NARRATOR: Hidden in
tropical jungles, buried in ancient texts,
lie mysterious clues to man's forgotten
military genius. Is it possible that
ancient man discovered the basic technologies
that led to one of today's ultimate fighting machines,
the battle tank, hundreds, even thousands of years ago? Bulletproof armor invented
for a war that killed a king and tore a nation apart,
five-ton armored beasts crushing armies with fear
and devastating firepower, armor-plated shock troops to
smash through enemy ranks, and strange, forgotten
weapons that, like the tank, shattered the balance of
power on the battlefield and repulsed whatever
the enemy threw at them. Unlocking the secrets
of ancient tank tech is our ancient discovery. [theme music] The tank is built for
aggression, mobility, and defense. A potent frontline weapon
in conventional battle, it is considered a
modern invention. Yet evidence recovered
from the ancient world suggests that man has always
strived to create weapons with the tank's
basic attributes. ANDREW LAMBERT: While the
tank was invented in the 20th century, the ideas behind the
tank-- mobility, protection, and firepower-- go back to the beginnings
of organized warfare. NARRATOR: In India
in the 17th century, a weapons system combining
firepower with mobility created havoc on
the battlefield. The elephant was drafted into
war, an animal weighing five tons and capable of moving
over rough terrain at speeds of up to 20 miles per hour,
mounted with platforms carrying heavy cannon fired by
specially trained gunners. ANDREW LAMBERT: The ancients
understood what a tank was long before they had the ability
to make anything that we would recognize as a tank. NARRATOR: Today, tanks
combine extraordinary mobility with heavy firepower,
125-millimeter guns mounted in rotating turrets. But is it possible
that the ancients used the same principles
and technologies on the lost battlefields of history? JOHN NAYLOR:
Throughout history, we get lots of stories about
elephants and their youth. But in a document from 1660, we
get a really, really exciting, intriguing eyewitness
account of elephants being used in an unusual way. NARRATOR: In 1660, British
traveler Edward Terry reported that Indian
war elephants were armed with heavy guns six feet
long mounted on wooden frames. JOHN NAYLOR: He states that
Akbar, the Mughal king, was using cannon
on elephant back. That turns an elephant from
a mobile fighting platform and a beast of war, much as a
stallion or a battle charger might be, to an animal-powered
equivalent to the battle tank. NARRATOR: There is
evidence that elephants were used in battle in India
as long ago as 1100 BC. At first, their main function
was to give commanders a better view of what was
happening on the battlefield. This is where the Indian kings
would have stood in battle. They would have been up
on top of the elephant, surveying the battlefield,
commanding the position, flying their flags. This is a very powerful
way of presenting yourself on the battlefield. NARRATOR: Commanders soon
realized that elephants could be used in the front line. Massed in their hundreds,
charging down on the enemy, the air filled with
dust and trumpeting, the earth trembling
under their feet. They were a terrifying
chaotic sight. THOM RICHARDSON: The elephants
themselves were trained to pick up horses and
riders in their trunks and dash them to the
ground to their ruin. They also had their
tusks sawn off and fitted with tusks swords. And one such looks like this. This fits on the sawn
off end of the tusks. So that instead of the
natural end of the tusk, you have this
double curved blade with a huge, fat, armor-piercing
point at the end, which would make a fearsome square
wound at anything it hit. NARRATOR: Their function
on the battlefield was simple, to smash
through the enemy's ranks and wreak havoc on
his order of battle. They will break the
enemy's formation. They will cause chaos in
the enemy's front ranks. That will give
you an opportunity to cross the ground to
attack the enemy hand-to-hand on your terms. NARRATOR: Sometimes the
elephants carried archers, a specialty that required years
of practice, not to mention a supreme sense of balance. But the discovery of
gunpowder changed the tactics of elephant warfare. Between the 16th and
the 19th century, the Indian subcontinent
was dominated by one of the greatest
states in history, the Mughal Empire ruled
by the emperor Akbar. Akbar was the third of
a highly successful series of Mughal rulers of India. He was around in
the 16th century. He was known as a great
military innovator. He was driving for technological
advantage over his enemies in an effort to hold
sway over the vast part of the Indian subcontinent. NARRATOR: The British
traveler Edward Terry is very specific about the
weapon he saw on the elephants back. JOHN NAYLOR: This is a
conjectural reconstruction of what Terry describes. First, he uses the word gun. NARRATOR: Mounting
a cannon on its back would transform the
way an elephant was used on the battlefield. The animal would become
a mobile artillery unit. The gunner would have a
