My first book of 2023 is one I was reading off and on through most of last year. It is an odd book that is more history than science, but not history of science. It is a history of weapons that has some very simple physics added to the descriptions to show how the weapons work.
In its pages are brief origin stories of weapons, such as the long bow and the hydrogen bomb, with some details about the science behind them.
If you are looking for a history of weapons with a little of the physics of how they work, this book is just what you have been looking for. If you are looking for details of the science that underpins airplanes, bombs, and missiles, the references in the index will point you to deeper treatment of individual weapons.
One very helpful aspect of the book is reading about the pace of weapons development and how rapidly those weapons changed war. The first gatling gun, the predecessor of the machine gun, was developed in the mid 19th Century. Very little was done with it for a couple of decades, then at the beginning of the 20th Century the multi-barrel gatling gun had developed from a large horse-drawn-carriage weapon to a compact, deadly single-barrel weapon that could be fired by two soldiers. The slaughter of World War I was in part set up by the machine gun which forced stagnant warfare and massive use of cannons.
The first aircraft flew in 1903. By 1916, both sides in World War I had fighter and bomber aircraft over the battlefields. The first lumbering tanks rolled to battle at 3-5 mph at the end of that war.
Two decades later tanks were fast, mobile and massed in thousands for invasion covered by swarms of bombers. The war ended when those bombers dropped the first atomic bombs. Radar and espionage get their due in this brief history with a nod to drones at the very end.
Interesting history of weapons with a sprinkle of physics.
