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4. War in the Air and on the Sea
From Canadian History Portal - HCO
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Technology Ends Trench Warfare
Contents |
World War One was the last war in which trenches were one of the principal techniques used in fighting. Given the carnage that trench warfare caused, it is not surprising that they have not been used in any of the dozens of wars that followed 'the war to end all wars.'
Old fashioned 19th century military strategy appeared to demand trench warfare. The geography and the terrain seemed to dictate them. The weather only made them that much more insufferable. But it was only towards the end of the war, especially with the use of the tank, first used at the Battle of the Somme, that trenches began slowly to grow out of favour.
Both sides believed that trenches offered the optimal way to protect their gains and their men. Trenches were also supposed to offer staging points for launching lightning strikes against the enemy. However, with the rapid introduction of barbed wire along the top of the trenches, such attacks were few and far between. Rather than being a dynamic strategy, trenches proved to be a highly static one.
While barbed wire made trench warfare obsolete, new weapons of war also began to change the thinking of the use of trenches. First, the Germans began to use chemical warfare, with a chlorine gas attack at the Battle of Ypres in 1915.
Motorized Warfare
On Sept 11, 1915, at Aldershot, England, the first prototype tank, then called a landship, was demonstrated to the British Army. Little Willie, an armoured tracked vehicle with a Daimler engine, had track frames 4 m long, weighed 14 tons and could carry a crew of three, at just over 5 kph. The speed dropped to less than 3 kph over rough ground and the vehicle was unable to cross broad trenches. Two British colonels, Ernest Swinton and Maurice Hankey, became convinced that "petrol tractors on the caterpillar principle and armoured with hardened steel plates would be able to counteract German machine-gunners in Flanders.
Swinton's proposals were rejected by General Sir John French and his scientific advisers, but Hankey took the idea to Winston Churchill, the navy minister, who set up a Landships Committee to look in more detail at the proposal. Constructed in great secrecy by William Foster & Co., the three-man armored vehicles, impervious to machine gun fire, and able to cross 'no man's land', scale trenches and attack the enemy, were given the code-name "tanks" by Swinton.
On Sept 15, 1916, at Flers-Courcellette, France, the first Little Willies were sent into action as part of the allied offensive at the Battle of the Somme. The first tanks were rudimentary and slow at the best of times. In the muddy season, they often got stuck and had to be abandoned. However, as design improved, these motorized vehicles, pointed to the demise of the trenches.
British tanks made their first authoritative appearance at the Battle of Cambrai in 1917, when General Sir Julian Byng, commander of the Third Army, sent a strike force of 476 tanks, six infantry and two cavalry divisions under General Elles at dawn on dry ground along a 10 km front against the German line between the Canal du Nord and the St Quentin Canal.
Winged Warfare
The third factor that spelled the end of trench warfare was the airplane. When war broke out, the plane was a totally new and unproven invention. Hardly any military commanders expressed any confidence in the flying machine. The earliest planes were exceedingly primitive. They were usually single-seater biplanes that had a maximum speed of about 100 km/hour and could only remain airborne an hour without having to refuel.
At the start of the War, planes were thought of little more than novelties. Commanders reluctantly used them to observe enemy movements and works, replacing observation balloons that were easily shot down. Planes easily took photographs of troops and their movements as well as the trenches and terrain. Soon, they were also used to drop grenades and bombs on the enemy.
Military commanders, even those wedded to nineteenth century tactics, soon realized the devastating effect that planes could have within the context of the static fighting of the trenches. By 1915, planes became armed with machine guns. The problem was that the technology had not advanced far enough as early pilots would shoot themselves out of the sky whenever they fired their machine gun. The invention of the interrupter gear, which synchronized the firing of the machine with the propeller blades, eliminated that problem.
Germany appeared to have the opening advantage in the aerial war. Its 400 planes were more than twice as many as the combined British and French force. In addition, the German-designed Fokker was considered much superior to what the Allies could produce. It was not until 1917 that the Allied Sopwith Camel could really effectively compete with the Fokker. The Germans also had a fleet of airships called Zeppelins or dirigibles that were used for scouting and bombing.
