>> NARRATOR: From time
immemorial, humans have been developing weapons that can
blast through, break down and breach the world's strongest
fortifications. From the ancient battering ram
to medieval catapults and crossbows...
from cannons and tanks... to computer-guided cruise
missiles. Now, "Siege Machines"
on<i> Modern Marvels.</i> <font color="#FFFF00">Captioning sponsored by
A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS</font> >> NARRATOR: King Edward had
one. Napoleon had one.
And so does Hew Kennedy. >> HEW KENNEDY: Early on in
my youth, I read about these large siege machines and I was
rather more than fascinated by the idea of building one
sometime particularly when I heard that the Emperor Napoleon
III tried to build one in the 1850s and had not really
succeeded very well. >> NARRATOR: Hew Kennedy, a
wealthy English landowner and military historian, owns
the only full-sized trebuchet, a giant seesaw-like device, in
existence today. >> KENNEDY: A trebuchet is an
engine of war. It's used for throwing large
weights. >> NARRATOR: In the late 12th
and early 13th centuries, siege machines similar to this four-
story, 30-ton instrument of destruction were used to
demolish fortress walls at will. >> PAUL DENNEY: The biggest ones
were capable of throwing a rock, maybe weighing 600 pounds.
And with a rock of that size, you can do quite a bit of
damage. >> RON TOMS: The trebuchet was
fearsome because it was repeatable and it had awesome
power-- the most powerful machine on the planet at the
time. >> DR. JOHN FRANCE: And we do
have instructions, drafted in the late 13th century, for the
construction of a trebuchet. And they begin with the words
"He who would build a trebuchet must take care."
>> NARRATOR: Guided by rare 19th century drawings, Kennedy
designed and built his own trebuchet.
>> KENNEDY: The drawings will tell you the principle on
which they worked, but that's all.
>> TOMS: We do know that they would heave boulders a certain
distance and these boulders had certain impact characteristics
when they hit. Working backwards from that and
also knowing what kind of woodworking skills they had,
what kind of materials they had at hand, and applying our
understanding of engineering today, we're able to reconstruct
what we think those machines were like.
>> NARRATOR: Unlike his medieval mentors who employed the massive
machine to knock down castle walls during a siege, Kennedy
must settle for the simple pleasure of flinging things--
big things-- through the air-- in this case, a 450-pound
piano. >> DR. KELLY DeVRIES: The
excitement of this type of technology, as with many types
of military technology: so long as you're not being hit, it's
pretty doggone exciting to watch.
>> DENNEY: It's so graceful. It starts almost imperceptibly.
It's very slow at first. And then really gracefully, it
moves round in this huge arc and nothing's put in there but
human effort. And it's just quite an amazing
thing to see. People even now just burst into
spontaneous applause when the trebuchet goes.
>> NARRATOR: The trebuchet is one of the most formidable and
impressive siege machines, but what exactly are siege machines?
>> FRANCE: A siege machine is anything, actually, that helps
an army sitting around a castle or a city to take it.
It's almost always made of wood because in the Middle Ages,
wood was the chief material used for almost any structure.
But siege machines come in all such shapes and sizes.
>> DeVRIES: A generic term for a siege machine is something
that will destroy that fortification, that will cause a
breach in that fortification so that armies may intrude on the
defenders and defeat it and conquer it.
>> NARRATOR: Siege machines have evolved from man's first long-
range projectile-throwing device-- the slingshot-- to the
computer-driven cruise missiles of today.
>> MAN: Oh, yeah. >> NARRATOR: But it is the
primitive mechanics of the machines used in the Middle
Ages, however, that provide us with the most surprising look
at their development. >> JULIE DOUGLASS: A lot of
people have a vision of the past that people did not have
very high levels of skill in engineering and technology.
And what machines like these prove is that they did have
very great engineering skills. >> FRANCE: People who do not
understand the laws of nature in the way that we understand them,
nonetheless, by trial and error, are working out the principle of
the lever. That's the central principle.
