We see new innovations and inventions every month of the war, and this week one of those
inventions had its premiere.
Make no mistake; this was something that would change the face of warfare all the way up
to the present day.
This week, a group of bomber aircraft hits the skies and targets civilians.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week the Italians launched a huge offensive on the Isonzo River.
The Battle of Arras came to an end on the Western Front, and the Allied Spring Offensive
ended in the Balkans.
There was more turmoil in Russia, feelings of invincibility in the German High Command,
and the first American troops arrived in Britain.
That might have been a first, but there was a tenth going on this week - the 10th Battle
of the Isonzo River.
It began last week as the Italians attacked the Austrians, but by now the army of Gorizia
was exhausted and had to pause its attacks to replenish men, ammo, and equipment.
The losses on both sides so far were enormous.
The weeklong battle for the Bainsizza Plateau had cost the Austrians some 30,000 casualties,
the Italians as many as 50,000.
The Italians had taken Hill 383, Zagorra, and the summit of Vodice, sure, but had not
achieved any of Chief of Staff Luigi Cadorna’s first phase objectives.
The bombardment to open the second phase further south began on May 23rd.
“The weight of fire on a front of just over 10 miles (16km) was as great as anything seen
on any front, in any country, during the whole of the First World War.”
(Caporetto and the Isonzo Campaign) In ten hours, the Italian gunners blasted over a
million shells on the enemy positions.
Now, the Austrian engineers had built pretty formidable defensive positions, but this was
just too much.
I don’t think any of us can really comprehend the noise, smoke, and fear that a soldier
must experience when a high explosive shell hits the side of his dugout, no matter how
secure, every other minute for ten straight hours just 6 or 7 meters away from him.
Still, the survivors managed to hold off the Italian infantry as the week drew to a close.
And another battle limped to its own close this week.
The Second Battle of the Aisne, also called the Nivelle Offensive.
Much like the Battle of Arras, which ended last week, its biggest actions were last month,
but they both raged in fits and starts afterward.
Arras was a British action and it was fought in tandem with the French Nivelle Offensive
and we could now see the repercussions of those battles.
For the British, Hugh Gough managed to retain his command in spite of his serious failures
at Bullecourt, and when you add those to his failures last year at the Somme, that might
come as a bit of a surprise.
Julian Byng was rewarded for his successes by being given command of the British Third
Army, though this meant that he would have to leave his Canadian Corps.
But what of the man who had run the Third Army in the battle, Edmund Allenby?
Well, in early June he’ll receive word that he is to head to the Palestine Front to take
over command there against the Ottomans.
And what of repercussions from the Nivelle Offensive?
Morale in the French army had reached an all-time low, and there had been mutinous behavior.
This grew and grew as May rolled by, but if you look at the broader picture, desertion
rates had risen in the first three months of the year and the Nivelle Offensive seems
to represent the end of a process, and not just a whole process in itself.
And even among the French citizens morale had fallen.
There were strikes in January and in May that spread from textile workers to munitions factories,
but these strikes were not - as the government feared - from revolutionary sentiments, but
about the cost of living.
And think of the dead soldiers - 306,000 in 1914, 334,000 in 1915, 287,000 in 1916, and
121,000 so far this year - that’s well over a million men from a national male population
of 20 million (Keegan)
The French troops had now fallen prey to the defeatists and extremists in their ranks.
The first mutinous behavior was back on April 17th when 17 men abandoned their posts in
the face of the enemy.
On April 29th, 200 men of the 20th infantry regiment (Cheerful Sacrifice) deserted and
hid in a nearby wood.
On May 3rd an entire division refused to go into the lines.
Mutinous sentiment was growing and now threatened to explode into a general mutiny.
There was another sort of a mutiny that was now nearly a year old in the Middle East.
The Arab Revolt.
And on May 19th, Sharif Nasir, T.E. Lawrence - Lawrence of Arabia, and Auda abu Tayi crossed
the Hejaz railway 1,000km north of Jeddah.
Lawrence blew up the track and cut the telegraph wire, which he tied to the saddles of camels
and shooed them along to pull down the telegraph poles behind them.
