Secrets of Warfare: Exposing the Myths and Hidden History of Weapons and Battles

by William Weir

Overview

You've already heard about the first Civil War battle between the ironclad warships the Monitor and the Merrimac, and about why Custer's last stand was, well, his last, but have you heard about the incredibly fast and maneuverable airship Dr. Solomon Andrews, which was offered to the government during the Civil War?

Secrets of Warfare exposes many of the myths that have kept the public misinformed about warfare, the most dangerous of all human activities. Some myths are the result of deliberate misrepresentation; others, the result of ignorance or bigotry. In any case, there is no substitute for the truth.

Secrets of Warfare explores:

Battles from the ancient world and the alleged superiority of Western nations from the earliest times.

The famed myth of the English longbow.

The introduction of submarines to warfare prior to World War I.

The deadliest American air raids of World War II.

The supposed "attack" on U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781601631558
Publisher:	Red Wheel/Weiser
Publication date:	08/15/2011
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.34(w) x 8.52(h) x 0.64(d)

About the Author

William Weir has written 13 previous books, mostly about military history and crime, including 50 Military Leaders Who Changed the World and 50 Battles That Changed the World. He is a former soldier, a military policeman, and a Korean War infantry combat veteran. He is a retired industrial editor and freelance magazine writer.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

MYTH #1

Western Military Superiority Dates From Ancient Times

Geoffrey Parker, editor of the Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare, is one of the most prominent proponents of this myth. He lists a number of Western military traditions that led to European domination of the world. These include superior technology and discipline, with discipline being the more important. "A technology edge, however, has rarely been sufficient in itself to ensure victory," he says. Ruthlessness is another important factor in the rise of the West, according to Parker. "The overall aim of Western strategy, whether by battle, siege or attrition, almost always remained the total defeat and destruction of the enemy, and this contrasted sharply with the military practice of many other societies." Parker contrasts the aims of the New England colonists with those of the Narragansetts, who strongly disapproved of the way the colonists fought: "'It was too furious,' one brave told an English captain in 1638, 'and it slays too many men.' The captain did not deny it: the Indians, he speculated, 'might fight seven years and not kill seven men.'"

And it's true. The New England colonists were far more ruthless than their Native American neighbors. (They were also more ruthless than their fellow Europeans from Spain. Compare the percentage of the U.S. population who have Native American blood with that of Mexico.) To the "Indians" of North America, war was an opportunity to demonstrate their bravery. A man got far more honor for touching an enemy with his hand than for shooting him with a bow or a gun. Native Americans in the technologically more advanced societies in what is now Latin America fought to obtain captives to sacrifice to their gods rather than to annihilate their enemies.

But most non-European societies were not Native Americans. When it comes to ruthlessness, few Europeans could hold a candle to Genghis Khan or Tamerlane. And did Europeans usually triumph over more numerous non-European enemies when both sides had roughly equal technology? Take Marathon: although the opponents were not technologically equal, the Persians were not hopelessly outclassed. In restricted space, like the Plain of Marathon, the Greek phalanx, a moving wall of bronze pushing a mass of spears, was far superior to anything the lightly armed Persians could field. Greek numbers may have been superior, too. There were 10,000 Athenians and 1,000 Plateans, according to Herodotus. Herodotus doesn't say how many Persians there were, but he says they came in 600 ships. Those ships carried rowers, who didn't normally fight on land, and they also carried horses. Admiral W.L. Rodgers, a student of galley warfare, estimates there could have been as many as 15,000 Persians or as few as 4,000.

But the Persians didn't plan to wipe out the Athenian army on the Plain of Marathon. They were carrying out a plan hatched by Darius the Great, a leader with far more talent than he is usually given credit for. Darius was a usurper, not the legitimate heir of Cyrus the Great and his son, Cambyses. He had managed to take the Persian throne, restore Cyrus's crumbling empire, and organize a competent administration. He was not, like Cyrus, a great general, but he was a competent one. He was not, again like Cyrus, a humanitarian. Cyrus promised his people freedom of religion, abolished slavery, and returned captive populations, like the Jews, to their homelands. Darius didn't liberate anyone, and he allowed slavery, though not to the extent that existed in Greece. But Darius was a statesman and a politician, a man who knew how to get his way without excessive bloodshed.

