Inventions during the First World War. Inventions of the First World War. Military submarine. Russian "Panther"

World War I became a war where the latest tactics and types of weapons coexisted with archaic, proven centuries, and sometimes millennia, types of weapons and methods of destroying the enemy. So, in one place there was a dashing cavalry attack with peaks, in another hand-to-hand combat, and very close to the trenches a yellow cloud of poisonous gas or an armored monster armed with cannons and machine guns was advancing ... But more often everything was intertwined together, embodied in strange hybrids of the old and the new . Such as bulletproof armor-transformers or catapults for throwing hand grenades. However, many of these inventions were the product of people who have experienced all the "charms" of a new type of war.

But for those who were far from the front line, confusion reigned in their heads. And very many of them continued to believe that war is a slender column of stately grenadiers marching to the drum and flute, from time to time issuing a coordinated volley in the direction of the enemy ... they considered very innovative, tried to help the front.

As usual, in the forefront were active amateurs and self-taught inventors. Hundreds of rationalization proposals filled up the Main Military-Technical Directorate (GVTU) of the Imperial Army. Representatives of all classes and social strata of society sent their projects: from peasants to professional engineers. Many really sensible, interesting proposals were made, but there were also such that one could only envy the endurance and patience of the officers of the GVTU. After all, in addition to studying the invention, they were obliged to send their conclusion to the author by mail, made in a polite and correct form.

"Pulehod" Shovkoplyas

This machine was a huge bullet on wheels or, alternatively, on rollers, containing many soldiers. A machine gun of an outlandish multi-barrel design stuck out of the back wall of the miracle machine and poured a hail of bullets at the enemy. Why from the back? Apparently because, according to the author of the project, a peasant of the Yenisei province Roman Ivanovich Shovkoplyas, it was impossible to stop his “bullet-walker”. Having easily overcome the enemy's fortifications, this machine will leave enemy soldiers far behind it, and this is where the machine gun will begin its work. Roman Ivanovich did not trouble himself with the issues of the arrangement of the running base and the characteristics of the engine for the “bullet-walker”, as well as the system of the infernal multi-barreled super-machine gun.

Nevertheless, even such inventions were considered, and the official conclusion of the competent commission came to the author by mail. Only in last years war GVTU shifted the costs of postal correspondence to the authors of rejected projects.

Barrel mitrailleuse "Volcano" Sukhmanov

Under the glamorous name was an ordinary lightly armored barrel, which was moved by soldiers running inside the barrel according to the “squirrel in a wheel” principle. On the sides of the barrel, loopholes were implied, from which the unfortunate on the run could conduct deadly fire. The barrel was supposed to crush the insane, and, apparently, previously immobilized enemy soldiers. It’s even scary to imagine the fate of the crew of the Vulkan mitrailleuse if it rolled down a slope ... However, even the most numerous and close-knit team would hardly be able to move a heavy barrel from its place.

Judging by the specifics of the proposed projects, the rear inventors continued to see the enemy hordes in the form of stationary tin soldiers built in even rows.

Skroznikov's ice rink

Pavel Skroznikov, a peasant from the Arkhangelsk province, proposed attacking the enemy with vehicles equipped with heavy rollers and destroying him, actually rolling him into the ground. Apparently, the inventor was sure that the German soldiers were not able to step aside from his combat “asphalt paver”. Pavel Skroznikov became one of the first authors from whom the experts of the State Higher Technical School demanded compensation for postage.

There was a project for an armored car, which, like a combine harvester, mowed down enemy infantry around it with special spinning sickles, and cut off wire obstacles with a retractable circular saw. An armored car project was also proposed for consideration, which, through special nozzles located along the perimeter of the body, spewed flames around itself. This was necessary in order to scare enemy soldiers crawling from all sides from the car ...

"Batt" Lebedenko

Standing apart in this row is the famous Lebedenko tank, also known as the Bat, also known as the Tsar Tank. The wheeled combat vehicle was a kind of old gun carriage with two huge wheels 9 meters in diameter and an armored hull 12 meters wide located between them. This monster moved by means of two autonomous Maybach engines, taken from a padded German airship. The crew of the vehicle consisted of 15 people serving two cannons and several machine guns. The design speed of the monster was supposed to be about 17 kilometers per hour.