two-meter height advantage, giving him enhanced
range and visibility. Experimental
archaeologist John Naylor has traveled to the
jungles of Southeast Asia to investigate the
advantages and disadvantages of this ancient tank. But before mounting
the weapon, there were other problems the
ancients had to solve first. John is investigating
each one in turn. The first problem was weight. At the time, heavy cast
bronze cannon were the norm. The elephant cannon demanded
iron, which is 20% lighter than bronze. JOHN NAYLOR: This is much
lighter than a bronze or brass piece, coming in at
about 400 pounds. NARRATOR: The second
problem is reloading. Most guns in the 17th
century where muzzle loaders. The gunner had to walk
around to the front and shove the powder, wadding,
and missile down the front of the barrel. JOHN NAYLOR: Obviously, if
you're balanced on an elephant, you can't walk around to the
front to ram the charge home and load it. NARRATOR: Cannon forged of
iron and not cast of bronze can be made with an opening
at the back called the breach. The missile and
the gunpowder are packed into a separate cylinder,
effectively, a giant bullet. This is slotted into the breach. This means you can load from
the back rather than the front. The final problem to be
solved before mounting the gun is how to aim it. Elephants cannot turn on a dime. To be effective,
the gunner would have to aim the gun
without changing the direction of the
elephant, exactly like the turret
on a modern tank. JOHN NAYLOR: The key
to how you aim these is in the swivel in the pintle. Just by having it being able
to turn left or right, to pan, and to tilt on this
point to balance means you've got lots of
flexibility in aiming. NARRATOR: But to investigate
how to aim the elephant cannon in practice,
John must mount up. From his position as
ancient elephant gunner, John now appreciates
the tactical advantage of this ancient tank. JOHN NAYLOR: The first thing
that's amazing about this is the field of view. I can see for hundreds
of yards all around. So for a commander, this is
excellent as a command point to actually see the whole
layout of the battlefield. This is an awesome
weapons platform. NARRATOR: To test
the targeting system, John has modified
his replica cannon to fire paintball rounds. Real explosives and real iron
cannonballs cannot be used in case they endanger the
elephant or John himself. Practice targets have been
laid in a clearing on the edge of the jungle, exactly
the same terrain that ancient commanders
preferred to attack in. Here we go. Yes, that's dead. It's a real learning curve. It's working out. The movement of the elephant,
movement of the gun, and movement of the target
in relation to both. NARRATOR: John has
discovered the trick of the ancient aiming technique. I ended up more
like a naval gunner, learning to wait for the point
where the gate of the elephant is in line with the target. As a weapon system,
I think it was shown that it would have worked,
especially against packed infantry. You add in bows
and other weapons in there, grenades and all the
rest of it, armor everybody up, and this thing would
have been devastating. NARRATOR: Over centuries,
weapons became more powerful. Armor became more sophisticated. And elephants themselves changed
through breeding and training. Still, elephants survived
for over 1,000 years as the front line war
engine of imperial armies. But it was not only animals
that laid the foundations for today's tank tech. Ancient sieges were a forging
ground of military innovation. Ancient Discoveries
is investigating an armored fighting machine
that battered a whole nation into submission. The ability of a tank to smash
through obstacles and enemy defenses is essential to
its military effectiveness. This capability was also at
the heart of a tank equivalents of the ancient
world, siege engines. From 300-foot high
armor plated siege towers to trebuchets capable
of firing burning missiles over 1,000 feet. HARRY SIDEBOTTOM:
Siege technology is a very advanced,
sophisticated thing in the ancient world, because
of the inherent difficulties of breaking into
defended places. NARRATOR: In the 2nd Century
AD, the Roman emperor Trajan led a campaign against the
Dacians, a tribe living on the northern
frontier of the empire. DAVID WOLLICROFT: Trajan
was a new emperor wanting to make his mark. The way you did that
as a Roman emperor was by winning military glory. Under the previous emperor,
Romans suffered a series of defeats at the
hands of the Dacians, and they've became almost
a traditional enemy. NARRATOR: The war is chronicled
on Trajan's Column, which still stands in Rome. The reliefs show versions of a
simple yet brutally effective siege weapon, the battering ram. It's so simple. It's what the police use
if they want to bash down your door, like batter it down. And you want to attack a castle? Well, you need to bash the walls
down or bash the gate down. NARRATOR: The largest battering
rams weighed up to three tons. They were usually
suspended by ropes from the roof of
a frame on wheels. Teams of soldiers
