where the machine gun will begin its work. Roman Ivanovich did not trouble himself with the issues of the arrangement of the running base and the characteristics of the engine for the “bullet-walker”, as well as the system of the infernal multi-barreled super-machine gun.
Nevertheless, even such inventions were considered, and the official conclusion of the competent commission came to the author by mail. Only in the last years of the war, the GVTU shifted the costs of postal correspondence to the authors of rejected projects.
Barrel mitrailleuse "Volcano" Sukhmanov
Under the glamorous name was an ordinary lightly armored barrel, which was moved by soldiers running inside the barrel according to the “squirrel in a wheel” principle. On the sides of the barrel, loopholes were implied, from which the unfortunate on the run could conduct deadly fire. The barrel was supposed to crush the insane, and, apparently, previously immobilized enemy soldiers. It’s even scary to imagine the fate of the crew of the Vulkan mitrailleuse if it rolled down a slope ... However, even the most numerous and close-knit team would hardly be able to move a heavy barrel from its place.
Judging by the specifics of the proposed projects, the rear inventors continued to see the enemy hordes in the form of stationary tin soldiers built in even rows.
Skroznikov's ice rink
Pavel Skroznikov, a peasant from the Arkhangelsk province, proposed attacking the enemy with vehicles equipped with heavy rollers and destroying him, actually rolling him into the ground. Apparently, the inventor was sure that the German soldiers were not able to step aside from his combat “asphalt paver”. Pavel Skroznikov became one of the first authors from whom the experts of the State Higher Technical School demanded compensation for postage.
There was a project for an armored car, which, like a combine harvester, mowed down enemy infantry around it with special spinning sickles, and cut off wire obstacles with a retractable circular saw. An armored car project was also proposed for consideration, which, through special nozzles located along the perimeter of the body, spewed flames around itself. This was necessary in order to scare enemy soldiers crawling from all sides from the car ... 
"Batt" Lebedenko
Standing apart in this row is the famous Lebedenko tank, also known as the Bat, also known as the Tsar Tank. The wheeled combat vehicle was a kind of old gun carriage with two huge wheels 9 meters in diameter and an armored hull 12 meters wide located between them. This monster moved by means of two autonomous Maybach engines, taken from a padded German airship. The crew of the vehicle consisted of 15 people serving two cannons and several machine guns. The design speed of the monster was supposed to be about 17 kilometers per hour.
The author of the project managed to get through to an appointment with the sovereign-emperor himself. With you to Winter Palace he brought a wooden model of his car. The clockwork model rushed along the parquet of the palace, famously jumping over obstacles collected from volumes of books from the sovereign's library. The king was fascinated watching the tricks of the Tsar-tank. As a result, the Lebedenko project received state funding.
Quite quickly, at a secret training ground near Moscow in the area of \u200b\u200bthe modern Orudyevo station of the Savelovsky direction, at the end of the summer of 1915, a prototype of a unique combat vehicle was created. After driving a few meters, the device got stuck in a swamp, from where even the most advanced tractors for that time could not pull it out. There he stood, overgrown with birch trees, until the mid-twenties, until he was dismantled for scrap. Until now, there are rumors that among the forests you can trace a wide track pressed into the ground ... 
If Lebedenko's car had not sat down tightly in the Dmitrovsky swamps, then one could only envy the German artillerymen, who would have enjoyed honing their accuracy at such a vulnerable and extraordinary target. Nevertheless, it was the world's largest armored land combat vehicle ever built.
Epicycloid "Wallpaper"
However, a truly demonic invention can be considered the triumph of a gloomy genius: a machine-destroyer of fortresses, the epicycloid "Wallpaper" of the Lviv engineer Semchishin. His invention, born of unprecedented dilettantism and unwavering faith in the size and inexhaustibility of the Russian military budget, strikes the imagination even after a hundred years.
"Wallpaper" was a huge ellipsoid measuring 605 meters in height (the Ostankino TV tower in Moscow has a height of only 540 meters) and 900 meters in length. Moving at a cruising speed of about 300 kilometers per hour, he had to wipe out enemy fortresses, jump over rivers and mountains, while laying a convenient track for the advancement of troops. Started at the border Russian Empire, the epicycloid was supposed to ram Berlin in a few hours. 
The body of a huge egg-shaped structure was made of hardened steel with a thickness of only 100 millimeters. The machine was set in motion by means of steam engines located inside the apparatus and raising an eccentric flywheel, thanks to which the machine rolled over the ground. The crew, consisting of several hundred people, got inside through hatches located on the axis of rotation, climbing to a height of 300 meters along rope ladders (!). Apparently in the same place, on the axis of rotation, the weapons of the supergiant should have been located.
Naturally, the project of Semchishin's epicycloid was not accepted by the GSTU. At least for the simple reason that such a monster would simply collapse under its own weight during the assembly process. 
Taser, dove bomb and glue gun
But the inventors of the GVTU officers were surprised not only by the scale. Thus, a project of a glue gun was presented to the commission for consideration, which, according to the author’s intention, was supposed to fill enemy soldiers with glue until they were completely immobilized by sticking members and sticking weapons and other objects to them.
Also interesting are the stun gun of mass destruction, which was a water cannon, pouring water on the enemy’s trenches and then firing high-voltage electrodes there, and a pigeon-bomb with a fixed tail to fly only in a straight line ...
There were some really promising proposals. For example, a projectile that sprays a cloud of flour with its subsequent explosion is a prototype of a vacuum bomb, or a clockwork drone for delivering bombs to areas of fortifications inaccessible to artillery.
But there were also proposals, the implementation of which would lead, if not to the end of the world, then at least to a local catastrophe. Avdeev, an engineer from St. Petersburg, proposed to create and launch a cloud of chlorine with a diameter of 40-50 versts into the wind at the enemy ...
One way or another, but a new type of war gave rise to new ideas, and one can only rejoice that most of them have remained projects.
Under the conditions of positional warfare, engineering barriers played a leading role. The whole colossal war machine stumbled over the barbed wire. It was truly the finest hour of the "thorn". Positional warfare has provided vast experience in the use of all conceivable and unthinkable non-explosive barriers.