The author of the project managed to get through to an appointment with the sovereign-emperor himself. He brought a wooden model of his car with him to the Winter Palace. The clockwork model rushed along the parquet of the palace, famously jumping over obstacles collected from volumes of books from the sovereign's library. The king was fascinated watching the tricks of the Tsar-tank. As a result, the Lebedenko project received state funding.

Quite quickly, at a secret training ground near Moscow in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe modern Orudyevo station of the Savelovsky direction, at the end of the summer of 1915, a prototype of a unique combat vehicle was created. After driving a few meters, the device got stuck in a swamp, from where even the most advanced tractors for that time could not pull it out. There he stood, overgrown with birch trees, until the mid-twenties, until he was dismantled for scrap. Until now, there are rumors that among the forests you can trace a wide track pressed into the ground ...

If Lebedenko's car had not sat down tightly in the Dmitrovsky swamps, then one could only envy the German artillerymen, who would have enjoyed honing their accuracy at such a vulnerable and extraordinary target. Nevertheless, it was the world's largest armored land combat vehicle ever built.

Epicycloid "Wallpaper"

However, a truly demonic invention can be considered the triumph of a gloomy genius: a machine-destroyer of fortresses, the epicycloid "Wallpaper" of the Lviv engineer Semchishin. His invention, born of unprecedented dilettantism and unwavering faith in the size and inexhaustibility of the Russian military budget, strikes the imagination even after a hundred years.

"Wallpaper" was a huge ellipsoid measuring 605 meters in height (the Ostankino TV tower in Moscow has a height of only 540 meters) and 900 meters in length. Moving at a cruising speed of about 300 kilometers per hour, he had to wipe out enemy fortresses, jump over rivers and mountains, while laying a convenient track for the advancement of troops. Having started on the border of the Russian Empire, the epicycloid was supposed to tamp down Berlin in a few hours.

The body of a huge egg-shaped structure was made of hardened steel with a thickness of only 100 millimeters. The machine was set in motion by means of steam engines located inside the apparatus and raising an eccentric flywheel, thanks to which the machine rolled over the ground. The crew, consisting of several hundred people, got inside through hatches located on the axis of rotation, climbing to a height of 300 meters along rope ladders (!). Apparently in the same place, on the axis of rotation, the weapons of the supergiant should have been located.

Naturally, the project of Semchishin's epicycloid was not accepted by the GSTU. At least for the simple reason that such a monster would simply collapse under its own weight during the assembly process.

Taser, dove bomb and glue gun

But the inventors of the GVTU officers were surprised not only by the scale. Thus, a project of a glue gun was submitted to the commission for consideration, which, according to the author’s intention, was supposed to fill enemy soldiers with glue until they were completely immobilized by sticking members and sticking weapons and other objects to them.

Also interesting are the stun gun of mass destruction, which was a water cannon, pouring water on the enemy’s trenches and then firing high-voltage electrodes there, and a pigeon-bomb with a fixed tail to fly only in a straight line ...

There were some really promising proposals. For example, a projectile that sprays a cloud of flour with its subsequent explosion is a prototype of a vacuum bomb, or a clockwork drone for delivering bombs to areas of fortifications inaccessible to artillery.

But there were also proposals, the implementation of which would lead, if not to the end of the world, then at least to a local catastrophe. Avdeev, an engineer from St. Petersburg, proposed to create and launch a cloud of chlorine with a diameter of 40-50 versts into the wind at the enemy ...

One way or another, but a new type of war gave rise to new ideas, and one can only rejoice that most of them have remained projects.

12.09.2017

We are all accustomed to viewing military operations from the angle of decisive events, battles, losses and victories. Many will agree that war is a negative process of mankind, which brings many unresolved problems and broken lives, but if you look at all this from a different point of view, you can see the positive aspects brought by the war.

