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Note: Reposted from SV where it got some attention about four years ago, but most of the people here are not SV posters, and so likely never saw it.
In the hundred and twenty odd years since Wells' War of the Worlds was written, there has been a general consensus to dismiss the actions of the British military against the Martians and their effectiveness. The Martians were ultimately defeated by disease, and until that point, humanity was helpless at the slaughterhouse. Later adaptations have focused on this immensely, to the point that there is a notion that Wells' novel generally portrays humanity being wiped out like gnats in an example of the first of the genre of the overwhelming alien intelligence crushing us, helpless with our technology and arrogance against it.
I am going to make a series of posts relating to specific incidents, usually covered only in passing, observing the details of the combat between the Martians and the British military, showing that this was not the case and providing some light on the exact details.
The first covers that glorious event, the fight of the Thunderchild and the three Tripods.
The guns of the newest ships of the channel fleet would be 12in/40cal main cannon mounted in hooded barbettes with 6in/40cal BLRs in battery casemates along their flanks. These Majestic class battleships could fire their main guns twice a minute, with high explosive or armour piercing rounds. Their range-finding was primitive, but Captain Scott was alive and already introducing critical refinements, and from the foretops they would have good sighting with Barr and Stroud coincident rangefinders.
Does it matter? Certainly so. At Shepperton a battery of six cannon laying in ambuscade destroyed a Tripod with a single well-placed round. These were not heavy guns, nor by the standards of Europe in 1898 were they even good guns. The British Army was profoundly deficient in 1898. The field artillery was, generally speaking, in the best case, the worst equipment used subsequent in the Boer War. The guns must have unambiguously been Ordnance BLR 15pdrs. These were modified 12-pdr guns of the 3-inch caliber, firing somewhat heavier shrapnel shells useless against armoured fighting machines and since it was before 1899, on the poor performing Mk.II carriage. Rate of fire was probably not much greater than 4 rounds a minute in practice due to the need to shift the guns back into firing position due to recoil, if not worse in some situations. The Shepperton battery is mentioned only firing twice.
Critically, most of the shells it fired burst harmlessly near the Martians, as did most other shells. Why? They were shrapnel shells, designed to burst in air with timed fuses. Against rapidly moving Martians, the Martian has already moved out of the way, since the fuse must be manually adjusted by time. And the Martian is clearly armoured enough to repel shrapnel. Why was one Tripod cut down at Shepperton, then? It was hit square-on by a shrapnel shell before it burst, the text made clear. The 3-inch shell succeeded in slaying the Martian and deranging the machinery through a direct impact that it was not designed for. Yet this shell, used against its design with a direct hit, did the job. We might imagine the solid shot the French issued for firing at river gunboats from the fully recoil-suppressed M1898 75mm firing up to 20 rounds a minute would have made quite the impression on an advance of Martian Tripods.
It is unambiguous that 3-inch fire from even a light gunboat is sufficient firing common rounds, with high explosive and some armour piercing ability, to seriously threaten the Martians. At the very least, the naval 4-inch quick firing gun must be taken to be a serious threat to a Martian Tripod. What of the 12-inch guns of the channel fleet? I think it is sufficient to say that they would be able to destroy a group of tripods with their high-explosive shells landing nearby. The blast would knock over Tripods, derange and possibly explode heat ray projectors, and by shock-wave, kill the Martians inside when the shell landed close enough.
What is the Thunderchild, then? The best theory I have is that she is the real-life ship named Thundershield (Tordenskjold): The Danish 1880-era UK-built Ironclad ram that Wells saw building when he was a young man as she was built in the UK. The British sometimes bought such ships when contracts fell through; it is thus plausible such a ship, more or less the ultimate of the ironclad rams, would have ended up in the Royal Navy and be the Thunderchild. At 2,500 tons, she was a fifth the size of a Majestic, armed with a single 14-inch gun forward that would fire one round a minute, if that. Low slung, for 13 knots and able to operate in only 16 feet of water she meets the description of the Thunderchild perfectly. Critically, her secondary battery is 4 x 4.7-inch BLRs, which firing 4 - 6 six rounds a minute would be completely lethal to the Martians despite being older blackpowder guns. Very notably, Tordenskjold did not carry side armour. She instead a heavy and very thick barbette defending her gun magazine, and a strong deck against plunging shells. This barbette would defend her head-on when she was approaching the enemy, firing her gun and preparing to use torpedoes and ram.
