Barbed Wire

[JMB1943]

From what I have read of the war in the trenches, cutting of the enemy (German) barbed wire was always largely problematic.

The following methods seemed to be available to the BEF, with my impression of effectiveness.

1) hand-held wire cutters: German wire was too thick to cut by hand (initially)

2) artillery fire, HE or shrapnel: largely ineffective,

3) wire-cutters attached to barrel of rifle & bullet fired: not exactly stealthy for trench raiding,

4) Bangalore torpedo: I have no idea of the effectiveness

5) flatten under a tank: did not cut per se.

Have I missed any other methods?

The BEF / CEF / AIF did plenty of surprise trench raiding against the Germans, so hand cutters must have been used successfully many times

Were the British wire-cutters upgraded or did the Germans downgrade the thickness of their wire over time?

Has the issue of barbed wire been successfully (greater than 95%) addressed in the last 100 years?

Yours confusedly,

Regards,

JMB

 

 

 

 

[MikeyH]

I have a pair of 'Bradbury' wire cutters, dated 1915, These known as the Mark V, introduced in 1912, 11" approx overall. They were in use until the folding type introduced in 1916.  There are three cutting jaws, which are around 8mm, fully open.  I seem to recall that the German's introduced a thicker gauge of wire, mid war.  The later folding wire cutters would have been much more effective on this.  The cutting effort required on the earlier type would have been considerable.

Mike.

Edited 18 February , 2023 by MikeyH

[4thGordons]

1 hour ago, JMB1943 said:

2) artillery fire, HE or shrapnel: largely ineffective,

I'm not sure about this. Early on, yes, but I think with the introduction of instantaneous detonation / graze fuzes (like the British No106 fuze?) then the ability of artillery to cut wire was quite significantly improved. My recollection is this became widespread from early 1917.

Chris

[battle of loos]

good evening,

here is some wire cutter in my collection :

1°

"Name of manufacturer to be identified"
1917
K K (what does this mean?)
Y /I\

2°

exemplary fixing on the Lee Enfield.
it comes from the field (Loos sector)

II will be on the others later because not on hand at the moment.
michel

[Chasemuseum]

There is little doubt the super quick fuzes on HE shells were effective in the destruction of barbed wire obstacles. The steel fragments of the steel quite literally cut through the wire.  The problem with HE shells was that there was a shortage through the whole of the war, with most shells being shrapnel. Additionally it took a long time to develop a super quick fuze. Prior to the super quick, percussion fuzes tended to allow the shell to penetrate the ground prior to detonating. Most of the blast effect was then directed upwards and the quantity of wire destroyed by each shell was too little.

 

Huge quantities of shrapnel shells were expended on the destruction of wire. Experiments proved that they could be effective, but it was much harder to destroy wire with shrapnel than it would appear. The shell must burst at exactly the right height above the wire for the cone of bullets to strike and cut the wire. Too high and the bullets just bounce off the wire, too low and the just buy in the ground as a concentrated mass. This is a shell designed to kill or injure men out in the open. It was hard enough to do this effectively. The bullets have a similar size and slightly lower velocity to a large bore pistol bullet when they leave the shell casing. They are alloy hardened lead. If you shoot a strand of barb wire at 5m you will break it. If you shoot it at 100m the pistol bullet will have lost so much speed that it will bounce off the wire.

 

Why was so much emphasis placed on the manufacture of shrapnel shells rather than HE. ?  For much of the war, Britain lacked the ability to manufacture sufficient quantities of HE. Additionally the HE shell represented a much greater consumption of steel than a shrapnel shell. It is difficult to quantify but in the consumption of resources it probably "cost" about three times to produce an HE shell to a shrapnel (this is resources not actual manufacture cost). It was difficult for the powers to be to comprehend the real metric needed to be shell effect on the enemy was the objective rather than shells fired at the enemy. Its just that the true metric is much harder to count.

[battle of loos]

Here are the German wire cutter :

1°

2°

T IV - DRGM -  W. HUCKINGHAUS - REMSCHEID - 1916

3°

A variant of the above model :

michel

[Dave66]

Can’t help with Great War era, but I did recently see a British 17 dated pair and quite chunky and well made, but a few years ago I did pick up a pair of ww2 1945 dated economy pattern cutters….a mere 9 inches long in total.

Dave.

Edited 19 February , 2023 by Dave66

[MikeyH]

Michel,

The maker of your wirecutters, is Chillinton of Wolverhampton.

K K, possibly Kaapse Korps/Cape Corps, a South African unit in WW1.

Mike.

Edited 19 February , 2023 by MikeyH

[battle of loos]

good morning,

thank's for your answer.

michel

[battle of loos]

here is another one from the field (Loos) who was identified to me as English :

3°

michel

[INW]

The Importance of Wire Cutters

In a lecture in the 2017 WW1 Centenary Conference at Chester le Street. Dr, now Professor, Matthias Strohn looked at several reasons why Germany lost the war.

One of the reasons listed was: In the initial invasion of Belgium and France the German troops were not equipped with wire cutters.

He explained that as the German troops advanced they found the field boundary hedges had the farmers wire in them, and they could not be breached. They had to move forward through the field gates. This concentrated them and made it easier for the defenders to pick them off with rifles and machine guns.

An interesting topic for debate....

INW

 

[Michael Haselgrove]

JMB,

Thanks very much for your interesting question.  If you wish to know more about the subject may I recommend "Dominating the Enemy" by Anthony Saunders pages 149 to 159.   The book is available on-line for a very reasonable price.

I don't think the Germans changed their single-strand wire during the war but they did, of course, make use of captured enemy wire.  It may interest you to know that in my collection I have a three inch piece of German single-strand wire with a label attached to it reading "A piece of German barbed wire taken form the enemy's trenches opposite Fromelles by an officers patrol on Oct 17th 1915."  I think it was not uncommon for a patrol to bring back a piece of wire to show they had reached the German wire.

Regards,

MIchael. 

[JMB1943]

Michael,

Always happy to receive a good book recommendation, I’ll look into getting hold of it.

Regards,

JMB