Thus, many philosophers argue that war is an inevitable stage in the evolution of mankind, which not only allows you to regulate the population of the earth, but also brings people to the next level of technological development. After all, all technical revolutions often occur after major military conflicts and confrontations between powers. This is especially true for medicine and heavy industry. The First World War, which we will talk about today, can serve as proof of this.

quartz lamp

At the end of the war, Germany was in a deplorable state. The country did not have enough food, and the people plunged into terrible poverty. In 1918, many children in Berlin suffered from rickets. Then the doctors did not know at all how to treat this mysterious disease and did not understand its nature. It was only clear that it was somehow connected with poverty.

The German doctor Kurt Guldchinsky decided to conduct a series of experiments and treat people with ultraviolet rays. To do this, he took four children of different ages and irradiated them using quartz lamps. Over time, he managed to establish that the bone tissue of the children began to strengthen, and the body was on the mend. So it was possible to make the greatest breakthrough in medicine, overcoming another mysterious and incurable disease at that time.

During the First World War, Germany, with the help of its submarines, managed to sink thousands of Allied ships. Back then, submarines were a huge threat, as it was very difficult to track them down. Hydrophones and underwater microphones known at that time could not give clear results.

Then British scientists turned their attention to ultrasound. On its basis, an echolocation device was developed, which quite accurately set the distance to the object, which made it possible to track down submarines at long distances and fight them.

As you know, the First World War was distinguished by the particular cruelty of battles and massive mutilations of soldiers. It was this fact that led to the development of a new branch in medicine related to the elimination of defects on the body and face. The first doctor to perform such operations was the New Zealand doctor Harold Gillis. During the war, he underwent more than 5 thousand plastic surgeries, most of which were done on the face.

As for the first soldier who successfully underwent plastic surgery, he is considered to be the sailor Walter Yeo, who lost his eyelids during the battle near Jutland.

There is a myth that wrist watches began to be worn during the First World War. In fact, this way of wearing watches was known long before and was often used by women. Nevertheless, wristwatches did not take root in society and were more of an exotic decoration.

World War I contributed to the significant popularization of this accessory. The clock was of great importance, because, due to the lack of high-quality communications, it made it possible to conduct simultaneous offensives, plan and conduct military operations. Therefore, each officer had a wrist watch in his wardrobe, which freed both his hands, unlike watches on a chain, and did not interfere in battle. This turned wrist watches into a symbol of high status and led to their spread, because wearing this accessory has become a real pride.

Today one of the main materials in infrastructure modern world is undoubtedly considered stainless steel. However, few people know that it was discovered during the war years - in 1913. Then scientists struggled with a big problem, which was the deformation of the trunks under the influence of high temperatures and strong friction. It was necessary to find a material with proper resistance to such loads.

Then Harry Brearley took over the case. He conducted a lot of experiments using various alloys, most of which ended in failure. The scientist threw the test items to a landfill not far from the laboratory, but over time noticed that some of the discarded metal alloys did not succumb to corrosion, which led to the discovery of stainless steel. This did not solve the issue of sustainability, but allowed us to cope with another, no less important problem. During the war years, aircraft engines began to be made from it.

soy sausages

This product was invented by the German scientist Konrad Adenauer, who at one time was the mayor of Cologne. During the war years, the inhabitants of the city suffered from a shortage of food, which was caused by the British blockade.

The mayor worked to address this issue, experimenting with various products that could replace people's main food - bread and meat. Experiments with obtaining bread ended in failure. The mayor established that it was possible to make bread using cornmeal supplied from Romania, but soon Romania withdrew from the war and stopped making deliveries.

As for meat products, the mayor found an excellent substitute for meat, suggesting using soy instead in sausages. Then the famous "Cologne sausages" were born, which at that time were also called the "mayor's sausages". This discovery allowed the Germans to survive the blockade and cope with hunger, and has found its way into today's food industry.

The war also made a breakthrough in the textile industry. Since the 19th century, people have been working to find the fastest and easiest way to fasten clothes and shoes.

A breakthrough in this area was made by the American engineer Gideon Sundbeck, who was the main designer of the Universal Fastener Company. In 1913 he patented his discovery. The slider quickly found application in the military sphere. After that, he gradually migrated to everyday clothes.

