Chronography of Military Technology
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modified 17 September 2023
A tall handsome
chivalrous Knight, killed by a short ugly little Gun.
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also Atomic power and electricity
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also Science and Technology
UK offshore munitions dump
sites, https://www.orbisenergy.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/2-Mine-map-UK-1.jpg
also mines etc, https://www.ordtek.com/mine-map/
COMPANY.
Up to 150 men.
REGIMENT.
650 to 900 men.
BATTALION,
Tactical battalion Group, up to 900 men.
BRIGADE,
2,000 to 5,000 men, around 3 to 5 battalions
DIVISION.
Usually commanded by a Major General, divisions are made up of three or four
brigades and include 10,000 to 15,000 soldiers.
2003, Multiple JDAM
(Joint Direct Attack Munition) air-alunched smart bombs invented.
2001, Heckler and
Koch submachine guns invented.
27 January 1998, In response to a worldwide
movement against landmines, the UK Government said it would destroy its stocks
of these weapons.
31 December 1994, Britain began using
the Trident nuclear deterrent on its submarines.
1988, IMINT (Imagery Intelligence) satellites launched.
9 November� 1988, The Pentagon unveiled its
new �Stealth� fighter plane,
supposedly invisible to enemy radar. It used radar-absorbent materials and a
�faceted� surface that reflected radar signals at odd angles.
1985, Semtex explosive became
available. It was named after Semtin, the Czech village where it was
manufactured, plus ex (for export or explosive). It is an odourless plastic
explosive and is much favoured by terrorists.
1984, Stun guns invented.
22
March 1983, The US Army awarded AM
General the contract for a new type of ;land vehicle,, the High Mobility
Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, or Humvee. This was to be a versatile off-road
vehicle that could ford 5 feet of water.
1982, Air-launched cruise missiles invented.
1980, The very large aircraft carrier ship, 20,000 � 30,000 tonnes, was
introduced, because of the need to destroy enemy aircraft beyond the range of
the ship�s own weapons, for example when on convoy duty. Previously, the size
and vulnerability of earlier aircraft carriers, and their cost, was thought to
outweight their utility. The Eisenhower,
USA, 81,600 tonnes, built 1979, was one of the largest such ships.
30
October 1979, The aeronautical engineer and� inventor Sir
Barnes Wallis died aged 92. He invented the bouncing bombs for the
Dambusters raid.
1977, The US developed the neutron
bomb, which released most of its energy as neutron radiation, killing
people but not destroying buildings.
18 January 1972, The first plastic warship, the minehunter HMS Wilton, was launched at Southampton.
1970, The USA began using laser guided bombs in Vietnam. A laser
beam was shone on the target and its reflection guided the bomb.
1970, Exocet missiles invented.
1960, Harrier jump jets invented.
15
November 1960, The US launched its
first nuclear armed submarine, the USS George Washington, from Charleston,
South Carolina. President
Eisenhower said that the submarine�s 16 missiles had the same
destructive power as �the total of all of the bombs dropped during World War
II�
12
March 1955, US Secretary of State
John Foster Dulles modified his defence statement of 12 January 1955, saying
that retaliation would involve smaller nuclear bombs on military facilities,
not the obliteration of entire cities.
12
January 1955, The US announced a
defence policy known as �Massive Retaliation�, entailing the capacity to
inflict huge damage unpredictably in time and location on any aggressor.� This policy was criticised for alienating some
of America�s allies. See 12 March 1955.
1954, Nuclear submarines invented.
27
September 1954, The US and Canada
agreed on a string of radar stations across from Arctic Canada to Greenland, to
warn of a Soviet attack. This was the DEW, or Distant Early Warning, line.
Nuclear weapons developed
1952, Hydrogen bomb invented.
1947, Lieutenant-General Mikhail
Kalashnikov designed the AK47 assault rifle.
1946, The swept back Delta wing appeared on fast military
aircraft. It was later adopted on the Concorde supersonic airliner.
1943, Jet
bombers and fighter planes in use.
1942, V2 rockets, in use. Napalm was developed by US chemist Louis Fieser;
it was a mixture of palm oil and gasoline.