used muscle power to swing the ram back and forth,
building up enough momentum to smash through
the wall or gate. To protect the soldiers from
arrows and stones that could be dropped from city
walls, a solid oak frame was covered in wood
and animal hides. The problem is would an
animal hide is flammable. Defenders could pour burning
oil or petroleum-based products onto the ram covering, burning
the shelter and the men beneath. Ancient engineers came up
with a startling solution, chemical fire retardant. NICK NORMAN: The material
that was used was alum And this was used to
prevent wood burning. NARRATOR: Alum is a
naturally occurring rock. NICK NORMAN: It's a mineral,
which contains aluminium. And this is a particular
rock here from which alum can be extracted. This is alunite. NARRATOR: Chemist Nicholas
Norman is using alum to cook up some ancient fire retardant. NICK NORMAN: The way in which
they would have extracted alum would be to heat this up
for long periods of time in air and to keep it moist as well. And the physical
effect of that is to turn the rock into a powder. And that dissolves in water
that could, therefore, be painted on things like wood. NARRATOR: Alum works by
chemically cooling the fire. NICK NORMAN: A reaction takes
place, which actually takes heat in an endothermic process. And the effect of that is to
take the heat out of the fire in a similar way to water does. NARRATOR: Ancient model
maker Richard Windley has been investigating
the ancient texts. He wants to know whether
alum really works. What we want to try and do is
to do an experiment using alum. And we're going to soak hessian
or canvas in an alum solution. And then once that's dry,
what we're going to try and do is to set fire to a piece
of the untreated material and the treated material and
see what the differences are. NARRATOR: The left hand canvas
is treated in the ancient fire retardant. The right is untreated. Using a replica
ancient flamethrower, Richard puts alum to the test. RICHARD WINDLEY:
Hopefully, we'll be able to see that the
alum-soaked canvas is fire retardant, if not fireproof. And we expect the other
canvas to char and burn. NARRATOR: Richard's flamethrower
uses a combination of sulfur and charcoal to produce
flames of up to 1,000 degrees. RICHARD WINDLEY: That's
just starting to burn. It's not burning very fiercely. But we are getting a
definite burn there. Took about 1 minute, 25
seconds to get that burning. It's not burning not
brilliantly even now. But it's definitely
been damaged. NARRATOR: How will the
untreated canvas compare? RICHARD WINDLEY: That
one seemed a lot quicker. We got that one burning
in about 27 seconds. And it's actually burning away. So it's fairly evident that this
is the actual natural canvas. NARRATOR: Ancient fireproofing
using alum works better than anyone expected. RICHARD WINDLEY: It's
several minutes now since we applied the flame to
the second piece of canvas. And as we can see, it's
actually burning away now. And it looks as though it'll
keep on burning until it's pretty much gone now. Whereas the first piece,
which is the alum-treated one, it's almost
extinguished completely. There's almost no further
sort of degradation or burning that's taken place since
we've removed the flame. So all in all,
this is relatively an impressive demonstration
of what was capable of using this armor treatment. NARRATOR: The superiority
of Roman siege engineering produced victory upon victory. Within four years, Trajan
destroyed a nation. He exterminated the Dacians and
repopulated the empty country with Roman settlers
and pensioned soldiers. The land became
known as Romania, and the nation is still
called Romania today. From the Roman siege to
the modern battlefield, all military engineers
face the challenge of combining fire power,
protection, and mobility. Ancient Discoveries is
investigating the battle tank of the medieval world,
an unstoppable steel plated war machine that
smashed through enemy lines. What sets the tank apart from
other war machines operating today is its combination
of protection and mobility. The medieval equivalent
was the knight. MARTIN BAVIN: This is a trained
killer encased in armor. And he is a medieval tank and
riding through the front lines of a battle line. NARRATOR: The plate armor
of the medieval knight is often thought of as
bulky and cumbersome. KARL UDE-MARTINEZ: There is a
myth that knights were winched onto horses. And lots of people were needed
to assist them to their steed. NARRATOR: Yet new
discoveries are revealing that the armor of the medieval
knight was much more advanced. A knight's training manual
written in the 14th century offers intriguing evidence
that the fully armored knight was actually a highly mobile
and agile assault weapon. The text is believed
to have been written by an adventurous French
knight named Bosica. He tells us that as part
of their rigorous training, knights in full armor
practice leaping onto the backs of their horses,
climbing walls, and even performing back flips. KARL UDE-MARTINEZ: When
you put a suit of armor on, it can be quite restrictive
