What advance improved communications during World War I?
1 Answer
IN WW-1, Armies faced enormous difficulty in command, control and communications; but the technological improvement they all depended on was new switching equipment for telephones.
Explanation:
Recommended Reading: 1) Griffith, Paddy: Battle Tactics of the Western Front: The British Army's Art of Attack 1916-1918; 2) Corrigan, Gordon; Mud, Blood and Poppycock:
In WW-1, especially on the Western Front, the tactical deadlock that defined the fighting was an acute technological imbalance. The new firepower of the 30 years before the war, had not been matched by similar improvements in transportation and communications. Massive armies and the huge quantities of supplies they needed could be railed to the edge of the battlefield, and then had to get out and walk.
Generals could sit out of artillery range, and wait for news, or they could go down into the trenches themselves and see... but could barely communicate when they were there. (By the way, the casualty rates in WW1 to generals in the British, French and German armies were the highest of any war in the last 250 years... they didn't stay in their chateaus).
Radios were in their infancy, but were still too large, clunky and unreliable to be used by troops in combat. Telephones and telegraphs were common, but shellfire cut lines all too easily. Both were used by headquarters in rear areas, but were not easily used on the battlefield. Flares, and signal flags, pigeons, runners, heliographs were all used but with limited effect.
There were clumsy field-phone sets that let -- with some limits -- company commanders talk to battalion commanders, and then to brigade commanders. Artillery observers could also reach their batteries the same way. But, starting in late 1917, new telephone switching equipment started to appear in the British and French armies that made communications a lot more effective than before. Phone networks started to appear that were much more resistant to the effects of shellfire, and command and control improved.
For instance, an artillery observer trying to direct gun-fire in 1916 could do nothing if his signal wire all the way back to his gun battery was cut. In 1918, he would only have to connect to the field phone of the nearest infantry company, and if that company had lost their rear link, they would have lateral links to the other companies in their battalion so that the message could be sent in a reliable and timely manner.