>> TOMS: Engineers of old would apprentice with other engineers
and learn their skills. They would spend a lifetime
developing an intuitive understanding of materials and
of strength, of force and leverage.
>> NARRATOR: Ron Toms knows all about force and leverage
because he too spends much of his life building siege
machines. >> TOMS: I fell in love with the
engineering behind siege engines and trebuchets.
In medieval times these were military weapons.
These were secret. These were the state of the art
for military weaponry. And, as such, the plans for
these things-- the detailed descriptions of how they work--
are not generally available. >> NARRATOR: Toms has developed
an intuitive understanding of medieval machines and the power
they wield by building trebuchets and catapults the
old-fashioned way-- trial and error.
>> TOMS: Three, two, one. >> NARRATOR: Even these scaled-
down machines have a force to be reckoned with.
>> TOMS: Now, to get a ten- or 12-pound object going 70 or 80
miles an hour in about a third of a second-- which is how long
it takes for the trebuchet to actually fire-- that's a lot of
acceleration. That's a lot of power.
And that's one of the things that made the trebuchet so
successful and so fascinating, is just how much power it's
capable. >> NARRATOR: Much less
sophisticated than the medieval trebuchet, but successful in its
own way, was the ancient battering ram.
The battering ram consisted of a whole tree trunk reinforced with
a metal head, which was thrust repeatedly against a wall or
gate. >> DeVRIES: Six burly
individuals with a big huge tree trunk between them-- they may be
very effective as long as there are no defenders who are firing
down upon them, so, again, you have to protect them.
And pretty soon what you begin to see are wheeled battering
rams with covers over the top of them.
>> NARRATOR: Suspended from an overhead beam, the battering ram
was rolled up to its target for prolonged attack.
Rams on rollers were an essential component of Roman
siege arsenals as early as the fourth century BC.
While all siege machines rely on the use of force, not all of
them are quite so simple. <i>Marvels.</i> ancient and medieval
While Hollywood has a way of marketing ancient and
medieval mayhem, the images belie the deadly nature of siege
machines. Attack and defense of
fortifications are two of the most essential components of
warfare. Each side employs machines
capable of breaching barriers, ultimately forcing the other
side to surrender. Siege warfare-- the art of
conquering a town or castle-- posed special problems for
military engineers during the Middle Ages.
>> FRANCE: The point of a siege is that a castle controls the
countryside round it. If you want to take over the
country, take over a land, you've got to take the castle.
>> NARRATOR: But taking a castle by medieval means wasn't easy.
>> FRANCE: The problem with a castle is that you can't get
into it without either battering a hole in the wall,
knocking the gate down or climbing over.
And your big problem is that the people on the walls won't let
you do that. >> DeVRIES: Well in order then
to defeat these fortifications that have been around for 4,000
years, man devised methods by which to bring the
fortifications down. >> NARRATOR: The ingenuity of
these siege machines developed in direct relationship to the
complexity of the fortifications they faced.
Perhaps the most primitive siege machine was the ladder.
>> DeVRIES: All the way through the earliest period of the
history of warfare, the ladder remains the strongest best siege
machine that is around. It's also cheapest to make.
For example, Joan of Arc testifies that she put her
ladder onto the fortification at Orleon first and she went up
that ladder first. But that's the problem: who goes
up the ladder first is generally going to be met with the
strongest defense against that ladder.
>> FRANCE: If you can dominate the castle with firepower, make
the defenders keep their heads down, then a lot of ladders go
up in a fairly limited stretch of wall.
Somebody's going to get over. That's how that works.
>> NARRATOR: While bows and arrows were capable of
delivering deadly blows, soldiers on ladders were
completely vulnerable. That's when armies began to
develop specialized ladders with wheels on them.
Covered in protective hides, these machines were called siege
towers. >> DeVRIES: You could have a
large number of troops already in the siege tower as you rolled
it up because it was protected all the way down to the ground,
you had constant number of troops then that were ready to
go up the ladder. In a way, it's the Trojan Horse
on the outside of the fortification.