for the first time. It's very heavy. And once the helmet comes
down, it's very claustrophobic. And if you're not used to
it, it's very, very daunting at first. And knights used to train
religiously in order to get used to it before they
went out in the battlefield. NARRATOR: The secret of how the
full-plated body armor allowed knights such freedom of
movement was articulation. Articulated armor is
steel armor joined together with rivets to enable the
wearer to be encased in armor yet still move freely. It's very important that the
plates are very close together before movement can be
maintained during combat without failing. NARRATOR: The metal joints and
rivets and full plate armor mirror of the
joints in our bodies so that they move smoothly
with the actions of the soldier on the battlefield. Actually wearing
the full plate armor, you are still very agile. You can still do pretty much
anything any normal man can do. NARRATOR: Expert horseman
Karl Ude-Martinez is preparing for the ultimate
demonstration of the knight's agility, the joust. KARL UDE-MARTINEZ:
On a joust, he need to be able to
really move quite well. You've got to be able
to control your horse. Not only holding the
reins in your left hand, you've also got a 12-foot
lance in your right hand. NARRATOR: A full suit of
armor worn by soldiers in the 14th and 15th
centuries weighed an average of around 60 pounds. This is lighter
than the 91 pounds a typical US soldier
carries into battle today. For jousting, this light
military combat suit was often reinforced
with heavier bolt-on protective plates. KARL UDE-MARTINEZ: Your midriff
is protected by the biggest part of the chest and the
back that joins together with a strap. Then the cuirass is this
bit here of [inaudible],, enables you to sit in the
saddle and is very articulate. That protects from your
waist down basically and the tops of your thighs. And then I have leg
armor on the bottom. As we move up to the top
here, as you can see, my shoulder and my
elbow protection is in two parts enabling
me to move my arm around. If it was in one part,
I'd find it very hard to move this left arm. NARRATOR: One of the most
articulated parts of the armor were the gloves
known as gauntlets. Each gauntlet could contain
hundreds of rivets and up to 60 articulated separate pieces. These gauntlets
that I'm wearing here is probably a very good
example of how articulated the armor had to be. You can see that there's
several layers to this. It's not just all
one rigid piece. The thing is it has to
be very mobile in order to clutch hold of
weapons, swords, reins. You can see there's
about 10 layers there. And you can see I can move
these very, very easily. NARRATOR: Skills used in warfare
we're also used in jousting. Mounted knights, like
Bosica who was known as a master of the joust,
would charge at their enemies with weapons like the lance
to kill or disable them in one powerful hit. KARL UDE-MARTINEZ:
Judgment time, I guess. I'm going to be galloping
at 15, 20 miles an hour in a straight line
with a 12-foot pole. Somebody else is going to
be doing exactly the same. So we're going to collide
at 30 to 40 miles an hour. The impact is
going to be strong. Now it's time to put
my trust in the armor that the knights wore
in the medieval era. NARRATOR: The medieval lance
was up to 14 feet in length. It was made of wood,
usually ash or oak, with a sharp metal tip
made of iron or steel. Its origins are as old
as military horsemanship. It began as a heavy spear
designed to take out enemy horses and riders. But during tournament
jousts, the head of the lance was fitted with a
crown-shaped metal cap instead of a sharp point. The purpose of this
was to allow the lance to catch onto the
shield, making it easier to unhorse your opponent or
break a lance on it, actions that scored highly
in the tournament. [tense music] KARL UDE-MARTINEZ: I can
move at quite fast speeds in this armor. You know, you really
forget about it. And your main focus is on the
target coming towards you. I'm able to move my body,
take my lance across, and I'm able to
get my shield out. So I'm actually very
mobile in the saddle. NARRATOR: The
combination of protection from full articulated
body armor, with weapons like the lance and the
speed of the horse, turned the knight into a
formidable shock attack weapon on the medieval battlefield. Used against ground
troops in open battle, the knight in full
plated armor reigned supreme for several years. By the end of
the 15th century, the armorers had
cracked it completely. They could make beautifully
articulated armor of steel plates, fully hardened and
quenched of the very finest imaginable quality. And if you could
afford it, you could be safe on the battlefield
from all the weapons systems that were around. NARRATOR: The plate
armor was so well articulated that when NASA
began researching the hard shell spacesuit for the
first moon landings, they looked to the 15th century
armorers for inspiration. Although plate armor did
not make it into space and astronauts found other
more advanced materials, the story of plate
armor is not over. Within the last
