Books The Military Response to the Martians (War of the Worlds).

[Deleted member]

Martian Grand Strategy

The Martians are intelligent, rational, thinking creatures. They saw their world cooling and had a definitive plan to deal with it, one that probably involved a civilisational investment of enormous resources. They did not leave anything to chance, either, instead engaging in the simultaneous attempt to effect lodgements on Venus and Earth. The real skill of the Martians is considerably greater, however. They did not simply walk around killing everything.

This is not a story of human helplessness, and it is not strictly a colonial inversion, either. Wells was a futurist and he made some astonishingly good predictions about where technology was going -- and many predictions in the War of the Worlds have been ignored to fixate on the traditional narrative of human helplessness, on the idea of reducing humanity to insignificance.

When we really look at the story, however, what we actually see is that the Martians were winning because they were executing a disciplined operational plan to get inside of humanity's decision cycle or OODA loop. Britain played the part of Iraq, the Martians the United States, a hundred years before that war happened. One could also make comparisons to Blitzkrieg, but this is something more, because it's the execution of total strategic dominance rather than simply battlefield dominance.

In London, also, on Saturday night there was a thunderstorm, and my brother reached Waterloo in a cab. On the platform from which the midnight train usually starts he learned, after some waiting, that an accident prevented trains from reaching Woking that night. The nature of the accident he could not ascertain; indeed, the railway authorities did not clearly know at that time. There was very little excitement in the station, as the officials, failing to realise that anything further than a breakdown between Byfleet and Woking junction had occurred, were running the theatre trains which usually passed through Woking round by Virginia Water or Guildford. They were busy making the necessary arrangements to alter the route of the Southampton and Portsmouth Sunday League excursions. A nocturnal newspaper reporter, mistaking my brother for the traffic manager, to whom he bears a slight resemblance, waylaid and tried to interview him. Few people, excepting the railway officials, connected the breakdown with the Martians.

I have read, in another account of these events, that on Sunday morning "all London was electrified by the news from Woking." As a matter of fact, there was nothing to justify that very extravagant phrase. Plenty of Londoners did not hear of the Martians until the panic of Monday morning. Those who did took some time to realise all that the hastily worded telegrams in the Sunday papers conveyed. The majority of people in London do not read Sunday papers.

The habit of personal security, moreover, is so deeply fixed in the Londoner's mind, and startling intelligence so much a matter of course in the papers, that they could read without any personal tremors: "About seven o'clock last night the Martians came out of the cylinder, and, moving about under an armour of metallic shields, have completely wrecked Woking station with the adjacent houses, and massacred an entire battalion of the Cardigan Regiment. No details are known. Maxims have been absolutely useless against their armour; the field guns have been disabled by them. Flying hussars have been galloping into Chertsey. The Martians appear to be moving slowly towards Chertsey or Windsor. Great anxiety prevails in West Surrey, and earthworks are being thrown up to check the advance Londonward." That was how the Sunday Sun put it, and a clever and remarkably prompt "handbook" article in the Referee compared the affair to a menagerie suddenly let loose in a village.

No one in London knew positively of the nature of the armoured Martians, and there was still a fixed idea that these monsters must be sluggish: "crawling," "creeping painfully"--such expressions occurred in almost all the earlier reports. None of the telegrams could have been written by an eyewitness of their advance. The Sunday papers printed separate editions as further news came to hand, some even in default of it. But there was practically nothing more to tell people until late in the afternoon, when the authorities gave the press agencies the news in their possession. It was stated that the people of Walton and Weybridge, and all the district were pouring along the roads Londonward, and that was all.

My brother went to church at the Foundling Hospital in the morning, still in ignorance of what had happened on the previous night. There he heard allusions made to the invasion, and a special prayer for peace. Coming out, he bought a Referee. He became alarmed at the news in this, and went again to Waterloo station to find out if communication were restored. The omnibuses, carriages, cyclists, and innumerable people walking in their best clothes seemed scarcely affected by the strange intelligence that the news venders were disseminating. People were interested, or, if alarmed, alarmed only on account of the local residents. At the station he heard for the first time that the Windsor and Chertsey lines were now interrupted. The porters told him that several remarkable telegrams had been received in the morning from Byfleet and Chertsey stations, but that these had abruptly ceased. My brother could get very little precise detail out of them.

"There's fighting going on about Weybridge" was the extent of their information.

The train service was now very much disorganised. Quite a number of people who had been expecting friends from places on the South-Western network were standing about the station. One grey-headed old gentleman came and abused the South-Western Company bitterly to my brother. "It wants showing up," he said.

One or two trains came in from Richmond, Putney, and Kingston, containing people who had gone out for a day's boating and found the locks closed and a feeling of panic in the air. A man in a blue and white blazer addressed my brother, full of strange tidings.