You're delivering a large number of individuals into the town for
a heated blow until you can open it up and allow more individuals
in. >> NARRATOR: The largest siege
tower of ancient times is the Helepolis built in Athens in 304
BC. The tower was reinforced with
iron plates on three sides as a protection from fire.
Almost nine stories high, weighing approximately 150 tons,
the tower was mounted on giant casters and propelled,
presumably in relays, by 3,400 men.
Artillery ports on all levels contained battering rams,
archers and a variety of missile-throwing devices known
as catapults. >> DeVRIES: By the time we move
to catapults in history, we've taken the siege in a different
direction. Now no longer is it simply man
against the fortification. Now it is man's tool against the
fortification. >> NARRATOR: Catapult is a
generic term for all ancient and medieval missile-throwing siege
machines. The first catapult appeared in
ancient Greece in the fourth century BC.
All of these machines operate on the basic principal of using
various mechanical devices to store and release greater
amounts of energy. >> FRANCE: To attack a castle,
you needed missiles above all. And the basic problem you've got
is that everything that you can do, they can do back at you--
only better, because they've got height and therefore range.
So how do you respond to that? You build big machines.
Machines as time goes by become more and more elaborate.
They can throw heavier and heavier stones.
>> DENNEY: There's three types of siege engine.
There's the tension machine in which the bow is bent back to
provide the force to throw a bolt.
>> NARRATOR: An early tension machine introduced in Syracuse
was the gastraphetes or "belly bow."
It added, on average, 81 yards to the flight of the projectile
over that of a traditional bow and arrow.
>> DENNEY: Then we have the torsion machine where the energy
is stored in a skein of rope which is then twisted very, very
tightly and as the arm comes back, it gets tighter.
>> NARRATOR: One early type of torsion machine was the bolt
shooter or oxybeles, which appeared around 375 BC, and
fired bolts, including 27-inch arrows with iron tips.
The force of the bolt could pierce a man's shield and armor
at ranges in excess of a quarter mile.
Another torsion machine was the stone thrower or lithobolos,
which could fire rocks from ten to 180 pounds.
Such machines were generally used at point-blank range and
were capable of stripping battlements from fortified
walls. >> DENNEY: And then the third
type of engine is the counterpoise engine, which, if
you imagine, it's a bit like a seesaw with the center set off
to one side. >> NARRATOR: These ancient siege
machines were not only hard to move around in battle but also
wildly inaccurate. >> DeVRIES: And this is where we
get the development of the crossbow.
The notion that you can actually use a wood or bone or composite
bow arms and then eventually metal, steel primarily and that
if you can draw that string back far enough, the energy that can
be delivered to this can penetrate almost anything.
>> NARRATOR: Unlike the stiff wood bows used in ancient times,
the medieval crossbow was a smaller, more flexible and
accurate tension machine, so accurate that it was a
both loathed and popular as a siege engine.
>> DeVRIES: There's only one weapon system was ever banned by
the Pope, and that's the crossbow.
The crossbow was banned by the Pope for one simple reason.
They figured it was unfair, okay?
It was too strong. It could be fired by individuals
who are less skilled than the archer.
It could be fired by almost anybody.
And it becomes a very interesting development of
technology over skill. >> NARRATOR: Introduced into
England by the Norman invaders in 1066, the crossbow was
attached to a stock and could be kept loaded without effort from
the soldier. The stock allowed the bending
and release of the bow to be mechanically assisted,
increasing its ballistic force. With the addition of
sophisticated cocking mechanisms in the 13th and
14th centuries, which allowed the soldier to draw back the bow
with ease, the crossbow fired a missile a minute with a maximum
range of 380 yards, 100 yards further than the ancient bow.
Built in the late 13th century, Caerphilly Castle is one of the
great strongholds of medieval Europe.
Located in Wales, Caerphilly is an example of how medieval
fortifications adapted to the increasingly powerful siege
machines that attacked them. >> FRANCE: Walls become better;
towers are crucial. Towers begin square because it's
easiest to build a big building square.
