Army

Secret Warriors Of The First World War

The Great War is often considered as a war fought in trenches, aided by brutal machinery that cost many lives. But behind this a scientific war was also being fought between engineers, chemists, physicists, doctors, mathematicians and intelligence gatherers.

Sir William Bragg, the youngest ever Nobel laureate, was also decorated for his work during the First World War

Bragg was a Cambridge scientist who joined the Royal Horse Artillery in 1914 and from the following year began to produce a system known as 'sound ranging' - to identify the location of the enemy's guns from tracking the sound they produced. It eventually proved to be one of the most important means of locating the enemy's artillery. Bragg was, and still is, the youngest person ever to receive a Nobel Prize in 1915, aged 25.

Taylor Downing, an expert and author on the topic, explains that "when we usually think of think of the First World War, we imagine trenches, poets, futile slaughter and incompotent generals. But there is another side that is rarely acknowledged".

The 'other side' was to make a positive and lasting contribution to how war was conducted on land, at sea and in the air, and most importantly life at home. Out of this contribution came dramatic developments in aviation, gunnery, in intelligence gathering, medicine and psychology, with the development of the Tank and the dreadful advances of chemical warfare.

British Vickers machine gun crew wearing PH-type anti-gas helmets. Near Ovillers during the Battle of the Somme, July 1916.

"The Great War witnessed a scientific revolution with immense advances in new technologies. Between 1914 and 1918 the foundations were laid for many of the advances of the rest of the 20th century".

Film cameraman in 1916 - the First World War was the first mass media war

In aviation, the British armed services went into war in 1914 with 272 aircraft. By November 1918, the RAF possessed 22,000 machines. They were bigger, better powered and more reliable than anything that could have been imagined at the beginning of the war.

Camera being taken aboard a Vickers observation aircraft - great advances were made in aerial photography in WW1

"Many of the foundations of scientific and technological progress in the 1920s and ‘30s were laid in the four years of war when the best and brightest scientists, writers and artists were called upon to do their bit."

Tank going forward 1916 - the Tank was one of the new technological advances made in WW1

Taylor Downing will be giving a lecture on this topic at the National Army Museum on the 20th November.