>> NARRATOR: The first fighter planes and deep water submarines. The earliest tanks. The first large-scale use of chemical weapons. When industrial-age technology and war first mixed on a large scale, the end result was ruthlessly efficient destruction. Now, "World War I Tech" on <i>Modern Marvels.</i> <font color="#FFFF00"> Captioning sponsored by</font> <font color="#FFFF00"> A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS</font> >> NARRATOR: World War I exposed the dark side of the Industrial Revolution. The technological achievements that created mass production, new forms of transportation and countless inventions, were now being put to use with devastating efficiency on the battlefield. >> NED BARNETT: The development between 1865 and 1914 was remarkable-- steel technology, explosive technology, chemical technology, aviation. All of these elements added to what happened in World War I. >> NARRATOR: Tanks... airplanes... guns, submarines and chemical warfare were all either created or refined in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. The creation of the assembly line resulted in fast and efficient mass production. Even human reproduction increased. Advances in hygiene and living standards sent populations skyrocketing throughout the late 19th Century. >> BARNETT: The growth of population and the growth of weapons potential meant that there was carnage on a level previously unanticipated in any war. You had more casualties in one battle during World War I then all of the casualties on both sides in the American Civil War. The carnage was huge. Something on the order of eight million soldiers were killed, and 12 million civilians were killed. >> NARRATOR: But this carnage didn't spring from nowhere. The stage for conflict was set some 40 years before the first shot was ever fired, in a series of European alliances. Territorial disputes and geographic vulnerabilities drove countries to commit to war if any member of an alliance was attacked. An alliance linked Austria-Hungary with Germany. Tiny Serbia allied with Russia, as did France. To balance the powers on the continent, England joined Russia and France. >> BARNETT: Everybody was lined up on one side or another, and all it took was a single spark to ignite the war. >> NARRATOR: That spark, on June 28, 1914, was the assassination by a Bosnian Serb of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. >> BARNETT: The insult of having this man assassinated ignited a war between Austro-Hungarian Empire and Serbia. >> NARRATOR: As Germany joined Austria-Hungary, so Russia backed Serbia. Within days, France and England had entered the fray. But Europe was ill-prepared for the consequences of what would become its first large-scale modern war. Neither alliance was able to sustain a mobile offensive against the other after the first few months of the war, so both sides dug in along the Western front, near the northeast border of France, stretching 500 miles from Switzerland to the English Channel. A system of parallel trenches came to symbolize this paralysis. It became both home and grave to many stationed there. >> DR. WILLIAM F. ATWATER: Modern war is now mechanized. It's a killing machine. A lot of people are going to get killed, and it's for naught. You're going to settle down into a stalemate, neither side will be able to achieve a decisive victory over the other, and it will be a war of attrition and the last guy standing will win, but what's he won? >> NARRATOR: Clifford Holliday, joined up as a bugle boy at 16 years old. At 105, he was the last surviving World War I combat veteran from Canada. >> NARRATOR: One of the most innovative of all World War I technologies was the tank. The creation of the tank was a direct response to the stalemate of trench warfare. 6,000 miles of the roughly nine-foot-wide and seven foot-deep trenches traced the Western front. Barbed wire was strewn in front of the trenches, and sandbags sometimes provided a protective barrier. Machine gun nests bristled with sprays of bullets. In the desolate ribbon of no-man's land between the belligerants were bomb craters, tree stumps, burning villages and the bodies of soldiers from both sides. The challenge was to find something that would just plow through them. The tank was the answer. >> ATWATER: There are antecedents. DaVinci has drawings which are these war machines, he calls them. But they didn't have the technology until they married the idea of the Holt Tractor, which was a track vehicle up with an armored cab, and then drive it over the barbed wire, and put machine guns or cannons on it to suppress the enemy's machine gun nest. >> NARRATOR: The British quickly developed the Mark series of tanks, beginning with the Mark I. The tank applied a host of technologies-- the internal combustion engine, steel plating, mounted machine guns, plus the all-important tracks instead