5/1942, Bazookas (anti-tank
weapons) first put in use.
1941, The Bailey Bridge was
invented by Sir
Donald Bailey (1901-85)
German
Enigma Code cracked by Bletchley Park
22 May 1940, Bletchley Park succeeded in cracking the most
frequently-used German Enigma code, giving the British access to German Air
Force messages. These
included messages between the German Air Force and German land forces.
12 February 1940, The British minesweeper HMS Gleaner sank a German submarine,
U33, in 30 fathoms of water, Three Enigma
rotors were recovered from this submarine, without German knowledge; they
gave Bletchely Park analysts important insights into German military coding.
1939, Military helicopters
in use.
2 December 1939, The Molotov
Cocktail was invented when the Finns, resistimng a Soviet invasion against overwhelming
odds, deployed extremely mobile units moving by ski or bicycle on nsarrow
forest paths. They threw bottles full of petrol, with a lighted rag oin the
neck, into the turrets of advancing Soviet tanks, with devastating effectrs.
Magnetic
mines and counter measures (see 1853)
19 December 1939, The British Admiralty
discovered that a ship could be demagnetised by means of a coil wrapped around
the ship greatly reducing its susceptibility to the new German magnetic mines. To keep this discovery secret, every time a
UK ship was sunk by an ordinary mine, her demise was attributed to a magnetic
mine.
23 November 1939, The first German magnetic
mine was recovered intact by the British. Laid usually by aircraft, these mines
had been increasingly effective against Allied shipping. The remedy was to
degauss ships to remove their inherent magnetic field, by passing an electric current
along a cable round the ship�s hull, and an urgent programme of degaussing was
instituted.
22 November 1939, A German magnetic mine was dropped by plane onto
the mudflats off Shoeburyness, and recovered intact from the soft mud. The
Admiralty could now begin work to find an antidote to this weapon. Germany remained unaware of the British discovery.
14 November 1939, First use of magnetic mines, against British shipping,
by Nazi
Germany. Dropped by plane, they sank merchant shipping
indiscriminately. See 22 November 1939.
1936, The first nerve gas,
tabun, was invented.
31 December 1927, The use of the lance was abandoned by the British Army, except for ceremonial
purposes.
1925, Biological warfare was prohibited inder
the Geneva Convention. However the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention permits
biological warfare for �defensive� pirposes, without specifying how this
differs from offensive weapons development. Chemical warfare was also banned.
1911,
The bomb-sight was pioneered by Lieutenant Riley Scott of the US Army. It
combined data about the height, speed and course of the aircraft with the
windspeed to determine the optimum time to release an aircraft bomb.
Development
of the Tank
5 January 1951, Sir Ernest Swinton, British
soldier and inventor of the military tank, died.
1935, The German 10 ton Mark 2
tank entered service. Desoigned for blitzkrieg warfare, it had a top speed on
roads of 30 mph.
1934, The German 5.5 ton Mark I
tank entered service.
15 September 1916. Tanks went into battle for the first time, for the British Army at
the battle of Flers on the� Somme.� They were invented by Sir Ernest Swinton, weighed 30
tons, and travelled at 4mph. It was hoped they would break the stalemate of trench warfare.
Some German soldiers fled, thinking the Devil had come. The tank forces
achieved their objective but infantry reserves could
not arrive in time to consolidate the successes. See 1908, 28 February 1912.
6 September 1915. The first military tank,
the No.1 Lincoln, modified and renamed Little Willie, had its
first run.
1915, The French experimented,
unsuccessfully, with armoured farm tractors.
28 February 1912, The Austrian, Gunter Burstyn,
patented an armoured vehicle that preceded the Tank. Although it did not have the continuous track that enabled
Tanks to traverse trenches and shell-holed ground, it did have front and rear
ancillary wheels on long pivots held above ground. These could be lowered to
lever the vehicle up and over steep edges.
1908, The Caterpillar Tractor was invented. It had steel bands within which
its wheels travelled, to facilitate travel over rough ground. In 1915 Winston
Churchill saw the potettial for this vehicle to cross the trenches
of World War One.