It is known that most of the soldiers during the battles did not die from wounds inflicted by the enemy, but from blood loss. For the first time, blood transfusions began to be carried out as early as 1901, when various blood groups were discovered and systematized. Yet at that time it was done directly from the donor to the victim, which was very difficult in combat conditions.

At that time, they still did not know how to store blood in banks, and many soldiers died on the battlefield due to this problem. Then the American scientist Pentor Rose conducted a series of experiments on adding potassium citrate and dextosol to the blood, which would allow the blood not to clot. Already in 1919 in Belgium, the American military, led by Oswald Robertson, conducted the first blood transfusion from a jar. This discovery made it possible to save the lives of many soldiers, and in the future made a real revolution in medicine.

At the beginning of the war, the main negotiations between the troops were carried out using the telegraph, which is why the pilots who took off into the air were left face to face with the aircraft and could not take orders and talk to other pilots. The most they could do was shout and gesticulate to neighboring aviators. This significantly hampered the flight process and put the lives of the pilots at even greater risk.

Radio engineering in those years was in a deplorable state. The discovery of radio transmission in aviation took place in 1916, when American scientists managed to make a breakthrough in this area and equip aircraft with radio transmitters. Of course, the first communication was of poor quality and high noise level caused by the operation of the motors. However, it was this discovery that led to the development of the current air communication and made long-haul flights possible.

Today, almost no production in the world can do without a conveyor, but few know that this technology was invented during the First World War. This invention belongs to Henry Ford, who developed this method in 1910 and put it into practice in 1913.

Then the industrialist received a large military order, and in order to fulfill it on time, this method was invented. As a result, Fords became the most common military vehicles used by the Allies on the Western Front.

All these and many other discoveries demonstrate the rapid development of science and technology during military conflicts.

For Russia, the First World War actually began August 4, 1914 from the East Prussian operation, in which the Russian army won the first military victories, but already in mid-August the Russian army of General Samsonov was completely defeated in the battle of Tannenberg.

The First World War served as a serious impetus for the development of military technologies. During the war years, many military-technical inventions appeared for the mass murder of people, as well as means of protection against mass destruction ....

During the First World War, aviation first appeared on the battlefields, the first aircraft were used for reconnaissance and bombing, submarines, torpedo boats, the first tanks, flamethrowers, machine guns, mortars, anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns. In the First World War, poisonous chemicals were first used, poisonous gases - chlorine, phosgene, mustard gas, and gas masks were invented to protect against poisonous substances.

The historic drawing on a postcard from 1917 shows a propaganda portrayal of a "Gas Alarm" in the German bunker on a World War One battlefield. Chemical weapons were used during WWI. The First World War was carried out in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, East Asia and on the world's oceans from 1914-1918. Photo: Sammlung Sauer - NO WIRE SERVICE

Chemical weapon used in the war by all countries. In 1914, the French were the first to use tear gas grenades, the Germans used tear gas against Russian troops in the Battle of Bolimov.

On the night of July 12-13, 1917, in the battles near the Belgian city of Ypres, Germany used a liquid blister agent, which was called mustard gas. Anglo-French troops were fired upon by German mines containing an oily poisonous liquid known as "mustard gas" or "mustard substance". 2,490 people received blistering lesions of varying severity, 87 of them died.

The Russians used chemical weapons for the first time against the Germans during the offensive on March 22-30, 1916 of the Northern and Western Fronts in the area of ​​​​Dvinsk and Lake Naroch - Lake Vishnevskoye, where the Russian army suffered heavy losses - about 80 thousand killed, wounded and maimed soldiers and officers. Thanks to the March offensive of the Russian army, German attacks on the French front near Verdun stopped from March 22 to 30, and Germany transferred additional troops to the Russian front.

The writer Alexander Moritz Frei, who served in the First World War in the same regiment with Corporal Adolf Schicklgruber (Hitler), said that the future Fuhrer wore a rather magnificent mustache, like the German Emperor Wilhelm II. However, on the orders of the commander, Adolf had to shave off his mustache, as they prevented him from properly putting on a gas mask.

First tanks

The Russian government ordered from England a batch of tanks (tank) for drinking water, under the guise of tanks, by rail, trains transported the first tanks to the front, which Russian soldiers called " tubs».