of wheels. >> BARNETT: The tread is the key, because it can go over terrain that no wheel can go over. It's harder to bog. And the reason is, it has a broad surface area, so it has a very light pounds per square inch on the ground. So on soft, muddy ground, it has a better chance of staying afloat above the ground rather than sinking in. >> NARRATOR: With a crew of six men, the early British tanks could travel at about three miles an hour. Two men worked the delicate 100 horsepower engine, which sat exposed inside the tank. Though the British were quick to make improvements on the Mark series tanks, they remained extremely uncomfortable and even lethal inside throughout the war. >> FRANK JARDIM: Temperatures could rise up over 100 degrees in there. The stink of oil and gasoline and exhaust vapors filled the inside of the vehicle. The engine is right inside the fighting compartment. Driving this thing would be similar to driving your car, if you sat underneath the hood with it closed, next to the engine. As machine gun bullets beat on the hull, the sounds of, uh, that ringing, that cacophony is added to the roar of the motor. Worse yet, spall splashed off the inside of the hull of the vehicle. Fragments of the, uh, steel plating and paint would cut the faces and the hands, any exposed flesh of the crewmen. >> ATWATER: So, now, you've got a vehicle with no suspension system, going four miles an hour, it's 120 inside, and you're in leather. So, how long are you going to last? Well, the answer is, probably not long. So, they had drawbacks to them. However, given the alternative, there was no comparison. >> NARRATOR: In January of 1916, the British deployed the tank for the first time. >> BARNETT: The first tank attack in the Battle of the Somme, 36 tanks were put into place. They did almost nothing, except give away the idea. But a year later, at Cambrai, nearly 400 tanks were put into effect, and they busted the German trenches. It showed what tanks could do. They could bust the trenches, and they advanced 6,000 yards. >> NARRATOR: Meanwhile, the French, with the aid of the Renault company, were developing their own lighter tanks. At roughly seven-and-a-half tons, they were a quarter the weight of the heavy British tanks. >> ATWATER: The standard French light tank was the FT17. It could be armed with a machine gun or a 37-millimeter gun. It had two men inside. The communication between the tank commander, gunner and the driver was a bit crude. The way they did that was, the tank commander would kick the driver in the direction he wanted to go. >> NARRATOR: At six miles an hour, the French tanks were twice as fast as the British tanks. They also incorporated a rotating turret. >> BARNETT: The French innovation of the rotating turret in a tank was extremely important. Instead of having to have six or eight guns located all around the surface of the tank to shoot from every angle, you could have one gun that could shoot from every angle. >> NARRATOR: One of only two surviving unmodified FT-18 French tanks was recently discovered in a dump in Afghanistan, where it had likely been discarded in the 1920s. It was donated to the George S. Patton Museum in Fort Knox, Kentucky for restoration. >> TIM GARRETT: This tank is operated by a series of control rods, a regular gas pedal, a regular clutch, and a regular shifter. The turret of the tank was a one-man turret. It was traversed by the gunner. It had no powered traverse mechanism. He would just lean back into two shoulder mounts and turn the turret. There are vision slits around the hatch. This represents the crew's only way of seeing out of the tank. This is the entrance and exit from the turret, which would be immediately over the engine deck if the turret was installed. This is the four-cylinder power plant that we removed from the tank. It had a total power output of approximately 39 horsepower. This engine represented state of the art in internal combustion technology. The reliability of the tank coupled with its reasonable ammunition supply would allow the tank to operate out to a radius of about 35 miles. This was far in excess of the larger tanks that were available during World War I. >> NARRATOR: Despite the effort the allies put into these mobile fortresses, the Germans lagged behind in designing and implementing tanks. >> BARNETT: And that was smart, because tanks were offensive weapons, and for the most part, in the Western front, Germany was on the defense. World War I tanks were useless in defense. >> NARRATOR: As significant a technological accomplishment as the tank was, its impact was limited, not because it wasn't effective, but because no one knew how to exploit it. Tactical use of the tank, within a limited battle or skirmish hadn't yet been fully conceived, because the tank was such a new concept. Only in 1918, with the end of the war in sight, did a coordinated