21 October 1868, Sir Ernest Swinton, one of the
inventors of the military tank, was born in Bamgalore, India.
20 April 1770. The first tracked vehicle
was patented by Richard
Lovell Edgeworth. It worked similarly to modern tanks. The idea was
to overcome traction problems caused by rough or soggy ground. Far ahead of its time, the vehicle never
caught on.
World War One
1917, Depth charges, explosives dropped from ships to detonate underwater
and destroy submarines, were in use.
1917, Flamethrowers, weapons that projected a steady stream of ignited
fuel, were in use.
1917, The term �ace� was coined for a World War One
fighter pilot who had shot down at least ten enemy planes.
1916, The creeping barrage was employed in World War One. Guns situated
behind the front line pounded ground in front ot it, and then hopefully the
front line troops could move forward and occupy this ground. The rear guns also
moved forward, and the process would be repeated.
24 November 1916, Sir Hiram Maxim, English-born US
inventor of the machine gun in 1883,
died in London.
26 June 1916, Peter Nissen (1871-1930)
patented the Nissen Hut. He noticed
that there was a lack of easy to build housing for the troops in World War One.
100,000 of these huts were built by the end of the War; each one taking 6 men 4
hours to build. Their main drawback was they were very cold in the winter. In
1942 the US military had a version of the Nissen
Hut, known as the Quonset Hut,
named after its place of manufacture (Quonset Point, Rhode Island). Quonset Huts replaced tent cities for
US troops.
1915, Aircraft-mounted machine
guns in use.
1915, Rifles with periscopic sights
(allowing the user to remain hidden) were invented by an Austrian soldier.
1915, Poison gas first used by
the Germans
in World War One at Ypres. They used chlorine, phosgene Cl2CO, mustard gas C4H8CI2S
and tear gas.
1914, Flechettes in use � steel darts designed to be dropped from an aircraft
on personnel below.
Pre-World
War One naval arms race, Britain and Germany
1918, ASDIC, Anti Submarine
Detection Investigation Committee, replaced passive microphones for detecting
enemy submarines with sonar, sound ranging.
1915, The British developed the
first anti-submarine depth charge.
It comprised a container with 120 lb (50 kg) explosive dropped into the water
and set off by a hydraulic trigger. However it had to be detonated within 21 ft
(6.3 metres) of a submarine to be effective, and submarines were hard to locate
precisely.
1911, The battle cruiser ship was developed,�
by Britain and Germany. It was the size of a battle ship but more
lightly armoured and faster.
10 February 1906, Britain launched the
revolutionary new battleship Dreadnought.� She made every other warship obsolete,
outgunning and outranging them all. Her new steam turbine propulsion made her
much faster than older ships. This marked the start of a keen naval arms race
between Britain and Germany. Germany now realised that the latest class of
battleships were too big to pass through the Kiel Canal. The Russo-Japanese War demonstrated the need for such battleship
innovation, as naval battles were now fought at long range, using torpedoes,
and torpedo boats therefore had to be destroyed at a distance with accurate
long-range artillery. They were a key part of UK naval strategy in World
War One; they were named after a naval ship of Francis Drake�s time.
1905, The term �minesweeper� was first used, for a ship
used to clear mines.
2 October 1901. Vickers launched the British
Navy�s first submarine. HMS Holland I, 105 tons, was designed for coastal
duties. Earlier submarine designs had been tried, but the idea did not work
until metal could be used for ships hulls, Now all major world powers had
submarines, setting the scene for future underwater warfare. The idea was
dismissed as �underhand, underwater, and damned un-English� by Admiral Sir
Arthur Wilson. The petrol engine was dangerous; later submarines
used diesel engines. Mice were kept on board, to give warning of dangerous
levels of petrol fumes. The crew breathed compressed air, and stayed under for
4 hours. The Royal Navy concentrated on using submarines for inshore patrols
whereas other navies, especially Germany, developed longer-distance craft. This
disparity was a severe handicap to Britain during the First World War; only the
development of sophisticated counter measures saved Britain from starvation as
German U-boats sunk supply ships.