Armies behind barbed wire
There are no really new, revolutionary principles. For example, barbed wire. This uncomplicated thing played a colossal role in trench warfare. The Germans were the first to wind it endlessly along their front. The enemy fought against the German wire with scissors and artillery. A whole nation was cordoned off by a low tangled fence of wire spikes - and this nation of many millions, standing at the height of technical culture, could not advance anything against ordinary wire, except for simple scissors, which had to be used while crawling on their stomach. No less crude, although more effective, is the method of destroying metal threads with the help of artillery, which blows up the whole soil with a hail of shells, twists wooden posts and thereby destroys the thorn fence, expending an immense amount of metal for this and bringing the space enclosed by wire into a state that is extremely makes it difficult to move forward.
Types of barbed wire and barbed wire
Before wire and scissors, as the most important factors of the present war, huge armies stopped in puzzlement. “This is a war that does not invent anything,” complains the famous writer-artist Pierre Ampe, “but simply selects all the means of attack and defense that have existed since the time people began to fight. This simple sum instruments of death. Does this mean that our civilization has spiritually exhausted itself, that it can only continue to repeat itself, because, despite its science, it returns to the struggle with the help of the knife of primitive epochs! And this monstrous destruction that she inflicts on herself, is not there proof that she is at a loss and that with her ends world era?».
Single barbed wire
To destroy an iron thread on wooden posts with the help of a monstrous cast-iron stream, where there are tens and hundreds of pounds of metal per meter of wire, this method most clearly showed its failure in the grandiose battles of Champagne. When the fortifications of the first line were destroyed and captured, and in order to break through the German front, it was only necessary to continuously continue the offensive, the French artillery suddenly fell silent in front of the German trenches of the second line, which were already being prepared to clear German troops. It turns out that the cannon barrels were heated to such an extent by continuous firing at the barbed fence that further continuation of the firing - where the continuity of the attack was first of all required - turned out to be impossible. This was one of the reasons that brought the victorious offensive in Champagne to naught.
In World War I, 20 and even 30-row wire fences were used! At the same time, the German trenches on the Eastern Front were entangled with such strong wire that our scissors often did not take! To destroy enemy barriers, Russian craftsmen offered a mortar that fired at wire barriers with an anchor with a cable. Having caught on the wire, it was possible from the shelter, without exposing yourself to the shots, to pull apart the wire barriers.
History of creationThe invention of barbed wire certainly changed the world, although probably not for the better. In the second half of the 19th century, active development of the southwestern Great Plains began in the United States. The settlers had a need to fence pastures to protect pastures from "foreign" livestock. A wire fence was the cheapest solution, but the rushing herds of cattle practically "did not notice" it in their path.
Farmer Joseph Glidden of Illinois began experimenting in 1873 with short wire thorns wrapped around a long wire (he used an old coffee grinder to speed up the process). To secure the thorns in place, Glidden used a second piece of wire wrapped around the first. The design was so successful that ironmonger Ellwood offered the inventor a business partnership.
The lumber merchant Heisch patented his design and founded a company to manufacture it. In 1874 Glidden received a patent. At the same time, the partners founded the Barb Fence Company. Until the end of 1874, they sold 5 tons of barbed wire, and for the whole next year - 300 tons.
double barbed wire
The boom in demand has created a large number of patents - about 600, and patent battles have been going on for many years. Joseph Glidden was recognized as the winner and "father of barbed wire". He was not the first and not the last inventor, just his design was the most successful.
In 1876, the inventor farmer sold his shares to the Massachusetts Washburn and Moen Company for $60,000 in compensation and a royalty of 50 cents for every 100 kg of wire sold in the future. This money made him, by the time of his death in 1906, one of the richest men in the United States.
Barbed wire and barbed wireIt could appear only with the development of industry and the mass introduction of various mechanical drawing machines, that is, when it became possible to mass-produce wire in general. Barbed wire fences are mentioned as an element of the perimeter of German forts already at the end of the 19th century. Its appearance and introduction into combat practice can be dated to the period of 1860-1875. In the wars of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, barbed wire began to find increasing use. For example, the siege of the Port Arthur fortress during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905.
The “finest hour” of barbed wire was the First World War, when, after a short period of maneuver warfare, the fronts dug into the ground and a long, exhausting positional war began. Massive defensive artillery and machine-gun fire, combined with multi-row wire obstacles stretching for tens and hundreds of kilometers, thwarted any attacks. Millions of shells were expended in order to break through the barriers. The consumption of shells reached 120-150 pieces per pass in a five-row wire fence. The cavalry collapsed before the combination of machine guns and barbed wire. The infantry stood helplessly in front of the wire fences, trying in various ways to gnaw their way to the enemy's trenches. Hand grenades, forgotten since the 18th century, owe their second birth to barbed wire. They were remembered in the process of searching for a means of overcoming wire obstacles. Most examples of World War I hand grenades were often supplied with three to six special cords with hooks at the ends. The grenade rushed to the barrier, clung to the hook and hung. The explosion damaged several strands of wire.
And only the tank, which appeared in the second half of the war, forced the barbed wire to begin to give up its positions. Its predecessor - an armored car was powerless in front of a multi-row wire fence. The tank owes its birth to the world, including barbed wire. Its main purpose was seen in laying a corridor for infantry in wire fences. The layout (caterpillars go around the entire hull of the tank, the front part is raised high) of the world's first English tank Mk-1 was chosen precisely on the basis of the need to crush, break through wire fences, crush Bruno's spirals under it. Machine guns were intended for flank cover of infantry rushing into the passage made by the tank. For such purposes, the tank did not need either high speed, or powerful armor, or cannon armament. The fact that the tank is capable of much more was revealed somewhat later, already during the first tank attacks.
Barbed wire is a non-galvanized or galvanized steel wire of oval or square section, fitting into a diameter of about 3–4 mm, on which pieces of the same wire are put on, twisted in the form of two springs threaded into each other. Such double segments (thorns) are placed every 30–40 cm. Types of barbed wire: single-strand oval; single strand of round section; two-strand round section.