"There's hosts of people driving into Kingston in traps and carts and things, with boxes of valuables and all that," he said. "They come from Molesey and Weybridge and Walton, and they say there's been guns heard at Chertsey, heavy firing, and that mounted soldiers have told them to get off at once because the Martians are coming. We heard guns firing at Hampton Court station, but we thought it was thunder. What the dickens does it all mean? The Martians can't get out of their pit, can they?"

The train service was now very much disorganised. After destroying the initial cordon, the activity of the Martians is vividly demonstrated: Information is no longer available. Trains from the Southwest Company are not arriving. The junction between Woking and Byfleet has been cut. Indeed, many junctions have been cut. A litany of wrecked rail junctions litters the book from the beginning to the end, where out of work people support the customary navvies in building temporary routings to send trains across at Clapham Junction.

What is a rail junction? Nothing less than a concentration of railway routes from which the re-routing of trains may occur, sometimes with major rail facilities for re-marshalling. These were facilities targeted by nuclear weapons during the Cold War; in the 1890s they are even more critical and even more important.

Remember that.

They were described as "vast spiderlike machines, nearly a hundred feet high, capable of the speed of an express train, and able to shoot out a beam of intense heat." Masked batteries, chiefly of field guns, had been planted in the country about Horsell Common, and especially between the Woking district and London. Five of the machines had been seen moving towards the Thames, and one, by a happy chance, had been destroyed. In the other cases the shells had missed, and the batteries had been at once annihilated by the Heat-Rays. Heavy losses of soldiers were mentioned, but the tone of the dispatch was optimistic.

The Martians had been repulsed; they were not invulnerable. They had retreated to their triangle of cylinders again, in the circle about Woking. Signallers with heliographs were pushing forward upon them from all sides. Guns were in rapid transit from Windsor, Portsmouth, Aldershot, Woolwich--even from the north; among others, long wire-guns of ninety-five tons from Woolwich. Altogether one hundred and sixteen were in position or being hastily placed, chiefly covering London. Never before in England had there been such a vast or rapid concentration of military material.

Any further cylinders that fell, it was hoped, could be destroyed at once by high explosives, which were being rapidly manufactured and distributed. No doubt, ran the report, the situation was of the strangest and gravest description, but the public was exhorted to avoid and discourage panic. No doubt the Martians were strange and terrible in the extreme, but at the outside there could not be more than twenty of them against our millions.

So the government is quickly responding. Guns are in rapid transit, including ninety-five tons from the Woolwich arsenal. The Government issues the regular assurances that the situation is under control. The Martians appear to retreat, but at the Battle of Shepperton that is referenced, they actually destroyed a powder works, telegraph wires, railway; they were still succeeding in their objectives.

Now as I have explained in covering the naval side, these guns are capable of destroying the Martians. What is a ninety-five ton gun? Probably spare 16.25in/30cal barrels with cocoa powder for their charges. These guns would take days to emplace. The heavy artillery is moving slowly on special trains. Does it ever reach London to be destroyed? absolutely not. Wells' descriptions of the subsequent battles that lead to the Martian conquest of London continue to explicitly reference field batteries. Heavy guns that could have strengthened a perimeter by firing at range and destroying Martians with concussion of near misses never once come into action--because the Martians, from the very first, have planned and are executing contingencies for the destruction of a civilisation they can envision.

They are destroying communications facilities and transportation facilities. It is noted that the canals are even no longer being worked west of London, forcing holidayers who don't realise the severity of events back to the city. Any form of transportation is being eliminated.

And yet the field guns are still able to disable a Martian, just not permanently:

The St. George's Hill men, however, were better led or of a better mettle. Hidden by a pine wood as they were, they seem to have been quite unsuspected by the Martian nearest to them. They laid their guns as deliberately as if they had been on parade, and fired at about a thousand yards' range.

The shells flashed all round him, and he was seen to advance a few paces, stagger, and go down. Everybody yelled together, and the guns were reloaded in frantic haste. The overthrown Martian set up a prolonged ululation, and immediately a second glittering giant, answering him, appeared over the trees to the south. It would seem that a leg of the tripod had been smashed by one of the shells. The whole of the second volley flew wide of the Martian on the ground, and, simultaneously, both his companions brought their Heat-Rays to bear on the battery. The ammunition blew up, the pine trees all about the guns flashed into fire, and only one or two of the men who were already running over the crest of the hill escaped.

Without prompt support a second Martian would have been destroyed by field guns. What follows, of course, is the use of the Black Smoke. Poison gas clears the remaining batteries. But it might not have been so easy; guns capable of long-range fire well placed with a favourable prevailing wind could have held them off for at least a while.

Instead, the Martians effectively combine the use of the heat ray and the black smoke to suppress and then destroy revealed batteries. They have already hamstrung the carriage of heavy guns to London; now they use their technical advantages to achieve battlefield dominance. They conduct the attack too rapidly for the batteries of heavy guns and for other defences to be prepared. In doing so, they have gotten inside of the British OODA.

