50 Weapons That Changed Warfare

by William Weir

  • The Dirigible: Dirigibles, ranging from the huge Zeppelins of World War I to the little blimps of World War II, played important parts. German Zeppelins were the world’s first strategic bombers, and one of them taking supplies to German colonial troops in East Africa made a mind-boggling flight of more than 4,000 miles at a time when few airplanes could travel much more than 100 miles. During World War II, U.S. Navy blimps contributed heavily to the defeat of the German U boats. But Zeppelins proved too vulnerable to attack by fighter planes, and a series of horrendous accidents after the war discouraged any more development of big dirigibles. Blimps are still around, but they are slow, clumsy, and unable to do anything that cannot also be done by helicopters.

  • The Molotov Cocktail: The Molotov cocktail, a bottle of gasoline, or gasoline and motor oil, with a burning cloth wick, was an important weapon in the Spanish Civil War, when Loyalist militia used them against tanks. Tanks in that war were thin-skinned and primitive. Molotov cocktails have not been of much use since then — except when, in World War II, U.S. troops used them against Japanese troops holed up in caves. These gasoline bombs have been widely used since the Spanish Civil War, however, and are still being used. That’s because they are dirt cheap. Anyone using a Molotov cocktail against a modern tank would be just as effective if he put a gun to his own head and pulled the trigger. Actually, a Molotov cocktail is no more than a reproduction — not a development — of an ancient and medieval naphtha bomb.

  • The Shotgun: Small arms enthusiasts rate the shotgun as the deadliest close-quarters weapon ever developed. Since World War I, shotguns have played a part in U.S. infantry tactics. They were “trench guns” in World War I and widely used in the jungle fighting in World War II and Vietnam. In mountainous Korea, where ranges tended to be long, they were mostly used for guarding prisoners, but in the street fighting common in Iraq, the shotgun again plays an important role, but in no war has the shotgun ever been a decisive weapon.

  • The Rocket Propelled Grenade: The rocket-propelled grenade does not make the list for a number of reasons. The first is that the name is a misno-mer. It has been applied to a Russian-invented weapon called in Russia the RPG 7. RPG does not stand for rocket-propelled grenade, because the weapon is not a grenade. A grenade is a missile, usually hand propelled. The RPG 7 is a combination recoilless gun and a rocket launcher. It’s a development of the Russian RPG 2, which was a small recoilless gun pattered after the German panzerfaust of World War II. The RPG 7’s missile is a rocket-assisted shell. Early shoulder-fired rocket launchers, like the U.S. bazooka, fired a rocket with a quick-burning motor. The rocket fuel was consumed inside the launcher tube so the firer would not be burned to a crisp by the back blast of the rocket. What the RPG 7 does is shoot the missile far enough before the rocket motor ignites so there’s no danger of the rocket burning the firer. The rocket is then capable of a prolonged blast, giving it far more range than the bazooka. The RPG 7 (RPG is a designation the Russians applied to a number of antitank weapons, including the RPG 43, a World War II hand grenade) is basically an antitank weapon. The Russians claimed it could penetrate 11 inches of homogeneous armor, though, today, most tanks are not protected by homogeneous armor. Tanks have laminated armor, with materials other than steel sandwiched in to reduce the acetylene-torch effect of a shaped charge blast. They have reactive armor — slabs of explosive which neutralize the directed jet of a shaped-charge explosion, and they have steel mesh work outside the armor to make shaped charges explode before they reach the optimum distance for penetration. The RPG 7 is widely used today, possibly because its big bang impresses its users, but it is not very effective in the role it was designed for.

  • The Humvee: Humvees seem to be everywhere in Iraq. But the humvee does not make the list for the same reason that jeep of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam did not, nor did the superb, but little-publicized, three-quarter-ton truck of those wars. The humvee and those other vehicles are trucks, basically a means of transportation rather than a weapon. All of them have, of course, been adapted to function as fighting vehicles, but that use has not resulted in a major change in tactics.

  • The Neutron Bomb: The neutron bomb, also called an “enhanced radiation device,” is a nuclear bomb that produces a relatively mild blast but fills a wide area with deadly radiation. Supposedly, it could kill every living thing in a city but leave the buildings largely intact. It has been the subject of horror stories by antiwar activists, who seem to think destruction of life without destruction of property is especially immoral. The neutron bomb, however, has never been built, and its effects are purely theoretical.

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  About the Author

  William Weir, an army MP, became an army combat correspondent and photographer with the 25th Infantry Division and the 27th “Wolfhound” Regiment during the Korean War. After leaving the army, he was a newspaper reporter in Missouri and Kansas and was, among other things, the military editor of the Topeka State Journal. Later, as a public relations specialist with a large telephone company, he became a freelance writer. He has written more than 50 articles, mostly on crime, weaponry, and military affairs, and has written eight previous books, two of which, 50 Weapons that Changed the World and Soldiers in the Shadows, have been published by New Page Books. He and his wife, Anne, live in Guilford, Connecticut, where they proudly watch the achieve-ments of their three children: Alison, an Air Force lieutenant colonel now serving as a U.S. S
upreme Court fellow; Joan, a special education teacher and the mother of their granddaughter, Emma; and Bill, a reporter for the Hartford Courant.

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