few years, patents have been filed in
the United States. The Department of Defense
is once again investigating articulated Kevlar armor,
though their results are still top secret. As with every successful
military innovation, articulated armor's
supremacy on the battlefield was challenged by a new
technology, the gun. But as we will see
the, armorer's response was ingenious. The medieval world's
answer to the gun? Bulletproof armor. Stunning new x-rays
will reveal the mystery of how ancient engineers created
this life-saving military gear. Amazingly, they reveal that the
technique is identical to that used on a modern tank. Today's armored
fighting vehicles are protected by duplex armor,
two layers of metal combined to absorb or fragment the
impact of the projectile. JOHNNY GENT: In
front of me, I'll have two slabs of
armor, which improve the ballistic protection
from incoming projectiles. As time moved on, we discovered
using heavier and heavier slabs of armor. It would just take away the
effectiveness of the vehicle itself, making it
slower, harder to handle, less effective generally. So we started to use
composite armors made up of several different layers of
different materials, air gaps, or materials such
as glass or ceramics because essentially,
they're lighter. NARRATOR: But duplex armor
is a much older concept, one that, in fact, dates
back over 300 years. In 17th century
England, an arms race was deciding the
fate of the monarchy. A civil war was being fought
between the royalists, who supported the King, and the
parliamentarians, who supported a Republic or Commonwealth. The English Civil
War left 850,000 dead on the battlefield. This death toll was due
mainly to two deadly weapons, the crossbow and the gun. The standard issue gun from
the 15th to the 19th century was the musket. It could be used against
both infantry and cavalry. Guns have been around on the
battlefield since the middle of the 14th century. Simple smoothbore
muzzle-loading matchlock guns, which could nonetheless, blow a
lead bullet through the middle of any armor that any
armorer could make. NARRATOR: But towards
the end of the Civil War, the armorers came up
with a technology that reduced the effectiveness
of both gun and crossbow-- bulletproof armor. MARTIN BAVIN: The
armorer's art has evolved over hundreds of years. And every time a weapon is
developed to penetrate armor, it's the armorer's job to defeat
that and create something that will stop penetration. NARRATOR: Earlier attempts at
bulletproof armor struggled to get the balance right
between protection and mobility. THOM RICHARDSON: Armorers
could make bulletproof armor. But nobody wanted to wear it. It was getting
heavier and heavier. And they were constantly
seeking ways of getting around the problem of the weight. NARRATOR: Ancient Discoveries is
investigating how the armorers of the English
Civil War unlocked the secrets of lightweight
bulletproof armor. It's a journey that begins
with a set of discoveries at the Royal Armories
in Leeds, Britain. While using X-ray geography
on a series of breastplates made in the 1650s, researchers
uncovered startling evidence that the armorers were
experimenting with technology that was way ahead of its time. They were using duplex armor. Well, one of our most
exciting recent discoveries has been these
duplex breastplates. THOM RICHARDSON: And they're
clearly an experiment that was going on in the
middle of the 17th century to make lighter bulletproof
armor by doing multiple layers of metal in a single piece. NARRATOR: But the X-ray revealed
an entirely unexpected feature. DAVID STARLEY: We can see
here the outline of the two breastplates crimped
together around the edges. But also, internally is this. We have a third piece of armor. NARRATOR: This third
layer was unknown before these x-rays were taken. And this is actually part
of a pikeman's leg armor. It's what's known as a tasset. We can still see the rivet
holes in there that help us to identify its function. NARRATOR: The breastplate
is reinforced by leg armor, astonishing proof that
English armorers were using triplex armor systems. But because of the lack of
ballistic data from the period, the true effectiveness of
duplex and triplex armor against 17th century
firearms remains a mystery. THOM RICHARDSON: We have no
ballistic data about shooting bullets at these things because
the problem is that we don't really want to shoot bullets
at historical objects and destroy them. And I suspect the manufacture of
replicas and testing of those, as good and as close as
we can to the real thing, might be the best
way forward forwards. NARRATOR: Martin Bavin, a
leading medieval armorer, is doing exactly that. Using the same
tools and materials that were available to
English Civil War armorers, he is recreating the
tank-like armor system. MARTIN BAVIN: The armor that
we're recreating, I would say, there's a lot of resemblance
to the modern armor used on tanks today. It's obviously
evolved a long way. And they're using
much finer materials. But in principle, the techniques
and the idea is the same. NARRATOR: To counter the