tank assault contribute to pushing the Germans back out of France. Still, the tank was an important new weapon that held great promise for visionary military leaders. Combined with an infantry assault that could hold on to enemy territory, the tank's aggressive drive across the battlefield would prove not to be only tactical, but also strategic. Decisive, not just in an individual battle, but as part of an overall plan of attack to permanently defeat an enemy. But its greatest military contribution would be realized in the next world conflict. (<i> jets whistling</i> ) (<i> rattling</i> ) The first war in which air superiority played a role in tactical, if not strategic thinking, was World War I. The machines that led to this new concept of warfare included the observation balloon, the zeppelin, and most importantly, the airplane, an engineering amalgam of aerodynamics and the internal combustion engine. Low-tech observation balloons up to 200 feet long and made of rubberized cotton could be sent up near the front. On a clear day, they could provide a 14-mile panorama and a view of enemy encampments. One or two observers could be positioned in the wicker basket below the balloon. >> BARNETT: They were especially used on the Western Front by the Germans and very effectively so. They put them up behind the lines but high enough to where they could see the Allies' lines without having to worry about flying over the lines. They were connected to ground with telephone or telegraph lines so they could immediately communicate. >> NARRATOR: Trench warfare effectively eliminated horse- mounted cavalry reconnaissance because there were no flanks to skirt in order to observe the enemy. The ability to view the enemy from an observation balloon was now vitally important. The zeppelin was an improvement on the observation balloon. It was essentially a series of compartmentalized air sacs filled with hydrogen, held together by an aluminum frame and attached to an engine. It was maneuverable and capable of speeds approaching 70 miles an hour. >> JEFFERY UNDERWOOD: They were built in a way that if the engine cut out, a mechanic could crawl outside and work on the engine and crawl back inside. It's every bit as complex as an ocean liner but flies a whole lot higher. >> NARRATOR: The zeppelin had been invented in 1900. By the start of the war, Germany had specialized combat zeppelins. They flew them at night and above the range of artillery fire. At first, they were just for reconnaissance, but in January, 1915, the first zeppelin bombing run was made on England. >> BARNETT: The bombing was inaccurate to the extreme. Uh, there really was not an understanding of what air dynamics did to bombs as they fell, so they pretty much went wherever they wanted to. The zeppelins were never decisive, and in economic terms, they were a huge waste of money, because they took an awful lot to build and maintain, and the results they would turn were infinitesimal. >> NARRATOR: They were also a danger to the crew. Zeppelins were full of boyant but highly-flammable hydrogen. If something were to shoot the zeppelin with an incendiary bullet, the whole thing could flame up and crash. The biggest threat to the zeppelin would be the airplane, which would ultimately fly higher, faster and better than any dirigible. It was just 10 years old and hardly more than a kite when the war began, but within four years, the airplane would be one of the greatest technological accomplishments to emerge from the war. >> BARNETT: The initial aircraft in World War I were flimsy, uh, slow. They couldn't fly very high, and they-they tended to fall apart. If you put them in a dive, the wing would come off. They just weren't very sturdy. But very quickly, as people saw the military capability, they started building sturdier aircraft with bigger engines that were more powerful that could carry weapons. >> NARRATOR: Like balloons, planes were used mostly in conjunction with cameras and made their greatest wartime contribution as reconnaissance craft. One of the earliest reconnaissance planes used during World War I was the Bleriot: a single-wing, one-man plane with a 50-horsepower engine. The entire plane weighed around 800 pounds and had no weapons. Many early reconnaissance pilots were ex-cavalry who no longer had as significant a role to play on the ground. >> BARNETT: They began taking rifles, pistols up to shoot at one another and began taking hand grenades, small bombs, artillery shells, even rocks to drop on people on the ground just because they were aggressive. This led ultimately to the development of specialized fighting aircraft, some intended as bombers, others intended as fighters. The goal of the fighters was always to shoot down the reconnaissance aircraft. >> NARRATOR: The challenge for a pilot was how to shoot at a target without damaging his own plane. A machine