The trouble had begun when the Ionian Greek cities in Asia Minor revolted against Persian rule. Those cities had been led by tyrants, leaders without the royal blood Greeks of that time expected of their kings. Darius had crushed the revolt and deposed the tyrants. He set up pseudo-democracies: the Greek citizens could make their own laws, but they had to be approved by the Great King. The Greek commander at the Battle of Marathon, Miltiades, had been one of those displaced tyrants.

During the Ionian Revolt, Athens and Eretria had aided the Ionians. Now Darius was getting his revenge. He had no intention of overwhelming Greece with a huge army and navy. Greece, rocky, mountainous land, could not support a large army: supplies would have to come by sea. Greek naval power was formidable, and the Aegean was a stormy sea with rocky shores. Instead of force, Darius would use guile. He cultivated fifth columns in Athens and Eretria and promised to liberate citizens from their upper-class oppressors. The traitors would open the gates of their cities and let in the Persian troops. So the Persian monarch sent a small force across the sea, first to Eretria, then to Athens. The Persian troops would distract the Eretrian and Athenian armies so the traitors could open their cities' gates.

Darius made only one mistake. He put the force under a Median general named Datis. Datis was probably a good battlefield commander — he had to be, because he held high command even though he was not an ethnic Persian. But he was a conservative old soldier. When the people of Eretria opened their gates, Datis rounded them all up and made them slaves. That's the way it had always been done.

Datis's action put a crimp in his master's plan for taking over Athens. Persian agents were persuasive, though, and Persian gold flowed freely. Miltiades, standing in the hills above Marathon with his troops, a position they had taken to neutralize the Persian cavalry, saw a flash of sunlight from distant Athens, probably a reflection from a polished shield. Then he saw the Persians loading their ships.

Miltiades knew the situation was desperate. Traveling by sea, the Persian army could get to Athens before the Athenian troops. Miltiades ordered the troops to fall in. There were 10 divisions, each with its own general. The generals rotated command. Today was Miltiades' day. Normally, the Greek phalanx was eight ranks deep. To lengthen his line and give the Persian cavalry no room for flanking moves, Miltiades made the center of his line only four ranks deep. Flanking units would be eight ranks deep.

The Greek army marched down the hillsides, a clanking bronze glacier bristling with spears, the men marching in step to the music of flutes. The Persian archer began shooting when the Greeks were 200 yards away, but their arrows wouldn't penetrate Greek armor. The bronze glacier changed to an avalanche as the Greeks switched to double time.

The center of the Persian line was held by ethnic Persians and Sakas, a Scythian people. They fought fiercely, even trying to climb the bronze wall of shields while thrusting with daggers and chopping with axes. The Greek center bent back while the stronger ends of the line pushed forward against the somewhat unenthusiastic troops of Persia's subject nations. It looked like the beginning of Cannae, Hannibal's masterpiece of more than two centuries later. But Miltiades could not, like Hannibal, complete the encirclement of his enemies. The Persians ran for their ships. The Greeks followed, but they captured only seven of the 600 ships. The bulk of the Persian army got away.

The Greeks had won, but the situation was still grave. The Persians would get to Athens before the Athenian army. Miltiades summoned Pheidippides, a professional runner, and told him to go back to Athens and tell citizens that their army had defeated the Persians.

Pheidippides ran his heart out — literally. He dashed into Athens crying "Nike! Nike!" ("Victory! Victory!") and dropped dead. When the Persian fleet arrived, Darius's troops found the gates closed and barred. The gates stayed closed until the victorious Greek army returned.

So ended what is universally acknowledged to be one of the most decisive battles of the world. There were no rivers of blood or mountains of corpses. There was heroism: Pheidippides, for one example, and the unarmored Persians and Sakas who attacked the Greek phalanx with daggers, for another. But there was no fight to the death against overwhelming odds. It was not a case of a Western David defeating an Eastern Goliath.

The Persians may have had more men than the Greeks, or they may have had fewer. But there was no question who had the larger force when, three and a half centuries later, the Romans invaded what had been Persia, now called Parthia.

Marcus Licinius Crassus, one third of the triumvirate who ruled Rome, was leading 40,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry across the Parthian desert. Crassus planned to defeat the Parthians, take over their empire, and continue on to India and perhaps China. It shouldn't be too hard — the Parthians had been desert nomads, mere barbarians, a few generations ago. They were nowhere near as powerful as the ancient Persians, who had been conquered by Alexander. And weren't Romans better men than Macedonians and Greeks?