Installing a wire fence
There are many options for anti-personnel barbed wire barriers. When creating them, everything depends on the tasks to be solved, the availability of materials, time, labor, the nature of the terrain, and enemy actions.
But in all cases, when using and applying them, it should be taken into account that the obstacle itself cannot stop the enemy and force him to abandon movement in this sector. The obstacle can only delay the enemy, disrupt the set pace of the offensive, confuse his battle formations, force the enemy to roll up into a column in front of the obstacle, and after passing through the obstacle zone, deploy again in battle formation, force him to spend time, forces and means intended for solving other tasks, create favorable conditions for the destruction of enemy infantry by artillery and small arms fire, to hinder the actions of enemy scouts.
Therefore, the fence should be:
1) as far as possible disguised, at least to the extent that it gives the enemy the impression that the barrier is less serious than it actually is;
2) to be fully penetrated by small arms fire, machine guns, anti-personnel grenade launchers; to hide behind the fire of mortars and cannons;
3) is placed on the ground so that its far edge is within the range of actual small arms fire, and the near edge is at a distance exceeding the throw range of a hand grenade (so that enemy soldiers located in the obstacle zone would not be able to throw grenades into trenches , and own grenades would not damage the barrier).
The following barbed wire fences were used:
Wire fence. Actually, such a fence with three strands of wire can hardly be called an anti-personnel barrier. It can delay the enemy for 20-30 seconds. Such a fence is used where the soldiers have no desire to overcome it, i.e. against their own troops (fencing minefields, forbidden and dangerous zones, guarded objects, etc.). It is needed especially at night and in conditions of poor visibility.
Wire fence "three wires"
Reinforced wire fence. It differs from a simple fence in that it has not three, but four horizontal rows of wire. In addition, each stake has stretch marks. Such a fence delays soldiers for 1-5 minutes.
Reinforced wire fence
3-row wire mesh on high stakes. Consists of three rows of a simple wire fence. The distance between the rows is 1.5 meters, i.e. the total depth of the fence is 3 meters. The gaps between adjacent stakes of adjacent rows are closed with wire in the same way as between stakes in a row. This is already a serious anti-personnel non-explosive barrier. Overcoming without the use of special tools or devices (shears for cutting wire, flyers, mats, shields, etc.) is impossible. The delay at the barrier, even with tools and devices, is from 8 to 20 minutes.
Three-row wire mesh on high stakes
Wire spiral. Also known as Bruno's Spiral. The total height of the fence is 1–1.2 m and the depth is 3.2–3.6 m. This type of fence is often more preferable than a wire fence.
Wire "Bruno spiral"
Firstly, with advance preparation of spirals, the amount of work is reduced by more than two and a half times;
secondly, if the integrity of the stakes is violated, the stopping capacity of the barrier practically does not change;
thirdly, you can reduce the number of stakes and even do without them altogether, limiting yourself to a small number of low stakes;
fourthly, the barrier can be easily removed and can be reused elsewhere;
fifthly, after a snowfall, the fence can be removed from the snow and installed on top of the snow cover (no stakes are used).
The disadvantage of the barrier is that when biting one strand, the spiral is easy to push apart and ensure the passage of soldiers with any weapons (i.e., to make a passage in a three-row barrier, it is enough to bite the wire in just three places).
Sometimes the third row of the spiral is laid on top of the first two. In this case, the height of the barrier is increased to 2 meters.
Bunk "Spiral Bruno"
Wire mesh on low stakes. In army jargon, this type of barrier is called "spotykach". It consists of 4–6 rows of stakes 25–30 cm high with barbed wire attached to the tops of the stakes. The wire between the stakes is pulled in two or three threads and is not stretched, but hangs freely, and one or two threads are pulled so that they form loops. The total depth of the fence is 4.5 m or more. The main purpose of the "spottykach" is to slow down the movement of enemy infantry while simultaneously depriving enemy soldiers of the opportunity to observe the battlefield and conduct aimed fire.
Wire net on low stakes
Portable wire hedgehog. It originates from slingshots, known since the XIII-XIV centuries. The only difference is that barbed wire is stretched between the ends of the stakes. They are interconnected with barbed wire, forming a single barrier. The main purpose is to quickly close passages between other barriers, passages in barriers; restoration of barriers damaged due to enemy influences (shelling, trawling), closing holes. Hedgehogs, interconnected, are a serious anti-personnel barrier, not inferior to a wire spiral or a three-row network on high stakes.
Portable wire hedgehog "spotykach"
Portable wire slingshot. This is a variant of the slingshot known since the 13th-14th centuries, but barbed wire is stretched over the horns of the stakes, similar to a barbed wire fence. The total length of the slingshot is 3 m, the height is about 1.2 m. It is designed to quickly close passages in barriers, gaps between barriers, passages between natural obstacles. The use of slingshots is especially convenient when constructing anti-personnel barriers in populated areas (blocking streets, approaches to strong points, etc.).
Portable wire slingshot
Lattice-barriers Nischensky. By order of May 10, 1915, the Russian troops of the 5th Army were recommended for the use of rising gratings and gratitude was expressed to their author, Staff Captain Nishchensky. Lattices - frames knocked together from poles and covered with barbed wire mesh, were installed in front of the firing positions and were usually in a horizontal position. When the enemy, going on the attack, approached them, they rose from the trenches with ropes.
“The purpose of the lattice,” the order says, “1) to detain the enemy unexpectedly for him at the last, most decisive moment of the attack, that is, when the enemy approaches the line of fire at a distance of a bayonet strike and when he least expects to encounter any obstacle , 2) eliminate the current dependence of the defender on his own artificial obstacles (slingshots, hedgehogs), which restrict freedom of action in the event of the defender going on the attack.