5 July 1901, French Navy submarine Gustave Z�d� stunned
the naval world by demonstrating ts potential to sneak up upon and sink even
the most powerful of surface ships. The occasion was exercises of the French
Mediterranean Fleet; the Gustave Zede travelled 160 miles under its own power,
moved undersea into Ajaccio harbour, Corsica, and struck the Fleet's flagship,
the Charles Martel, with a dummy torpedo. The successful 'sinking' of a fully
protected battleship by a tiny submarine which could approach its target,
deliver a lethal blow and escape without being detected, was a watershed in the
history of submarines and was a lesson to the naval planners of all major
countries..
1861, Sea mines in use.
1805, The use of armour plate on
ships was first proposed by English scientist and politician Sir William
Congreve (1772-1828)
1805, James Fulton demonstrated that a
ship could be sunk by exploding a large charge of gunpowder next to the hull
underwater. However technical difficulties in actually getting the explsoivr to
the ship�s hull remained.
1777, David Bushnell invented the
torpedo.
�Advances�
in gun technology, 1718-1942
1942, The Sten Gun was developed; named after the initials of its inventors,
RV Shepherd and HJ Turpin, plus the En of Enfield, where it was manufactured.
1937, The Bren Gun, a light and quick-firing ,machine giun, was introduced.
It was named after Brno, a town in Czechoslovakia where the gun was first
manufactured, plus Enfield, north London, where the giun was produced at the
British Royal Small Arms Factory.
1935, The Magnum gun, a powerful handgun, was introduced by Smith and Wesson.
21 May 1915, Leonid Gobyato, Russian General who designed
the portable mortar, died in combat aged 40.
1913, The Lewis Gun, a light machine giun, came into use. It weighed
26lns. Later it was superseded by the Bren
Gun, weighoing 22 lbs.
Lee-Enfield
rifle factory
1902, The Lee-Enfield rifle was in use in the British Army (used in the Boer War
1899-1902). It was named after JP Lee, 1831-1904, the US designer of the
bolt-action gun, and Enfield, the north London town where the gun was made, at
the British Royal Small Arms Factory. See 1851.
1851, A rifle� factory was set up in Enfield, north of
London. This was the Lee-Enfield works (see 1902). By 1857 it was producing
1,000 rifles a week, a figure later raised to 2,000. All components were
interchangeable, a great advance in military technology imported from the USA.
1900, The revolver was invented by JM Browning.
1898, Luger pistols in use,
1884, Maxim machine guns in use, developed by Hiram Maxim (born 5 February 1840
in Sangerville, USA). The force of the recoil was used to recock the gun so it
kept firig automatically.
1872, Automatic pistols in use,
Gatling Gun
26 February 1903. Richard Gatling, US inventor of
the rapid-fire gun, died aged
84.
1876, The Gatling Gun could now fire 1,200 rounds per minute.
4 November 1862. Richard Gatling, in Indiana, invented a
gun that could fire hundreds of rounds a minute using rotating
barrels.� Mounted on wheels, it had 10
parallel barrels and fired 1200 shots a minute.
1861, The Gatling Gun was invented by US engineer Richard Jordan Gatling, aged 43.
It was soon introduced to the US Civil War battlefields. It had a fire rate of
600 rounds per minute. That was soon raised to 700 a minute, although the gun
had a trendency to jam. However the gun was heavy and had to be mounted on
wheels.
12 September 1818, Richard Gatling, US inventor of
the revolving battery gun, was born in Winton, North Carolina.
Colt
Revolver
10 January 1862, Samuel Colt,
who invented the Colt revolver in 1835, died at Hartford, Connecticut.
1846, Samuel Colt recieevd a large
order for his new revolver, as the Mexican War caused a shortage of them for
the US military.
25 February 1836, Samuel Colt was granted a patent
for his new revolver
firearm.
19/7/1814, Samuel Colt, the inventor of the Colt revolver
(patented 1835), was born.
1841, The Prussian needle gun,
designed by Johann
Nikolas Dreyse, aged 54, was the first successful,breech-loading
military rifle. It had a long thin needle-like firing pin which penetrated
through the black powder charge to set off the primer. The Prussian Army
adopted this gun in 1848 to replace their muzzle-loading rifles.