So, setting about it as methodically as men might smoke out a wasps' nest, the Martians spread this strange stifling vapour over the Londonward country. The horns of the crescent slowly moved apart, until at last they formed a line from Hanwell to Coombe and Malden. All night through their destructive tubes advanced. Never once, after the Martian at St. George's Hill was brought down, did they give the artillery the ghost of a chance against them. Wherever there was a possibility of guns being laid for them unseen, a fresh canister of the black vapour was discharged, and where the guns were openly displayed the Heat-Ray was brought to bear.

By midnight the blazing trees along the slopes of Richmond Park and the glare of Kingston Hill threw their light upon a network of black smoke, blotting out the whole valley of the Thames and extending as far as the eye could reach. And through this two Martians slowly waded, and turned their hissing steam jets this way and that.

They were sparing of the Heat-Ray that night, either because they had but a limited supply of material for its production or because they did not wish to destroy the country but only to crush and overawe the opposition they had aroused. In the latter aim they certainly succeeded. Sunday night was the end of the organised opposition to their movements. After that no body of men would stand against them, so hopeless was the enterprise. Even the crews of the torpedo-boats and destroyers that had brought their quick-firers up the Thames refused to stop, mutinied, and went down again. The only offensive operation men ventured upon after that night was the preparation of mines and pitfalls, and even in that their energies were frantic and spasmodic.

One has to imagine, as well as one may, the fate of those batteries towards Esher, waiting so tensely in the twilight. Survivors there were none. One may picture the orderly expectation, the officers alert and watchful, the gunners ready, the ammunition piled to hand, the limber gunners with their horses and waggons, the groups of civilian spectators standing as near as they were permitted, the evening stillness, the ambulances and hospital tents with the burned and wounded from Weybridge; then the dull resonance of the shots the Martians fired, and the clumsy projectile whirling over the trees and houses and smashing amid the neighbouring fields.

One may picture, too, the sudden shifting of the attention, the swiftly spreading coils and bellyings of that blackness advancing headlong, towering heavenward, turning the twilight to a palpable darkness, a strange and horrible antagonist of vapour striding upon its victims, men and horses near it seen dimly, running, shrieking, falling headlong, shouts of dismay, the guns suddenly abandoned, men choking and writhing on the ground, and the swift broadening-out of the opaque cone of smoke. And then night and extinction--nothing but a silent mass of impenetrable vapour hiding its dead.

In short, modern military tactics have been used to destroy morale, coordination, and supply, and thus make resistance impossible. Their technology is not profoundly overwhelming. What is profoundly overwhelming, and profoundly unique about Wells' writing, is that the Martian technology, only slightly superiour to that of the British, is unstoppable because it is being combined with modern military tactics that disrupt and demoralise the ability of the defenders to respond to the offensive.

Wells then makes this explicit:

Had the Martians aimed only at destruction, they might on Monday have annihilated the entire population of London, as it spread itself slowly through the home counties. Not only along the road through Barnet, but also through Edgware and Waltham Abbey, and along the roads eastward to Southend and Shoeburyness, and south of the Thames to Deal and Broadstairs, poured the same frantic rout. If one could have hung that June morning in a balloon in the blazing blue above London every northward and eastward road running out of the tangled maze of streets would have seemed stippled black with the streaming fugitives, each dot a human agony of terror and physical distress. I have set forth at length in the last chapter my brother's account of the road through Chipping Barnet, in order that my readers may realise how that swarming of black dots appeared to one of those concerned. Never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered together. The legendary hosts of Goths and Huns, the hugest armies Asia has ever seen, would have been but a drop in that current. And this was no disciplined march; it was a stampede--a stampede gigantic and terrible--without order and without a goal, six million people unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of civilisation, of the massacre of mankind.

Directly below him the balloonist would have seen the network of streets far and wide, houses, churches, squares, crescents, gardens--already derelict--spread out like a huge map, and in the southwardblotted. Over Ealing, Richmond, Wimbledon, it would have seemed as if some monstrous pen had flung ink upon the chart. Steadily, incessantly, each black splash grew and spread, shooting out ramifications this way and that, now banking itself against rising ground, now pouring swiftly over a crest into a new-found valley, exactly as a gout of ink would spread itself upon blotting paper.

And beyond, over the blue hills that rise southward of the river, the glittering Martians went to and fro, calmly and methodically spreading their poison cloud over this patch of country and then over that, laying it again with their steam jets when it had served its purpose, and taking possession of the conquered country. They do not seem to have aimed at extermination so much as at complete demoralisation and the destruction of any opposition. They exploded any stores of powder they came upon, cut every telegraph, and wrecked the railways here and there. They were hamstringing mankind. They seemed in no hurry to extend the field of their operations, and did not come beyond the central part of London all that day. It is possible that a very considerable number of people in London stuck to their houses through Monday morning. Certain it is that many died at home suffocated by the Black Smoke.