gun right in front of the pilot provided easy aim down the nose of the plane... but resulted in a shot-off propeller. Side-mounted guns were another option, but they could be awkward and hard to aim. Finally, Dutch inventor Tony Fokker figured out a way to aim a gun down the nose and have it shoot through the path of the propeller without actually hitting the blades. The best solution is called an interrupter gear. As the propeller swings across the gun, it interrupts the machine gun from firing until the propeller passes and it fires again. Fokker figured out a method that used a mechanical lever. When the propeller spun across it, the gun stopped firing. The first true combat aircraft using Fokker's interrupter gear was the German Fokker Eindecker: a lightweight, single-wing aircraft capable of speeds approaching 85 miles per hour. >> UNDERWOOD: "Pursuit aircraft" is what they called them. The pursuit aircraft-- all you got to do is swing your airplane toward the enemy and fire the machine gun. Now, this sounds romantic, but basically, this is murder. What you're trying to do is sneak up on an enemy while they're busy taking pictures, and then shoot him in the back with your machine gun. >> NARRATOR: The men in the trenches grew familiar with the buzz of aircraft flying above the front. >> NARRATOR: Dogfights created a demand for stronger, lighter, faster aircraft. Engineers looked to save an ounce of weight on an aircraft that was mostly canvas and wood. >> GREG HASSLER: The wings, for instance-- on a lot of them are- are hollowed-out pieces of wood. And they would, uh, hollow out all of the wooden frame members they could just to make 'em as light as they could. And-and you look at it initially, and you think, 'They're only saving ounces," but over the entire aircraft, they're saving several pounds, maybe even hundreds of pounds by the time it's all done. >> NARRATOR: Plane engines also went through a swift evolution as pilots pushed their machines to heights approaching 25,000 feet. >> UNDERWOOD: Just taking the engine from an 80-power engine that spins round and round and round to a huge 400-horsepower engine with 12 cylinders popping up and down inside-- this is a major achievement. >> NARRATOR: One of the most famous fighters was the Sopwith Camel, named for the slight hump visible near the cockpit. It had a 130-horsepower rotary engine with cylinders arranged in a circle rather than the more familiar straight line. Both the propeller blades and the engine rotated around the shaft of the propeller. >> BARNETT: This cooled the engine but it created a tremendous gyroscope force so the plane was enormously maneuverable if you turned in the direction of the spin of the engine. If you tried to turn the other way, it didn't do very well. But if you were a superb pilot, it was extraordinarily maneuverable. It needed to be because the German army had come up with what was the probably the best aircraft of the war, the Fokker D-VII. It had a powerful Mercedes engine, two machine guns. Unlike most fighters, the wings were cantilevered, which means self-supporting and they didn't need a lot of wires to hold them together. >> NARRATOR: The fast and agile Fokker D-VII, more than any other plane, demonstrated the tactical possibilities of planes as offensive weapons. Within the world of flying aces, it loomed large, but within the context of the entire war, it was not decisive. At the end of the First World War, the airplane's greatest contribution remained reconnaissance. >> BARNETT: Probably the most significant use of aerial reconnaissance in the war was in 1918 on the Allied side. General Ludendorff launched the last German offensive, and it nearly succeeded. He was trying to win the war quickly before Americans got into the field in great numbers. Aerial reconnaissance let the Allies know what was going on so they were able to attack where Germans had a weakness. >> NARRATOR: The camera was the only strategic piece of equipment on a World War I airplane. But it would take the more sophisticated planes of World War II for aircraft to play a bigger, offensive role, controlling airspace and engaging in bombing raids against supplies and civilians. Despite cutting-edge machinery like airplanes and tanks, the weapons of the trenches were guns, artillery and a host of small bombs. The machine gun was the most effective of all. >> BARNETT: The machine gun, as with so many weapons used in World War I, was an American invention. The first effective automatic machine gun was the Maxim, which was designed by an American. >> NARRATOR: Irish immigrant and amateur inventor Hiram Maxim was reportedly moved to invent the machine gun in 1885 after someone told him, "If you want to make a lot of money, invent something that will enable these Europeans to cut each other's throats with greater facility." Maxim achieved his machine guns rapid-fire