5 February 1840, Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim,
American inventor of the first fully automatic machine gun, was born in
Sangersville, Maine.
1838, Breech-loading rifles in use. Gun reloading was slkow as the
projectile had to be inserted down the barrel. Breech loading, using a closable
aperture or breech at the base of the barrel, was tried from the 1400s,but only
in the 1800 did metallurgists produce an alloy strong enough to resist the
explosion within the barrel.
15 May 1718, The machine gun
was patented by a London
lawyer, James
Puckle. It could fire 63 rounds in 7 minutes, using nine chambers
cranked to insert bullets into a single barrel.
Dum Dum
bullets
7 December 1908, Major explosion at the Dum Dum arsenal in India, killing some
50 Indian
workmen. It was here in around 1898 that
�Dum Dum� bullets were first manufactured by the British. They have a
hollow nose and so expand on impact, causing a more serious wound than ordinary
bullets. These bullets were used by the Russians against Japan in 1904/5, and after
protests by Japan
the Second Hague Convention, 1907,
banned their use. This convention was signed by most States, but not the UK
or USA.
1897, Dum-dum bullets invented; they were internationally banned in 1907.
They had a hollow nose, to improve their stopping power (within their target),
and caused terrible wounds.
1906, Plastic explosive was invented. It is a putty-like substance, much
favoured by terrorists from the later 20th century onwards because
it can be moulded to the shape of its target for greater impact.
1902, Armoured cars in use.
27 March 1902, Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps was established in the British Army, with Queen Alexandra
as its first President, with the signing of a Royal Warrant by her husband, King Edward VII.
1 October 1887. The British in India annexed Baluchistan,
an area strategic to the North-West Frontier.
British
military strategy on the Indian North-West Frontier was to maintain an
administrative zone where the military protected the civilian, farming,
population, a �forward zone� where garrisons were purely for military
operations, and forward of that, a �tribal zone� where just the main roads were
protected. This zone system had been in use for many centuries.
1855, Lord Dunaldson suggested the use
of poison gas (sulphur dioxide) in
the Crimean War.
Naval
Innovations
1853, M Jacobi invented the first naval mine, a floating bomb which
blew up on contact with a ship; he gave it the name �mine�. See 1939.
25 September 1840, Sir Robert Seppings, Engloish
naval archite ct, died in Taunton (born 1767 in Fakenham, Norfolk). He made
technical improvements to ship design, shortening the time in dry dock and
improving their armamanet capabilities.
1 March 1840, John Philip Holland, inventor of
the modern submarine, was born.
3
January 1823, Robert Whitehead, English engineer and
inventor of the naval torpedo, was
born in Bolton Le Moors, Lancashire.
1847, Nitroglycerine was discovered by Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero,
aged 35. Prepared from
.glycerol, with nitric and sulphuric acid, its
highly explosive properties were used mainly for manufacturing dynamite (it was also used to treat
symptoms of angina pectoris).
Shrapnel
13 March 1842, Henry Shrapnel, English soldier
and inventor of the shrapnel shell, died.
30 April 1804, The British used shrapnel in warfare for the first time, against the Dutch in
Suriname.
1761, Henry Shrapnel of England was
born this day; he invemted the shrapnel
shell.
15 September 1832, Sir Andrew Noble, military engineer, was born
in Greenock
1828, British arms company Vickers began as a toolmaking company
started by steelmaker Edward Vickers, aged 24, along with his
father-in-law George
Naylor. The firm became Vickers and Sons in 1867, and specialised in
armaments from 1888.
1805, British artillery officer William
Congreve invented the Congreve
Rocket. It comproised a rocket 103 cm long with a 4.9 metre stabilising
stick, and had a range of 1.8 km. It was used in the Napoleonic Wars, amnd the
war of 1812 against the USA.
1751, The Ecole Superieure de Guerre (High
School of War) was established in Paris.
1700,
Armies were often raised by payment of a
�premium� to secure volunteers. The amount
of this premium was linked to the general economic situation;when prices were
low, or food was plentiful the premium had ot be set high; when scarcity of
food and highb prices prevailed, the necessary premium was mich lower. It was
higher at harvest time and lower in the winter. In 1700-10, France, it ranged
between 20 and 50 livres. In some bad
winters after 1710 the premium was effeciively zero � men enlisted simply to be
fed and avoid starvation.
