Throughout the 19th century, the steam engine drove the Industrial Revolution and the railways it brought transformed societies, fortunes and even landscapes.
Its influence was powerful and far-reaching and it didn’t take military thinkers long to start dreaming up ways to repurpose this mighty commercial tool to fight wars.
Initially, trains were recognised as an efficient means of transporting large amounts of men and materiel to battlefields. The Prussian, Russian and Austrian armies were the first to do this in the 1840s. The British, too, were early adopters and during the Crimean War (1853-56) built the first-ever military railway when they constructed a 13km track from the port of Balaklava to resupply troops besieging the city of Sevastopol.
It wasn’t until the American Civil War (186165), however, that the full military potential of railways and steam engines began to be realised. It was the first conflict to see rail lines and railway junctions become strategic objectives, and also the first in which trains were weaponised.
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Denne historien er fra Issue 113-utgaven av History of War.
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NAUMACHIA TRUTH BEHIND ROME'S GLADIATOR SEA BATTLES
In their quest for evermore novel and bloody entertainment, the Romans staged enormous naval fights on artificial lakes
OPERATION MANNA
In late April 1945, millions of Dutch civilians were starving as Nazi retribution for the failed Operation Market Garden cut off supplies. eet as In response, Allied bombers launched a risky mission to air-drop food
GASSING HITLER
Just a month before the end of WWI, the future Fuhrer was blinded by a British shell and invalided away from the frontline. Over a century later, has the artillery brigade that launched the fateful attack finally been identified?
SALAMANCA
After years of largely defensive campaigning, Lieutenant General Arthur Wellesley went on the offensive against a French invasion of Andalusia
HUMBERT 'ROCKY'VERSACE
Early in the Vietnam War, a dedicated US Special Forces officer defied his merciless Viet Cong captors and inspired his fellow POWs to survive
LEYTE 1944 SINKING THE RISING SUN
One of the more difficult island campaigns in WWII's Pacific Theatre saw a brutal months-long fight that exhausted Japan’s military strength
MAD DAWN
How technology transformed strategic thinking and military doctrine from the Cold War to the current day
BRUSHES WITH ARMAGEDDON
Humanity came close to self-annihilation with the Cuban Missile Crisis, Broken Arrows’ and other nuclear near misses
THE DEADLY RACE
How the road to peace led to an arms contest between the USA and USSR, with prototypes, proliferation and the world’s biggest bomb
THE MANHATTAN PROJECT
Einstein, Oppenheimer and the race to beat Hitler to the bomb. How a science project in the desert helped win a war
