Published on 26 Jun 2017
Check out Military History Visualized and his video on armoured trains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvHTR-5n2_E
Armoured Trains were heavily armed and armored trains operating the vast rail networks of Europe, especially on the Eastern Front of World War 1. Their tactics and design evolved considerably during the First World War and the later Russian Civil War. From rather improvised locomotives to sophisticated designs specially built for combat purposes.
June 27, 2017
Armoured Trains of World War 1 I THE GREAT WAR Special feat. Military History Visualized
1 Comment
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
The folks from the Great War channel posted this to Facebook, in response to some questions from the subscribers:
“Duh, can’t you just destroy the tracks or walk away from the armoured train?”
Got a lot of comments like this for our Armoured Train episode yesterday. Let’s look at this a bit, we thought the episode made clear why this wasn’t so easy.
The most important thing to note here is that we are talking about the vast area of Eastern Europe and Russia here. 100 years ago, in a lot of areas, the railways were the most important supply route – so if you would sabotage the railways beyond repair, you would basically shoot yourself in the foot. A lot of the fighting in the Russian Civil War took place along these railway lines between major cities because whoever controlled the railways could supply troops and civilians. Lighter sabotage was of course a valid tactic to stop an armoured train but you could only really do that if you really set a proper ambush and if you knew the train was coming in the first place.
The next important thing is that the armoured trains would not travel alone, they had cavalry scouts and by 1917 they had a good system in place for these troops to scout ahead and communicate any information backwards. The train itself was also transporting infantry that would defend the train in case of an ambush or when it stopped.
So, we are not saying that armoured trains were invincible but at this specific point in history and in this particular place, they were a valid military resource.
Comment by Nicholas — June 27, 2017 @ 10:30