Tag Archives: WWI

WWI

The Granatenwerfer or Grenade Thrower

Granatenwerfer Grenade Thrower

Granatenwerfer

War seems to bring out some of the strangest inventions known to man. In this case the Granatenwerfer which translates to “grenade thrower.” The device was developed for the Austro-Hungarian military by a priest and was used by the German army during WWI.  It could throw a grenade further than a person, but did not have the range that mortars would have. It served as a middle ground solution that was a product of its time.

Specifications

The Granatenwerfer itself weighed about 31lbs and came with a solid base plate that weighed in at 48lbs. Those weights meant that it could be easily carried by one or two people and assembled in place. It was capable of throwing a 14oz grenade to a maximum of 330 yards. With practice it could fire 4 to 5 projectiles a minute!

The grenade itself was designed to slip onto the launch tube and contained a “blank” rifle cartridge ( a normal round with the bullet removed) which it used as the propellant. A pull of a lanyard fired the unit. When the projectile exploded it could spread shrapnel over about a 30 meter radius. It could be fired effectively directly at a target, or indirectly (lobbed into trenches and such).

The Pigeon

To the French, the Granatenwerfer round made a very distinctive warbling sound when the round was in the air. Because of this the French referred to the grenades as pigeons. That distinctive sound came into play for the Germans later in the war.  Due to the short-range of the weapons it was hard to use them during full on assaults. By the time the grenades launched, the advancing Germans would have caught up to them. This put them in danger of getting into the blast range.

Knowing the enemy would likely go to ground when they fired with their distinctive sound, they would remove the explosives from the grenades. This gave them the advantage of advancing without worry of their own bombs, but also knowing the enemy would have their head down!

 

 

Interwar Years

Remember When We Occupied Russia?

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(Sorry for the dark picture.)

After the end of WWI the United States struggled to find its place in the world. Still largely an isolationist nation, we had come out of our shell in a major way by sending troops to the fields of France. The Entente powers ended up winning the war against Germany, but something more interesting was happening in Russia which would test America’s new role in the world.

In October 1917 the communist forces came to power in Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution and immediately signed a treaty with Germany. This freed up many resources for the Germans and placed the outcome of the war in doubt. Russia was gripped in a terrible civil war as the Bolsheviks and Tsarists battled for the soul of their country.

The Allies had other issues besides the massive reinforcements the Germans were looking to throw their way. First off they had spent a lot of money and sent a lot of supplies to the Russians during the war, and no one wanted any of that to fall into the hands of the Communists. Second, all 50,000 Czechoslovakian troops were stuck in Russia, and were being attacked. They had one way out and that was through Vladivostok in Siberia. So the allies had to do something and the decision was made to intervene in the Russian Civil War on the side of the Tsar. England and France were tapped out for resources, so it was decided the US would lead the way.

In July 1918 President Wilson ordered 5,000 men to North Russia (The Polar Bear Expedition) and 10,000 to Siberia (The Siberian Expedition) with the mission to secure whatever war materials they could from the communists, and to help facilitate the evacuation of the Czech troops. As part of the expedition Imperial Japan occupied part of Siberia and China sent several thousand troops. The occupation ended in June 1920 when the Allies felt they had accomplished their goals, the Japanese however stayed untill​ 1922.

The uniform in the picture belonged to First Lieutenant Verner C. Aurell of the 27th Infantry Regiment, “The Wolfhounds” served in the expedition until April 1920. A very interesting artifact from the time the US invaded, and occupied Russia.

 

 

 

 

 

Interwar Years

The Five Power Treaty of 1922

 

In the aftermath of WWI, the world was tired of war. Millions had died for reasons that most people didn’t understand. Secret treaties and insane military build ups were seen as part of the problem, so in the wake of the war a massive demobilization was undertaken. A move was also made to limit the size of each nation’s military. Take away the toys, and no one would want to play. The Washington Treaty, also called the Five Power Treaty, of which the picture above present an actual copy, was designed to limit the size of the Navies of the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan.

Signed in 1922 the treaty set a strict tonnage (displacement) limit for the navy of each power. That tonnage would be counted against their battleships, battle cruisers and aircraft carries based on certain ratios. While much time is spent discussing the actual ratios of the allowed tonnage, the important thing to note is that the US and Great Britain were allowed much more tonnage than Japan and far more than France and Italy.