But the trouble with squares is that the corners hide people
approaching, so you build round towers where you have absolutely
perfect vision all around and the arrow slits, of course, also
have accordingly better vision. >> NARRATOR: The most intriguing
feature of Caerphilly Castle, however, is its multiple lines
of defense: walls within walls. >> FRANCE: That's the principle
of the concentric castle. That is, one line of defense is
supported by another line of defense, so that if the enemy
break into the first line of defense, if they can get in,
then they face a second line of defense, so that every obstacle,
there's another obstacle. You never, as it were, get to
the end until you really get to the middle of the castle.
>> NARRATOR: For an attacking army in the Middle Ages to be
successful, they had to build the biggest and best siege
machines money could buy. Four scaled-down machines, all
fully operational, are on display at Caerphilly:
a ballista... mangonel...
trebuchet... and traction trebuchet,
or Perrier. >> DOUGLASS: These machines are
babies in comparison to what could have been achieved.
The size and the scale of the machines here at Caerphilly
Castle is based on what we can use safely within the grounds of
the castle. >> NARRATOR: The ballista is, in
effect, a giant crossbow. Originally developed by the
ancient Greeks during the siege of Syracuse around 399 BC,
this machine was used primarily as an antipersonnel weapon.
>> DENNEY: It uses two vertically mounted skeins of
rope you can see here, and unlike a normal crossbow, you'll
see that the arms are solid. There's no bend in those at all.
As the string is pulled back, you can see those skeins don't
intertwist. The farther you pull it back,
the more tension you build in those skeins so that eventually,
when you get it all the way back to the trigger here and hooked
over, it's that that gives the engine its propulsive force.
The whole thing is mounted on a kind of crude universal joint at
this end which allows you to move it up and from side to
side. >> NARRATOR: This half-ton
ballista fires deadly darts or bolts made of beaten brass or
bronze. >> DENNEY: The objective here is
that this part punches through the armor and it's essentially
wider here than the rest of the shaft so that that allows, once
the head's gone through the armor, for the rest of the shaft
to carry on through the hole that the head's made.
And this is an armor-piercing antipersonnel weapon very
effective against an armored knight, especially at close
range. >> DOUGLASS: Behind us we have a
mangonel, otherwise known as an onager, which is Latin for "wild
ass" because it has a kick like a mule when it goes off.
It's probably of late classical origin.
It's a single-armed torsion engine.
It would have been used to attack either lines of infantry
or defensive positions. >> NARRATOR: A mangonel weighed
between two and six tons and was disassembled for transport and
reassembled for a siege. It was not a rapid-fire machine
but did have limited success in pitching incendiaries with a
spoon-like arm. >> TOMS: People tried to solve
the problem of how to throw bigger things.
What they were really trying to throw were flaming pots of tar
and this thing called "Greek fire," which is a mixture of
chemicals that, when you throw water on it, it only makes the
fire more intense. >> DeVRIES: It was a flammable
liquid that was then sent out against an opponent.
But again, it was not used very often because of the danger and
also, I think, because of the lack of material.
Problem is it seemed to have been rather secret and we don't
have a lot of evidence for it. >> NARRATOR: Depending on the
weight and type of projectile, the range for the mangonel and
the ballista at Caerphilly is about 150 yards.
The largest and most effective siege machine ever invented is
the trebuchet, which, according to medieval experts, holds the
distinction of being the most powerful form of mechanical
artillery ever devised. Just the sight of Edward I's
14th-century trebuchet was enough to force defenders to
surrender. >> DENNEY: It's worth
remembering the fact that for 200 years in Europe this was the
most powerful weapon in the world.
There was nothing more powerful than this.
>> NARRATOR: Trebuchets like those at Caerphilly Castle
revolutionized siege warfare not only because of the range of
their destructive power, but also because of their accuracy.