The Canadian Aces
World War One was the first military encounter in which planes were used. Being a relatively new invention, they were very primitive and in fact, hundreds of fighter pilots died in training rather than in actual combat. The men who piloted these single-engine machines were considered lords of the air. They developed their own mystique and camaraderie. They had to as dueling in dogfights over enemy fire without parachutes meant a hazardous existence at best.
The captains of the newly conquered skies appeared to be a breed alone as they introduced a new form of fighting to war. They were the intrepid and fearless elite who flew high above the muck and mire of the trenches below. To outsiders, theirs appeared to be a glamorous and exciting life. However, it was a very short life, far too often. Since parachutes were not in widespread use until near the end of the war, many pilots died horrific deaths inside their flaming cockpits.
Life expectancy of pilots was very brief indeed. One-third of all fliers died in combat, many in their early missions. Casualties included 1,600 Canadians.
Any pilot who survived long enough to shoot down five or more enemy planes was given the coveted title, 'ace.'
Since Canada did not yet have its own air force, Canadian pilots flew with the British Royal Flying Corps. Yet Canada produced more and better pilots than any other country.
Over 40% of the 'British' knights of the air were Canadian. Of the top 27 'British' aces, ten of them were Canadian. The top Canadian aces were Billy Bishop, Will Barker, Roy Brown, and Raymond Collishaw. Billy Bishop from Owen Sound, Ontario, had a reputation for being both fearless and reckless. He shot down an astounding 72 enemy planes in 'dog fights' (aerial combat between two enemy planes), was the top British air ace, and third overall among the combatants.
Will Barker of Dauphin, Manitoba, was called 'Billy' by contemporary newspapers for the parallel with Bishop as well as the alliteration. He too was absolutely courageous and intrepid, once taking on an entire German flying formation single-handedly. Barker was Canada's most decorated war hero as he also received the Victoria Cross.
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In addition, Canadian Roy Brown is credited with shooting down German's greatest air ace, Baron Manfred von Richtoffen, 'the Red Baron' who was at the time in pursuit of another Canadian, Wilfred ("Wop") May. Although Australian ground gunners claim to have shot down the great German ace with 80 kills to his credit, it was Brown who was given official credit. Raymond Collishaw with 60 enemy planes shot down, was Britain's fifth highest ranking air ace.
In all, nearly 25 000 Canadians served with the British Royal Air Corps as pilots, mechanics, and spotters. They captured more than 800 decorations and awards, including three Victoria Crosses.
The War at Sea
The Canadian Navy at the start of the war was little more than a wish. Canada's naval force consisted of only two ships, the Rainbow and the Niobe, and fewer than 350 men. However, through a vigorous and well funded campaign, by the last year of the war, 1918, those numbers had grown to 112 warships and 9 000 men, respectively. All the ships were under the command of a British Royal Navy Officer. The Canadian Naval Reserve performed minesweeping operations. The Naval Reserve, along with the larger Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve's main duty was to protect Canada's eastern and western coastlines, especially being on the lookout for German submarines. Some Canadians did join the British Royal Navy and saw active naval combat duty.
Overall, the war at sea, while consequential, was arguably the least significant of the World War theatres. During the early war years, British and German naval forces did not engage one another in open warfare. There was only one major naval engagement, at Jutland, off the coast of Denmark. In that lone naval battle, the British suffered heavy losses, but at the same time, much of the German fleet remained bottled up in port.
The actual naval war consisted chiefly of the British effort to strangle and circumvent the attempted German blockade by which Germany sought to cut off Britain's source of food and war material.
The U-boat Menace
All that changed in 1915, when Germany introduced submarine warfare on a massive scale. Submarines had been developed in the mid-1850s during the US Civil War, but World War I marked the first time they were used as a major weapon. The German undersea U-boats (from the German word 'Unterseebooten') quickly became a menace to the Allies, sinking scores of merchant vessels and warships.
