War of airplanes and giant submarines. Trade routes and cities defenseless under their onslaught. After the end of the First World War, the world had a presentiment that the next war would be a more terrible massacre, and predictions of what it would look like tried to stop it. Did not help. But 90 years ago they guessed exactly about the dominance of aviation and navy.
The world, and with it the war, at the beginning of the twentieth century was changing with a terrifying speed that strikes us even today, in an age of more advanced scientific and technological progress. The Anglo-Boer and Russo-Japanese wars were perhaps the last to be fought without motorized formations. Already 10-15 years later, tanks and airplanes appeared on the battlefield, and the trenches were filled with mustard gas. The First World War determined the type of war for the next 20-30 years, but even then the developed world understood that scientific and technological progress would not stop at these innovations.
Military experts immediately after the end of WWI began to make predictions of what the next clashes would look like. It seemed to them that aviation and submarines would begin to dominate after 10-20 years. And the infantry will be a thing of the past. Mechanisms will fight each other. They were wrong by 30-40 years.
This world, accurately described back in the 1920s, we can see today. Trade blockade, carpet bombing, a fifth column in a defeated country and "information support". Forecasters 90 years ago guessed correctly that the winner in the war will now be a country developed from a scientific and technical point of view, and not one that can deploy "100 million bayonets." Some exaggeration, but today, for example, 60 million England can bring China 1.5 billion to its knees in six months - simply by organizing a blockade of the Molucca Strait and the water area around the Philippines with the help of pirates (read the footnote on this topic at the bottom of the text). Perhaps in such a war, where there will be a winner and a loser, not a single soldier will be killed.
In 1922, Pavel Abramovich Sadyker, managing director of the Nakanune joint-stock company, made a compilation of the forecasts of foreign military analysts (made by them in 1921) - what the future war would look like. The text was published in the Smena Vekh magazine. We present this forecast with minor reductions. Illustrations are from American, English and German editions of the time.
Regarding the accuracy of forecasts of those years - an illustration from an American magazine from 1919, which * gadgets * will become everyday very soon.
***
"War to war", "destruction of militarism", "last war" and other slogans with which the masses of all countries were hypnotized, slogans in which these masses sincerely believed - where are they? Did they find at least partial embodiment in the treaties that concluded this greatest of human wars? Is there the slightest certainty that the world slaughter will not happen again? - Nobody has such confidence.
Promotional video:
A new world war is already considered almost inevitable and the whole question seems to be only in the deadline: how much time is left for preparation? That is why the study of new methods of waging war, based on the experience of the past war, is being conducted everywhere with unrelenting and still unprecedented energy, it is true, in parallel with conversations and conferences on disarmament.
And so, if war in the future is considered probable, if not ways of avoiding war are developed, but only rules for regulating it, then naturally a number of questions arise:
-Will the coming war inevitably be similar to the last one, and will there not be radical changes in the fundamentals of tactics, land and sea? What role should be assigned to artillery? What - infantry attacks? And at sea - who will be the leader? Is it for the one with the largest and most heavily booked ships (Capital Ships), or for the one with the most submarines and airplanes? What will be the role of chemistry in the coming war? the role of mechanics?
- After all, already during the last war, it was necessary to change all the usual ways of waging war, due to the use of tanks, airplanes, smoke screens, asphyxiant gases, fire ejectors. The future may hold even more drastic changes.
-Almost all authorities agree that the main weapon in a future war will be submarines and airplanes.
- We will not dwell on the role of submarines here. The experience of the "merciless" German submarine war is still remembered by everyone.
Illustration from 1926 - about the role of robots in a future war.
Even then, the Germans used armored submarine cruisers with a displacement of 2,200 tons, more than 100 meters long, with submersion under water for only 30 seconds. These submarine cruisers repeatedly crossed the entire Atlantic Ocean, despite all the complex patrol service of the allied fleet. Their disadvantage was too weak armor.
Let us recall the German "commercial" submarine Deutshland, which during the war brought a cargo of aniline dyes from Germany to America and, having loaded nickel in America, safely reached Bremen, although the English fleet was aware of the exact moment of its departure from the American port.
Now the opening of the German prof. Flamma is revolutionizing the submarine industry. Prof. Flamm discovered a special way of stabilizing submarines, thanks to which it is possible to build submarines of unprecedented dimensions and - what is most important - to cover them entirely with powerful armor. Until now, there is one such model boat in 1443 tons, equipped with two armored turrets, armed with 105 mm guns.