>> DENNEY: These machines are very accurate, provided you keep
the missile perfectly round and exactly the same weight and you
don't touch anything, it will hit the same spot time and time
again. Now, that was necessary,
actually, because in order to even hope to penetrate one of
these massive walls, you needed to keep hitting the spot time
and time again. >> NARRATOR: The trebuchet draws
its remarkable power not from twisted ropes but from gravity.
At the short end of this giant seesaw-like engine is a
counterweight. >> DENNEY: This one here's got
about two tons in the counterbalance box.
It's sand and rock. We know lead was used.
Now, lead's much more dense, and for a cubic meter of lead, it
weighs about 11 tons, so if we fill that with lead it would be
a hell of a lot more heavier than it is.
>> NARRATOR: At Caerphilly, a crew of seven to nine is needed
to pull down the 20-foot arm and cock the counterweight.
A 24-pound concrete missile is then placed in the 30-foot
sling. >> Heave!
>> NARRATOR: Because the counterweight is closer to the
fulcrum, as it drops, the longer end of the arm swings around,
propelling the concrete missile at tremendous speeds.
>> DENNEY: I have been party to an experiment where a laser gun
was used to track a missile, and we clocked it at 125 miles an
hour. And that was a 350-pound
sandstone ball. >> NARRATOR: A smaller, more
mobile version of the trebuchet originated in Asia in the tenth
century. >> DOUGLASS: It's a simple
machine, much like our Perrier, where the pulling power of a
team of people at one end of an arm pulls down a weight at the
other end and shoots it off. That's a Perrier or traction
trebuchet. >> DENNEY: They were very easy
to transport. They were quick to make, and you
could use a large crew of men to operate them.
So it's quite typical that you would have five or six of these
in a row, maybe, attacking any given section of wall.
>> NARRATOR: The early traction trebuchets fired projectiles
weighing up to 130 pounds at a distance between 90 and 145
yards. The real advantage, however, is
that they could fire five or six times a minute.
By the 13th century the trebuchet displaced all other
siege machines and continued to hold its own for the next 200
years despite the growing popularity of gunpowder.
Harnessing the explosive force necessary to propel a projectile
would be the vital step in the escalation of siege machine
technology. But the invention of the cannon
was dependent on gunpowder. >> DeVRIES: We're not exactly
sure when gunpowder was invented.
It does appear that it was invented in China somewhere
before the tenth century AD. It also seems to have gone<i> to</i>
the West. >> FRANCE: What's distinctive
about the Western use of it is the almost immediate attempt--
at the very end of the 13th century-- to put it in the
tube... and use it to fire balls of some
sort or other, usually at fortifications.
You have to realize that it'd been known in the Arab world for
well over 100 years and hadn't been used like that, and had
been used for hundreds of years for different purposes in
China, but they had never, as it were, sought the development of
the cannon in the way that the West did.
>> DeVRIES: Roger Bacon-- who was considered to be one of the
great scientists of the Middle Ages-- he says if you could take
this gunpowder, which is a combination of carbon, of
saltpeter and of sulfur, and you could enclose one end of a
tube, that gunpowder would be able to push out a projectile.
>> NARRATOR: That was the basic principle behind the cannon, the
first explosive siege machine, developed in the 13th century.
>> FRANCE: The first cannons were pretty crude.
They looked a bit like big, lumpy vases laid on their sides,
with a flared muzzle and a fat chamber to put the powder in,
and they were very inefficient. >> NARRATOR: The early cannons
were inefficient because engineers had yet to harness the
explosive nature of gunpowder. >> FRANCE: Gunpowder is very
slow-burning. You have to pack it tight to
make it explosive. In so doing, you deprive it of
air, so the gunpowder itself burns very slowly, a bit like a
firework in the bottom of these tubes and therefore, projects
the missile very badly. So what looks flash-bang-smoke,
pretty spectacular-- actually, even if you're on the receiving
end-- isn't that effective, and certainly isn't very accurate.
>> NARRATOR: Even though the early cannons were inaccurate,
they were used alongside catapults and trebuchets at the
Siege of Tournai in 1340, and again at the siege of Calais in
1346, because they were intimidating to defenders.