Despite this she was essentially sacrificial; the Martian tripods stand on legs probably about 40 feet high with the structure another 20 and the heat-ray is a direct fire weapon. The officers of the Channel Fleet would have, in despondency over their inability to prevent the invasion of Britain, nonetheless discussed the events, and received intelligence from Shepperton. It would be clear that the Heat Ray is not a ballistic, but a direct fire weapon. Thus a simple geometric calculation determines the range of its effect. The curvature of the Earth demands that the Heat Ray strike ground or sea about twelve kilometers away from where it is projected, assuming the lay of the land is the same. Firing down from the low Essex coast would not help very much.
The fleet's gunnery is not good, but they have ballistic weapons and they have high fighting tops with sighting equipment. They can stay off the coast at a distance of twelve kilometers and direct main battery fire against any Martians seen with minimal risk; this is within the range of the 12-inchers, but at the limit of the Martian range of the heat-ray. They can protect people in a band along the coast; that is the salvation of some measure of the British people, at least. Other officers would discuss plans for the repair of the fleet to the Island of Wight, which might be covered all around with guns so as to prevent the Martians from effecting a landing. The government doubtless was making plans to arrange for the mounting of guns of the 4.7in to 6in caliber on canalliers to provide a more effectual defence using the massive British canal system. This is still talk of despair.
More to the point, Thunderchild is in range of Martian counter-fire. She is sacrificial because she is small, and because the fleet must have intelligence. There is no wireless telegraphy. They have optical telegraphs and flag signals to communicate with shore only, and they must have detached vessels close to shore to repeat intelligence. She is a scout and a picket, and her officers and men know that she is doomed when the fight begins against the Martians. But with their loved ones being pitilessly massacred ashore and the immense tradition of the Royal Navy being laid low by the inability to prevent this invasion, a burning need to find some way to fight back exists, and by fate or fortune, the Martians give it to them.
At some point to the south, a division of battleships of the Channel Fleet sights Martian Tripods working down to the shore, probably in considerable force. The firing probably was from off Shoeburyness initially, but was this division of the Channel fleet fighting a running battle with tripods along the coast to the north of the city. The ability of the Channel fleet to defend Shoeburyness is unknown, but it's quite possible that the city was saved by mass 12-inch fire turning the tripods back. The Martians finding they did not have the range to engage the Channel fleet, tried to find a solution. The coast being very shallow in this area and the Martians having good imagery from above, it appears they settled on a flanking maneouvre against the Channel fleet.
A group of Tripods would set out to sea; the notion that they were there to massacre the shipping comes off as absurd. The Martians are not massacring at this point. They are engaging in the surgical destruction of Britain's ability to fight back. They are destroying telegraphs and railway junctions in targeted strikes against critical points, wrecking roads and bridges and surgically removing the ability of the country to resist, while using terror to demoralise the people into being unwilling to resist. This is Shock-and-Awe in 1898, as I will go into in more detail.
What this means is that the objective of the Tripods was to remove the ability of the British to continue to resist militarily. They were to slip out to sea and ambush the Channel fleet as it continued to steam north, firing at Tripods moving north from Shoeburyness after the initial attempt to destroy the city was repulsed by the massed 12-inch gunfire of the fleet. By getting out to sea, the Tripods can range on the ships and destroy them. Thunderchild is warned to be alert for such a maneouvre by the exchange of signals, confirmed by shot of a signal gun; and indeed, the Martians send out their flanking maneouvre. Abruptly Thunderchild is no longer helpless. Every man aboard must have felt an indescribable thrill as days of helplessness at the steady butchering of their loved ones and country were replaced by the smallest chance, however hopeless to their lives, to meaningfully fight back.
