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The outbreak of World War I led to a revolution in modern warfare, and the use of barbed wire on the battlefield was one of the many technologies relied upon to hamper the enemy's attack. Used by American cattle ranchers since the 1870s, barbed wire was adapted on the Western Front to serve a more gruesome purpose than containing livestock. [2]
Barbed wire began to be widely used as an implement of war during World War I. Wire was placed either to impede or halt the passage of soldiers, or to channel them into narrow defiles in which small arms, particularly machine guns, and indirect fire could be used with greater effect as they attempted to pass.
World War I entanglements could in some places be tens of metres thick and several metres deep, with the entire space filled with a random, tangled mass of barbed wire. Entanglements were often not created deliberately, but by pushing together the mess of wire formed when conventional barbed wire fences had been damaged by artillery shells.
Triple concertina wire fence Baled concertina wire prior to deployment. Concertina wire or Dannert wire [1] is a type of barbed wire or razor wire that is formed in large coils which can be expanded like a concertina. In conjunction with plain barbed wire (and/or razor wire/tape) and steel pickets, it is most often used to form military-style ...
The Bangalore torpedo was adopted by many armies, and continued in use past the end of World War II. [36] The barbed wire used differed between nations; the German wire was heavier gauge, and British wire cutters, designed for the thinner native product, were unable to cut it. [35]
In World War I the Bangalore torpedo was primarily used for clearing barbed wire before an attack. It could be used while under fire, from a protected position in a trench. The torpedo was standardized to consist of a number of externally identical 1.5 m (5 ft) lengths of threaded pipe, one of which contained the explosive charge.
Jules-Louis Breton (1872-1940). The Breton-Prétot machine was a saw designed to cut the barbed wire protecting enemy trenches of World War I.The first version consisted of a small circular saw, driven by a six hp engine, attached to a long lever that was placed on a small cart with four wheels, that had to be pushed towards its objective.
Hanging on the Old Barbed Wire" (Roud 9618) is a British war song of World War I. The song sarcastically recounts the location of various army members, not to be found in the combat zone, and concludes by describing the location of the old battalion: "hanging on the old barbed wire " .