The designers of the first tanks gravitated towards gigantomania. Military self-propelled vehicles of the First World War were much larger than the tanks of the Second World War. Russian engineer Lebedenko designed the tsar tank - an armored fighting vehicle with wheels 9 meters in diameter, armed with machine guns and cannons, but due to obvious defects in the design, the tank elm in the ground was not in battles, but stood at the test site, and in 1923 it dismantled for scrap.

The first military aviation.

The First World War made aviation a full-fledged branch of the military. The first reconnaissance aircraft, fighters and bombers appeared. The real legend of the "German" war was the "Ilya Muromets" - a Russian heavy aircraft that the Germans could not shoot down for a year and a half.

There were legends about the super-armor covering the Ilya Muromets, but the reason for the "resilience and invulnerability" of the aircraft was hidden in a successful design, and not a miracle armor. At the end of 1916, a group of German fighters attacked the lone Ilya Muromets for more than an hour, but the Germans could not bring it down.

In the end, the Russian aircraft made an emergency landing, as 3 out of 4 engines failed, the aircraft received more than 300 holes, the ammunition in machine-gun belts and cartridges in regular Mausers ran out.

The aviators of the First World War carried out manual bombing, throwing bombs from the open cockpit, which was not safe for the pilot himself.

In the First World War, aviators developed new designs of zeppelins, airships, light aircraft, the first simulators for training pilots and snipers.

Military engineers and designers have developed new technical means of assisting aviation on the water. A light aircraft could board a warship for refueling, replenishment of ammunition, and take off successfully to continue the battle.

Strong searchlights were used to detect aircraft in the sky at night or during heavy cloud cover,

as well as special "hearing devices" that detect the operation of aircraft engines.

Military submarine. Russian "Panther"

In the "German" war, the first ineffective steps were taken by the military submarine fleet. By the beginning of World War I, Russia had 22 submarines. Throughout the war, not a single submarine sank even a fishing boat, but dozens of crews of submariners died during the operation of the submarines. The Russian submarine "Panther", built in 1916, became the only submarine in the world that participated in three wars: the First World War (or "imperialist"), the Civil War and the Great Patriotic War.

In July 2015, Swedish divers discovered a sunken Russian submarine with Cyrillic inscriptions on board off the east coast of Sweden at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. The Russian submarine is 20 meters long and no more than 3.5 meters wide. Swedish expert is convinced that the discovered submarine is a submarine Som", sunken May 10, 1916 in the Baltic Sea in a collision with the Swedish steamer Ingermanland. Seven submarines of this series, modeled on the American submarine "Fulton", were built at the Nevsky Shipyard in 1904-1906 and were used for reconnaissance and patrolling the Baltic Sea during the First World War.

Railway transport.

at the beginning of the 20th century, railway construction in the Russian Empire was quite active, from 1900 to 1904 8222 versts of railways were built, from 1905 to 1909 - about 6000 versts of the railway track.

In the pre-war period, railway transport in Russia was treated as a purely commercial enterprise - it was required to ensure maximum income while reducing costs in every possible way, and in 1910-1913 only 3466 miles of railways were built.

The Russian Empire entered the war with a railway network consisting of 38 railways providing transport links with a total length of 71,542 km. Of these, 24 railways (47,861 km) belonged to the state, and 14 railways (23,681 km) belonged to private companies.

10,762 km of railway tracks were under construction. Before the outbreak of the First World War, the construction of railways was carried out more intensively by private companies; by the summer of 1913, private companies had built about 7877 km of railways, while 2885 km were built at the expense of the state.

In terms of the level of development, the railway transport of Russia lagged significantly behind the railway transport of Germany, and this lag became threatening to the interests of the empire.

During the First World War, railway transport was required to ensure the continuous operation of the front and rear railways; for this, all the forces and resources of the Russian Empire were mobilized.

In 1914, from the side of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 32 railway lines approached the Russian border, of which 14 were double-track railways, and only 13 railway lines went to the border from the Russian side, of which only 8 lines were double-track.

Machine guns, cannons, artillery.