ability using the thrust of the recoil to quickly pull the next bullet into the chamber. >> BARNETT: He had a limited success selling it to the American army so he went to Europe and sold it to just about every country over there, so many of the combatants were using Maxim guns or guns designed based on the Maxim. >> NARRATOR: Another method of rapid fire was developed that collected expanding gases, expelled when the gun was fired, to trigger a mechanism that allowed accelerated shooting. The best machine guns had a range of about 4,000 yards, with an aimed range of a thousand yards, shooting rifle-caliber bullets. >> ATWATER: The battlefield is going to become dominated by the machine gun, a recoil-operated machine gun, which can spew out 400 to 500 rounds a minute. Not only that, but it has a water jacket on it which keeps the barrel cool, so you can fire this thing and fire it and fire it and fire it, and keep on firing it. >> NARRATOR: Almost as important as the gun's ability to fire rapidly was its ability to pivot. Guns were placed on a special mount, called a traversing and elevation mechanism, that enabled each gunner to spray rounds in an arc. >> BARNETT: By swiveling, you could cover 500 yards of battlefront with one machine gun. And if you could shoot out to 400 yards and men were walking across 400 yards, you could pretty much kill them all with one machine gun before they get anywhere near you. >> NARRATOR: A typical heavy machine gun weighed about 50 pounds, with the mount adding another 70 pounds or so. It was not designed to be portable. It was designed to stay in the trenches. >> CHARLES LEMONS: This is a very solid mount, so it's not like it's bucking around a lot when you're firing. The crew was about six people. You, uh, have ammo bearers. You have four people to carry the mount. There's people to keep water in the water jacket to keep it from overheating. And you have people who continually feed ammunition into these. >> NARRATOR: Lighter, portable machine guns were developed around 1915. They still weighed around 30 pounds, with their mounts adding another 20 pounds. A typical example is the French Hotchkiss. >> LEMON: You can fire this thing practically forever. Even though it is not water cooled, it will get very hot, but these large fins here, which are basically<i> the</i> feature of the Hotchkiss machine gun, puts enough area out, that this thing will get red, guarantee you, but it will continue to shoot. >> NARRATOR: By far the least effective machine gun was the French-designed lightweight, air-cooled Chauchat. >> LEMON: And when you're trying to fire it with this long recoil it just shakes itself. There is aluminum around the barrel to help in the air cooling, and they figured the air holes help would pass air down it. But all it ends up doing is jamming the weapon by getting more dirt in there. Because the magazines are so curved and open, you get dirt and everything else inside here. Most people considered them the weapon from hell. >> NARRATOR: Despite technological failures like the Chauchat, the guns were killing machines. Old school generals ordered their soldiers to charge, only to have the men mowed down. In virtually every battle of World War I the machine gun played a decisive role. >> BARNETT: It was particularly decisive in the early British offensives in the Somme, for instance. This was where thousands and thousands of British soldiers were killed daily for six months, and they were just charging machine guns and being mowed down because the British generals didn't have a better idea. As Winston Churchill said there was something illogical about trying to attack machine guns with the chests of soldiers. >> NARRATOR: As devastating as the machine gun was, large- caliber guns, collectively known as artillery, were even more destructive, reeking havoc with explosions that threw men and machinery into the air. Artillery weapons can be divided into three types. The first is a gun that shoots line of sight. The shell is fairly heavy so the explosive power that shoots it out must be strong. Howitzers shoot at a high angle and they generally don't shoot as far. The explosive force launching the shell is lighter, therefore, the actual shell itself can have a thinner wall with more explosives and can do more damage. Mortars are like small Howitzers that shoot up at an angle, with shells that come down almost vertically. They tend to carry considerable explosive power for their size. Even before the trenches were dug, artillery was pummeling defensive structures along the Belgian border. Belgium hoped to rely on a group of fortresses to prevent the Germans from invading. But Germany had developed massive guns, nicknamed "Big Berthas," which were some of the largest-caliber artillery pieces built during the war. Some of these explosive-packed shells weighed over 2,000 pounds. And some of