Thunderchild has no side armour. Speaking from a heat transfer perspective, this is critical to her vulnerability. The massive battleships of the Channel Fleet bear 12 inches of thick belt armour along the waterline. The Heat Ray would have required thirty-two times, at minimum, the length of time to cut through the plating of Thunderchild to cut through the armour belt of a Majestic. Considering that the beam does not project long enough to do more than, based on the great mass of steam, destroy a single boiler room (thus most likely two of Thunderchild's eight boilers), and that the internal bulkheads prevent the propagation of damage to her other boiler rooms, engine room, and steering gear, it is clear that some measure of protection of the Channel Fleet from Martian fire is possible.
Where is it? Why wasn't it firing?
In fact, the Battle off the Blackwater was neither hopeless nor doomed; as it was, both forces annihilated each other, but the British came very close to outright winning.
This battle was functionally won; like at Dunkerque in our timeline, an intact Channel fleet successfully screened an evacuation. A small, old ship sacrificed herself gallantly destroying three Tripods; the toll from the battle may have in fact been more, especially during the opening salvoes against the Martians when it is certain they were in range. The Tripods are not invincible nor magical, and direct fire weapons are limited in replying at the range of 12-inch shellfire. Even 3-inch guns, orders of magnitude smaller, can destroy Tripods, and it is certain that the larger guns must have done so on that day.
In the hundred and twenty odd years since Wells' War of the Worlds was written, there has been a general consensus to dismiss the actions of the British military against the Martians and their effectiveness. The Martians were ultimately defeated by disease, and until that point, humanity was helpless at the slaughterhouse. Later adaptations have focused on this immensely, to the point that there is a notion that Wells' novel generally portrays humanity being wiped out like gnats in an example of the first of the genre of the overwhelming alien intelligence crushing us, helpless with our technology and arrogance against it.
I am going to make a series of posts relating to specific incidents, usually covered only in passing, observing the details of the combat between the Martians and the British military, showing that this was not the case and providing some light on the exact details.
The first covers that glorious event, the fight of the Thunderchild and the three Tripods.
The identity of the Thunderchild is something of a mystery. She is not a real ship of the historic British ranks. She is described as a ram. This is an interesting sort of ironclad that was actually quite obsolete in the 1890s when the book was written. By that point the classical pre-dreadnought battleship was well established, and the construction of armoured rams had largely ceased--though battleships themselves were still fitted with impressive ram bows. She is described as low-slung and almost waterlogged, and critically the Channel fleet, which would have consisted of pre-dreadnought battleships, is also described as being a line of ironclads. So the word is not being used with technical precision.
The guns of the newest ships of the channel fleet would be 12in/40cal main cannon mounted in hooded barbettes with 6in/40cal BLRs in battery casemates along their flanks. These Majestic class battleships could fire their main guns twice a minute, with high explosive or armour piercing rounds. Their range-finding was primitive, but Captain Scott was alive and already introducing critical refinements, and from the foretops they would have good sighting with Barr and Stroud coincident rangefinders.
Does it matter? Certainly so. At Shepperton a battery of six cannon laying in ambuscade destroyed a Tripod with a single well-placed round. These were not heavy guns, nor by the standards of Europe in 1898 were they even good guns. The British Army was profoundly deficient in 1898. The field artillery was, generally speaking, in the best case, the worst equipment used subsequent in the Boer War. The guns must have unambiguously been Ordnance BLR 15pdrs. These were modified 12-pdr guns of the 3-inch caliber, firing somewhat heavier shrapnel shells useless against armoured fighting machines and since it was before 1899, on the poor performing Mk.II carriage. Rate of fire was probably not much greater than 4 rounds a minute in practice due to the need to shift the guns back into firing position due to recoil, if not worse in some situations. The Shepperton battery is mentioned only firing twice.