During the First World War, the machine guns of the British gunsmith Hiram Stevens Maxim were called the "infernal mower". Maxim created the first machine gun in 1883, it was a very reliable, simple and durable weapon, working on a very simple system.

The Tula gunsmiths Tretyakov and Pastukhov, having familiarized themselves with the production of machine guns in England in 1905, conducted extensive design and technological research at the Tula Arms Plant "Tula Arsenal", and significantly reworked and largely improved the design of "Maxim". Russian designers changed the design of many parts of the machine gun and in 1908 began to use new-style cartridges with a pointed bullet.

In 1908-10, the Russian designer Sokolov and the Tula engineer Zakharov created a very successful mobile, maneuverable infantry wheeled machine and machine gun, significantly reducing total weight guns up to 20 kg. The machine gun, modernized by Tula gunsmiths, was adopted in 1910 by the Russian army under the official name "7.62-mm easel machine gun".

Animals at war.

Not only mechanisms were sent to serve in the army. The first attempts were made to combat training of animals. The famous trainer Vladimir Durov in 1915 suggested using seals to search for mines. In total, he managed to train 20 animals, but all the animals were poisoned, according to contemporaries, German agents intelligence.

Horses remained the main draft force on the roads of the First World War. On the eve of the First World War, the Russian guards cavalry was reinforced and performed well prepared. Every war brings unforeseen surprises that were difficult to guess in peacetime.

At the beginning of the war, it turned out that the times of dashing cavalry attacks had receded into the realm of legend. A cavalryman with a pike or saber was powerless against the massive fire of a machine gun, cannon, and artillery. A cavalryman with a gun was also an unsuitable fighter, since he was a good target for shooting, while he himself remained a poorly shooting rider. The battle on foot prevailed, on cavalry attacks.

Pigeons have also been successfully trained for aerial photography. The first patent for a miniature pigeon camera with good image quality was received in 1908 by the inventor Julius Neubronner (German), but in the First world war aerial photography with pigeons was not widely used.

On board the submarine and in the trenches of the First World War, one could often meet cats, which were detectors for the soldiers to control the purity of the air and warned of the next gas attack.

In the First World War, trained sanitary dogs were used as medical assistants, scouts, messengers, telegraph wire layers, to ensure communication.

The dogs carried the cap of the wounded soldier to the medical battalion and brought orderlies to provide first aid, the dogs delivered orders to the front line in capsules attached to the body.

Military curiosities.

Enigma(from other Greek αἴνιγμα - a riddle; English Enigma) - a disk encryption machine during the Second World War, the mechanism is based on disks with 26 resoldering. The first mention of enigma dates back to 1918, and the most widespread enigma was in Nazi Germany "Wehrmacht Enigma" (Wehrmacht Enigma). In the 1920s, a whole family of electromechanical machines was created that were used to encrypt and decrypt secret messages. The cryptanalyst of the Anti-Hitler Coalition was able to decipher a large number of messages encrypted with Enigma. Especially for these purposes, a machine was created with the code name "Bomb".

In addition to successful military developments, curious inventions appeared in the armies of war participants. Skis for crossing water barriers, combat catamarans were practically not used in the army.

The Germans invented heavy armor transformers in which it was difficult to move, in addition, the armor easily shot through machine gun bullets.

Trench armor against bullets and shrapnel, body armor, armored vehicles, mobile barricades, caterpillar tractors, etc. There were even funny inventions - a bomb-throwing machine, a slingshot, etc. Articles

Able to turn into a tank. But this is not the only example of strange military ammunition from the First World War. Soldiers sometimes came up with ideas, some of which they put into practice right at the front. But there were other military inventions that were supposed to change the course of hostilities.

French trench armor against bullets and shrapnel. 1915

Sappenpanzer appeared on the Western Front in 1916. In June 1917, after capturing some German body armor, the Allies conducted research. According to these documents, the German body armor can stop a rifle bullet at a distance of 500 meters, but its main purpose is against shrapnel and shrapnel. The vest can be hung both on the back and on the chest. The first samples assembled were found to be less heavy than later ones, with an initial thickness of 2.3 mm. The material is an alloy of steel with silicon and nickel.