Prof. Flamm has already fully developed a plan for a submarine ship of 4870 tons, armed with 210 mm guns and having a speed of 25 knots. Recently, at a lecture at the Charlottenburg Polytechnic, prof. Flamm reported that he, with the assistance of the Krupp and Siemens-Schuckert factories, had developed plans for large underwater armored cruisers of 8400 and 9900 tons, with a speed of 28 knots and armed with 240-mm guns placed in armored towers with armor of 60 and 70 mm thick.
The concern of the great maritime powers that have a huge surface fleet and consider themselves, therefore, according to tradition, the masters of the seas, becomes understandable. Until now, this fleet has provided them with the opportunity to use the most terrible weapon - the blockade - that hits the civilian population of an entire country. Undoubtedly, submarines will be able, if not to nullify the effect of this blockade, then, in any case, they will significantly weaken the disasters it causes. In addition, they will make it possible to apply this very blockade to the territory of the masters of the sea. They are weapons of defense as much as weapons of attack. Therefore, they are the weapon of the weaker powers at sea, who are forced to defend their vital interests against anyone's hegemony.
(By the way, in the USSR after the Second World War, the stake was placed on submarines, while the surface fleet was at times inferior to the American one - BT)
The second powerful weapon designed to revolutionize both naval war and land warfare is aviation.
“What is the point,” asks Mr. XXX in the Revue des deux Mondes (December 15, 1921), “to have a fleet of mastodons if they are forced to remain in their bases, and aircraft can drop on them two-ton bombs containing many times more explosive than the largest torpedoes known so far?"
What is the point, we ask, of spending many millions on the construction of a dreadnought, if even at sea it cannot feel safe from airplanes, which, with one successful hit, can send it to the bottom?
A number of interesting experiments in support of the above view were made recently in America by General Mitchell, the chief of military aviation, an indefatigable advocate of the development of aviation as the main weapon of the coming wars.
“Battleships,” says the gene. Mitchell, are as helpless against airplanes as a medieval warrior clad in armor against modern weapons. I undertake to sink with the help of airplanes all the ships that will be provided to me for this."
And ships were given to him for his experiments. The former German submarines U-117, light cruiser Frankfurt and dreadnought Ostfriedland were sacrificed to finally determine if an airplane could sink a warship? In addition, to find out the influence of the speed of the ship on the accuracy of hitting it, gene. Mitchell was provided with the obsolete American Navy battleship Iowa, operated from a distance from another ship using a wireless telegraph.
The experiments began with the bombing of the U-117 submarine: after the second volley of 6 bombs, the submarine sank. One bomb of 100 kilograms was enough to sink it. Of course, during the war, the conditions for hitting are much more difficult, but this experience, in any case, proved that a hit from an airplane can be quite accurate.
Even more indicative is the bombing of the battleship Iowa. The bombs used for the experiments were filled with sand and could cause only minor external damage, while still giving an idea of the accuracy of the hit.
On the appointed day, the naval detachment surrounding the ship was on the high seas, 100 miles offshore, at a point unknown to the air squadron; and an hour after the moment determined as the beginning of the experiments, airplanes appeared over "Iowa".
Observations of the experience were made from the cruiser Henderson (on which there were foreign military agents), moving 3 km from Iowa.
Despite the change in the direction of "Iowa", the results were as follows for its changing speed (from 1 to 6 knots): 76 bombs dropped, 2 hits on the ship directly, 15 hits at a distance of less than 20 meters from the ship, and all the others - at a distance of less 100 meters from the ship.
If we take into account that the bombs that hit the 20-meter zone around the ship are incomparably more dangerous for it than those that hit it directly, then we must admit that the results of the bombing are brilliant.
Experiments with the bombing of "Frankfurt" and "Ostfriedland" fully confirmed the calculations of the gene. Mitchell. The cruiser "Frankfurt" was sunk by one 300 kg bomb that exploded outside it, 10 meters from the waterline. Prior to this, "Frankfurt" withstood 11 hits directly into it, which did not cause much damage to either deck armor or guns.
The most difficult task remained - to sink the dreadnought "Ostfriedland".
It is a 23,000-ton battleship with 11 "side armor and 3" deck armor. At one time, he brilliantly withstood the explosion of a mine in a naval battle near Jutland. The first phase of the experiment with 300 kg bombs ended in failure: 42 bombs were dropped, 13 hit the ship, but did not cause significant damage to it.
The second phase lasted 25 minutes. The explosion of two 800 kilogram bombs (each containing 350 kg of trinitrotoluene), which fell a few meters from the starboard side of the dreadnought, torn off several plates of its armor, and 15 minutes later, the Ostfriedland sank.
