Honorable Mentions

Whenever you choose the most important of anything, be it battles (as in 50 Battles that Changed the World), or weapons, or ice cream, other people will have other ideas. That’s the reason for elections and the existence of horse races. So here are some weapons that had been suggested or otherwise considered as possibilities and the reasons they didn’t make this list. As in the main list, they are presented more or less chronologically.

• The Ax: The ax was probably an important hand‑to‑hand weapon in the Stone Age. One large prehistoric European group is even called the Battle Ax People. But we have no record of whether or not the Battle Ax People actually used their stone axes in battles or, if they did, how they used them or how much they depended on them. Until recent times, the ax was an important weapon to many people in central Africa, but it was never as important as the spear, which is the first item on the list of 50 weapons. Scandinavian, Anglo‑Saxon, and Russian warriors used axes extensively, but those axes were never more important than swords, spears, and bows. Nor did use of the ax result in any change in the tactics of these northern fighters

• The Sling: Although this weapon proved to be quite decisive for young David and was widely used in antiquity, it was never as decisive as the bow was for either the Eurasian nomads or the English yeomen.

• The Spear‑Thrower: This weapon, called a woomera in Australia and an atlatl in ancient Mexico, was a major weapon for many primitive hunting peoples. It’s basically a stick with a hook or notch at one end. The user fits the butt of his spear into the hook or notch. When he throws the spear, he flips up the end of the spear‑thrower, which adds velocity to the spear. Most people who used the spear‑thrower were hunter‑gatherers such as the Australian aborigines or the Eskimos, people who lived in small groups and seldom engaged in what we would call war. The Aztecs of Mexico used spear‑throwers in war, but their primary weapons were bows and obsidian‑edged clubs. They used their atlatls to throw harpoons to collect victims for sacrifice and cannibal feasts.

• The Siege Tower and the Battering Ram: These devices were used in sieges since before history was written. They were still in use after the introduction of gunpowder, but they were usually ineffective. Mining was much more effective if the enemy stronghold were not built on solid rock or surrounded by water, as many of them were. Until the invention of gunpowder, the outcome of most sieges depended on who got hungry first.

• The Halberd: The halberd, a combination of ax, spear, and sharpened hook, was a major weapon in the Swiss struggle for independence. The Swiss phalanx used a wall of pikes (very long spears) to stop enemy cavalry so their halberdiers could move up through the ranks to pull the enemy knights off their horses and chop them up. In the chopping‑up process, the Swiss halberdiers were assisted by other infantry with two‑handed swords, some of which were more than 6 feet long. On the flanks of the Swiss phalanx were crossbowmen who softened up the enemy before contact. The crossbow, incidentally, was greatly esteemed by the Swiss, as can be seen in the legend of William Tell.

• The Crossbow: This weapon is a favorite of mine and I have owned a couple of crossbows. It is far more powerful than the highly publicized longbow and far more accurate. It can be shot from cover or from the prone position – something extremely difficult with a longbow. It can also be reloaded while the shooter is prone or under cover. Try that with a muzzle‑loading musket! The Chinese invented a repeating crossbow that could shoot 10 arrows in 10 seconds or less. Crossbowmen shared, with armored knights and infantry spearmen, credit for the Crusader victories in the Holy Land. But if an inanimate object can be said to have had bad luck, the crossbow had it. Neither the Chinese (who had, in some respects, the best crossbows) nor the Europeans ever used enough crossbows to be decisive. Longbows were far cheaper and could shoot arrows faster (except for the low‑powered Chinese repeating crossbow), although with less range, accuracy, or penetration. Even the recurved bows of the nomads – which required great skill to manufacture – were cheaper than crossbows. By the late 14th and early 15th centuries, Europeans finally began making enough crossbows to make a difference, but by that time, they were also making guns, which were cheaper than crossbows and even more powerful.

• The Wagenburg: This item is somewhat marginal, because the wagenburg is really a formation rather than a weapon. It was a ring of armored wagons containing soldiers manning very small cannons, crossbows, and primitive hand guns. It was a decisive factor in the Hussite Wars of the 15th century, but was little used outside of central Europe. Mobile artillery quickly made it obsolete.

• The Horse Pistol: When the Swiss phalanx of pikemen was adopted through‑out western and central Europe, mounted lancers quickly learned that their favorite weapon had become obsolete. The pike was longer than any spear a cavalryman could manage on horseback. So the horsemen adopted the pistol. This was a gun you could manage with one hand and had a much longer reach than any pike. The cavalrymen created the caracole – a long column of horsemen, each carrying from two to six large pistols. The pistols used the newly invented wheel lock, which fired the priming charge with sparks caused by the abrasion of a spinning wheel on iron pyrites. The column of cavalry trotted forward, and, as the front rank neared the enemy pikemen, they fired their pistols and rode to the rear, while succeeding ranks were firing. The caracole kept up continuous fire on one point of the pike phalanx. The new formation was an early success. Then armies increased the proportion of musketeers in their ranks. The musket outranged the pistol the way the pistol outranged the pike, and a dense column of horsemen made a splendid target. The horsemen were armored, but the big heavy muskets, which had to be fired from a rest, could penetrate any armor a man could carry.

• Percussion Ignition: Using a small explosive pill to ignite a powder charge instead of sparks caused by the collision of steel and stone greatly improved the reliability of guns. It did not, however, require a change of tactics. When that percussion lock was attached to a rifled barrel, as happened shortly after the introduction of percussion ignition, a change of tactics become necessary. The need for a change was bloodily demonstrated in the American Civil War.