They then headed east toward Wadi Sirhan across a plain devoid of life and called Al Houl,
“The Terror”, by the Bedouin.
A few days later, ANZAC camel corps demolished 20km of the railway.
The Bedouin traditionally live in the harsh environment of the deserts of the Middle East,
and were courageous, fearsome fighters, who often despised living under the centralistic
rule of the Ottoman Empire.
Open revolt was declared last June under Sharif Hussein bin Ali and his sons, who wanted a
unified Arab nation.
With the advice of Lawrence, British rifles and artillery, and a lot of British gold,
the Arab Revolt recruited thousands of Bedouins to fight the Ottoman army.
They had neither the military training nor the tactical knowledge to fight a modern Ottoman
force head on, so instead they waged a bloody guerilla war.
Sabotaging the Hejaz Railway and storming weakly defended Ottoman outposts and supply
stations; they fought a war of movement and surprise.
The narrow gauge Hejaz railway was initially constructed to transport pilgrims from Damascus
in Syria to Medina in Saudi Arabia, but it soon became of vital military importance to
the Ottomans.
It quickly transported troops, artillery, and supplies to the battle zones of the Middle
East and Palestine, which is why the Allies and the Arab Revolt constantly tried to sabotage
it.
But sabotage is just one way to get ahead in war.
And on May 25th a new kind of warfare began when 23 German Gotha bombers carrying 13 bombs
each, took off from Belgium for London.
Only two reached England because of cloudy skies, but the five bombs dropped by one of
the planes caused more damage than any zeppelin raid ever had.
95 people were killed and 192 injured, including many children.
Albert Einstein wrote to a friend a few days later, “The ancient Jehovah is still abroad.
Alas, he slays the innocent along with the guilty, whom he strikes so fearsomely blind
that they can feel no sense of guilt.”
(Gilbert)
But the British had an innovation of their own.
The Admiralty had rejected the convoy system for shipping for years, since it took warships
away from their fleets, but on May 24th it was finally introduced.
The system was that all merchant ships crossing the Atlantic would sail in groups with an
escort.
A group of ten to fifty merchant ships might now have a cruiser, six destroyers, 11 armed
trawlers, two torpedo boats, and a spotting balloon in the air.
In the first convoy, from Hampton Roads, Virginia, only one ship was lost to German U-boats and
it had lagged behind.
Seven more convoy collection points were set up- at Halifax, Panama, Rio, Murmansk, Port
Said, Gibraltar, and Dakar.
Germany had been sinking hundreds of thousands of tons of shipping per month - 2.4 million
tons so far this year - hoping to drive Britain out of the war, but thanks to convoys those
hopes were dashed for good, though it would take months for the convoy system to properly
get going.
And here are a few notes to end the week.
Count Istvan Tisza, Hungarian Prime Minister since before the war began, resigned this
week.
In Russia, Mikhail Alexeev is replaced as Commander in chief of the armies by Alexei
Brusilov, and Nicaragua severed diplomatic relations with Germany.
And that was the week, a new chapter beginning in the skies as one begins its end at sea.
The Italians pounding the Austrians but unable to break through, the rumblings of mutiny
in France, and the Arab revolt sabotaging the enemy in the Middle East.
Bombers.
How would the 20th century look without bombers?
Think of every movie or documentary you’ve seen about World War II, Korea, or Vietnam,
and that’s what you see.
Bombers.
From Guernica to Dresden to Tokyo.
And it all began this week in the skies over Britain.
I’ve said many times that “impossible as it seems, this war is going to get more
bloody”, but I won’t say it again, because it doesn’t seem impossible any more, because
it really does happen every.
Single.
Week.
If aviation during the First World War is a topic that interests you and if you want
to meet me and the rest of the crew in person, you should definitely get your tickets for
Stow Maries At War - a great Living History Event at Stow Maries Great War Aerodrome,
click the link in the description to find out more.
If you want to learn more about World War 1 aviation doctrines, check out our episode
about Bloody April right here.
Our Patreon supporter of the week is Rob Montgomery - Montgomery, Montgmery.
Why does that sound familiar?
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