Grid-barrier Nischensky
Oshchevsky lattice. It was used to close approaches to caponiers and ditches in fortresses (for example, in the Osovets fortress). This lattice was a capital structure, rigidly fastened in place. The grating itself was a very useful invention, since the reconnoitered wire fence, due to its visibility, no longer adequately fulfilled its purpose, since before an enemy attack it was significantly damaged by targeted enemy artillery fire. Moreover, knowing the location of the wire obstacles, the enemy could foresee in advance the ways of bypassing and the procedure for overcoming the obstacles, the fire cover of the infantry during their overcoming. Enemy sappers, under cover of darkness, could make passages in the wire, and then it did not fulfill its role at all. Of course, there was cover fire, but it did not always give the desired effect, and the mining of obstacles was in its infancy. Yes, and during the offensive, overcoming wire obstacles from a prepared enemy, and even under the cover of a fire shaft, took a matter of minutes!
The raised grating was hardly noticeable, which means that its use led to a sharp decrease in the rate of attack, the enemy was forced to stop in front of an obstacle and, crowding, was an excellent target for the defenders to fire.
Anti-personnel spikes and trapsThese devices were not so much a means of killing, but a kind of engineering barrier, known in ancient Rome. During the First World War, the design of the anti-personnel spike did not undergo practically any changes, improvements concerned only manufacturing technology. As before, it was a spike with four points directed in different directions so that one of them sticks up in any case, and the rest serve as supports.
“Soon I lost my direction, got into the funnel from the shell and heard the voices of the British, who were working in their trench. Having disturbed their peace with a couple of grenades, I quickly disappeared into my trench, stumbling with my hand on the protruding spike of one of our glorious traps. They consisted of four iron blades, one of which I ran into. We put them on rat trails ”(Junger E.“ In steel thunderstorms ”).
trench spikes
Spikes were littered with "no-man's land" and reinforced with barbed wire. This was done in order to counter enemy night raids; stepping on such a spike, the enemy soldier immediately, for obvious reasons, found not only himself, but the entire detachment. In addition, they could fill up trenches and communications during the retreat.
Trap per person
It is known that the Austrians, at least on the Italian front, used large spring traps to reinforce barbed wire. Their arcs were seated with steel spikes, which, when the trap was triggered, pierced the leg in the middle of the ankle.
Quietly waiting for death
mine weaponsIn the coming XX century, it would seem, there was everything necessary for the rapid growth of mine weapons. There are powerful explosives, a fairly developed industry, proven means of blasting, even the basics of mine tactics have been developed. However, the new century in terms of the development of mine weapons began rather sluggishly. By this time, artillery had already reached an outstanding development. The nearest approaches to the positions were flooded with machine gun fire. Against this background, the mines looked simply primitive and unconvincing. It could be assumed that as a weapon, mines are a thing of the past. They tried to resort to mines when all other means of armed struggle were exhausted and did not give the desired result. We can say that mines are the last straw that a drowning man clings to. Often mines are weapons of the weaker side (not necessarily the weaker side in general, on the scale of the war, but rather the weaker side here, in this area, at this time). In any case, the nature of the mine weapon has a clearly defensive principle of its use.
Little is known about mine action during the First World War. Historians pass over this topic in silence - partly due to the fact that the mines, organically fitting into the general system of barriers that stretched in front of the trench lines from the Baltic to the Black Sea, somehow disappeared into it. And partly from the fact that many witnesses and participants in the First World War themselves knew little about mines and, in order not to look stupid in their books, simply did not write anything about mines. The sappers of the First World War were a silent people, they did not consider their combat work a feat, they did not like to write memoirs.
If we find mention of a mine war, then most often these are descriptions of an underground mine war (and many then only imagined mines), when underground passages were dug under the key nodes of the enemy’s defense, sometimes a dozen or more kilometers, several tons were laid explosives and at the right moment, the defense unit took off into the air. Or you can read stories about booby traps improvised by soldiers, which they left in their trenches and dugouts during the retreat, that is, a kind of black soldier humor or in retaliation for a lost battle.
About mines in their current understanding (at that time they were commonly called land mines) in books on the First World War, it usually comes when the first tanks appear on the battlefield. Instantly appeared anti-tank mines (initially improvised) became one of the first means of anti-tank warfare. It was only then that this weapon became noticeable.
Some military historians believe that mines generally appeared as a means of anti-tank warfare, and only then did anti-personnel mines appear - partly as a transfer of this weapon to the infantry, partly as a means of protecting anti-tank mines from deminers. This mistake is more characteristic of Western historians, who have never considered it necessary to carefully study the military history of Russia. But already in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, in the defense of Port Arthur, the Russians quite actively used anti-personnel mines and created several very successful examples. This is evidenced by the shrapnel land mine of Staff Captain Karasev, a sample of which is now on display at the Military History Museum of Artillery, Engineering and Signal Corps in St. Petersburg.
The First World War did not contribute to the development of mine weapons as a tactical weapon for a long time. The battlefield was dominated by artillery and machine guns, which reliably destroyed the advancing infantry, slowly pushing its way through the terrain pitted with craters and blocked by wire barriers. The attacking infantry battalion was destroyed in 5-7 minutes. There was no place for cavalry on such battlefields at all - the rider, along with the horse, was too large a target. There was no particular need for anti-personnel mines, and the mining of barbed wire in front of their front line was quickly abandoned.
With regard to mine warfare, the Russian army turned out to be technically ready for war, but not ready in terms of stocks of explosives and explosives. Centralized reserves were made only for 4-6 months of the war, which were used up in the first two or three months. Because german army did not have any means of detecting mines or demining specialists, then even single land mines strongly held back the advance of the Kaiser's troops, and in some cases stopped them. The Germans preferred to wait until their sapper units built new roads around the existing ones.
In the Russian army, land mines were ordered to close spaces that were not affected by cannon and machine-gun fire, dead spaces. Already at the beginning of 1915, factory-made land mines began to enter the army. They went under the names "Large Shrapnel Landmine" and "Small Shrapnel Landmine".
Shrapnel mine. These land mines were blown up from the control panel by an electric impulse. Land mines were buried in the ground in the neutral zone in front of wire fences at a distance of about 200 meters from the trenches. The PM-13 demolition machine, created in 1913, was used as a control panel. The electric impulse was transmitted through a sapper wire of the 1900 model.
During the war, on an initiative basis, officers and soldiers of sapper units invented, manufactured and widely used very original mines. They could be attributed to the group of anti-barrage (more precisely, to the means of making passages in barriers).
