Chapter I: Preface

The great World War was more than two-thirds over when America entered the struggle, and yet in a sense this country was in the war from its very beginning. Three great inventions controlled the character of the fighting and made it different from any other the world has ever seen. These three inventions were American. The submarine was our invention; it carried the war into the sea. The airplane was an American invention; it carried the war into the sky. We invented the machine-gun; it drove the war into the ground.

It is not my purpose to boast of American genius but, rather, to show that we entered the war with heavy responsibilities. The inventions we had given to the world had been developed marvelously in other lands. Furthermore they were in the hands of a determined and unscrupulous foe, and we found before us the task of overcoming the very machines that we had created. Yankee ingenuity was faced with a real test.

The only way of overcoming the airplane was to build more and better machines than the enemy possessed. This we tried to do, but first we had to be taught by our allies the latest refinements of this machine, and the war was over before we had more than started our aërial program. The machine-gun and its accessory, barbed wire (also an American invention), were overcome by the tank; and we may find what little comfort we can in the fact that its invention was inspired by the sight of an American farm tractor. But the tank was a British creation and was undoubtedly the most important invention of the war. On the sea we were faced with a most baffling problem. The U-boat could not be coped with by the building of swarms of submarines. The essential here was a means of locating the enemy and destroying him even while he lurked under the surface. Two American inventions, the hydrophone and the depth bomb, made the lot of the U-boat decidedly unenviable and they hastened if they did not actually end German frightfulness on the sea.

But these were by no means the only inventions of the war. Great Britain showed wonderful ingenuity and resourcefulness in many directions; France did marvels with the airplane and showed great cleverness in her development of the tank and there was a host of minor inventions to her credit; while Italy showed marked skill in the creation of large airplanes and small seacraft.

The Central Powers, on the other hand, were less originative but showed marked resourcefulness in developing the inventions of others. Forts were made valueless by the large portable Austrian guns. The long range gun that shelled Paris was a sensational achievement, but it cannot be called a great invention because it was of little military value. The great German Zeppelins were far from a success because they depended for their buoyancy on a highly inflammable gas. It is interesting to note that while the Germans were acknowledging the failure of their dirigibles the British were launching an airship program, and here in America we had found an economical way of producing a non-inflammable balloon gas which promises a great future for aërial navigation.

The most important German contribution to the war--it cannot be classed as an invention--was poison gas, and it was not long ere they regretted this infraction of the rules of civilized warfare adopted at the Hague Conference; for the Allies soon gave them a big dose of their own medicine and before the war was over, fairly deluged them with lethal gases of every variety.

Many inventions of our own and of our allies were not fully developed when the war ended, and there were some which, although primarily intended for purposes of war, will be most serviceable in time of peace. For this war was not one of mere destruction. It set men to thinking as they had never thought before. It intensified their inventive faculties, and as a result, the world is richer in many ways. Lessons of thrift and economy have been taught us. Manufacturers have learned the value of standardization. The business man has gained an appreciation of scientific research.

The whole story is too big to be contained within the covers of a single book, but I have selected the more important and interesting inventions and have endeavored to describe them in simple language for the benefit of the reader who is not technically trained.

A. RUSSELL BOND

New York, May, 1919

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I THE WAR IN AND UNDER THE GROUND 3

II HAND-GRENADES AND TRENCH MORTARS 20

III GUNS THAT FIRE THEMSELVES 41

IV GUNS AND SUPER-GUNS 62

V THE BATTLE OF THE CHEMISTS 85

VI TANKS 107

VII THE WAR IN THE AIR 123

VIII SHIPS THAT SAIL THE SKIES 148

IX GETTING THE RANGE 169

X TALKING IN THE SKY 184

XI WARRIORS OF THE PAINT-BRUSH 209

XII SUBMARINES 232

XIII GETTING THE BEST OF THE U-BOAT 253

XIV "DEVIL'S EGGS" 276

XV SURFACE BOATS 298

XVI RECLAIMING THE VICTIMS OF THE SUBMARINES 310

INDEX 339

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Oil-tempering the lining of a big gun _Frontispiece_