>> FRANCE: It took nearly 200 years to realize that if they
granulated gunpowder-- that is, they mix the powder in the
correct ratios, then soaked it, usually in human urine, then
dried it, it dries into a cake-- you break the cake up and you
get granules. The granules allow plenty of air
in the charge, and the gun becomes much more efficient.
>> NARRATOR: By the 15th century, cannons became an
effective siege machine. >> DeVRIES: Cannons can begin to
bring down walls and fortifications and
fortifications consequently have to devolve.
>> NARRATOR: In Scotland, King James II had a cannon called
Mons Meg that fired a 19h-inch iron ball 1,400 yards.
This was the beginning of the end for high-walled
fortifications. >> FRANCE: This castle behind us
withstood a several month-long siege in the 17th century
against very effective cannons because the sheer weight of
masonry here is still very effective.
>> NARRATOR: But castles like Caerphilly were rare.
By the 17th century, improvements in casting
techniques, and the standardization of the iron
ball, helped make the cannon the definitive siege machine.
Not only did the cannon change the nature of siege warfare, but
it also changed the face of fortifications forever.
>> FRANCE: They began to make castles so that they could
contain batteries of guns, and they developed this distinctive
form-- the star. They built castles in a
different way-- rather low walls, rather deep ditches in
front of them, multiple ditches, cleared areas around them to
give fields of fire. Garrisons became bigger, and
they had lots and lots of cannon in them, big cannon as well, so
that they could outrange the enemy.
>> NARRATOR: But not even these fortifications could withstand
the ever-increasing accuracy and power of cannon fire.
A siege that used to take years now took only months or days.
Becoming too expensive to rebuild, high-walled
fortifications were finally robbed of their value.
High, thick walls as a means of defense hit the dirt for good,
and with it, one of the most essential obstacles in siege
warfare. >> NARRATOR: By the late 19th
and early 20th century, excavated earth replaced iron
and stone as the materials of choice to fortify defenses in
war. In World War I, these defenses
went underground, as siege warfare turned into trench
warfare, and with it a new siege engine emerged.
>> NORMAN FRIEDMAN: Tanks were certainly conceived as a
siege engine. The whole idea was that the
machine gunners couldn't stop it, and the machine gunners
would be the problem once the barrage lifted and you try to
make your attack. It could cross trenches.
It's designed to be just big enough to go right over
trenches. >> NARRATOR: The first tanks
able to breach sandbagged, barbed-wired, entrenched troops
went into action in the Battle of Somme on September 15,
1916. They were essentially armored
farm tractors. >> ED HEASLEY: They put armor
plate on it and cannons or machine guns on the thing, and
they had a crew of eight men. >> NARRATOR: Developed by the
British army, this 28-ton siege engine traveled at a top speed
of almost four miles an hour and crossed ten-foot trenches.
It was also equipped with two 57-millimeter cannons.
>> HEASLEY: The tank is essentially a moving gun
platform. It allows you to have a varied
caliber of weapon in a vehicle moving along and targeting fixed
positions. >> NARRATOR: Early tanks were
fickle mechanically, but employed in mass, they gained
increasing success with accompanying infantry and
artillery support. But they only had a range of 23
miles. >> FRIEDMAN: By World War II,
you could go a lot faster and a lot further.
By the way, also your stuff didn't break down as much.
That changed it a lot. >> NARRATOR: In World War II,
the tank set in motion the unlikely collaboration of
historic opponents: siege machines and fortifications.
In essence, the tank became an effective movable fortress.
>> HEASLEY: It allows you to go to the enemy with a large amount
of firepower and the mobility of the tank allows you not to have
to build these large fortifications anymore.
>> NARRATOR: In the late 20th century, there was a revolution
in siege machine technology and design.
Up until then, siege machines had absolutely no control over
the projectiles once fired. All the projectiles were, in
military terms, "dumb." >> BART KOSKO: Projectiles got
smart and weapons got smart with the introduction of radar, and
more sophisticated navigation systems.