Why this action? They aren't really hamstringing mankind; they're hamstringing London. Why Britain? Britain, how much they could they have seen that it was the centre of the world? Why not Berlin, why not Paris? I think the answer is that Britain is on an island. As we know, there were only ten cylinders in the first wave:

"It's all over," he said. "They've lost one--just one. And they've made their footing good and crippled the greatest power in the world. They've walked over us. The death of that one at Weybridge was an accident. And these are only pioneers. They kept on coming. These green stars--I've seen none these five or six days, but I've no doubt they're falling somewhere every night. Nothing's to be done. We're under! We're beat!"
I made him no answer. I sat staring before me, trying in vain to devise some countervailing thought.

"This isn't a war," said the artilleryman. "It never was a war, any more than there's war between man and ants."

Suddenly I recalled the night in the observatory.

"After the tenth shot they fired no more--at least, until the first cylinder came."

For some reason, they could not project a larger force. Britain was a springboard. Did they know that it was important? Possibly they were able to track the wakes of ships from Mars or some other grand endeavour of telescopic refinement. Quite possibly they had observed that of all the cities on Earth, the lights of London had grown the fastest and furthest in the past century--London's population growth was immense in the 19th century, and with the invention of gas-lighting, probably detectable and obvious.

But it seems that Britain being an island was just right. The objective of the first landing was not to destroy humanity, and indeed it could not, for it was much too small. The objective was to establish a base which could be defended against counterattack while at the same time providing a large enough habitat and secure territory from which to build up a full strength invasion force. Britain was Okinawa in preparation for Downfall.

That was the Martian objective. And that is why the military situation shows both his unique genius as a futurist and also how humanity could, in fact, have fought back, because in the time before the Martians had built up in Britain to conquer the rest of the world, the critical gas-masks and protective gear against the black smoke could have gone a long way to equalise the contest.

Or could it have?

The Martians understood the OODA loop extremely well, which brings us to:

Across the pit on its farther lip, flat and vast and strange, lay the great flying-machine with which they had been experimenting upon our denser atmosphere when decay and death arrested them. Death had come not a day too soon. At the sound of a cawing overhead I looked up at the huge fighting-machine that would fight no more for ever, at the tattered red shreds of flesh that dripped down upon the overturned seats on the summit of Primrose Hill.

They were experimenting on a "great flying machine". There is no guarantee they had aircraft in the thin aircraft on Mars, but from their rocketry, they knew the principles of flight and aerodynamics. If the machine had succeeded, it is obvious what the next step would have been:

Using the black smoke to strategic bomb with chemical weapons the major industrial cities of continental Europe to disrupt defensive preparations.

Whether or not it would have succeeded, though, is up to the interpretation of the reader.

 

[Deleted member]

@S'task it is certainly true that even in the novel the narrator mentions a "horrible accident" that occurred as a consequence of experimenting with the Martian heat rays, so I acknowledge that the reverse-engineering would be an effort of enormous magnitude. But some things like the servos for the legs of the Walkers, or a metallurgical analysis, might be possible and useful, and the mere existence of titanium might even point the way to the welding techniques for it which were only a few decades away from being perfected OTL.

I hope in regard to the other points that perhaps my second post addressed them.

 

[S'task]

But some things like the servos for the legs of the Walkers,

The walkers didn't use servos. One of the major technological differences between Martian and earth technology was quite explicit: Martians do not use the wheel or cogs. That's actually one of the things Wells hated about many of the artist renditions of Fighting Machines: they had legs that required wheel like structures to work, and he explicitly wrote they didn't use them. It's a weird tidbit, but it's there.

and the mere existence of titanium might even point the way to the welding techniques for it which were only a few decades away from being perfected OTL.

Uhh... humans first isolated and identified Titanium in 1791, 100 years before the Martians showed up. In fact, it was a Brit who did it. So them knowing about it wasn't really a factor, and scientists were already working on ways to purify it.

Oh, and I never disagree that the Martians were not using smart tactics to disrupt and conquer. I'm just skeptical of human ability to reverse engineer their technology.

 

[Francis Urquhart]

One thing you are forgetting though, in your long term analysis, is that the Martians never planned on limiting themselves to their Fighting Machines. They did have other support machines, one of which would potentially made the entire Royal Navy Obsolete: the Flying Machines. If these even had a fraction of the capability of the Fighting Machines and featured downward pointing Heat Rays and decent maneuverability, these would have been a near complete out of context problem for the Earth at the time, as heavier than air flight was still very much a dream (the first successful heavier than air flight was still about 5 years off at the time the novel was published).

Surprisingly, the foundations for air defense on the 1890s fleet were in place. All the British battleships and armored cruisers were equipped with 12-pounder guns intended to fight off destroyers and torpedo boats. All that was necessary was to put those guns on high-angle mountings so they could engage aircraft. Such mountings already existed; the 12 pounders using them were described as anti-balloon guns. In fact, the first such mountings were installed on British ships in 1908 but they had existed before that (they appear in designs as early as 1898). Other navies had similar guns and its a good bet that the designs for such high-angle mounts existed. So the basis of the defense exists.