The Romans were engaging in a seemingly endless pursuit of Parthian light cavalry when an Arab who had previously given the Romans valuable information appeared. He told Crassus he knew a shortcut to the Parthian army, which was much smaller than the Roman. Crassus took the shortcut, which was over waterless wasteland, and he did meet the Parthians.

He met them suddenly.

The Parthian general, king of the subordinate kingdom of Suren, was known to the Romans as Surena. He was a young man, only 30, but he had a reputation for both wisdom and courage. He would need both, because he had only 10,000 cavalry: 1,000 lancers wearing heavy armor and 9,000 lightly armed horse archers (archers mounted on horses).

Surena had hidden his men behind sand dunes, their armor covered with leather so there would be no reflected sunlight to give away their position.

Crassus knew the battle had begun when he heard the thunder of hundreds of horse-mounted kettle drums and the Parthian cavalry appeared on the crests of the dunes. The Parthian heavy cavalry, covered with narrow sheets of steel laced together (called lamelar armor) charged with leveled lances. The Parthian heavy cavalry also carried bows and arrows as secondary weapons. Behind the heavy horsemen came the light horse archers holding their bows.

Roman legionaries had no fear of cavalry. They stood firm and pointed their spears at the horsemen. The Parthians turned away, galloping in all directions. Then the Romans realized that the Parthians had completely surrounded them and were shooting arrows at them from all sides. The Parthians were using an ancient weapon of the Central Asian nomads, the composite bow. This short, extremely flexible bow was composed of layers of sinew, wood, and horn. It was far more sophisticated and powerful than the famous English longbow. It could penetrate Roman armor and outrange any hand weapon in the Roman army. The Parthians were not going to run out of arrows. Surena had brought along a thousand camels loaded with arrows.

Crassus told his son, Publius, to counterattack. Publius had served with Julius Caesar in Gaul and had recruited 1,300 Gaulish horsemen, the best cavalry in the West. He took them, 500 archers, and 4,000 legionaries, and charged. The Parthians fled while shooting over the backs of their horses — what became known as the "Parthian shot." When Publius and his troops were too far from the main body to get help, the Parthian lancers charged. Publius fell back to a defensive position and mighty Roman infantry again stopped the lancers.

Then the Parthian horse archers took over. They surrounded the Romans and shot them all down. The Parthians were using tactics later revived when muskets and cannons replaced spears and bows: If infantry stood firm, they could defeat a cavalry charge with their bayonets, but they then made a wonderful target for the enemy artillery. If they broke ranks and tried to take cover, they foiled the artillery but were vulnerable to the cavalry. The Parthians wiped out Publius's detachment and cut off its leader's head. They threw the head at the Roman main body, which was wilting under the rain of arrows.

Roman survivors tried to escape when darkness fell, but they became scattered. Parthian scouts found Crassus and the group he was leading. They told him that Surena wanted to talk to him about surrender. While Crassus was discussing terms with Surena, a fight broke out between Roman and Parthian troops. Crassus was killed and the remaining Romans enslaved.

According to Parker, utter ruthlessness "became the standard technique for Europeans fighting abroad" from the time of the Greek hoplites (citizen-soldier spearmen) and the Roman legionaries, and this made the Europeans militarily dominant. "Armies from Asia and Africa rarely marched into Europe," he writes, "many of these exceptions — Xerxes, Hannibal, Attila, the Arabs and the Turks — achieved only short-term success." But in fact, the Turks came to Europe in the 15th century and are still there. The Arabs controlled all or part of Spain for twice as long as the British controlled India, and their control was much stricter. The Mongols and Turkish khans controlled Russia — a very big part of Europe — from the 13th to the 16th century. In the 13th century, three divisions of Genghis Khan's army — about 30,000 men — led by Subotai Bahadur and Chepé Noyon, made a reconnaissance in force into Europe. They wiped out the armies of Georgia, Russia, Poland, and Hungary, and then returned to the Gobi to participate in a council to elect a new Kha-Khan.

The myth of Western superiority sounds as if it was invented to make the reader feel good, to think, "We Westerners are made of sterner stuff than those lesser breeds." At the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BC, the Westerners, ruthless or not, showed no superiority. As a matter of fact, from the time of Carrhae until they could oppose composite bows with practical guns, Europeans were almost always defeated by Asian horse archers.