When in 1915 the war acquired a positional character, the opposing armies began to cover their positions with solid barbed wire fences. It was impossible to overcome such dense barriers without their preliminary destruction. The consumption of shells for making one passage 5–10 meters wide reached 150–250 shells. It was impossible to manually make passages under dense machine-gun fire. Sappers developed many samples of elongated explosive charges for destroying wire fences. Some of them were put forward manually, others were self-propelled. The mine-charge of non-commissioned officer Semenov, the device-trolley of Private Savelyev, the movable mine of Sidelnikov, the creeping mines of Kanushkin and Doroshin, the crocodile mine of Colonel Tolkushin are known.
There were no tactics for using mines. Perhaps only mining during the withdrawal of troops to their original positions after capturing enemy positions, if he counterattacked with superior forces, could be attributed to a tactical method of battle. They mined trenches, dugouts, and other structures with pressure mines and booby traps in order to make it difficult for the enemy to use his own trenches and defensive structures. Or to cover the retreat, which began to happen more often in the final stage of the war. It is a known fact that after a successful battle at the Sambre (June 5–7, 1918), the Allies were unable to pursue the hastily retreating Germans, and the German commanders were able to turn the flight into a planned withdrawal.
However, there were no specially designed anti-personnel mines yet. Ordinary artillery shells were used as mines, in which the artillery fuse was replaced with a special pressure-action fuse, often based on a conventional projectile fuse. These shells were usually buried at the bottom of a trench, or in the floor of a defensive structure, or on a road.
The Germans also used time-delay fuses that detonated the projectile within 48 hours of being fired. Such mines (“hellish machines”, as it was then customary to say) were impossible to detect. In some cases, this led to the refusal of the French and British soldiers to return to their trenches.
anti-tank minesA significant year in the development of mine weapons was 1916, when on September 15, 32 British tanks attacked German positions on the Somme for the first time. The success was amazing - the German front was broken through 5 km wide and up to 40 km deep. The new weapon had nothing to oppose. Machine guns were powerless against armor, field guns could not effectively fight tanks, and there were no special anti-tank guns yet.
The only means at that moment capable of stopping the tanks were mines. At first, the Germans acted simply - they burst artillery shells vertically into the ground, the fuses of which remained above the surface of the earth. These were the first anti-tank anti-track mines. The Germans then improvised many types of mines, including the wooden box mine. Mines exploded from pressing the tank caterpillar or from the control panel.
However, anti-tank mines, improvised from shells or made in front-line conditions by soldiers, were very unreliable and dangerous to use. In Germany, a standard anti-tank mine with 3.6 kg of pyroxylin was urgently developed and introduced into industrial production. The fuse worked under the pressure of the tank caterpillar. The method of setting mines in front of a wire fence two meters away from it towards the enemy was also used. A wire was tied to every third fence post, leading to a box of explosives buried two meters from the fence. When a moving tank knocked down a fence post, an explosive charge exploded under the bottom of the tank, destroying the vehicle and crew. This simplest mine should be considered the first anti-tank, anti-bottom mine.
Anti-tank mine from an artillery shell
Although the first success of the tank attack in September 1916 turned out to be very modest in the end, and the real success for the tanks came only during the battle of Cambrai in November 1917, the Germans turned out to be very prudent and began factory production of anti-tank mines in December 1916. Until the end of the war, they produced almost 3 million of them. After the war, the Germans calculated that the losses of allied tanks from mines were very significant: the British lost up to 15–28% of their tanks on mines.
The famous German general-theorist and practitioner of the use of tank forces of the Second World War G. Guderian in his book “Attention, tanks!” (1937) indicated that only from the end of July 1918 to the end of the war (November 1918) the French lost 3 Schneider-type tanks, 13 Renault-type tanks and for unclear reasons (presumably mines) another 1 tank Schneider and 70 Renault tanks.
English and German anti-tank mines of the 1918 model
The Germans were the first to come to the conclusion that mines can be successful if two necessary conditions are met:
1. Mines should be placed in long rows and in two or three rows; individually placed mines or small groups of mines are ineffective.
2. The minefield must be covered by machine gun fire and artillery; which excludes the evacuation of the crew of the damaged tank and will not allow organizing the towing of the tank to the rear; artillery finishes off a damaged tank.
The Germans also developed the first standard for an anti-tank minefield.
The successes of German mine weapons forced the Allies to attend to the means of overcoming minefields. In 1918, the British created a minesweeper tank based on the Mark V tank. He was pushing several heavy rollers ahead of him. This trawl was developed by the Mechanized Field Company of the Royal Engineers (Mechanical Field Company, Royal Engineer) from Christchurch in Dorset.
The Allies, believing that the appearance of German tanks would not be long in coming, also took steps to develop anti-tank mines. The British fired three samples of mines - the first in the form of a piece of pipe, the second from an artillery shell, the third - a box mine. In early 1918, the Experimental Section of the Royal Engineers developed a mine for use against German tanks that were beginning to appear on the battlefield.
It should be noted that the actuation force of both German and British mines during the Great War did not exceed 45–50 kg, and they could be triggered when a person stepped on them. These isolated incidents later gave rise to the erroneous thesis among military historians that anti-personnel mines originally appeared as a means of protecting anti-tank mines.
On March 22, 1918, German tanks advancing on Gosincourt stumbled upon an English minefield, lost a couple of vehicles, after which the crews refused to move on. Perhaps the greatest success of anti-tank mines was in March 1918, when the advancing 35 Mark Vs tanks of the American 301st Heavy Battalion (301st Heavy Battalion) stumbled upon the same minefield, which everyone forgot about. The Americans lost 10 tanks to mines in this attack. English mines here were mortar mines, each reinforced with 23 kg of ammothol (ammonite), which led to breaking through the thin bottom of the vehicles and killing the crew.
The Allies also promptly warned Russia of the possibility of the Germans using tanks on the Eastern Front. Under the pressure of the allies in Russia, several samples of anti-tank mines were urgently developed and their factory production was established. Russian mines turned out to be more advanced than the English ones. All of them were self-explosive type. The mine designed by Revensky was anti-tracked with a push-button fuse. The mines of Dragomirov and Salyaev had an inclined type fuse and exploded both under the tracks and under the tank hull, destroying both the crew and the vehicle. However, German tanks never appeared on the Russian front.