**Edit. On checking I found that a Majestic class battleship had 16 12-pounder guns and 12 3-pounders. The former could fire up to 12 rounds per minute, the latter 25. The guns mostly had pedestal mounts that permitted up to 40 degrees elevation. So, they are quite usable for anti-Flying machines. ***End Edit

Now the big problems, the ones air defense systems have never really solved convincingly, is not engaging a target but knowing target is out there. Unless one starts getting clever (which navies did in the 1930s), spotting an aircraft coming in will not take place until its 5 - 8 nautical miles out. The faster it comes in, the further out it has to be engaged.

So, critical question number one. What is the speed of these Martian flying machines? My personal guess is that by WW1 standards they are slow. Mars has thin air and its technology will reflect that. Once in the thick air of earth, drag alone is going to really slow its flying machines down. If they come in at 60mph, the target ships will have 6 - 8 minutes to engage them. That is likely to be a significant emotional event for the Martian pilots.

Now, weaponry. The Heat Ray. There is a pretty good law of physics that one cannot get more energy out of a machine than one puts into it. So, how is the flying machine going to power its heat-ray. If it has a generator on board, that flying machine is going to be large and clumsy making it very vulnerable. I doubt it. My guess would be that the Heat ray would be pre-charged and once discharged, the flying machine would have to return to base to get it recharged. This makes the Martian Flying machine look a lot like a torpedo bomber. Got a lethal weapon but its one shot only.

So, critical question number two. What is the range of the Heat ray? Based on experience with laser weapons, My guess here is surprisingly short. probably no more than a thousand yards or so. The reason why is that there has to be a lot of energy in that beam if it is to do any harm. Air (especially over the sea) contains minute droplets of water which will be flashed into steam by that beam energy. Once that happens, that steam acts as a lens which defocusses the beam, and dissipates its power. The longer the range, the greater the dissipation, the more power in the beam, the faster the dissipation. I would suspect that the Heat ray is even more susceptible to this effect than the laser. So the range of the heat ray means the flying machine carrying it must come in to extreme short range if it is to be effective. Again, this gives the 12 pounders a pretty good chance of knocking it down. I doubt if the Martians, used to thin, dry air, even realize that is a problem.

Only, that problem is much worse than they think. H.G. Wells mentions how the Heat ray causes water to flash-boil into clouds of steam. And steam is seriously inimical to Heat rays. So simply using the Heat Ray will create its own problems for the flying machines but the implications are much worse than that. Every steam-powered ship has a near-invincible defense against the Heat Ray. Steam hoses. every ship had them, they were used against boarders amongst many other things. The steam hose crews could easily put up clouds of steam in the path between the flying machines, dissipating the power of the ray and protecting the target ship.

One can imagine a really stirring story of a pre-dreadnought battleship fighting off an attack by flying machines. The alarms as the machines are spotted approaching, the frantic race to man the guns and engage the targets. The cheers going up as the first flying machines are shot down; the grim determination of the steam hose crews as they block the heat rays with steam clouds, then the relief as the few survivors of the flying machines escape, their pilots knowing they make have sorely wounded the United Kingdom but Britannia's Navy still rules the waves.

 

[Flintsteel]

o, critical question number one. What is the speed of these Martian flying machines?

Aerodynamic flight is not even possible on Mars at speeds less than something like 200 km/h. Given the demonstrated available power supplies that run Fighting Machines, you're likely looking a jet+ speeds possible. Martian metallurgy was substantially more advanced than Earth's, and their cylinders survived re-entry and lithobraking - drag isn't really a factor except for thrust, and that you can get with power. Which they have plenty of.

Now, weaponry. The Heat Ray. There is a pretty good law of physics that one cannot get more energy out of a machine than one puts into it. So, how is the flying machine going to power its heat-ray. If it has a generator on board, that flying machine is going to be large and clumsy making it very vulnerable. I doubt it. My guess would be that the Heat ray would be pre-charged and once discharged, the flying machine would have to return to base to get it recharged. This makes the Martian Flying machine look a lot like a torpedo bomber. Got a lethal weapon but its one shot only.

All assumptions with no basis in the narative. The Fighting Machines never showed any power limitations, and were not described as being too large that their power source could not be used for a Flying Machine.

So, critical question number two. What is the range of the Heat ray?

Heat Rays had ranges measure in miles. The only ever limitation demonstrated was line-of-sight, and possibly reduced power at range.

 

[Deleted member]

The walkers didn't use servos. One of the major technological differences between Martian and earth technology was quite explicit: Martians do not use the wheel or cogs. That's actually one of the things Wells hated about many of the artist renditions of Fighting Machines: they had legs that required wheel like structures to work, and he explicitly wrote they didn't use them. It's a weird tidbit, but it's there.

Fair. Of course my instinct as a mechie was to just assume servos.