1667,
Hand grenades were first used in action, by the French Army.
1645,
In Britain, Oliver
Cromwell instituted red uniforms for his soldiers. They served to
easily dustinguish friend from foe, also concealed blood from wounds to
maintainmorale. Red was the standard colour of the British Army until 1902 when
it was superseded by khaki, whoch provided better camouflage.
1630,
Armies escated a heavy toll on the countryside; however this was often the only
feasible way they and their horses could be fed. Feeding 30,000 Swedish
soldiers in the field at this time required, daily, 225 bullocks and 90,000
litres of beer, also huge quantities of bread. Their 20,000 horses required 400
acres of fresh grazing land every day. This level of food extraction often
turned the local peasantry into another enemy the army had to deal with. Poor
nutrition in the ranks led to outbreaks of plague and dysentery that could
decimate an army faster than hostilities could.
1590,
Bayonets first made, at Bayonne, France.
The
supremacy of the gun
1610, The flintlock gun now superseded the
slower matchlock
gun. That had required a slow-burning match cord ignited the
priming. The flintlock gun used a flint striking a steel plate to generate
sparks which ignited the gunpowder in the priming pan, shooting the projectile.
Flintlock guns remained in use until the invention of the percussion rifle in the 1800s.
1543, Guns first entered Japan. A Chinese ship was wrecked off
Kyushu, with two Portuguese on board carrying muskets. The local governor
bought these muskets and replicated them.
Firearms eventually made the Samurai redundant, as they did the European
knights.
1539, The earliest recorded
flintlock gun was made, in Sweden.
24 February 1525. The Battle of Pavia. Pavia, held by the French,
had been under siege by Spanish forces since October 1524. Italy itself was a
territory being fought over by the rival powers of France, Germany, Turkey and Spain. The French under King Charles
VIII defended Pavia with cavalry and cannon, but the Spanish had
adopted the arquebus
or hackenbushe,
an early version of the handgun; this weapon replaced the Spanish
crossbow. The arquebus
meant an unskilled infantryman could kill a skilled knight and Pavia was the
start of the dominance of the handgun as a
military weapon.
Early arquebuses
apparently constituted far inferior weaponry toa skilled archer. A well trained archer could fire
ten arrows a minute, at reasonable accuracy up to a range of 200 metres. By
contrast an arquebus took several minutes to reload each shot.and was accurate
only up to range 100 metres. However the training to become a skilled archer might
take decades; an arquebus required almost no training to use. These
disadvantages of early hand firearsm could be overcome by 1) improved accuracy,
and 2) the countermarch (used to
great effect by Sweden in the 1600s);rank one advanced ten paces then fired;
rank two advanced beyond them and they now fired, whilst rank one was
reloading, and so on.
By the 1740s the Prussians had imporved their
military technology to achieve a fire rate of 5 rounds per minute per soldier.
The proportion of cavalry in European armies declined sharply, falling to one
third in 1650, one quarter in 1750 and one sixth in 1810. However armies still needed large numbers of horses, to pull guns and
supplies. These horses need large quantities of fodder; along with limited
agricultural productivity this limited the capability of an army to fight and
sustain itself in the field by requisitioning food. Campaigns and conquests
could often only be undertaken from April until October, when grass grew; the
winter break enabled defeated armies to regroup. This restriction on European
invaders was especially acute in areas like Spain; in more fertile areas such
as central Europe the fighting season was longer. An aggressor backed by naval
power could also be resupplied by ship, if the battlefields were near the sea
or large rivers.
1520, Rifling was invented by Gaspard Kollner of Vienna. By inserting
grooves in the gun barrel to force the bullet to rotate as it is fired, any
irregularities in the bullet are smother out and it will depart less from a
straight line of fire. However the tighter fit of the bullet in the barrel made
the firing rate slower as the projectile was harsder to insert. Rifled barrels
also cost more to manufacture.
1515, Wheel-lock muskets in general use. They were complicated
to make, but could be fired using only one hand, so were popular with horsemen
who could fire one-handed and still control their mount.