Critically, most of the shells it fired burst harmlessly near the Martians, as did most other shells. Why? They were shrapnel shells, designed to burst in air with timed fuses. Against rapidly moving Martians, the Martian has already moved out of the way, since the fuse must be manually adjusted by time. And the Martian is clearly armoured enough to repel shrapnel. Why was one Tripod cut down at Shepperton, then? It was hit square-on by a shrapnel shell before it burst, the text made clear. The 3-inch shell succeeded in slaying the Martian and deranging the machinery through a direct impact that it was not designed for. Yet this shell, used against its design with a direct hit, did the job. We might imagine the solid shot the French issued for firing at river gunboats from the fully recoil-suppressed M1898 75mm firing up to 20 rounds a minute would have made quite the impression on an advance of Martian Tripods.
It is unambiguous that 3-inch fire from even a light gunboat is sufficient firing common rounds, with high explosive and some armour piercing ability, to seriously threaten the Martians. At the very least, the naval 4-inch quick firing gun must be taken to be a serious threat to a Martian Tripod. What of the 12-inch guns of the channel fleet? I think it is sufficient to say that they would be able to destroy a group of tripods with their high-explosive shells landing nearby. The blast would knock over Tripods, derange and possibly explode heat ray projectors, and by shock-wave, kill the Martians inside when the shell landed close enough.
What is the Thunderchild, then? The best theory I have is that she is the real-life ship named Thundershield (Tordenskjold): The Danish 1880-era UK-built Ironclad ram that Wells saw building when he was a young man as she was built in the UK. The British sometimes bought such ships when contracts fell through; it is thus plausible such a ship, more or less the ultimate of the ironclad rams, would have ended up in the Royal Navy and be the Thunderchild. At 2,500 tons, she was a fifth the size of a Majestic, armed with a single 14-inch gun forward that would fire one round a minute, if that. Low slung, for 13 knots and able to operate in only 16 feet of water she meets the description of the Thunderchild perfectly. Critically, her secondary battery is 4 x 4.7-inch BLRs, which firing 4 - 6 six rounds a minute would be completely lethal to the Martians despite being older blackpowder guns. Very notably, Tordenskjold did not carry side armour. She instead a heavy and very thick barbette defending her gun magazine, and a strong deck against plunging shells. This barbette would defend her head-on when she was approaching the enemy, firing her gun and preparing to use torpedoes and ram.
So it is the Battle off the Blackwater. We can assume that the Martians came into the water at Courtsend and that Thunderchild was standing on a line, about midpoint between Courtsend and Clacton-on-Sea, five miles from the shore. Her guns thus commanded the beaches of the entire surrounding area from which the evacuation was proceeding. At 20-degrees elevation her 4.7-inch BLRs would range to ten thousand yards. Twelve rounds per minute from the two guns on a broadside would rain down on the position desired, as long as visibility was good, and threaten Martians along the shore with a single round from her 14-incher every minute creating a greater effect.
Despite this she was essentially sacrificial; the Martian tripods stand on legs probably about 40 feet high with the structure another 20 and the heat-ray is a direct fire weapon. The officers of the Channel Fleet would have, in despondency over their inability to prevent the invasion of Britain, nonetheless discussed the events, and received intelligence from Shepperton. It would be clear that the Heat Ray is not a ballistic, but a direct fire weapon. Thus a simple geometric calculation determines the range of its effect. The curvature of the Earth demands that the Heat Ray strike ground or sea about twelve kilometers away from where it is projected, assuming the lay of the land is the same. Firing down from the low Essex coast would not help very much.
The fleet's gunnery is not good, but they have ballistic weapons and they have high fighting tops with sighting equipment. They can stay off the coast at a distance of twelve kilometers and direct main battery fire against any Martians seen with minimal risk; this is within the range of the 12-inchers, but at the limit of the Martian range of the heat-ray. They can protect people in a band along the coast; that is the salvation of some measure of the British people, at least. Other officers would discuss plans for the repair of the fleet to the Island of Wight, which might be covered all around with guns so as to prevent the Martians from effecting a landing. The government doubtless was making plans to arrange for the mounting of guns of the 4.7in to 6in caliber on canalliers to provide a more effectual defence using the massive British canal system. This is still talk of despair.