Uhh... humans first isolated and identified Titanium in 1791, 100 years before the Martians showed up. In fact, it was a Brit who did it. So them knowing about it wasn't really a factor, and scientists were already working on ways to purify it.

Let's put it this way; what I meant was that even with the knowledge and equipment of the time, simply being able to look at the crystalline structure of a sample of successfully welded and shaped titanium will massively help that process along.

I'm just skeptical of human ability to reverse engineer their technology.

We're very good at reverse-engineering. Even if not perfectly, even if not duplicating the same technology, it would allow us to develop counters (like NBC gear against the black dust) very quickly.

 

[Francis Urquhart]

Aerodynamic flight is not even possible on Mars at speeds less than something like 200 km/h. Given the demonstrated available power supplies that run Fighting Machines, you're likely looking a jet+ speeds possible. Martian metallurgy was substantially more advanced than Earth's, and their cylinders survived re-entry and lithobraking - drag isn't really a factor except for thrust, and that you can get with power. Which they have plenty of.

One of the problems we have is that there is very little hard data at all in the original source material Looking around on the web, one thing I did find was a "Martian Technology Report" but its unclear how authoritative this is. It does mention "Witnesses in London recall seeing this vast, broad object rushing almost silently across the landscape, adhering to the contours of the terrain, followed shortly after by a roaring crash, like a clap of thunder, that smashed windows and stripped houses of their slates in the monstrous device’s wake. This sounds like supersonics. It also refers to the propulsion being Air from the atmosphere is taken in through several vents in the front surface of the craft, where it is used to ''burn'' a fine spray of viridigen fuel in the presence of the catalyst which induces the fuel to release viridigen. The expansion of hot gases from this combustion, composed for the most part of viridigen and the unreactive parts of the air, is used to power the forward movement of the craft. However, immediately before it leaves the engines, a powerful charge is applied to it, causing the viridigen to expand even more and greatly increasing the thrust of the engines. I can't find support for this in any of the text from the original books. Drag from a thick atmosphere (compared to Mars) will be a serious problem though. It's not just a matter of adding power to overcome it; the law of diminishing returns kicks in quickly. There comes a point where power additions just increase fuel consumption without increasing performance. I'd refer you here to Whitcombs Area Rule, or in solid examples, the F-86H vs the F-86F and the Scimitar FGR.1 vs the F-4B.

All assumptions with no basis in the narrative. The Fighting Machines never showed any power limitations, and were not described as being too large that their power source could not be used for a Flying Machine.

The problem is that there is no basis for anything concrete in the novel and we're left with a directed energy weapon, something like a laser but using heat. We also see no sustained use of the Heat Ray. So the power source is up in the air.

Heat Rays had ranges measure in miles. The only ever limitation demonstrated was line-of-sight, and possibly reduced power at range.

All assumptions with no basis in the narrative. There is no data at all on range in the original text. However, we do have a lot of experience with directed energy weapons in the atmosphere and they show the factors I described that severely limit range. Those are basic laws of physics and they can;t be changed by just adding power.

So, I think my basic questions still stand and they are critical for a proper assessment of the Martian threat. What is the speed (and range come to think of it) of the Flying Machines and what is the range of the Heat Ray?

 

[Urabrask Revealed]

That's actually one of the things Wells hated about many of the artist renditions of Fighting Machines: they had legs that required wheel like structures to work, and he explicitly wrote they didn't use them.

Were there any arts that portrayed the maschines like he imagined them? I'm trying and failing to see how they would move without wheels...

 

[Francis Urquhart]

If you go to the Gutenberg Library version of War of the Worlds, there's some illustrations there. I've been reading that carefully and I can find almost no hard data in it. It does state there were ten cylinders only in the attack wave. The list of cities that were not attacked includes a lot of English ones. Plotting on a map suggests that the Martian invasion was confined to a relatively small area of the Home Counties (mostly Surrey and Hampshire (plus London of course). There's certainly no support in the text for high-speed flying machines, long-range heat rays etc. Given the thermal bloom effect that's plaguing designers of DEW, I would think that the Heat Range is a short-range, direct-fire weapon.

 

[JagerIV]

We really do have to assume a pretty heafty power source for the tripods, given how long they were able to operate at high speeds for extended periods of time: they seem to be able to sustain independent operations for several days at least of heavy maneuvering. An Abrams for example can only really do about 8 hours at 50 km ish an hour. And hell, given how light of a weapon can knock them arround, they may be lighter than and Abrams.

As to range limiters, while you do have to modulate your laser to compensate for atmosphere, that's a known issue. Its not necesarily easy to compensate, but it is compensatable. Multi km range is perfectly doable, and you don't necesarily even need all that powerful lasers: the Boeing YAL-1 airborne laser had estimated ranges against liquid rockets in the 300-600 km range.

If the laser is powerful enough to eventually burn through an inch or so of steel, its likely has a lot longer range against soft targets, like aircraft. Plus light speed lag makes targeting much simpler.