With a crew of 35 and a payload of a dozen torpedoes, the U-boats could stay submerged for two and a half hours. Those torpedoes could be fired underwater at moving targets. Typically, the submarine would surface, show its flag, and then fire upon enemy ships. However, at the end of January 1917, Germany passed the Pless Amendment, which called for 'unrestricted submarine warfare.' Germans submarines would now stay submerged and fire from that undetected position, a strategy considered almost immoral at the time. (It also contradicted an earlier 1915 German pledge to the United States not to sink ships without warning.) Prior to this, the naval custom was that any vessel, including the new submarines, had to show itself and its flag, and only after having done that, could it fire on the enemy. To remain hidden or submerged was considered immoral and a contravention of the rules of the sea.
Germany realized that if they had any chance at victory, it would have to be achieved quickly, before the United States entered the fray. It was a spectacular gamble. The German high command was convinced that using unrestricted submarine warfare, they could starve out Britain within five months, even as they were prepared to risk the American entry into the war. Even before the passage of the Amendment, the Germans were wrecking havoc with Allied shipping, sinking an average of 160 ships a month.
Great Britain and her European allies depended heavily on imported supplies. German submarines did everything to disrupt those supply lines. By 1918, German U-boats had sunk over 6 million tonnes of British merchant shipping.
The British and their allies employed convoy ship systems with accompanying warships to minimize the losses of merchant shipping. The battleships, traveling in front of the merchant vessels, were supposed to spot the submarines by detecting their periscopes and then attack them with mines. Britain also built additional warships and their own submarines, as well as leasing destroyers from the United States.
The Sinking of the Lusitania
Ironically, it was the U-boat that turned the course of the war; but not in favour of Germany. In early April 1917, the Cunard luxury liner, the Lusitania, was to sail from Southampton to New York. The German Embassy in Washington took out advertisements in British and American newspapers warning passengers that anyone traveling on ships carrying a British flag did so at their own risk. As Germans had instituted their 'unrestricted submarine warfare', even such passenger liners were at risk.
On April 6th, at 2:15pm, off the south coast of Ireland, German Navy Kapitanleutnant Walther Schwieger of the submarine U-20 submerged and aimed a torpedo at the Lusitania on the starboard side between the third and fourth funnel. The ship, making its return trip from New York to Liverpool, sank in only 20 minutes, killing 1,198 passengers and crew out of 1,959 aboard; she was carrying about 4,000 cases of small arms and ammunition from the US.
While almost two thousand people were killed, it was the 128 American lives lost that galvanized the United States into entering World War I, although not for another year. The act decisively shifted US opinion against Germany. Although the German Kaiser called a halt to unrestricted submarine warfare in British waters, it was a mistake that would ultimately cost Germany victory in World War I.
The United States Enters the War
U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, like the majority of his countrymen, morally supported the Allied side. However, again like most Americans, he wanted to keep his nation out of the fighting. He simply wanted to remain neutral as well as to go on trading.
Three events forced Wilson's hand: the Pless Amendment calling for 'unrestricted submarine warfare,' the brutal sinking of the 'Lusitania', which outraged the American public, and finally the secret 'Zimmerman Telegram,' sent by the German ambassador to the United States but intercepted by the Allies. Zimmerman suggested that Germany would support the Mexicans if they attacked the United States in an effort to regain lost territory.
President Wilson was sanguine in taking his nation into the conflict. He was well aware that it would bring irrevocable change. But he was convinced that it was demanded by the circumstances. Still in his War Declaration to Congress, he promoted American entrance as a righteous and moral crusade. This war that the United States was now entering would be "the war to end all wars" and the "war to make the world safe for democracy."
Prior to 1917, Wilson and most Americans supported the Triple Entente. However, other than some minor shipments of war material from the United States to members of the Triple Entente, little of substance was actually done. However, after 1917, with the United States fighting directly on the Allied side, the tide began to turn in the Allies' favour. American troops played an important role in several major engagements on the Western Front in the second half of 1917 and throughout 1918.
The previous year's major offensives at Verdun and the Somme produced almost two million casualties. Nevertheless, in spite of these horrendous losses, the Allied high command, early in 1917, decided to launch another offensive in order to achieve that ever-elusive breakthrough. This time the plans called for a major attack in the south between Reims and Soissons, in conjunction with a British diversionary attack around Arras. Meanwhile, the Germans fortified themselves behind the massively powerful Hindenburg Line.
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