More to the point, Thunderchild is in range of Martian counter-fire. She is sacrificial because she is small, and because the fleet must have intelligence. There is no wireless telegraphy. They have optical telegraphs and flag signals to communicate with shore only, and they must have detached vessels close to shore to repeat intelligence. She is a scout and a picket, and her officers and men know that she is doomed when the fight begins against the Martians. But with their loved ones being pitilessly massacred ashore and the immense tradition of the Royal Navy being laid low by the inability to prevent this invasion, a burning need to find some way to fight back exists, and by fate or fortune, the Martians give it to them.
At some point to the south, a division of battleships of the Channel Fleet sights Martian Tripods working down to the shore, probably in considerable force. The firing probably was from off Shoeburyness initially, but was this division of the Channel fleet fighting a running battle with tripods along the coast to the north of the city. The ability of the Channel fleet to defend Shoeburyness is unknown, but it's quite possible that the city was saved by mass 12-inch fire turning the tripods back. The Martians finding they did not have the range to engage the Channel fleet, tried to find a solution. The coast being very shallow in this area and the Martians having good imagery from above, it appears they settled on a flanking maneouvre against the Channel fleet.
A group of Tripods would set out to sea; the notion that they were there to massacre the shipping comes off as absurd. The Martians are not massacring at this point. They are engaging in the surgical destruction of Britain's ability to fight back. They are destroying telegraphs and railway junctions in targeted strikes against critical points, wrecking roads and bridges and surgically removing the ability of the country to resist, while using terror to demoralise the people into being unwilling to resist. This is Shock-and-Awe in 1898, as I will go into in more detail.
What this means is that the objective of the Tripods was to remove the ability of the British to continue to resist militarily. They were to slip out to sea and ambush the Channel fleet as it continued to steam north, firing at Tripods moving north from Shoeburyness after the initial attempt to destroy the city was repulsed by the massed 12-inch gunfire of the fleet. By getting out to sea, the Tripods can range on the ships and destroy them. Thunderchild is warned to be alert for such a maneouvre by the exchange of signals, confirmed by shot of a signal gun; and indeed, the Martians send out their flanking maneouvre. Abruptly Thunderchild is no longer helpless. Every man aboard must have felt an indescribable thrill as days of helplessness at the steady butchering of their loved ones and country were replaced by the smallest chance, however hopeless to their lives, to meaningfully fight back.
Bolded text just confirms that the Martians were coming from beyond the Crouch, i.e., going into the sea around Courtsend, and so were probably trying to flank the Channel fleet steaming north.
Here, we see that the Martians have probably reached a depth of thirty-five feet or greater. This is well within the operating range of the Thunderchild, and indeed, her Captain must have realized she could ram, in addition to using her guns. The Martians themselves could not be sure of the nature of the Thunderchild, likely then steaming at 13kts, having encountered the Channel fleet at a dim remove and those ships being very different besides. But it is just as likely that the Martians were silent because their orders were to engage the Channel fleet, and they were ignoring shipping that did not match the nature of that clear enemy.
The range of the cannister discharges is not great. This means Thunderchild approached to at most perhaps a mile from the Martians, they are never shown as discharging the cylinders at greater distances, and the process is probably pneumatic as very careful observers do not attend it with any kind of flash or noise, and it clearly doesn't have any force like an electromagnetic catapult to damage the ship by.
This is the moment the Martians realise there is a danger. They have realised, most likely, that the massive gun on the bow of the Thunderchild, even silent, is similar to those on the Channel fleet. They have allowed the gunners to get within point blank range. The British fleet had bad gunnery in the 1890s, but bad in the context of technology having outstripped their traditions. At this range it does not matter; they are within smoothbore cannon shot of the Martians already! They can lay the gun in and hit with it against an object of that size, about the same size as the floating targets they might have practiced against, at similar ranges.