I think you might also be overestimating energy needs a bit: a 1 MW laser would be pretty darn powerful, which is a power output something with an Abrams sized engine can maintain constantly. Something like a B-17 has about a 3 MW power output. A proper turbine engine like on a B-52 has even more power. MWs of energy is enough to do a lot of damage in a laser, even in atmophere, and storing that much isn't really that hard: gasoline has about 45 MJ per kg. If you could convert 1 kg of gasoline to laser with any signifigant efficiency, you could have a 5-10 MJ laser shot, which is energy roughly equivalent to a modern anti tank round, though it is my understanding the lack of momentum will make it less damaging than that.

Still, the main point is if you have figured out lasers, power and range are not nearly as big of an issue as I think your making them out to be.

 

[Francis Urquhart]

We really do have to assume a pretty heafty power source for the tripods, given how long they were able to operate at high speeds for extended periods of time: they seem to be able to sustain independent operations for several days at least of heavy maneuvering. An Abrams for example can only really do about 8 hours at 50 km ish an hour. And hell, given how light of a weapon can knock them arround, they may be lighter than and Abrams.

These are very good points and well-presented. I agree on the Tripods having a hefty power source on board although it is quite possible they were pulling out to refuel/recharge at varying points. I agree also that they are probably much lighter than they seem due to their vulnerability to what must be 13-pounder field guns (not one of the best guns to grace the pre-war era). The Flying machines are a bit different; the original text does mention the Martians were "learning to fly" them so the suspicion is that they were not indigenous to Mars.

As to range limiters, while you do have to modulate your laser to compensate for atmosphere, that's a known issue. Its not necesarily easy to compensate, but it is compensatable. Multi km range is perfectly doable, and you don't necesarily even need all that powerful lasers: the Boeing YAL-1 airborne laser had estimated ranges against liquid rockets in the 300-600 km range. If the laser is powerful enough to eventually burn through an inch or so of steel, its likely has a lot longer range against soft targets, like aircraft. Plus light speed lag makes targeting much simpler.

The problem is that as power goes up, thermal bloom becomes progressively more serious. That's why we can use low-powered lasers for ranging, target designation etc. As the power goes up (and we have stunningly powerful lasers now), the range in atmosphere goes down. Range in space is another matter of course. That's why laser weapons are a long time coming. They're much more useful for deranging people's vision than actual destruction.

Modulation doesn't work in beating thermal bloom. What we use modulation for is distinguishing between my laser pulse and your laser pulse. There is a trick we can use though which is to fire two lasers in tandem. The first, a relatively low-powered laser goes out and its thermal bloom clears the water and particulates out of the beam path. Then we fire the powerful pulse down the "tunnel" created by the first. This tends to work fairly well and would have been used on the YAL-1A. I'm not sure though how well the "Heat ray" correlates to a laser though. I suspect that, being heat, its not as efficient as a laser. The mention of it causing clouds of steam when it strikes water also suggests the use of steam as a countermeasure.

I think you might also be overestimating energy needs a bit: a 1 MW laser would be pretty darn powerful, which is a power output something with an Abrams sized engine can maintain constantly. Something like a B-17 has about a 3 MW power output. A proper turbine engine like on a B-52 has even more power. MWs of energy is enough to do a lot of damage in a laser, even in atmophere, and storing that much isn't really that hard: gasoline has about 45 MJ per kg. If you could convert 1 kg of gasoline to laser with any signifigant efficiency, you could have a 5-10 MJ laser shot, which is energy roughly equivalent to a modern anti tank round, though it is my understanding the lack of momentum will make it less damaging than that.

One of my little souvenirs is a boiler brick with a laser hole burned through it. So, I agree, we can push a lot of power down that beam. Also, in a location where the atmosphere is thin and dry, thermal bloom won't be such a problem. Certainly fired from a tripod, the Heat Ray will be a formidable enough weapon, at least equivalent to a modern tank gun and probably better. However, the immediate effect will be the same as tank vs anti-tank guns. Concealment and firing from ambush will be the obvious solutions (and the British Army was obviously already thinking that way). Another thought is IEDs. Once people get their act together and start being nasty and devious, there are a lot of ways of hurting Tripods and we can bet the French, German and Russian armies are watching the fighting in SE England and coming up with some. Its the mix of Tripod and Flying machine I don't like.

Still, the main point is if you have figured out lasers, power and range are not nearly as big of an issue as I think your making them out to be.

You may very well be right and you do make an excellent case. I just wish HG Wells had given us some solid data so we could know which way his mind was running. If only he'd said, just once, something like "When the tripods were but five miles away, they opened fire with the Heat Rays" we'd have an order of magnitude key.