these guns were so massive that they could only be transported in pieces by railcar. Belgium's fortresses fell within an afternoon. >> ATWATER: These big guns literally smashed those fortresses flat, which allowed the German army to go through Belgium. And no one had ever seen modern fortification smashed up like that. >> NARRATOR: Though of smaller caliber than the Big Berthas, the most technologically innovative of all the seige mortars was the Paris Gun, built to terrify Parisian civilians into surrendering. The 210 millimeter gun's 131 foot-long steel barrel could hurl shells over ten miles high, into the stratosphere. And the gun could be fired from over 75 miles away. >> ATWATER: The French didn't know what they were being hit with. They thought that we were being bombed by a zeppelin, or a gasworks had blown up, or something like that. Then once they found out that these explosions were occurring in sort of a straight line, no, it was a gun. >> NARRATOR: More than 256 Parisians were killed in a barrage that lasted for six months and dropped 351 shells. But the Paris Gun was too unwieldy to sustain a consistent barrage. The barrel needed constant replacement, and it was impossible to target accurately. In the end, it cost Germany manpower and resources that it couldn't spare. Trench mortars, however, were particularly effective along the front. They were essentially just a strong tube in which an explosive shell was inserted. Braced against the ground, they needed no recoil-absorbing mechanism. Mortars like the Stokes three inch and the Newton six inch threw explosive shells, gas shells, flares or even shrapnel up into the air to drop nearly vertically and unobstructed into an enemy trench. >> BARNETT: The key is that trench mortars were ones that were small enough to be moved into the trenches and they had a short range, 500, 800 yards, but enough to hit the trench on the other side, and there was really no defense against them. The only defense was to dig a hole and hope that they didn't drop a shell right in it. >> NARRATOR: Coordinated with machine guns, trench mortars were lethally effective. Machine gun spray could herd men into clusters, then mortars could literally rain death down on them. But both the Central and the Allied powers were developing another weapon that would prove both physically and psychologically effective. A weapon that was nearly invisible and lighter than air. "World War I Tech" will returnen Chemical weapons were by far the most insidious technology of the First World War. >> JEFFERY SMART: Large-scale chemical warfare began in World War I, but the concept was around much, much earlier. Even during the American Civil War, there were concepts of employing a chlorine-type shell, but each time, the concept was rejected because it was thought to be against warfare. >> NARRATOR: Germany had no such qualms during the First World War. >> SMART: There was the 1899 Hague Convention that said you cannot use a shell, if the sole purpose was to disseminate a toxic gas. So to get around that agreement, they mixed a high explosive with a chemical agent. >> NARRATOR: Early on both sides attempted to lace grenades with non-lethal "harassing agents" like tear gas. Tear gas is known as a lachrymate, which means it irritates the tear ducts, causing them to tear and obstruct vision. But any chemical agent must sufficiently saturate the air to be effective. >> BARNETT: The first use of chemical warfare in World War I was tear gas. The Germans used it first but the French didn't notice. I guess the wind was too high. The Germans then used it against the Russians and it was too cold; the tear gas froze. >> NARRATOR: After these false steps, the German military intensified its efforts, developing lethal gas for use in mortar shells. It was aided by a chemist named Fritz Haber. Haber was a leading scientist and academic whose work in chemistry was world renowned. A deeply patriotic Prussian, he pioneered the use of chlorine, and later phosgene, as a weapon. >> BARNETT: Chlorine and phosgene are respiratory agents. They attack the lungs and the victims wind up actually drowning in their own bodily fluids. >> NARRATOR: The Germans first used chlorine on the battlefield of Ypres, Belgium, in 1915, as they were attempting to push through the British and French lines. They waited until the wind was blowing toward the French to prevent any gas from floating back over their own troops. >> SMART: The first attack was very psychologically effective in that the average French soldier did not know what to expect and saw this cloud coming towards them. At first they thought maybe the German trenches were on fire. And there was just smoke, but once they smelled it and got gassed by it, and got affected by it, the word spread very quickly. >> NARRATOR: Terrified soldiers fled to escape the sinister yellow cloud as it floated toward their position. The gas may have cost the British as many as 5,000 lives. But the Germans did not capitalize on their success because they failed to follow up on the attack. The Allies ultimately blocked their advance and pushed them back. Shortly after Ypres, both sides began hurling chemical agents at each other. It was a chemical arms race as each side attempted to develop more effective weapons. But launching enough poison to create a cloud sufficient to saturate the air to lethal levels was a technological challenge. 