Thunderchild has no side armour. Speaking from a heat transfer perspective, this is critical to her vulnerability. The massive battleships of the Channel Fleet bear 12 inches of thick belt armour along the waterline. The Heat Ray would have required thirty-two times, at minimum, the length of time to cut through the plating of Thunderchild to cut through the armour belt of a Majestic. Considering that the beam does not project long enough to do more than, based on the great mass of steam, destroy a single boiler room (thus most likely two of Thunderchild's eight boilers), and that the internal bulkheads prevent the propagation of damage to her other boiler rooms, engine room, and steering gear, it is clear that some measure of protection of the Channel Fleet from Martian fire is possible.
So what is that first flicker of flame? Let's look at the sequence: Flicker of flame is first, second the Martian reels and staggers; third the Martian falls. Fourth, the Guns of the Thunderchild going off in the reek. So what is the flicker of flame? It isn't more damage from Thunderchild, it's clearly her main gun. A single shot, but point-blank range and well placed. The first Tripod has been struck down by a shell from a 14-inch blackpowder rifle. That gun will get only one shot in the battle, but it has done its duty.
Thunderchild's cellular internal structure and the immense armour around the barbette has prevented a magazine explosion from destroying her. With at least half of her boilers intact, she is still driving at speed and under power. Her target is the almost awash Martian tripod directly ahead of her. She is driving in to ram. The Captain knows that if he fouls those legs, knocks her into the water, she is finished. His wounded ship is capable of this even with her main gun still desperately reloading.
Her magazine exploded from directed fire of the Heat Ray ultimately cutting through the armour. It's possible the Martian had been repeatedly firing to cut through the armour, but it shows that ultimately the Heat Ray is a heat ray. It can burn through armour if it has enough time. So while armour prolongs your survival, simple iron and steel do only that; something more sophisticated would be required to properly turn the Heat Ray. Thunderchild's magazine explosion is, like most, not completely destructive to the structure of the ship. Dead, she carries on the last distance and destroys the second Tripod unambiguously. More ambiguous is what happened to the third Tripod.
Where is it? Why wasn't it firing?
The Third Martian has been destroyed; destroyed by the reek of the guns going off in the smoke. They cannot see it, because the 4.7-inch secondary battery was more than able over a period of several minutes of firing to place at least one shell on the foremost part of the third tripod -- and as demonstrated at Shepperton, this alone was able to destroy one of the Tripods. The reason the Captain was gearing up to ram the last is because his 4.7-inch guns could not bear on her, and from his vantage point he knew his secondary battery had destroyed the third tripod. In fact, in her last moments, Thunderchild's crew died hoping they could live, fighting for their lives: Had she rammed the Tripod only a minute earlier at most, had she possessed only a few more knots of speed, Thunderchild would have rammed and destroyed the last tripod she was fighting, and with only one watertight compartment compromised, made her way out to sea to take stock of her damage and live to fight another day.
In fact, the Battle off the Blackwater was neither hopeless nor doomed; as it was, both forces annihilated each other, but the British came very close to outright winning.
Nothing of aerial craft capable of engaging the fleet is mentioned. The description of this device is as a rocket projecting, most likely chemical weapons such as spores for the red weed, or re-deploying more landing capsules and tripods. Based on the description of the battle, the fleet reached the limit of tripods that it could see, turned around, which is explicit, and steamed back south. Why? I suspect they were defending Shoeburyness with desultory firing against an evening or night attack, to buy yet another day for the city. There is no indication that the Channel fleet was destroyed or otherwise suffered casualties. In the longer term, the danger to it is the loss of spare parts and fresh ammunition.
This battle was functionally won; like at Dunkerque in our timeline, an intact Channel fleet successfully screened an evacuation. A small, old ship sacrificed herself gallantly destroying three Tripods; the toll from the battle may have in fact been more, especially during the opening salvoes against the Martians when it is certain they were in range. The Tripods are not invincible nor magical, and direct fire weapons are limited in replying at the range of 12-inch shellfire. Even 3-inch guns, orders of magnitude smaller, can destroy Tripods, and it is certain that the larger guns must have done so on that day.