increasing power of firearms, armorers looked for ways of
making their metals stronger. The repeated heating, banging,
and cooling of ferrous metals like iron changes the
crystalline chemical structure into a much smoother one. This renders the metal harder,
tougher, and more flexible. This is known as tempering. We've got here
the inner layer, the central layer replicating
the pikeman's tasset that we can see on the X-ray. And then finally,
the outer layer. NARRATOR: The final
piece weighs 10 pounds. It is 17 inches high and 13
inches wide, very similar to the Leeds breastplate. MARTIN BAVIN: We've
built this as closely as we can to the original
from the Illustrations on the X-rays. Weight-wise, we'd like
to think we've got it around the same kind of weight. So hopefully, the
metal is thick enough. NARRATOR: The armor has been
brought to a ballistic testing facility operated by
Cranfield University in the UK where it will be tested against
the firepower of a musket and a crossbow. STEVEN FLETCHER: This crossbow
is actually a goat's foot lever crossbow. If I load the crossbow, you need
to put the goat's foot lever on the top. The crossbow is now
cocked and ready to fire. Place the bolt on the crossbow
and we're ready to go. NARRATOR: The goat's
foot device uses a lever, which
enables the warrior to draw a more powerful bow. Double the power of many
ordinary bows, up to 350 pounds of draw strength. But even this enhanced super
crossbow cannot penetrate the armor. Today, the crossbow may not
seem as deadly as the gun. But in the Middle Ages, they
were considered so lethal that for many years, they
were banned by the pope. IAN HORSFEL: Well,
the armor seemed to perform quite well here. The crossbow has
dented the armor. But the dents are not
very deep and really unlikely to do anything more
than give the wearer fright. And there's also no sign
of any cracking there. So this armor seemed to perform
very well against the crossbow. NARRATOR: But how will the
armor stand up to the gun? The team is resetting the
lab for the musket, which will be mounted in a
clamp and fired remotely. CHARLES SHAKESPEARE:
We've got in front of us here today a matchlock
musket from the first quarter of the 17th century, still in
use up until roughly the 1640s, 1650s. It's called a
matchlock because it's ignited by a piece of glowing
match cord in the serpentine here, touching loose
powder in the pan, causing chemical
reaction in the barrel. And then we get the projectile
coming out of the end. NARRATOR: The team will fire
a 20-bore iron musket ball out of the 42-inch barrel using
two grams of gunpowder, the same measure of
gunpowder used by musketeers in the English Civil War. With this amount of gunpowder,
the musket has less kick than a modern gun. It could be fired
from the shoulder. Nevertheless, the muzzle
velocity, in other words, the speed of the musket
ball when leaving the gun was 1,400 feet per second. Although deadly if you were hit,
the musket was not accurate. And its effective range was
little more than 100 feet. So the tactic was for
ranks of musketeers to fire volleys all at once to
create a wall of projectiles flying towards the enemy,
rather than individual soldiers singling out specific targets. This meant that whether or
not an individual musket was accurate, it did not
matter as hundreds of balls would have sprayed
into the oncoming forces with the same
effect as a machine gun. The inaccuracy of the musket
was overcome in an ingenious way in the battle for Nagashino
Castle in Japan in 1575. The musketeers were vastly
outnumbered by a superior force of heavy infantry and cavalry. The commanders ordered the
front ranks of musketeers to carry three guns each so
they could let off all three in rapid succession. 3,000 balls, 200 pounds of
fast moving lead spraying out in less than a minute
devastated the enemy forces. And the battle is won. However, the warriors
at Nagashino Castle did not have triplex armor. If they had-- CHARLES SHAKESPEARE:
Well, it hit the target. And it took away one
layer of the metal and pushed the other two
layers into the body. Now that gave us quite a
big bash, quite a hole. But it didn't penetrate. We still got two
layers of steel. And it withstood the charge. NARRATOR: The
massacre at Nagashino would have been prevented had
they had English Civil War triplex armor. IAN HORSFEL: Well, this
is very similar to the way of modern armor would work,
particularly a ceramic faced composite armor where
it would use a ceramic layer or a front to spread the
bullet out, disrupt it, and then a composite
layer on the back to absorb the energy of
the projectile so stopping full penetration together. NARRATOR: Our
experiment has revealed that the use of multiple
layers of metal armor is capable of
resisting projectiles. The breastplate was an
innovative, lightweight alternative to thicker and
heavier single layer armor. One thing triplex
armor does prove is that armorers were constantly
striving to create that product to make the wearer a lot safer. And this actually shows that
by using three layers of steel, it is possible to slow