So when you read statements like this: "Once again, the crucial advantage [for Europeans] lay in the ability to compensate for numerical inferiority, for whether defending Europe from invasion (as at Plataea in 476 BC, at Lechfeld in AD 955 and at Vienna inAD 1683) or in subduing Aztec, Inca and Mughal empires, the Western forces have always been outnumbered by at least two to one and often by far more."

... it's time to remember what 10,000 Parthians did to 44,000 Romans, and who won the Crusades. Clear Western military superiority did not exist until the invention of gunpowder.

CHAPTER 2

MYTH #2

The Ancient Greeks Refused to Use Poisoned Arrows

Even though the English words toxin and toxic come from the Greek word toxicon, which itself comes from the Greek toxon, meaning "arrow," many "authorities" have long maintained that the ancient Greeks did not use poisoned arrows. The Greeks themselves, at the time of the Persian Wars, maintained that arrows were for hunting, not war. Archery was a coward's way of fighting, they believed, and poison was despicable.

In Greek myth, however, there is much written about archery. Odysseus used a bow, although he seems to have left it at home when he went off to the Trojan War, using it only to wipe out his wife's suitors when he finally got back to Ithaca. Herakles was also a famous archer, and he poisoned his arrows with the blood of the Hydra. And how, without recourse to poison, did Paris manage to kill Achilles with an arrow in his heel? (Paris, of course was a coward, according to both his brother, Hector, and hislover, Helen. But how brave was Achilles, who could dash into battle knowing that the only vulnerable spot on his body was one heel?)

Nevertheless, writers in the 19th and early 20th centuries managed to ignore both etymology and these hints from folklore. The people of Western Europe and the United States have long had an idealized view of ancient Greece. At one time, most educated people had studied Greek in school; Greece was the inventor of democracy (a Greek word); pseudoGreek architecture was the preferred style for public buildings; Greek art was pure, pristine, and unemotional — scholars long refused to believe that the classical Greeks painted their statues. The use of poisoned arrows seemed far too barbaric for these people, especially because in so many of their writings the classical Greeks distained archery. The only way a man should fight, according to those Greeks, was in a hoplite phalanx head to head with his opponent, thrusting with his spear.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Secrets Of Warfare"
by .
Copyright © 2011 William Weir.
Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
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Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Introduction 13

Myth 1 Western Military Superiority Dates from Ancient Times 17

Myth 2 The Ancient Greeks Refused to Use Poisoned Arrows 27

Myth 3 Cavalry Ruled the Battlefield in the Middle Ages 31

Myth 4 Plate Armor Was Enormously Heavy 39

Myth 5 The English Longbow Was a Phenomenal Weapon 43

Myth 6 The World s Biggest Guns Reduced Constantinople 53

Myth 7 Guns Made Armor Obsolete 61

Myth 8 The Monitor and the Merrimack Staged the First Ironclad Duel 67

Myth 9 When the Revolution Began, the American Colonists Split Three Ways 77

Myth 10 The American Long Rifle Was the Best Rifle in the World 83

Myth 11 American Revolutionary Troops Seldom Fought From Cover 91

Myth 12 The American Civil War Saw the First Use of Submarines 101

Myth 13 The British Band Played "The World Turned Upside Down" at Yorktown 107

Myth 14 Union Troops Always Outnumbered the Confederates 111

Myth 15 The Only Aircraft in the Civil War Were Tethered Balloons 119

Myth 16 Custer's Stand Was His Last Because the Indians Had Repeaters 127

Myth 17 Latin American Warfare Was Never Serious 133

Myth 18 The 45 Automatic Helped Conquer the Philippines 143

Myth 19 The Bayonet Is Indispensible 151

Myth 20 German Tanks Were Invincible 157

Myth 21 Lance Corporal Hitler Was a Military Moron 163

Myth 22 Nuclear Missiles Are the Ultimate Weapons 169

Myth 23 Douglas MacArthur Was Our Greatest Military Hero 179

Myth 24 Harry Truman Desegregated the Armed Forces in 1948 197

Myth 25 There Was No Korean War After Peace Talks Began 201

Myth 26 Dwight Eisenhower Ended the Korean War 205

Myth 27 The Majority of the Troops in Vietnam Were Minorities 209

Myth 28 There Were Two Attacks on American Ships in the Gulf of Tonkin 215

Myth 29 Khe Sanh Survived a Terrible Siege 221

Notes 229

Bibliography 239

Index 245

About the Author 253