Booby traps: deadly wit. However, mines have found quite wide application in a different role, namely as a soldier’s means of revenge for dead comrades, a way to throw out the accumulated irritation, war fatigue, a reflection of personal hatred for the soldier of the opposite side, even a kind of entertainment, cynical soldier humor. In war, such mines are ineffective. Rather, it is a weapon to terrorize the enemy. Here is what one of the German officers wrote in those days:
“People in the trenches spend whole days turning each dugout into a death trap, and the most innocent things become infernal machines. Some dugouts fly into the air when the doors are opened. A drafting table with several books lying on it is a trap, and from each book an electrical wire runs to a charge capable of destroying a platoon. The gramophone left on the table playing a record is also a trap and will explode when the tune ends. Scattered piles of cans of beef stew turned into fiendish projectiles of doom. Hundreds of tension mines are laid in front of the trenches ... Indeed, I never thought that the British Tommy had such diabolical ingenuity.
M. Kroll writes that such use of mines and not only mines, aimed only at causing losses to the enemy outside of their tactical use and purely military necessity, is generally characteristic of the First World War, which he calls a grandiose massacre.
In the dugout, just recaptured from the enemy, there is an ordinary telephone on the table. A soldier enters, the phone starts ringing, prompting him to pick up the phone. On the one hand, doing this is a stereotyped unconscious reaction ( conditioned reflex) a civilized person, on the other hand, who will deny himself the pleasure of telling the caller (an obviously enemy officer is calling, believing that there are still his own soldiers in the dugout) something like: “And we are already here, hello.” The victim does not realize that in fact this is a call from the other world, where she is now being invited. There is not a telephone on the table, but a surprise mine, the wires from which are connected to the door, and the one who opened the door himself made the phone ring. Removing the tube will cause an explosion.
Opened desk drawer. It shows papers. The natural reaction is to open the drawer and see what kind of papers. The booby trap is just waiting for this. Explosion.
There is a saucepan on the stove with the lid ajar. There is definitely something tasty in it. But it is worth lifting the lid - and the desire to eat will remain forever last wish soldier. A mine lurking in a saucepan guards its prey.
Winter, in an unheated house, the stove door is open, from where firewood is visible. It remains only to stick a lit match there - and it will soon become warm. So warm that a fighter will never be cold again. A mine lurks in the stove, ready to explode as soon as fire reaches its target sensor.
An overturned chair is lying at the door, making it difficult to pass. But as soon as it is lifted or moved away, an explosion will thunder.
It should be noted that the wounding or destruction of an enemy soldier, however strange it may seem, is not the main task of anti-personnel mines and booby traps. They serve only as a means to make soldiers afraid of mines, to develop mine fear in them. It is this fear that solves the main task of mines - to stop the enemy, to force him to abandon certain actions, for example, from using premises, abandoned cars, equipment, equipment, and household items.
Inventions are made at the front not from a good life - the rear inventors and designers did not have time or forgot to invent this or that useful thing even before the war, the soldiers themselves have to get down to business. And in the rear during hostilities, design thought is also in full swing - war is the engine of progress.
As a result, numerous interesting devices and projects are born. Some of them are quite functional, some are even ahead of their time, and some belong to the category of curiosities. But they all end up on the pages of the military press - they are used for propaganda purposes. We bring to your attention a selection of funny military inventions from the pages of newspapers and magazines during the First World War.
As they write in the comments to this material, this is an aircraft simulator
And this is a more useful thing. They tried to use such things in all the armies participating in that war. But for some reason they didn't stick.
French bomber. Medieval technology is in demand again
And another French trench catapult
Armored Observer. Attempts to create a body armor that is effective and suitable for mass production did not stop in many armies during the First World War. But, alas, serial body armor appeared much later.
French armored tricycle. The first step towards blitzkrieg. The signature says that this miracle of technology has shown itself well in intelligence. But where exactly it fought - we do not know.
German snowmobile with a propeller. A little later, similar machines appeared in service with the Red Army.
And again ancient technology overcoming water obstacles
Combat catamaran
Combat water skiing
The French had a brilliant idea - to use small-caliber guns firing grappling hooks to overcome enemy wire obstacles. In the photo - calculations of such guns
The picture shows boarding guns in action.
Single-seat crawling tank. The only member of the crew along the way plays the role of the engine.
Approximately the same car for orderlies
Movable steel shield for shooters
Larger version of this shield
Amphibious car for the Austrian army
Radium was used until the 1970s to create luminous paints. An American inventor proposes to use such paints on the front line.
What you can’t think of, just not to freeze
Well, a very simple invention - an ordinary slingshot, only a big one.
War spurs scientific and technological progress. The states leading wars are trying to destroy the enemy soldiers more, and, at the same time, to protect their soldiers from defeat. Perhaps the most prolific invention was the First World War.
R2D2. Self-propelled firing point on electric traction. Behind her, a cable dragged across the battlefield.
French trench armor against bullets and shrapnel. 1915 
Sappenpanzer appeared on the Western Front in 1916. In June 1917, after capturing some German body armor, the Allies conducted research. According to these documents, the German body armor can stop a rifle bullet at a distance of 500 meters, but its main purpose is against shrapnel and shrapnel. The vest can be hung both on the back and on the chest. The first samples assembled were found to be less heavy than later ones, with an initial thickness of 2.3 mm. Material - an alloy of steel with silicon and nickel. 
Such a mask was worn by the commander and driver of the English Mark I to protect their faces from shrapnel. 
Mobile barricade 
German soldiers captured a mobile barricade 
Mobile infantry shield (France). It is not clear why there is a man with a cat 
Experimental helmets for machine gunners on airplanes. USA, 1918. 
USA. Protection for bomber pilots. Armored pants. 
Various options for armored shields for police officers from Detroit. 
An Austrian trench shield that could be worn as a breastplate. He could have, but there were no people who wanted to constantly drag such a heavy piece of iron on themselves. 