FACING
PAGE

Lines of zig-zag trenches as viewed from an aëroplane 8

French sappers using stethoscopes to detect the mining
operations of the enemy 9

A 3-inch Stokes mortar and two of its shells 36

Dropping a shell into a 6-inch trench mortar 36

The Maxim machine-gun operated by the energy of the recoil 37

Colt machine-gun partly broken away to show the operating
mechanism 37

The Lewis gun which produces its own cooling current 44

The Benèt-Mercié gun operated by gas 44

Browning machine-gun, weighing 34-1/2 pounds 45

Browning machine-rifle, weight only 15 pounds 45

Lewis machine-guns in action at the front 52

An elaborate German machine-gun fort 53

Comparative diagram of the path of a projectile from the German
super-gun 60

One of our 16-inch coast defence guns on a disappearing mount 61

Height of gun as compared with the New York City Hall 61

The 121-mile gun designed by American ordnance officer 68

American 16-inch rifle on a railway mount 69

A long-distance sub-calibered French gun on a railway mount 76

Inside of a shrapnel shell and details of the fuse cap 77

Search-light shell and one of its candles 77

Putting on the gas-masks to meet a gas cloud attack 84

Even the horses had to be masked 85

Portable flame-throwing apparatus 85

Liquid fire streaming from fixed flame-throwing apparatus 92

Cleaning up a dugout with the "fire-broom" 93

British tank climbing out of a trench at Cambrai 112

Even trees were no barrier to the British tank 113

The German tank was very heavy and cumbersome 113

The speedy British "Whippet" tank that can travel at a speed of
twelve miles per hour 120

The French high-speed "baby" tank 120

Section through our Mark VIII tank showing the layout of the
interior 121

A Handley-Page bombing plane with one of its wings folded
back 128

How an object dropped from the Woolworth Building would
increase its speed in falling 129

Machine-gun mounted to fire over the blades of the propeller 136

Mechanism for firing between the blades of the propeller 136

It would take a hundred horses to supply the power for a small
airplane 137

The flying-tank 144

An N-C (Navy-Curtiss) seaplane of the type that made the first
flight across the Atlantic 145

A big German Zeppelin that was forced to come down on French
soil 148

Observation car lowered from a Zeppelin sailing above the
clouds 149

Giant British dirigible built along the lines of a Zeppelin 156

One of the engine cars or "power eggs" of a British dirigible 156

Crew of the C-5 (American coastal dirigible) starting for
Newfoundland to make a transatlantic flight 157

The curious tail of a kite balloon 160

Observers in the basket of an observation balloon 160

Enormous range-finders mounted on a gun turret of an American
warship 161

British anti-aircraft section getting the range of an enemy
aviator 176

A British aviator making observations over the German lines 177

Radio headgear of an airman 192

Carrying on conversation by radio with an aviator miles away 192

Long distance radio apparatus at the Arlington (Va.) station 193

A giant gun concealed among trees behind the French lines 212

Observing the enemy from a papier-mâché replica of a dead horse 213

Camouflaged headquarters of the American 26th Division in
France 220

A camouflaged ship in the Hudson River on Victory Day 221

Complex mass of wheels and dials inside a German submarine 240

Surrendered German submarines, showing the net cutters at the
bow 241

Forward end of a U-boat 256

A depth bomb mortar and a set of "ash cans" at the stern of
an American destroyer 257

A depth bomb mortar in action and a depth bomb snapped as it
is being hurled through the air 260

Airplane stunning a U-boat with a depth bomb 261

The false hatch of a mystery ship 268

The same hatch opened to disclose the 3-inch gun and crew 268

A French hydrophone installation with which the presence of
submarines was detected 269

Section of a captured mine-laying U-boat 272

A paravane hauled up with a shark caught in its jaws 273

A Dutch mine-sweeper engaged in clearing the North Sea of
German mines 288

Hooking up enemy anchored mines 289

An Italian "sea tank" climbing over a harbor boom 300

Deck of a British aircraft mothership or "hush ship" 301

Electrically propelled boat or surface torpedo, attacking a
warship 304

Hauling a seaplane up on a barge so that it may be towed 305

Climbing into an armored diving suit 320

Lowering an armored diver into the water 320

A diver's sea sled ready to be towed along the bed of the sea 321

The sea sled on land showing the forward horizontal and after
vertical rudders 321

The diving sphere built for deep sea salvage operations 324

The pneumatic breakwater 325

INVENTIONS
OF THE GREAT WAR