75 and 155 millimeter artillery shells were long range and carried a lot of agent into the trenches, but it could take hundreds of shells to create a cloud. Once again chemist Fritz Haber offered his expertise. >> SMART: Fritz Haber decided that one way was to simply use the chlorine in a chemical cylinder. >> NARRATOR: Attackers could launch 20 to 50 times more gas in the cylinder than they could inside the much smaller shell, which also had explosives taking up space inside it. Launching the cylinders was effective, but it was a clear violation of the Hague Convention. Clifford Holliday remembers the first time he was gassed during a battle. >> NARRATOR: But by 1916, Holliday and his comrades were now equipped, however poorly, to counter the effects of the creeping gas cloud. >> NARRATOR: Ammonia and other chemicals in the cloth neutralized the acid passing through. Within a short time, however, defensive technology improved, providing soldiers with masks that included charcoal filters carried on the back that neutralized the poison. >> BARNETT: This was one of the later gas masks. The design had this hood that fit over the face, had the lenses that protected the eyes, and this hose which attached to a canister. This is the pack that carried it and inside were a metal canister. The material that filtered the air was in this canister. >> NARRATOR: But the bulky gas masks seriously reduced a soldier's effectiveness, making it awkward to aim a gun. And filtering agents did nothing to protect against so- called mustard gas, which wasn't a gas at all but a sticky persistent liquid. >> BARNETT: Mustard gas is a blister agent. It won't necessarily kill you, but it will rot your flesh and it's also a pretty horrible thing. >> NARRATOR: After mustard gas was introduction in 1917, soldiers had to be covered in water-proof clothing that protected their skin. That prevented exposure to the non-lethal, but extremely painful, mustard agent. All of this was difficult on the troops, but gas technology didn't add up to much strategically. Gas played no decisive role in any battles of the First World War. Gas masks kept most from dying and subject to meteorological whims, gas was simply too unreliable. >> BARNETT: It just made everybody more miserable and had some causalities, but didn't... it was not decisive. >> NARRATOR: Though gas injured more than a million soldiers, it killed fewer than 100,000, representing less than 1% of the war's death toll. Germany's Fritz Haber is not listed among those 100,000, but it's hard not to think of him, the father of chemical weapons, as a victim of his own misguided patriotism. >> BARNETT: His wife, who was also a chemist, was so horrified by what he did that she committed suicide. She couldn't live with it. And the ultimate irony was he was run out of Germany in 1933 when Hitler took over because he was Jewish and the Germans had no use for him anymore. >> NARRATO >> NARRATOR: The development of the submarine may have been the most important technological advance of World War I, but though the submarine evolved into a formidable weapon during the war, early examples had existed for nearly 200 years. >> GARY WEIR: You can look at a wide variety of water vehicles that can be called submersibles, all the way back to the turtle, which attempted an attack on a British ship during the Revolutionary War. Robert Fulton pioneered some steam-propelled variations in the submarines during the 19th Century, and the Europeans did so as well. >> NARRATOR: But the father of the modern submarine was an Irish-born American named John Holland, who during the 1880's perfected a way to make a vessel easily submersible and truly maneuverable underwater. Holland used tanks of water and compressed air to raise and lower the sub. >> BARNETT: He created a company, which still builds submarines today, the Electric Boat Works. He sold them to England. The design was widely copied. Initially they were powered by gasoline engines while on the surface and electric battery- driven engines underwater. >> NARRATOR: Two different types of engines were needed because internal combustion engines required oxygen and could only be used on the surface. Battery-powered electric engines did not need oxygen, so were used under water. Gasoline engines were initially used for the surface engine, but they were prone to