JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
“Torpedoing the Enemy’s Trenches as a Preliminary to Infantry Attack” is a short but powerful article on the possibility of drone strikes in 1917. Actually, it was more like a wire-guided war robot, steam-driven, trundling across No Man’s Land in a whirl of steel wheels and steam, guided from one trench to attack another, on the other side. The thing doesn’t look so functional, given the varied and terrifically uneven ground it had to traverse with a heavy (and explosive) load and its carriage and powertrain. In a way it reminds me of a Bangalore torpedo, except mobile–on the other hand, the Bangalore actually worked.
Ironically, the torpedo was being operated across land from one land-submerged army to another; the colorful cover of this issue pictures finding submarines by air patrol, and then eventually killing the sub with an air-launched torpedo.