1512, The English Navy began to use
double decked warships. They displaced 1,000 tons and had 70 guns
each.
1510, The wheel-lock firearm was invented in Nuremberg, Germany.
21
April 1503, The Battle of Cerignola.� The Spanish under Gonzalo Fernandez de Cordoba
defeated the French under the Duc de Nemoura, who was killed.� This
was the first battle considered to have been won by gunpowder and small
arms.1500, The pistol was invented.
1515, Because
attackers of castles were increasingly succesfully using bombardment to destroy
the walls, castlews changed design to have lower thicker walls.However this
meant that defenders could less easily cover the ground immediately below the
wall, making them more vulnerable to a suprise attack. Castles therefore
changed design to include bastions,
first used at the Papal Fort of Cittavecchia this year. Bastions were projecting angularpoints to the walls from which
defenders could look sideways to the ground at the foot of their walls. However the cost
of suchn elaborate fortifications, especiallywhen applied to town or city walls
rather than just a castle, could be prohibitive. A proposed fortification for
Rome,1542, with 18 bastions, was abandoned when just one bastion was fond to
cost 44,000 Ducats, or about �10,000.
Guns made castles redundant � but
huge guns (cannon) were also self-limiting. More smaller arms were the solution
1453, At the siege of Constitninople, the Ottoman
forces were using huge bronze cannon. They had a bore of three feet, and could
only be moved with 70 oxen or over 1,000 men � it was often easier to cast such
huge weapons on the battlefield itself than to try and move them.
1449, Mons
Meg, a huge cannon cast in The Netherlands for the Duke of Burgundy, ws
over 3 metres long, weighed 8.5 tonnes,and could hurl cannon balls 50 cm in
diameter. However such huge weapons
could only be transported by water, and therefore were only of use for
attacking places accessible by sea or large rivers.
1464, The increasing size of guns meant that castles were
becoming redundant. Previously, the stone castles of the 1300s were so
strongly built that they could only be taken by means of prolonged siege.
1415, Longbowmen defeated mounted knights at Agincourt.
1370, Early small hand guns were in
use to defend castles. Guns had been used in China since 1259.
1324, Cannon first used, at the siege of Metz. The first cannon made from forged iron were
made at Metz.
1314,
At Bannockburn, Scottish spearmen
showed they could defeat mounted knights in armour.
Guns making armour redundant
1300, The earlier chain mail armour of knights was
becoming superseded by steel plate armour. However this greatly increased
the expense of maintaining a knight, and the number of knights in Britain
had fallen to 2,500, from 5,000 in 1150.
By 1450 only a few hundred knights existed. By 1500 the knight was obsolete,
due to developments in firearm
technology.
However plate armour was popular as a decorative feature only. The polished plates of steel armour had the potential to glance off
blows, but at the same time the armnour was often embossed with elaborate
designs, both reducing its tensile strength and its glancing properties.
1297,
Gunpowder
was first used in siege warfare, by King Edward I against Stirling Castle. Gunpowder had been
used in China
since the 7th century.
1259,
First recorded use of weapons that fire
bullets. China�s
Sung Army used bamboo tubes to fire bullets at Mongol invaders.
1249,
Roger Bacon,
35, made the first known European reference to gunpowder, 12 years after the Mongol
invasions.The Chinese had been using explosives
as early as 1161.
The explosive nature of the recipe for gunpowder, a mixture
of charcoal, saltpetre (potassium nitrate) and sulphur, had been discovetred by
Chinese alchmists arounf 850 CE.
1150,
Longbows
in use. The longbow had a maximum range of
400 yards, and was accurate up to 250 yards, twice the range of the crossbow.
It was also lighter and could be fired more rapidly.
1000,
Chainmail in use.
851, Crossbows began to be used in France.
They were a sort of hand ballista, with a slower rate of fire than traditional
bows and arrows; however this was offset by the increased range and accuracy of
these weapons. Generally, crossbowmen were on foot, as mounting them cuased a
decrease in accuracy of fire.