explosion in the confines of a small vessel. The noxious gasses that they emitted made the living quarters all but uninhabitable. >> WEIR: What they gradually discovered was that the diesel engine and the fact that diesel oil is less immediately combustible than gasoline. The diesel engine was a far better propulsion source for surface propulsion, and that they would use batteries for submerged propulsion. And, of course, while they were on the surface, they could recharge their batteries employing the diesel engines. >> NARRATOR: Although it was an Irish-born American who developed the modern submarine, it was Germany that established itself as a leader in sub technology throughout World War I. Germany sought to counter Britain's superior navy by going underwater, developing a <i>unterseeboot,</i> or "U-boat." Initially, submarines stayed relatively close to the surface and near ports, but changes in strategy drove them great distances, at 200 to 250 feet below the surface, moving at speeds of eight knots underwater and approaching 15 knots on the surface, making them more aggressive weapons. By 1918, the Germans had a fleet of 44 U-boats of various sizes-- from 24-person, short range coastal subs up to massive 1,500-ton U-cruisers with a crew of 60. The Germans also worked to perfect the torpedo, a weapon that would make their U-boats lethal. Compressed air or heated gasses were used to power a turbine inside the torpedo. The torpedo improved its speed and accuracy over the course of the war. The turbines enabled torpedoes to extend themselves, achieving greater range and speeds of up to 24 knots or roughly 35 miles per hour at longer distances. They were packed with TNT or gun cotton and could be set for depth and proper direction. >> BARNETT: Submarines also had deck guns for targets that were either alone and unable to defend themselves, and was cheaper to shoot them with an artillery cannon and sink them that way than it was to expend a torpedo which was fairly expensive. >> NARRATOR: U-boats sank more than 6,500 Allied ships over the course of the war. One lone U-boat sank 224 ships. But the key to the submarine's advantage was not its firepower. >> WEIR: Its primary weapon was stealth. It couldn't be seen. You gave that up only at your own peril. >> NARRATOR: The biggest danger a U-boat faced was a depth charge, a bomb set to go off at a certain depth under water. The Allies attempted to use depth charges against U-boats, but their stealthiness made this a challenge. But the Germans weren't satisfied sinking only Allied ships. They realized that if they were to win the war, they needed to strategically attack supply ships, even if they were from so-called "neutral" countries. >> WEIR: There was also a major debate, you know-- they shouldn't be torpedoing these vessels because they are commercial vessels, after all. The German says, "Right. What you're bringing in on these vessels are going to be shot at me later on because you're bringing in war materials. So as far as we're concerned, these are warships." >> NARRATOR: Logistical targeting of supply ships nearly won the war for the central powers as the Allies were cut off from outside supplies, but it angered neutral countries like the United States. America finally entered the war on the Allied side after German U-boats sank a number of American and other non- combat ships and passenger liners. The most famous of these, the British passenger liner <i>Lusitania,</i> was almost certainly smuggling materiel for the Allies. >> BARNETT: The use of unrestricted submarine warfare brought America into the war and the fresh soldiers who arrived in France in 1917 and 1918 were the decisive margin of victory for the Allies. So the weapon that almost won them the war ultimately cost them the war. >> NARRATOR: Though both sides realized the same advantage from the new technologies, and the soldiers certainly helped, it was American manufacturing production that pushed the Allies over the edge. American raw materials were virtually limitless and American supplies enabled the Allies to outlast their exhausted enemies. Because World War I was a laboratory for destructive technology, warfare changed drastically between 1914 and Armistice, November 11, 1918. Even as the soldiers were celebrating the armistice, the dark clouds of the next conflict were already gathering. Some historians claim that World War II was simply a continuation of one great global war that began in 1914. What is undeniable is that the seeds of technically-efficient destruction planted during the First World War would bear bitter fruit in the coming conflict, and on an even larger scale. <font color="#FFFF00"> Captioning sponsored by</font> <font color="#FFFF00"> A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS</font> Captioned by <font color="#00FFFF"> Media Access Group at WGBH</font> access.wgbh.org