For the US and Britain the allowance was 525,000 tons for capital ships (battleships and cruisers) and 135,000 tons for Aircraft carriers. With the average displacement of a capital ship at 35,000 tons that would limit each to about 15 capital ships. Aircraft carriers at 27,000 tons would allow for 5. A drastic reduction indeed.

Japan was allowed 315,000 and 8,100 tons (9 and 3).

France and Italy came in at 175,000 and 60,000 (5 and 2-ish).

Size and amount of guns on each ship we also limited as well as a ten-year moratorium being placed on new construction.

Like most treaties that came  out of the Great War, this one left everyone, let’s just say “grumpy”. With the world spinning towards the next great war, Japan realized that the treaty left them incredibly behind the other US and Britain in the Pacific and in 1934 the announced they were pulling out of the treaty. In 1936 the treaty was not renewed.

Japan always felt like the little brother to the West in modern times, they way their contributions in WWI were overlooked, and their subordinate position in this treaty simply brought them to the point where conflict would become inevitable.

Aren’t treaties wonderful things?

 

 

WWI

The Spad

WWI saw the advent of many aspects of war that we take for granted nowadays. Tanks, chemical weapons, machine guns and airplanes. For almost one hundred years now these have been part of most conflicts on the globe. The picture is a replica of one of the models that the Allies used. The Americans started using them in late 1917 and the model continued in use for various countries well in to the 1920’s.

The Spad S.VII pictured has a basic bi-plane design, the combination of the wings set low to give the aircraft maximum lift and stability, while giving the pilot the most possible visibility. The body was cloth and wood, powered by a V8 automobile engine that could get it up to about 140 MPH. Not much by today’s standards but that was literally flying back then.

The Spad was armed with a single .303 Vickers machine gun that was synced to be able to fire through the propeller. The gun was mounted on top of the engine compartment and placed so that pilot would be able to clear jams without much difficulty, as they were prone to occur.

Armed with 189 of these fighters, the United States Amer Air Service began it mission in Germany, using some of these planes as front line units, but alas as trainers for the new version that was to be released shortly.

Even though they came late to the fight, tools such as the Spad VII were among those used by the US to turn the tide of the war, or at least break the tie, depending on who you ask.

 

 

 

Book Reviews

Book Review: Doughboys, the Great War, and the Remaking of America

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Doughboys, the Great War, and the Remaking of America

 

Doughboys, the Great War, and the Remaking of America, written by Jennifer Keene can best be described as a social history of the American citizen soldiers that fought in the Great War. The focus is mainly on the men drafted and how the military had to deal with the influx of hundreds of thousands of these citizens and convert them into soldiers. Several aspects of the issues were addressed in the book: training, discipline, race relations, and demobilizing the new soldiers.

With war looming on the horizon the American military was faced with the specter of having to increase their standing army and navy a dozen times over. A mobilization that reached deep into the various levels of American society. The author goes into the great detail of the methods used to raise and train this army, issues that were complicated by the uniquely American idea of the “citizen soldier”. Who would be in the army, who would lead the army and what role would the National Guard play.

Once the new soldiers were in the military they were difficult to discipline, many did not understand the new military life they had entered and many more were foreigners. Many of the traditional punishments for military crimes did not seem to faze the new soldiers and this caused many changes in the way that discipline was handed out.

The author deals with the issue of race in the military in a frank and honest manner. This issue is one that would haunt the military all the way from the stateside training camps to the frontlines of the war. An interesting aspect that is dealt with is how the colored soldiers found some kind of equality among the French countryside, something they could never find at home.

Desperate to avoid the mistakes of the Civil War, the issue of how best to demobilize the troops back into civilian lives came to the forefront. At this point politics and Spanish Flu complicate the issues, all well sorted in the end.

The author takes all these issues and rolls them together under the premise that the Military treaded carefully with all of these issues in the hopes that after the war the soldiers would become a powerful lobbying group, designed to support military appropriations bills. As a method of achieving this goal the Military constantly tried to stay informed of what their soldiers were thinking by clandestine operations against their own troops. The information gathered from the troops shaped and molded policy in a way that individual soldiers had never done before.

Where I feel the author wanders from their point was towards the end when the formation of the various Veteran societies became intertwined with the various labor interests. It is here that the authors own politics seep into the writing and ruin what is an otherwise solid social history of that generation.

At the time this book was written Jennifer Keene was an assistant professor of history at the University of Redlands in Redlands, California.