Such a mask was worn by the commander and driver of the English Mark I to protect their faces from shrapnel.

Barricade.

German soldiers try on the captured Russian "mobile barricade".

Mobile infantry shield (France).

Experimental helmets for machine gunners. USA, 1918.

USA. Protection for bomber pilots. Armored pants.

Various options for armored shields for police officers from Detroit.

An Austrian trench shield that could be worn as a breastplate.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from Japan.

Armored shield for orderlies.

Individual armor protection with the uncomplicated name "Turtle". As far as I understand, this thing did not have a “sex” and the fighter himself moved it.

Shovel-shield McAdam, Canada, 1916. Dual use was supposed: both as a shovel and a shooting shield. It was ordered by the Canadian government in a series of 22,000 pieces. As a result, the device was uncomfortable as a shovel, uncomfortable due to the too low location of the loophole as a rifle shield, and was pierced through by rifle bullets. After the war melted down as scrap metal

I could not pass by such a wonderful stroller (though already post-war). UK, 1938

And finally, "an armored cubicle of a public toilet - pepelats." Armored observation post. United Kingdom.

It's not enough to sit behind a shield. To "pick out" the enemy from behind the shield with what? And here “the need (soldiers) are cunning for inventions ... Quite exotic means were used.

French bomber. Medieval technology is in demand again.

Well, sovseeem ... slingshot!

But they had to be moved somehow. Here the engineering and technical genius and production capacities again entered into operation.

An urgent and rather stupid reworking of any self-propelled mechanism sometimes gave rise to amazing creations.

On April 24, 1916, an anti-government uprising broke out in Dublin (Easter Rising - Easter Rising) and the British needed at least some armored vehicles to move troops along the shelled streets.

On April 26, in just 10 hours, specialists from the 3rd Reserve Cavalry Regiment, using the equipment of the workshops of the Southern Railway in Inchicore, were able to assemble an armored car from an ordinary commercial 3-ton Daimler truck chassis and ... a steam boiler. Both the chassis and the boiler were delivered from the Guinness Brewery

You can write a separate article about armored railcars, so I’ll just limit myself to one photo for a general idea.

And this is an example of the banal hanging of steel shields on the sides of a truck for military purposes.

Danish "armored car", based on the Gideon 2 T 1917 truck with plywood armor(!).

Another French craft (in this case in the service of Belgium) is the Peugeot armored car. Again, without protection for the driver, engine, and even the rest of the crew in front.

And how do you like this "aerotachanka" from 1915?

Or like this...

1915 Sizaire-Berwick "Wind Wagon". Death to the enemy (from diarrhea), the infantry will blow away.

Later, after WW1, the idea of ​​an air cart did not die out, but was developed and in demand (especially in the snowy expanses of the north of the USSR).

The snowmobile had a frameless closed hull made of wood, the front of which was protected by a sheet of bulletproof armor. In front of the hull there was a control compartment, in which the driver was located. To observe the road in the front panel there was a viewing slot with a glass block from the BA-20 armored car. Behind the control compartment was the fighting compartment, in which a 7.62-mm DT tank machine gun was mounted on a turret, equipped with a light shield cover. Machine gun fire was fired by the commander of the snowmobile. The horizontal angle of fire was 300°, vertical - from -14 to 40°. Machine gun ammunition consisted of 1000 rounds.

By August 1915, two officers of the Austro-Hungarian army - Hauptmann engineer Romanik and Oberleutnant Fellner in Budapest designed just such a glamorous armored car, presumably based on a Mercedes car with a 95 horsepower engine. It was named after the first letters of the names of the creators of Romfell. Reservation 6 mm. It was armed with one Schwarzlose M07 / 12 8 mm machine gun (3000 rounds of ammunition) in the turret, which could, in principle, be used against air targets. The car was radio-equipped with a Morse code telegraph from Siemens & Halske. The speed of the device is up to 26 km / h. Weight 3 tons, length 5.67 m, width 1.8 m, height 2.48 m. Crew 2 people.

And Mironov liked this monster so much that I would not deny myself the pleasure of showing it again. In June 1915, the production of the Marienwagen tractor began at the Daimler plant in Berlin-Marienfelde. This tractor was produced in several versions: semi-tracked, fully tracked, although their base was a 4-ton Daimler tractor.