down, or even in some cases, stop musket balls
or pistol balls. NARRATOR: Over 350 years
later, the same principle underlies the latest
developments in tank armor. JOHNNY GENT: Weapons
on impact will penetrate the initial layer. But then they're
exploded into the air gap rather than penetrating
through the internal armor and killing the occupant. NARRATOR: However,
advances in armor could not counter the threat
of every type of missile. Ancient Discoveries
is investigating a rocket-based weapons system
that would not look out of place on today's battlefield,
the ancient world's answer to the modern anti-tank missile. In the 3rd century BC,
Alexander the Great had conquered almost
all of the known world. Turkey, Syria, Judea,
Egypt, and Mesopotamia had all fallen to the
most celebrated commander of the ancient world. But in 326 BC, he came face
to face with a new threat, the ancient tank. ANDREW LAMBERT: When
Alexander's conquest runs across into India, he comes across
the kingdom of Porus. And he meets elephants in
battle for the first time. NARRATOR: The Hydaspes river in
the present day Punjab region of India was the battleground. On one side, 45,000
battle hardened troops led by Alexander. On the other, King Porus
and 50,000 Indian infantry supported by 200 war elephants. Even the best soldiers will be
spooked by something as novel, as bizarre, and as awe inspiring
as the first tanks or war elephants. NARRATOR: So how do you
defeat the ancient tank? A manuscript written
in the 11th century by the Persian poet
Ferdowsi, the Shahnameh, suggests that Alexander used an
extraordinary weapons system. ANDREW LAMBERT: There's a
wonderful Farsi poem, which says that Alexander the Great
defeated Porus' war elephants by building large numbers of
iron horses, which he filled with naphtha and
then set on fire. NARRATOR: However,
other ancient sources report that it was Alexander's
tactical brilliance and heroic soldiers that won
the battle, not burning iron statues. ANDREW LAMBERT: He
wins the battle. And the elephants then come
back into the post-Alexander Hellenistic warfare. NARRATOR: Alexander had achieved
what all commanders demand of their anti-tank weapons,
to disable the weaponry, pierce the armor, or bring
the whole thing to a stop. The ability to take out
the enemy's main firepower has always been paramount
to winning the battle. If the enemy doesn't have his
mobile firepower in his tanks or his elephants, he hasn't
got the backup for his infantry on the ground. Therefore, you have a higher
chance of winning the battle. NARRATOR: But Alexander's
victory came at a cost. The 12,000 casualties he
incurred from Porus' war elephants left his army
unable or unwilling to fight on in their
invasion of India. But the precedent had been set. War elephants could be defeated. BETTANY HUGHES: Elephants
are unusual creatures really to use in battle. They don't like the
atmosphere of the battlefield. They don't like the swings. They don't like the smell
and the sound of death. And quite often, these creatures
would turn tail and, of course, actually storm straight
through their own ranks rather than the enemy ranks,
causing absolute chaos. NARRATOR: Military
commanders soon began to deploy many kinds
of anti elephant devices that targeted the elephants'
weaknesses on the battlefield. HARRY SIDEBOTTOM: One
particularly ingenious way the ancients came up with of
panicking elephants was to coat pigs in tar and
set fire to them. Elephants,
unsurprisingly, get very frightened by the
self-barbecuing pigs heading their way. These poor, kind of
flaming, poor, kind creatures would charge towards
the elephants and send them off
in a crazy stampede. NARRATOR: But 1,000 years
after Alexander surged into the Punjab region, India
was still the ancient tank battleground. The Mughal emperor Akbar, in his
campaign to expand into Gujarat in northern India, was
faced with the same problem as Alexander. But now the world had gunpowder. ANDREW LAMBERT: There's a
battle between the Mughals and the army of Gujarat. The Mughals have
quite a small army. And they're using a lot of
missile weapons, artillery, and rockets. And the Gujaratis are relying
more on older technologies, the elephant in particular. NARRATOR: During
Akbar's campaigns, countless rockets
were launched by hand or mounted in wooden frames. The weapons system was
even said to be optimized to target elephants by skimming
the rockets along the ground. In this battle, a rocket
hits one of the elephants. And the inevitable happens. He stampedes. The other elephants stampede. Very large Gujarati army is
defeated by a much smaller Mughal army using
firepower and knocking out their primary weapon system. And this is the battle where the
elephant really ends his reign on the battlefield. NARRATOR: The weapon that ended
2000 years of the elephants' domination of the
battlefield was not much bigger than a large mouse. Leading rocket experts
Ben Jarvis and Paul Burch are investigating how such a
weapons system would have been deployed by Akbar's
rocket artillery units. BEN JARVIS: From as early
as the 13th century, rockets were being