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from Japan. 
Armored shield for orderlies. 
Individual armor protection with the uncomplicated name "Turtle". As far as I understand, this thing did not have a “sex” and the fighter himself moved it. 
Shovel-shield McAdam, Canada, 1916. Dual use was supposed: both as a shovel and a shooting shield. It was ordered by the Canadian government in a series of 22,000 pieces. As a result, the device was uncomfortable as a shovel, uncomfortable due to the too low location of the loophole as a rifle shield, and was pierced through by rifle bullets. After the war melted down as scrap metal 
Carriage, UK 1938. 
Armored observation post 
French bomber 
military slingshot 
As for armored vehicles, the most unimaginable designs existed here. 
On April 24, 1916, an anti-government uprising broke out in Dublin (Easter Rising - Easter Rising) and the British needed at least some armored vehicles to move troops along the shelled streets.
On April 26, in just 10 hours, the specialists of the 3rd reserve cavalry regiment, using the equipment of the workshops of the South railway in Inchicore, they were able to assemble an armored car from a conventional commercial 3-ton Daimler truck chassis and ... a steam boiler. Both the chassis and the boiler were delivered from the Guinness Brewery 
armored rubber 
Truck converted into an armored car 
Danish "armored car", based on the Gideon 2 T 1917 truck with plywood armor(!). 
Peugeot car converted into an armored car 
Bronetachanka 
This is some kind of hybrid of an aircraft and an armored car. 
Military snowmobiles 
Same but on wheels 
Armored car not based on a Mercedes car 
In June 1915, the production of the Marienwagen tractor began at the Daimler plant in Berlin-Marienfelde. This tractor was produced in several versions: semi-tracked, fully tracked, although their base was a 4-ton Daimler tractor. 
To break through the fields, entangled with barbed wire, they came up with just such a hay wire mower. 
And this is another one that overcame any obstacles. 
And this is a tank prototype 
Tank FROT-TURMEL-LAFFLY, a wheeled tank built on the chassis of the Laffly road roller. Protected by 7 mm armor, weighs about 4 tons, armed with two 8 mm machine guns and a mitrailleuse of unknown type and caliber. By the way, the armament in the photograph is much stronger than the declared one - apparently the “holes for the gun” were cut with a margin.
The exotic shape of the hull is due to the fact that the idea of the designer (the same Mr. Frot), the machine was intended to attack wire barriers, which the machine had to crush with its hull - after all, monstrous wire barriers, along with machine guns, were one of the main problems for the infantry. 
A cart based on a motorcycle. 
Armored variant 
Here protection is only for the machine gunner 
Connection 
Ambulance 
Refueling 
Three-wheeled armored motorcycle designed for reconnaissance tasks, especially for narrow roads. 
Combat water skiing 
Combat catamaran 
The First World War gave mankind a number of unexpected inventions that had nothing to do with the military industry. Today we recall only some of them, which have become firmly established in everyday life and have radically changed our lifestyle.
Sanitary pads a high degree absorption. And they began to produce it even before the start of the First World War, specialists from a small at that time American company Kimberly-Clark. The head of the research department, Ernst Mahler, as well as the vice president of the company, James Kimberley, toured pulp and paper mills in Germany, Austria and the Scandinavian countries in 1914. There they noticed a material that absorbed moisture five times faster and cost manufacturers half the price of cotton. Kimberly and Mahler brought samples of cellulose wadding to America, where they registered a new trademark. When the US entered World War I in 1917, Kimberly-Clark began to produce dressings at a speed of 100-150 meters per minute. However, the Red Cross nurses, who dressed the wounded and appreciated the new dressing material, began to use it in a different capacity. This misuse of cellucotton became the basis of the company's prosperity. After the end of the war in 1918, the production of dressings had to be suspended, since the main consumers - the army and the Red Cross - no longer needed them," say the current representatives of the company.
Nearly 100 years ago, enterprising Kimberly-Clark businessmen bought leftover cellulose wool from the military and created a new product and a new market. After two years of intensive research, experimentation and marketing, the company produced a sanitary napkin made from 40 thin layers of cellulose wadding wrapped in gauze. In 1920, a small wooden shed in Nina, Wisconsin, began mass-producing pads, which were made by hand by women workers. The new product was dubbed Kotex (short for cotton texture). He entered the shelves in October 1920, about two years after the signing of the armistice agreement.
paper handkerchiefs Advertising sanitary napkins was not so easy, because it was simply indecent to talk aloud about the menstrual cycle, and women were embarrassed to buy them from male sellers. The company agreed with pharmacies that sold pads of this brand to put two boxes at the checkout. A woman took a package with gaskets from one, put 50 cents into another, but if these boxes were not observed at the checkout, then one could simply say the word "Kotex". It sounded like a password, and the seller immediately understood what was needed.
Gradually, the new product gained popularity, but not as quickly as Kimberly-Clark would have liked. It was necessary to look for a new application for the wonderful material. In the early 1920s, one of the company's employees, Bert Furness, had the idea to ennoble pulp under a hot iron, which made its surface smooth and soft. In 1924, after a series of experiments, face wipes were born, which they called Kleenex.
A quartz lamp In the winter of 1918, about half of all children in Berlin suffered from rickets, one of the symptoms of which was bone deformities. At that time, the causes of this disease were unknown. It was assumed that this had something to do with poverty. The Berlin physician Kurt Gouldchinsky noticed that many of his rickets patients were very pale, without any tan. He decided to experiment on four patients, including a three-year-old boy. All that is now known about this child is that his name was Arthur.
Kurt Guldchinsky began to irradiate this group of patients with ultraviolet rays from mercury-quartz lamps. After several sessions, the doctor found that the skeletal system in children began to strengthen. In May 1919, with the onset of the summer season, he began to sunbathe the children. The results of his experiments caused a great resonance. Throughout Germany, children began to sit in front of quartz lamps. Where there were not enough lamps, as in Dresden, for example, even lamps taken by social workers from street lamps went into action.