To break through the fields, entangled with barbed wire, they came up with just such a hay wire mower.

On June 30, 1915, another of the prototypes was assembled in the courtyard of the London prison "Wormwood Scrubs" by soldiers of the 20th Squadron of the Royal Naval Aviation School. As a basis, the chassis of the American Killen-Straight tractor with wooden tracks in caterpillars was taken.

In July, an armored hull from the Delano-Belleville armored car was experimentally installed on it, then a hull from the Austin and a turret from the Lanchester.

Tank FROT-TURMEL-LAFFLY, a wheeled tank built on the chassis of the Laffly road roller. Protected by 7 mm armor, weighs about 4 tons, armed with two 8 mm machine guns and a mitrailleuse of unknown type and caliber. By the way, the armament in the photograph is much stronger than stated - apparently the “holes for the gun” were cut with a margin.

The exotic shape of the hull is due to the fact that the idea of ​​​​the designer (the same Mr. Frot), the machine was intended to attack wire barriers, which the machine had to crush with its hull - after all, monstrous wire barriers, along with machine guns, were one of the main problems for the infantry.

The French had a brilliant idea - to use small-caliber guns firing grappling hooks to overcome enemy wire obstacles. The photo shows the calculations of such guns.

Well, as soon as they didn’t bully motorcycles, trying to adapt them to military operations ...

Mototachanka on a Motosacoche trailer.

Another one.

Field Ambulance.

Fuel delivery.

Three-wheeled armored motorcycle designed for reconnaissance tasks, especially for narrow roads.

More entertaining than this - only the "caterpillar boat Grillo"! Just to drive alligators on the swampy shores of the Adriatic, firing torpedoes ... In fact, he participated in sabotage operations, was shot while trying to sink the battleship Viribus Unitis. Due to the noiseless electric motor, he made his way to the port at night and, using caterpillars, got over the protecting booms. But in the port it was noticed by guards and flooded.

Their displacement was 10 tons, armament - four 450-mm torpedoes.

But to overcome water barriers individually, other means have been developed. For example, such as:

Combat water skis.

Combat catamaran.

Fighting stilts

But this is R2D2. Self-propelled firing point on electric traction. Behind her, a “tail” cable dragged across the entire battlefield.

Inventions are made at the front not from a good life - the rear inventors and designers did not have time or forgot to invent this or that useful thing even before the war, the soldiers themselves have to get down to business. And in the rear during hostilities, design thought is also in full swing - war is the engine of progress.

As a result, numerous interesting devices and projects are born. Some of them are quite functional, some are even ahead of their time, and some belong to the category of curiosities. But they all end up on the pages of the military press - they are used for propaganda purposes. We bring to your attention a selection of funny military inventions from the pages of newspapers and magazines during the First World War.

As they write in the comments to this material, this is an aircraft simulator

And this is a more useful thing. They tried to use such things in all the armies participating in that war. But for some reason they didn't stick.

French bomber. Medieval technology is in demand again

And another French trench catapult

Armored Observer. Attempts to create a body armor that is effective and suitable for mass production did not stop in many armies during the First World War. But, alas, serial body armor appeared much later.

French armored tricycle. The first step towards blitzkrieg. The signature says that this miracle of technology has shown itself well in intelligence. But where exactly it fought - we do not know.

German snowmobile with a propeller. A little later, similar machines appeared in service with the Red Army.

And again the ancient technology of overcoming water obstacles

Combat catamaran

Combat water skiing

The French had a brilliant idea - to use small-caliber guns firing grappling hooks to overcome enemy wire obstacles. In the photo - calculations of such guns

The picture shows boarding guns in action.

Single-seat crawling tank. The only member of the crew along the way plays the role of the engine.

Approximately the same car for orderlies

Movable steel shield for shooters

Larger version of this shield

Amphibious car for the Austrian army

Radium was used until the 1970s to create luminous paints. An American inventor proposes to use such paints on the front line.

What you can’t think of, just not to freeze

Well, a very simple invention - an ordinary slingshot, only a big one.