700, Buyzantium began to use Greek Fire. An early version of the modern
flamethrower, the exact recipe, a closely guarded secret then., has been lost.
It was likely a mixture of sulkphur, naphtha and quicklime whoich would burn
fiercely when wetted. The Greek Fire was packed into wooden tubes into which
water was pumped; the fiery mixture exploded out under pressure causing much
damage to both soldiers� and wooden
ships.
500, The bow and arrow was the principal
weapon in India. Although their enemies used chariots and horse-borne archers,
the Hindus did not use the horse much, perhaps bevcause the Deccan was
unfavourable for raising horses of good quality. The bow and arrow was superior to
heavy clumsy catapults and soon became the weapon of choice across Eurasia.
390, The Roman, Flavius Vegetius Renatus, wrote
a book, De Re Militari (On Military Affairs). This remained a
key text on military tactics for 1,000 years.
300, Germanic tribes were utilising the Gothic Wagon Fort. They linked their
wagons in a laager to make a fort at each night�s encampment, and sometimes
even moved in this formation during the day forming a sort of mobile fort.
120 BCE, Death of Polybius, Greek military historian
(born 201 BCE) emphasised� the importance
of military intelligence, writing
that a general must �apply himself to learn the character and inclinations of
his adversary�,
332 BCE, Stones being thrown by catapults.
The Syracusan catapult could throw a stone up to 500 metres, and was accurate
to 200 metres.
300 BCE, Galleys in use by Crete.
350 BCE, Crossbow in use in China
400 BCE, Roman soldiers provided their own arms
and equipment, and were therefore divided by wealth. Top were cavsalry and
heavy infantry, then javelin and slingers, then unarmoured
auxiliaries. The elite troops formed a phalanx, with the lighter-armed troops
ahead and to the flanks.
500 BCE, Greek terrain was unsuitable for
cavalry, it was generally not flat enough. Their elite soldiers, the hoplites, were well trained, and their
principal weapon was a pike some 8 to 10 feet long. He also carried a shoort
sword, a helmet, breastplate and greaves, and a small round shield. They also
had specialist archers
and slingers. Lower in the hierarchy were the poorly trained or mercenary
psiloi, whose role was to protect the flanks of phalanx of hoplites.
856 BCE, Battering rams in use by the Assyrians.
1186 BCE, The Egyptians were using sailing boats in marine
battles against the Sea Peoples. However sail boats were limited in utility as
ramming vessels because if the wind was strong enough to get up enough speed,
the sea would be too rough to sail on. Rowing boats overcame this limitation to
an extent as they could be rowed up to greater, ramming speeds. The aim was to
hit an enemy ship on its broadside. However they had to be narrow with shallow
draught to be able to attain such speeds. This
limited their fighting radius to within a few days of a friendly port, because
their slim design precluded the carrying of large food supplies for the 150 or
so rowers. Sailships with guns had a greater fighting radius, as they could
carry more supplies, but were less manoeuvrable, and opposing fleets could
easily miss each other completely in the open ocean.� The adoption of steam as propulsion got
around the manoeuvrability issue, but paradoxically re-imposed a smaller
fighting radius from port as the early steam warships burnt coal at a huge
rate. Only when fuel oil superseded coal could steam warships fight further
from port. Nations such as the UK and France needed to maintain a network of
friendly ports and coaling stations across the globe, in order to project their
naval power far from home.
1500 BCE, The Egyptian Army was comprised of
divisions, each about 5,000 men. Each dividion was made of companies of around
200. Each company could use all the weapons but specialised in one, so there
were companies of bowmen, of spearmen and so on.
2000 BCE, Armour in use, firstly leather.,
then metal-reinforced leather, then all-metal. Initially bronze, then iron.
Swords being used, probably first by the Assyrians, once
metallurgy had progressed to where sharp blades could be produced.
3000 BCE, Bows and arrows used in warfare.
15,000 BCE, Professional spear throwers used in armies.
25,000 BCE, Boomerang-like weapons in use in
what is now Poland.
250,000 BCE, Estimated date of earliest stone
axes.
500,000 BCE, Estimated date of earliest spears.
The Military Revolution, Geoffrey Parker, Cambridge University Press, 1988.
