Ariel Dart Throwers...What are they ?

[centurion]

The flechette was first used by the Italians in Libya in 1912. As far as I can ascertain they developed what we would call a weapons system in that it involved both the flechette and the box.

[Piorun]

To return to practicalities, I would agree with Centurion's analysis that a handful of flechettes would be of less-than-minimal use and quite impractical. That's not to say that a handful of flechettes was never thrown out of a plane, just that it's hardly likely to have been the optimal distribution system. Antony

[Old Owl]

German diagram illustrating the way in which flechettes were dropped

There is a very similar French one

A year or so back someone sold a flechette box such as shown on e bay

Fascinating, must have acted a bit like machine gun fire if metered out at a steady rate. I wonder how many men were killed or seriously wounded by such flechettes? I seem to recall that an officer I was researching several years ago was noted as having been killed by an ariel dart, but it is not something which I have come across on a regular basis. When were they first used during WW1?

[nthornton1979]

Thanks to all for their contributions to this thread.

It's turned out to be a very interesting one

Neil

[centurion]

Fascinating, must have acted a bit like machine gun fire if metered out at a steady rate. I wonder how many men were killed or seriously wounded by such flechettes? I seem to recall that an officer I was researching several years ago was noted as having been killed by an ariel dart, but it is not something which I have come across on a regular basis. When were they first used during WW1?

As I said they were already being used in 1912 in the Italio Turkish war so its possible that other forces had already acquired the capability by the outbreak of WW1. A typical box or canister (there were a number of designs) held 250 flechettes. One French pilot in early 1915 is reputed to have dropped 18,000 in a single day (that's 72 boxes) which seems a lot, one wonders how many sorties he'd have to fly.

However I have so far encountered no verifiable examples of casualties from the things, some stories (including a fantasic story of a French column with their feet all nailed to the road) but nothing that would stand up in court so to speak, so I'd be interested if there is anything in the records of your officer that might provide evidence. Their rapid demise is, probably, the best indicator of their effectiveness.

[centurion]

As I said they were already being used in 1912 in the Italio Turkish war so its possible that other forces had already acquired the capability by the outbreak of WW1. A typical box or canister (there were a number of designs) held 250 flechettes. One French pilot in early 1915 is reputed to have dropped 18,000 in a single day (that's 72 boxes) which seems a lot, one wonders how many sorties he'd have to fly.

However I have so far encountered no verifiable examples of casualties from the things, some stories (including a fantasic story of a French column with their feet all nailed to the road) but nothing that would stand up in court so to speak, so I'd be interested if there is anything in the records of your officer that might provide evidence. Their rapid demise is, probably, the best indicator of their effectiveness.

Thinking about this I wonder if my source for the 18,000 (a national museum project) may have mistranslated airmen as airman and this might represent a days usage for the French air forces as a whole rather than a single man's tally.

[AlanCurragh]

I've removed some personal comments from earlier in this thread - if the member who made them repeats anything similar, they will be suspended.

Apologies for the delay in removing these comments - as I've mentioned elsewhere, there appears to be a glitch in the reporting system at the moment

Alan

[bob lembke]

I have an example of what might be called the "ultimate flechette". My father's unit (2. Kompagnie, Garde=Reserve=Pionier=Regiment (Flammenwerfer) ) was stationed in Stenay-sur-Meuse in late 1916, in an old French wooden barracks, and one night there was a tremendous crash, waking up one of the Pioniere, who found himself a mess. He was in the bottom berth of a "double-decker" bed; as the top berth was not in use there was no bedding, the top bed stripped to the heavy wire mesh matress support. Due to some night aviation mishap a French aircrewman had fallen, crashed through the roof, and landed on the wire mesh of the top bunk, waking the sleeping Pionier quite dramatically, and also dousing him with assorted bodily fluids; the wire mesh having cut up the Frenchman quite nicely, quite a rude awakening.

Yet another reason to try to get the bottom berth, if you can engineer it.

Bob Lembke

[centurion]

A survivor of one of the airships shot down over France fell through the roof of a nunnery, into a dormitory and onto a nun's, unoccupied, bed. One imagines the Mother Superior had some words to say.

[truthergw]

I have an example of what might be called the "ultimate flechette". My father's unit (2. Kompagnie, Garde=Reserve=Pionier=Regiment (Flammenwerfer) ) was stationed in Stenay-sur-Meuse in late 1916, in an old French wooden barracks, and one night there was a tremendous crash, waking up one of the Pioniere, who found himself a mess. He was in the bottom berth of a "double-decker" bed; as the top berth was not in use there was no bedding, the top bed stripped to the heavy wire mesh matress support. Due to some night aviation mishap a French aircrewman had fallen, crashed through the roof, and landed on the wire mesh of the top bunk, waking the sleeping Pionier quite dramatically, and also dousing him with assorted bodily fluids; the wire mesh having cut up the Frenchman quite nicely, quite a rude awakening.