• The Battleship: The battleship is an armored ship, a classification already on the list. Like the U.S.S. Monitor, it has armored sides and a revolving turret – actually multiple turrets, like some Civil War Monitor‑class ships. Like the U.S.S New Ironsides of the Civil War, it has a high freeboard. It’s also powered by engines rather than wind. But, although the battleship is merely a development of ships introduced in the 1860s, it does rate some consideration. One strange thing about it is that, although the most powerful weapon of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it turned out to be more important politically than militarily. The Battle of Manila Bay in 1898 caused the United States to be internationally recognized as a great power, but no U.S. battleships were involved in that fight. The Battle of Tsushima Strait in the Russo‑Japanese War was a great and decisive battleship clash, but the war itself had already been decided by the land battle of Mukden. What made Tsushima Strait decisive was that it showed east Asian people, most of them colonized (or, as in China, semi‑colonized) that an east Asian people could use modern ships to defeat a European power with a much larger navy. Still, every country considered battleships the ultimate expression of military power. The race between Britain and Germany to see which could build the most battleships greatly increased the tensions that contributed to World War I. When that war came, its greatest battleship fight, the Battle of Jutland, was thoroughly indecisive. Still, battleship construction continued, and the Washington naval treaty, followed by Japan’s construction of the super dreadnoughts, Yamato and Musashi, built up tension between the United States and Japan. But when the two Pacific powers came to blows in World War II, the aircraft carrier, not the battleship, proved to be the new capital ship.

• The Dirigible: Dirigibles, ranging from the huge Zeppelins of World War I to the little blimps of World War II, played important parts. German Zeppelins were the world’s first strategic bombers, and one of them taking supplies to German colonial troops in East Africa made a mind‑boggling flight of more than 4,000 miles at a time when few airplanes could travel much more than 100 miles. During World War II, U.S. Navy blimps contributed heavily to the defeat of the German U boats. But Zeppelins proved too vulnerable to attack by fighter planes, and a series of horrendous accidents after the war discouraged any more development of big dirigibles. Blimps are still around, but they are slow, clumsy, and unable to do anything that cannot also be done by helicopters.

• The Molotov Cocktail: The Molotov cocktail, a bottle of gasoline, or gasoline and motor oil, with a burning cloth wick, was an important weapon in the Spanish Civil War, when Loyalist militia used them against tanks. Tanks in that war were thin‑skinned and primitive. Molotov cocktails have not been of much use since then – except when, in World War II, U.S. troops used them against Japanese troops holed up in caves. These gasoline bombs have been widely used since the Spanish Civil War, however, and are still being used. That’s because they are dirt cheap. Anyone using a Molotov cocktail against a modern tank would be just as effective if he put a gun to his own head and pulled the trigger. Actually, a Molotov cocktail is no more than a reproduction – not a development – of an ancient and medieval naphtha bomb.

• The Shotgun: Small arms enthusiasts rate the shotgun as the deadliest close‑quarters weapon ever developed. Since World War I, shotguns have played a part in U.S. infantry tactics. They were “trench guns” in World War I and widely used in the jungle fighting in World War II and Vietnam. In mountainous Korea, where ranges tended to be long, they were mostly used for guarding prisoners, but in the street fighting common in Iraq, the shotgun again plays an important role, but in no war has the shotgun ever been a decisive weapon.

• The Rocket Propelled Grenade: The rocket‑propelled grenade does not make the list for a number of reasons. The first is that the name is a misno‑mer. It has been applied to a Russian‑invented weapon called in Russia the RPG 7. RPG does not stand for rocket‑propelled grenade, because the weapon is not a grenade. A grenade is a missile, usually hand propelled. The RPG 7 is a combination recoilless gun and a rocket launcher. It’s a development of the Russian RPG 2, which was a small recoilless gun pattered after the German panzerfaust of World War II. The RPG 7’s missile is a rocket‑assisted shell. Early shoulder‑fired rocket launchers, like the U.S. bazooka, fired a rocket with a quick‑burning motor. The rocket fuel was consumed inside the launcher tube so the firer would not be burned to a crisp by the back blast of the rocket. What the RPG 7 does is shoot the missile far enough before the rocket motor ignites so there’s no danger of the rocket burning the firer. The rocket is then capable of a prolonged blast, giving it far more range than the bazooka. The RPG 7 (RPG is a designation the Russians applied to a number of antitank weapons, including the RPG 43, a World War II hand grenade) is basically an antitank weapon. The Russians claimed it could penetrate 11 inches of homogeneous armor, though, today, most tanks are not protected by homogeneous armor. Tanks have laminated armor, with materials other than steel sandwiched in to reduce the acetylene‑torch effect of a shaped charge blast. They have reactive armor – slabs of explosive which neutralize the directed jet of a shaped‑charge explosion, and they have steel mesh work outside the armor to make shaped charges explode before they reach the optimum distance for penetration. The RPG 7 is widely used today, possibly because its big bang impresses its users, but it is not very effective in the role it was designed for.

• The Humvee: Humvees seem to be everywhere in Iraq. But the humvee does not make the list for the same reason that jeep of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam did not, nor did the superb, but little‑publicized, three‑quarter‑ton truck of those wars. The humvee and those other vehicles are trucks, basically a means of transportation rather than a weapon. All of them have, of course, been adapted to function as fighting vehicles, but that use has not resulted in a major change in tactics.

• The Neutron Bomb: The neutron bomb, also called an “enhanced radiation device,” is a nuclear bomb that produces a relatively mild blast but fills a wide area with deadly radiation. Supposedly, it could kill every living thing in a city but leave the buildings largely intact. It has been the subject of horror stories by antiwar activists, who seem to think destruction of life without destruction of property is especially immoral. The neutron bomb, however, has never been built, and its effects are purely theoretical.