Later, scientists found that ultraviolet radiation lamps contribute to the production of vitamin D, which is actively involved in the synthesis and absorption of calcium by the body. Calcium, in turn, is needed for the development and strengthening of bones, teeth, hair and nails. So the treatment of children who suffered from malnutrition during the war years led to a very useful discovery about the benefits of ultraviolet rays.
Daylight Savings Time The idea of moving the clock forward one hour in the spring and one hour back in the autumn existed even before the outbreak of the First World War. Benjamin Franklin stated it in a letter to the Paris Journal as early as 1784. "Since people do not go to bed at sunset, candles have to be wasted," the politician wrote. "But in the morning, sunlight is wasted, because people wake up later than the sun rises." Britain switched to daylight saving time on May 21, 1916, followed by other European countries. Similar proposals were made in New Zealand in 1895 and in Great Britain in 1909. However, they came to nothing. The First World War contributed to the realization of this idea.
Germany was short of coal. On April 30, 1916, the authorities of this country issued a decree according to which the clock hands were moved from 23:00 in the evening to 24:00. The next morning, everyone had to wake up, thus an hour earlier, saving an hour of daylight. The experience of Germany rather quickly migrated to other countries. Britain switched to daylight saving time on May 21, 1916, followed by other European countries. On March 19, 1918, the US Congress established several time zones and introduced daylight saving time from March 31 until the end of World War I. After the armistice, daylight saving time was canceled, but the idea of saving daylight hours remained to wait for better times, and, as we know, these times eventually came.
Tea bags The tea bag doesn't owe its origins to wartime issues. It is believed that for the first time tea packaged in small bags began to be sent to its customers by an American tea merchant in 1908. One of the fans of this drink dropped or dipped such a bag into a cup of boiling water, marking the beginning of a very convenient and quick way to brew tea. So, at least, representatives of the tea business say.
During the First World War, the German company Teekanne remembered this idea and began to supply tea bags to the troops. The soldiers called them "tea bombs".
A watch appeared that left both hands of a soldier free, that is, a wristwatch. They were also comfortable for aviators. So a pocket watch on a solid chain, one might say, has sunk into oblivion. During the Boer Wars, Mappin and Webb produced wristwatches with lugs through which a strap could be threaded. Later, this company, not without pride, declared that its products were very useful during the battle of Omdurman, the decisive battle of the Second Anglo-Sudan War. But it was the First World War that made watches an everyday necessity. It was especially important to coordinate the actions of different units during the creation of an artillery curtain of fire - that is, ground artillery fire before the infantry marched. A mistake in a few minutes could cost many of the lives of their own soldiers.
The distances between the various positions were too great to use signals, there was too little time to transmit them, and it would be unwise to do this in full view of the enemy. So wristwatches were a great way out of the situation. The H. Williamson company, which produced the so-called trench watches in Coventry, in its report for 1916 reported: "It is known that already one in four soldiers has a wrist watch, and the remaining three will acquire them at the first opportunity." Some brands of wristwatches, which have become a symbol of luxury and prestige, date back to the times of the First World War. The Cartier Tank model was introduced in 1917 by the French watchmaker Louis Cartier, who created this watch inspired by the shape of the new Renault tanks.
During World War I, Adenauer was the mayor of Cologne, whose inhabitants were starving due to the British blockade. Possessing a lively mind and the talent of an inventor, Adenauer began to look for products that could replace bread and meat in the diet of the townspeople. He suggested using soybeans instead of meat. His work began to be called "sausages of the world" or "Cologne sausage". Adenauer decided to patent his recipe, but the Imperial Patent Office refused him.
It may seem strange, but Adenauer was more fortunate in this regard with the enemy of Germany: the British King George V granted him a patent for soy sausage on June 26, 1918. But the patented "Cologne sausage" with soy content went down in history. Vegetarians around the world should raise a glass of bio-wine to the humble German finance minister who created such an indispensable dish for them.
Zipper Since the middle of the XIX century, many people have tried to create a device that would help to connect the parts of clothing and shoes in the fastest and most convenient way. However, luck smiled at the American engineer Gideon Sundbeck, who emigrated to America from Sweden.
He became the chief designer of the Universal Fastener Company, where he invented the Hookless Fastener (fastener without hooks): a slider-slider connected the teeth attached to two textile tapes. Sundbeck received a patent for his version of the zipper in 1913. The US military began to use these zippers in military uniforms and shoes, especially in the navy. After the First World War, zippers migrated to civilian clothes, where they continue to live to this day.
Stainless Steel For steel that doesn't rust or corrode, we have Harry Brearley of Sheffield, England, to thank. According to documents from the city archives, "in 1913, Brearley developed what is considered the first example of "stainless" or "clean" steel - a product that revolutionized the steel industry and became a major component of the infrastructure modern world". The British military was just puzzling over what metal is best to make weapons from.
The problem was that gun barrels, under the influence of high temperatures and friction, began to deform. Metallurgist Brearly was asked to create an alloy that could withstand high temperatures, chemical elements, and so on. Brearley began to conduct experiments, testing the properties of various alloys, including those with a high chromium content. According to legend, many of the experiments, in his opinion, ended in failure, and the rejected ingots ended up in a pile of scrap metal. However, Brearley later noticed that some of them did not succumb to rust. Thus, in 1913, Brearley discovered the secret of stainless steel. During the First World War, new aircraft engines were made from it, but later spoons, knives and forks, as well as countless surgical instruments, without which no hospital in the world can do now, began to make stainless steel.
A communication system for pilots Before the First World War, the aviator found himself in the air one on one with the aircraft. He could not communicate with other pilots or with ground services. The aviators had to make do with shouts and gestures. It didn't fit anymore. Something had to be done. The solution was wireless.
Radio technology was then in its infancy. During the First World War, relevant research was carried out in Brookland and Biggin Hill, by the end of 1916 serious progress was made. "The first attempts to install radiotelephones on aircraft ended in failure, as the noise of the engine created a lot of interference," writes historian Keith Trower in one of his books on the development of radio in Britain. According to him, later this problem was solved by creating a helmet with a built-in microphone and headphones. As a result, civil aviation post-war years"took off" to new heights, and the gestures and shouts with which the aviators had to get in touch are a thing of the past.