used by the military. It wasn't till the
17th or 18th century that they had much
more of a defined use. Rockets were generally
used on the battlefield mainly as a psychological
weapon and were used for sort of scaring
horses, camels, and elephants. NARRATOR: The text describes the
rockets as being 8 inches long, and 1.5 to 3 inches in diameter. The canister of propellant
was sealed at one end and strapped to a shaft of
bamboo about 4 feet long. This is basically a replica
that we've built off of one of the 17th century rockets. And the casing here would
have been made of iron. And it's bound onto a bamboo
plane with this leather thong. The Indians were using
iron-cased rockets probably before pretty
much anyone else was. It has a lot of advantages
over bamboo cases, for example, which the Chinese
use, in that it's able to contain the explosive
power of the gunpowder much, much better. And so they could
have packed more in and got higher pressure and,
therefore, higher performance out of the rocket. NARRATOR: Ben and Paul have
recreated a multiple rocket launch system. BEN JARVIS: We've
basically got a rack of eight replica Indian
artillery rockets here using gunpowder engines, same as
the Indians would have done up until the 18th, 19th centuries. NARRATOR: Straw bales equal to
the width and depth of two war elephants have been
set up 120 yards away. Using these sort
of old bamboo canes and the same sort of technology
that they would have used, accuracy isn't
exactly guaranteed. So this is probably
one of the reasons why they use quite
so many rockets. Batteries of eight or 10
would commonly have been used. On this test, we've got the
angle we think about right. So we're hoping that these
ones should be fairly accurate. We're aiming for a
fairly straight flight. NARRATOR: How will
the weapons system that ended the reign
of the war elephant behave under test conditions? [rocket launching] Seen here in 3D, the
rocket's trajectories are wild and inaccurate
with no two rockets showing the same line of fire. But just as the ancient
engineers must have done, testing the war
elephant destroyer involves refining and retakes. We're going to do another test
of a single rocket this time. We've picked one that's
got quite a straight stick. We've lowered the angle
about another five degrees. So we can have another
go, see if we can actually get it to hit the target. [rocket launching] NARRATOR: Despite the team's
new calculations of what angle the launcher should
be set out, they are finding it a difficult
challenge to hit the target. Did the Indian rocket men know
something that Ben and Paul have yet to find out? The text that we have about
these Indian artillery rockets tell us that they were actually
able to sort of hit targets with different diameter rockets
and do calculations to work out what elevation. Having done all these tests
today, if nothing else, it proves that they must have
really known what they were doing because it's proving a
lot harder than I thought it was going to be to actually hit a
target even fairly close range. NARRATOR: The team has set
the launcher at 12 degrees. They hope the straight
line from launch to target will provide better results. While lowering
the degree of fire has brought improved results
with three rockets keeping a lower trajectory,
replicating the feats of the ancient Indian rocketeers
is proving a very difficult challenge. After firing over
25 rockets, the team have decided to move the weapons
system closer to a range of 80 feet. Firing at close
range brings success. BEN JARVIS: Well,
we finally managed to actually hit the target. If nothing else, we've learned
today that these rockets really probably were very,
very inaccurate. And in terms of actually
hitting a fixed, let alone a moving target, it
would have been very, very hard for them. If you're firing hundreds
of them at a time, it only takes one
of them to go even near a horse or an elephant. And the effect would
have been devastating. NARRATOR: At this range, the
terrified Indian soldiers would have had to wait until
the elephants were almost on top of them before firing. Just as today, tank battles
were fought with technology but won by the
bravery of the men. ANDREW LAMBERT: I think
there are brief moments when the elephant is the tank of
the ancient and medieval world. But they're very brief because
the innovative thinking of people like Alexander
the Great, the Mughal emperors like Akbar, they very
quickly realize that they have to neutralize this advantage,
which the enemy has. And they do so. NARRATOR: From fearsome
armed elephants to ingenious bulletproof
armor, the ancients' arms race to produce the most
sophisticated assault and defense systems
revolutionized the way they fought wars. Wherever the battleground,
every ancient general called upon his
engineers and armorers to give him the upper
hand in conflicts that have shaped our history. Ancient Discoveries as
uncovered weapons technologies that not only defined
the ancient world, but also laid the foundations
for the machines that dominate the battlefields of today.