 

[Scottty]

Now, weaponry. The Heat Ray. There is a pretty good law of physics that one cannot get more energy out of a machine than one puts into it. So, how is the flying machine going to power its heat-ray. If it has a generator on board, that flying machine is going to be large and clumsy making it very vulnerable. I doubt it. My guess would be that the Heat ray would be pre-charged and once discharged, the flying machine would have to return to base to get it recharged. This makes the Martian Flying machine look a lot like a torpedo bomber. Got a lethal weapon but its one shot only.

Presumably, if they used the same weaponry on their aircraft as on the walkers, they would have the same sort of power-source. All of the depictions I've seen make it look rather compact - the "heat ray" projector was a lantern-like device carried on one of the tentacles.

That's assuming they didn't have other things planned. Gravity bombs of some sort would probably have occurred to them.

 

[Scottty]

Regarding the unclear descriptions of the Martian technology, that always came across as quite realistic to me. The narrator is an ordinary man getting brief looks at devices based on engineering principles very different from those that he's familiar with. The Clarke quote about sufficiently advanced technology applies.

Now the main cause of the Martians' defeat, of course, was their complete lack of preparedness for terrestrial bacteria. And while that may seem strange, it's actually quite forgivable.
We know more about conditions on Mars than people in Well's time did, of course, but even in his day it would have been obvious that the planet was no longer Earth-like, if it ever had been.
Any advanced civilization based on organic life as chemically similar to our own as Well's Martians are implied to be must of necessity have been living in a completely artificial environment, and have been doing so for... rather a long time.
One imagines huge underground cities, with an almost completely closed-loop biosphere. No "wild" life left, just the tentacled sophonts themselves and whatever plant or animal life was symbiotic with them. They are described as nourishing themselves by draining blood from other lifeforms and injecting it into their own bodies. (no digestive system as such!) Ick.

So the concept of dangerous, pathogenic bacteria was something they had simply forgotten about. It had been too long ago for their own people to have any real cultural memory of it. Their environment had been sterile and safe for them for way too long.

 

[Francis Urquhart]

Presumably, if they used the same weaponry on their aircraft as on the walkers, they would have the same sort of power-source. All of the depictions I've seen make it look rather compact - the "heat ray" projector was a lantern-like device carried on one of the tentacles.

That doesn't mean the power source is integral to the unit. The tentacle could easily incorporate a power conduit linking the external projection unit to an internal power source. That's the way our laser weapons will/do work.

Regarding the unclear descriptions of the Martian technology, that always came across as quite realistic to me. The narrator is an ordinary man getting brief looks at devices based on engineering principles very different from those that he's familiar with. The Clarke quote about sufficiently advanced technology applies.

Absolutely. There's no reasonable argument against that; its a measure of Wells genius as a writer that he conveyed the situation so well by using an 'ordinary man' as the protagonist. It makes doing an assessment of what the fighting power of the Martians was really like very hard though.

Now the main cause of the Martians' defeat, of course, was their complete lack of preparedness for terrestrial bacteria. And while that may seem strange, it's actually quite forgivable. We know more about conditions on Mars than people in Well's time did, of course, but even in his day it would have been obvious that the planet was no longer Earth-like, if it ever had been. Any advanced civilization based on organic life as chemically similar to our own as Well's Martians are implied to be must of necessity have been living in a completely artificial environment, and have been doing so for... rather a long time. One imagines huge underground cities, with an almost completely closed-loop biosphere. No "wild" life left, just the tentacled sophonts themselves and whatever plant or animal life was symbiotic with them. They are described as nourishing themselves by draining blood from other lifeforms and injecting it into their own bodies. (no digestive system as such!) Ick.

Again, I agree completely. The situation for the Martians was a bit like the Mississippi valley in the USA when the smallpox epidemics hit. That was a humanitarian catastrophe that changed the population make-up of the continent. Which does, by the way, raise the point that even if the Martians had survived their first brush with Earth bacteria, the penny was likely to have dropped with the humans and the Martians really would have been on the receiving end of a biological warfare campaign. That feeding mechanism would leave them wide open to infection. Kuru anybody?

So the concept of dangerous, pathogenic bacteria was something they had simply forgotten about. It had been too long ago for their own people to have any real cultural memory of it. Their environment had been sterile and safe for them for way too long.

Indeed so, and there's a grim warning there for us. Too safe can be as dangerous as too dangerous.

 

[Deleted member]

The Martians, regardless of the exact effectiveness of their technology, did demonstrate sophisticated, modern strategy, which is rare in science fiction. But their weakness was just as brilliantly plausible and consistent as their strength. The technology was, though, more alien than better.

 

[Husky_Khan]

Naval Historian Drachnifels releases a twenty minute long analysis of the HMS Thunderchild of War of the Worlds fame. And he goes whole hog into analysis of what this fictional warship might've been.

 

[Harlock]

He later had a vid speculating on the follow up battle where the RN Channel fleet engages the tripods that followed Thunderchild. Basically a full sized pre-dread would be a serious opponent not really for its big guns but for all its secondaries.
Unfortunately their armour wouldn't help much so it would end up being a case of who could put the most hurt on the enemy first.