The next big leap up came with the introduction of the GPS
satellite system-- those 24 orbiting satellites that could
directly guide a missile or other components to the
opponent. At essence, in any weapon, are
two things: energy and accuracy. The energy part hasn't changed
much. What's changed over the years,
fundamentally, is accuracy. Each year, each month, smart
weapons get smarter and that makes them more accurate.
>> NARRATOR: Computer technology fuels today's growing arsenal of
smart weapons, from remote- controlled unmanned combat
vehicles... to airborne laser systems and
cruise missiles-- the quintessential siege machine.
Launched from as far away as 1,000 miles, cruise missiles
travel 500 miles per hour, hugging low terrain to avoid
detection. >> KOSKO: Today's cruise missile
is at the end of a long line of classic siege weapons.
It still conveys a lot of energy, but it's far more
accurate, and of course, can go greater distances.
But like the classic weapons, they're very difficult to defend
against. But unlike those, they're
increasingly accurate. >> NARRATOR: The "smart"
projectile is now a universal siege machine, capable of
breaching countries and continents anywhere on the
planet. >> KOSKO: The cost of cruise
missiles continues to fall and more countries are acquiring
them, and the trouble is, there's no good way to defend
against a cruise missile once it's launched at you.
It is like trying to knock down a bullet with a bullet, and that
is a fundamentally destabilizing force in modern warfare.
>> NARRATOR: While the age of formal siege warfare is long
past, the development of siege weapons continues.
Are we as a species hardwired to attack and destroy
fortifications of all kinds just because they are there?
>> TOMS: You just can't dispute that we are an adversarial
species. We do value our safety and
protect ourselves, and so it's part of the human condition that
we will always differ with each other; we will always fight
each other, and we will always defend ourselves against each
other. >> FRIEDMAN: The real legacy of
all the siege stuff is that every time people thought that
it had been decided in favor of the defenders or the attackers
permanently, turned out to be a very unpleasant surprise for
someone. And maybe that's the most
important lesson of all: that these things are not permanent,
and it's much more a cyclical thing.
It goes around. >> DeVRIES: I think the notion
that it boils down to men over technology is as true today as
it was then, and I think that<i> that</i> is what we have to
remember. Military technology is<i> always</i>
dependent upon that person who is developing it and who is also
utilizing it and also defending against it.
>> NARRATOR: Up next: a new While the development of siege
machines has historically been a deadly business, it has also
been one of resourcefulness and inventiveness.
It's those characteristics that typify the siege engine
spin-offs of today. There is no place on earth that
demonstrates the power... grace...
and crazy ingenuity... of modern-day siege machines
more than the world championship pumpkin chunking contest.
>> DAWN THOMPSON: You can't say "punkin' chunkin'" without
a smile on your face. >> That's right.
>> NARRATOR: Pumpkin chunking is to these would-be warriors what
firing 200-pound rocks was to their medieval counterparts.
>> ERIC LUDLUM: Once you start throwing stuff, you just have to
go and throw some more stuff with different machines, and
keep building stuff. There's just no going back.
>> NARRATOR: Pumpkin chunking began innocently enough in rural
Delaware in 1986, evolving out of a barroom duel between "Big
Bill" Thompson and a couple of his friends over the designs
they fashioned on cocktail napkins.
>> WILLIAM THOMPSON: You draw machines on napkins and stuff
like that, and threaten if you can beat the other guy, and then
we set it up for a date the week after Halloween, come out high
noon and challenge you with your best machine.
>> CHARLES BURTON: It just started out for fun.
There was only three machines that were out there playing at
the time, and the furthest throw was 178 feet.
>> NARRATOR: Today, the annual contest draws 30,000
spectators and features more than 60 different
contraptions, all of them based loosely on one kind of medieval
siege machine or another. >> ROGER NICHOLS: We don't care
really what time of history it came from.
We take whatever's good from whenever and try and use and
build the medieval machines stronger and more
accurately. >> ANDREW REED: This is The
Regulator. It's a ancient trebuchet.