The effect is complete: a small airplane sinks a huge sea monster of 23 thousand tons, built in 1913, which, according to its designers, should have withstood any mines, shells and torpedoes (and resisted in a normal naval battle)!
The American naval minister concludes from this that it is necessary to strengthen the armor … One of the foreign military agents, who was present during the experiments and upset for the tradition, found "that such experiments should not be allowed" (!). The winner of the test, the gene. Mitchell considered it necessary to note: "This is still nothing, I have only had small bombs so far, but now I already have 2150 kg bombs, but this is just the beginning."
Gene. Mitchell predicts the coming war as a specially air war, with the help of huge air masses; he considers a group of 100 airplanes to be a tactical unit.
“A war without lines of communication: the air army rises, concentrates, attacks, returns to its base, not depending on land communications. She has extraordinary activity, mobility, thanks to which she can extremely quickly deliver terrible blows here and there."
Its supply (food), which in the last war was carried out with the help of automobile columns, will now be carried out by air; for this purpose huge airships of the Zeppelin type will serve, lifting up to 30 tons of cargo, with a flight range of up to 15 thousand kilometers. They will transport gasoline, oil, spare parts, provisions.
Gene. In the event of a war with Japan, Mitchell predicts that a huge American airship powered by airships (1 airship per 1000 airplanes) will fly over the Bering Strait and begin to sow death and destruction on Japanese territory.
And vice versa. “Imagine,” he says, “that an enemy air force is flying over New York and dropping into the city center some of the bombs I have already carried out (bombs of 2 tons). Do you think that the war can go on for a long time when all Wall Street banks are blown up?"
Airplanes can already fly far into the depths of the enemy country, carrying with them a quantity of explosives, unprecedented until now, in one shell; they can now perform the work of tanks, not paying attention to obstacles (uneven ground, wolf pits, underground mines). With the merciless, inhuman use of aviation, where is the limit to the destruction it causes? After all, airplanes can, by dropping reservoirs of asphyxiant gases, poison entire areas, destroying everything that lives there.
What value can the advance of the infantry 10 kilometers have, if any city in the rear can be filled with choking gases on any day of the war, if it can be ignited on any night by an enemy who, having done his heinous deed, will calmly return to himself.
That the air force has already become a reality is shown by the following report from London dated January 2, p. year:
“The British War Office has ordered 150 airplanes to move troops destined to maintain order in Mesopotamia. Each airplane will be able to carry 10 soldiers fully equipped and will be equipped with two machine guns. In the future, it is planned to recall the British expeditionary force from Mesopotamia and order will be maintained exclusively by the air army."
So, the most decisive word in the coming world war will be with the submarine and air fleets. This word will be so terrible that this war has to be thought of as a catastrophe from which humanity can no longer recover. And yet they are preparing for it, it serves as an argument in the establishment of new international relations! And when they are looking for a way to prevent or mitigate its excessive destructiveness, then, as usual, they find nothing better than insincere agreements on "humanitarian" bullets or not too large bombs … And is it ever possible to successfully solve the problem, in the very essence its contradictory: to prepare to harm the enemy as much as possible, but so as not to cause him "unnecessary suffering"?
The flying submarine is the most terrible weapon of the future.
In addition, a military victory over the enemy, as the experience of 1918 showed, does not mean a real victory over him and does not give the winner neither benefits nor peace of mind. So why fight, then? Obviously, subsequent wars will continue to owe their beginning exclusively to the inability of states to truly reconcile their mutual interests and to fairly and expediently distribute life's benefits among themselves.
And from this there is only one conclusion: it is necessary to build the foundations of international life differently than they were built up to now. Is it not this task that the Great Russian Revolution ultimately undertakes, if viewed from the point of view of world politics? Rejecting the legitimacy of wars for annexations and indemnities, successfully overcoming the principle of "national self-determination", proclaiming the principle of universal unification, it thereby opens the way for the final overcoming of wars …
From the attacks of the aviation of the city, it was proposed to place underground, in any case, the most important infrastructure facilities - power plants, telegraph, train stations, etc.
Undoubtedly, overcoming the war by eliminating militaristic psychology will not happen immediately, because this elimination itself will not happen immediately. That is why even Russia itself will have to attend to the creation, for defense purposes, of submarine and air fleets. But it is even more certain that its main strength will forever remain its radically renewed outlook, depriving it of the need to attack, but also protecting it, thanks to the sympathy of the working people of the whole world, from predatory attacks from outside."