Yet another reason to try to get the bottom berth, if you can engineer it.

Bob Lembke

I am planning an overnight trip by sleeping car this summer, Bob. Thanks for the tip.

[Andy Wade]

I have an example of what might be called the "ultimate flechette". My father's unit (2. Kompagnie, Garde=Reserve=Pionier=Regiment (Flammenwerfer) ) was stationed in Stenay-sur-Meuse in late 1916, in an old French wooden barracks, and one night there was a tremendous crash, waking up one of the Pioniere, who found himself a mess. He was in the bottom berth of a "double-decker" bed; as the top berth was not in use there was no bedding, the top bed stripped to the heavy wire mesh matress support. Due to some night aviation mishap a French aircrewman had fallen, crashed through the roof, and landed on the wire mesh of the top bunk, waking the sleeping Pionier quite dramatically, and also dousing him with assorted bodily fluids; the wire mesh having cut up the Frenchman quite nicely, quite a rude awakening.

Yet another reason to try to get the bottom berth, if you can engineer it.

Bob Lembke

That sounds like a dreadful way to go.

Why am I thinking about a chip slicing machine?

[Old Owl]

However I have so far encountered no verifiable examples of casualties from the things, some stories (including a fantasic story of a French column with their feet all nailed to the road) but nothing that would stand up in court so to speak, so I'd be interested if there is anything in the records of your officer that might provide evidence. Their rapid demise is, probably, the best indicator of their effectiveness.

I shall have to do some digging around to see if I can trace where I read about the officer killed by an aerial dart--it's quite a few years ago in the dim and distant past and I can't even remember the officers name or regiment, but I shall try!!

[Tony43]

I have looked through this thread for any mention of this postcard published by E. Le Deley of Paris - but could not find it

French aviators dropped the arrows or Flechettes which when released on an unsuspecting soldier could piece his body from head to foot. A description of what they looked like appeared in The War Illustrated on 23rd January 1915

"They are pieces of steel rod about six inches long, sharpened at one end like a pencil, and with the four and a half inches or so at the other end machined out so that the whole thing has the section of a cross...which is, of course, very much lighter than the front end, and so acts just as a feather of an arrow."

The steel arrows were packed in boxes of 500 and placed over a hole in the floor of the aircraft. When over the target the flechettes were released in a stream, simply by pulling a string! When they hit the ground, the arrows covered an area of about fifty yards by ten yards.

In 1915, Mr. C. G. Grey the editor of The Aeroplane commented, "A friend of mine was at the military aerodrome at St. Cyr some little time ago, when some of these arrows were being tested, with an unfortunate cow as the enemy, about three arrows struck the cow, and went clean through her into the ground, after which the cow died quite suddenly.’

According to The War Illustrated, the Royal Flying Corps refused to use flechettes against the Germans because, "Our aviators think arrow-dropping dirty work…because the enemy cannot hear the things coming, and because they make such nasty wounds. Also it was not possible to drop them with sufficient accuracy." The paper then conceded, "nevertheless against cavalry or infantry in any thing like close formation they certainly are effective, as the French have proved."

The editor of The Aeroplane also told his readers about a "German surgical paper", which had devoted a long article about the effect of the flechette on troops. The report said. "If one hits a man on the head it will go straight through his helmet into his brain." However, just as fatal was a hit on the shoulder by one of the steel arrows. The report continued, "it will probably glance off the shoulder blade and go straight through the lungs, and get mixed up with other parts of the anatomy."

One German soldier, who had been on the receiving end of a steel arrow attack said, "that if there was any arrow-dropping going on it was actually safer to be flat on the ground, because although one covers a greater area the area the arrow which does hit home will have less chance of going through several organs."

In early 1915, Grey of The Aeroplane said that in view of the uncertainly of hitting a man with the much larger missile, the bomb, it was hardly likely that the flechette will prove a weapon of "any serious consequence in the war." However, its use was recorded on a postcard by an artist’s impression.

[Cnock]

URL=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/716/dartc.jpg/][/url]

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from 'Stand to' a diary of the trenches 1915-1918

arial darts not the same as arial flechettes

Cnock

[Radlad]

The use of flechettes from small-arms or arty is a post-WW1 (even WW2) development, As our Forum is WW1, I'll leave it at that. Antony

Walter De Milemete didn't seem to think so when he wrote his treatise on arms in 1326, and what about that French electric gun, developed at the end of WW1

[centurion]

URL=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/716/dartc.jpg/][/url]

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

from 'Stand to' a diary of the trenches 1915-1918

arial darts not the same as arial flechettes

Cnock

I think that that is a poor drawing of a granatewerfer

[Cnock]

but that is what they called an aerial dart!

Cnock

and about the flechettes, they were so efficient that the German aviators preferred to give them away as presents to visitors.