An old wartime machine is what it's prototyped after.
And it's made of scrap steel that we found out here in the
yard. It's actually a burnt-down
trailer that I cut in half. >> SEAN REID: And before that,
it was the trailer I lived in. But we thought it was a nice
frame to put a catapult on. Fire in the hole!
(<i> chains clinking</i> ) >> JOHN HUBER: In 1996, we
started on a boat trailer with small garage door springs and a
very weak beam. And I think our best throw was
50 feet. The Boy Scouts beat us that
year, so we went back with our tail between the legs.
>> NARRATOR: John Huber, an engineer at a local nuclear
station, decided to build a machine with the help of his
computer at work, one that would blow the Boy Scouts out of the
water. >> HUBER: We loaded this whole
thing in CAD and broke it five times before we got all the weld
geometry right and the materials.
And there are welds on this machine that say 196,000
foot-pounds of force. (<i> trumpet fanfare blows</i> )
>> NARRATOR: To demonstrate, Huber spray-painted a pumpkin
florescent pink, so our camera could follow it in flight.
We saw it launch, but we never saw it land.
And for all we know, the pink pumpkin is still up there.
>> That baby went out there. (<i> fanfare blows</i> )
>> NARRATOR: For the contest, the rules are simple.
Pumpkins must weigh between eight and ten pounds, leave the
machine intact and not be propelled by explosives.
(<i> cheering</i> ) After that, you can pretty much
figure that one man's junk is another man's siege engine
prototype. >> THOMPSON: There's no prize
money involved. Just the bragging rights.
The right to say you're the World Champion Punkin' Chunker.
>> HARRY LACKHOVE: I was the first one to ever try plastic
pipe. And it worked.
It didn't blow up in my face or anything.
And we cranked that sucker up and put a pumpkin in it, and it
went 2,655 feet. >> NARRATOR:<i> Those</i> are bragging
rights, and that was the world record for an eight-pound
pumpkin pitched from this modified air cannon back in
1995. While chunking a pumpkin the
farthest usually captures the crowd's attention...
(<i> cheering and applause</i> ) ...there's nothing quite like a
siege machine with accuracy. >> NATHAN PARKER: I haven't hit
anything yet. Actually, no, yesterday, we did
hit that truck. We hit her twice in one shot.
>> NARRATOR: Using his allowance money and donated scrap metal,
14-year-old Jake Burton and his buddies assembled one of the
most accurate air cannons ever to wage war on an old Chevy,
abandoned at the end of the pasture.
(<i> cheering</i> ) >> JAKE: We fill this up with
air pressure, about, between... Well, it depends how heavy your
pumpkin is. And then that depends how much
air you need and how far you want to shoot it.
(<i> cheering</i> ) We can shoot pretty much
anything that'll fit in the eight-inch barrel and that
isn't<i> too</i> heavy. And we shot up to 2,300 feet,
around there. >> NARRATOR: Unlike soldiers in
the Middle Ages who used siege machines to break down fixed
defenses, chunkers just can't resist the simple pleasure and
irresistible power of flinging something-- anything-- through
the air with their ingenious devices.
>> CHARLES: I've seen toilets thrown.
We've seen beer kegs thrown. We've seen watermelons, cabbage.
>> Cole slaw, coming up. >> CHARLES: Cantaloupes,
lettuce, pumpkins, of course, white and yellow.
(<i> fanfare blows</i> ) (<i> cheering</i> )
>> THOMPSON: If you make somebody laugh, you've got them.
If there's not enough laughing going on, you got to let your
hair down and play and enjoy life a little bit.
And that's what this is about, the whole festival.
>> NARRATOR: It's ironic that machines that once destroyed
entire cities and displaced thousands now draw a crowd.
From time immemorial to the 21st century, there has been an
enduring fascination with the primitive mechanics and brute
strength of siege machines. <font color="#FFFF00">Captioning sponsored by
A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS</font> Captioned by<font color="#00FFFF">
Media Access Group at WGBH</font>
