The Electric Fence in WW1

Sachyriel

Banned
I am neither an amateur electrician from the 1900s nor a colonel in 1916. But I have a question that can alter history. Electric Fences can be a shocking trap, yes?

The thin barbed wire represents a boundary in warfare, one you can not cross without consequences. The inspired tactician might make even touching the wire from any side deadly. And while I place my bets on the Commonwealth forces I see no reason why the Continental European forces, Americans, or even the rebels of the future USSR don't come up with it.

I'm not even sure the electric fence is confined to post-1900.

It's not too far of a stretch to make it happen. While it maybe blown apart by artillery fire it certainly might be worth investigating to a desperate commander. I can be wrong.
 
The technology required to build an electric fence was around during WW1. The trouble is once you put it up you have to maintain it and it would not be any more effective than the regular barbed wire used, there is a reason combat engineers are referred to jokingly as bullet stoppers or meat shields. Plus the generators and capacitors used would be very bulky thus hard to hide and draw artillery fire.
 
Not practical. You've made barbed wire MUCH harder to emplace (infantry and engineers hated that job in WWI enough as it was), MUCH more complicated to maintain, and only a hair harder to breach. Cut the wire anywhere, and you've broken the circuit; ALL the wire in that circuit is useless.

You're also forcing generators (not the easiest pieces of equipment in the world to handle) to be sent up to the front lines. Bad enough that they're big and awkward and need to be supplied with fuel as well as maintained, but they're noisy. While irrelevant in a pitched battle, the generators have to run all the time... which makes hearing infiltrators and enemy patrols impossible.

Wire cutters with wooden handles could be field-improvised from regular cutters and would nullify any benefits the wire would offer.

I give you full credit for an out-of-the-box idea, and I'm not saying someone in WWI wouldn't try it (they tried walking slowly across no-man's land, after all), but it will never be more than a historical footnote.
 
The trouble with barbwire was WWI armies were not equipped with the proper artillery to cut them. It therefore fell upon the infantry to cut them with wirecutters and explosives, which took time.

Electrified wire would not be difficult to cut by properlly equipped men.
The generators would also be attractive targets. It's really something designed to stop livestock and unprepared intruders, not armies.
 

Orsino

Banned
The function of an electric fence is to stop people/animals climbing over or knocking down through brute force, neither of which a first world war army would generally do under ideal circumstances.

Even if that were not the case, its a trick that could only ever work once. Troops aren't going to continue blindly marching into such fences like zombies and as others have said they'd be relatively easy to disable.
 
Maintaining a permanent 'killer' electric fence grid on a WWI Western Front battlefield? No, all you end up with is non-electrified wires strewn everywhere.

Makeshift electric wire grids used for enemy detection/setting off defensive mines, that's a possibilty, particularly in some thinly defended sector like the Vosges Mountains portion of the front.
 
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Electric fences are bastards of things to keep working properly with only docile dairy cattle, farm machinery and weather working against them. Beef cattle ruin electric fences so fast you wouldn't belive it, within a day or two they are shorting out and shocking you when you're not execting it. Rain shorts them out as does bumping one with the quad bike or tractor and long grass with dew on it touching the fence.

With shellfire, sappers and the rest of it an electric fence would literally never work. The sappers would never be able to set up a circuit in the face of enemy patrols and the enemy could just chuck stuff like planks of wet wood at the fence and it would earth or short out.

Barbed wire's biggest advantage isn't the wounds it inflicts, its the tangles it causes, making nice static targets for machine gunners.
 
I am neither an amateur electrician from the 1900s nor a colonel in 1916. But I have a question that can alter history. Electric Fences can be a shocking trap, yes?

The thin barbed wire represents a boundary in warfare, one you can not cross without consequences. The inspired tactician might make even touching the wire from any side deadly. And while I place my bets on the Commonwealth forces I see no reason why the Continental European forces, Americans, or even the rebels of the future USSR don't come up with it.

I'm not even sure the electric fence is confined to post-1900.

It's not too far of a stretch to make it happen. While it maybe blown apart by artillery fire it certainly might be worth investigating to a desperate commander. I can be wrong.

Electric fence was around in huge amounts during WWI.
Suprised that none of the residential Dutchmen/Belgians came up with it yet.

The Germans placed electric fence on almost the entire border between occupied Belgium and the neutral Netherlands (up to 200 km+ probably) to prevent traffic of any kind and to save manpower from guarding the border in a more conventional way.

It caused a lot of deaths.
Especially Belgian refugees amongst which young male Belgians who tried to cross to the Netherlands, ship to England and then join the Belgian army to fight the Germans.

see here: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Draad

Anyways, as others already mentioned, it's only viable in an environment which is not a frontline, such as the Iron Curtain or the Dutch/Belgian border.
 
Yes it was invented....but mostly used for peacetime borders.

Using in a situation of war, is very impractical, due to the ressources, having to be used, and the vulnerability og the whole setup to artillery (generators included).
 

mowque

Banned
How the heck are you going to keep it from grounding every few feet ina llt hat mud and such?
 
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