| Searchlights in Warfare Electric searchlights have been illuminating battlefields ever since they were reinvented over 150 years ago. Captain Brittes of the French Army experimented with them in 1851, and primitive searchlight warfare was tried by the Russians in the Crimean War (1853-1856) at Sevastopol. The French fleet also experimented with a searchlight at the siege of Kinburn, during the Baltic campaign; and General Menabrea used one, which shot out a beam of light 1,500 meters, in a campaign against the king of Naples in 1861. Three sets of early pattern searchlights were later used on the British march to Magdala, in the Abyssinian war of 1868. They cost the considerable sum of three hundred and fifty pounds each, and cast their beams a mile and a half away. Shortly thereafter, searchlights were employed in the Franco-Prussian war, in the defense of Paris. Searchlight stations employing carbon arc lights were installed in various forts circling the city, and each was maintained by four electricians with equipment gathered from instrument makers, telegraph offices, and laboratories. Electric batteries (Bunsen cells) powered most of the searchlights. However, one of the brightest light projectors, at Moulin de la Galette, was powered by an Alliance electro-magneto generator, similar to the one powering the arc light illustrated below. The searchlights were often effective in preventing surprise attacks and discouraged sappers during the night. A Nollet Magneto-electric generator, invented in 1850, powering a carbon arc light with magnets A searchlight beam shooting out over Paris from Fort Mont Valerien during the Franco-Prussian War An article in the January 14, 1871 edition of Harper's New Monthly included the illustration above and reported that “The striking effect of the powerful electric lights, by which the French are able at night to illuminate the country to a great distance around Paris, is shown in the picturesque sketch on this page. The dark mass in the center is Fort Mont Valrien, from which the light is cast over the western side of Paris with almost the brilliance of noonday. By the use of this light the French were able to annoy the Prussians very much in such military operations as are usually carried on after nightfall, as it enables them to detect every attempt to take up new positions or throw up earth-works under cover of darkness. It is not to be supposed, however, that it can materially impede the construction of aggressive works, since at most it only partially deprives the enemy of the advantage offered by night, and obliges them to proceed with greater caution. The modern system of approaches is reduced to an exact science; and if the besieging army is strong enough to hold its own against sorties and attacks from a relieving force, the question of its success is only one of time. Starvation, if not bombardment, will sooner or later cause the most powerful strong-hold in the world to fall.” Searchlights were also employed by the Russians in the defense of their ice-free Port Arthur, on the Manchurian coast, in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. Much of the fighting was done at night, and the searchlights not only illuminated the attacking Japanese forces but also blinded them in the process. Frederick Villiers, the English observer with General Nogi’s Japanese 3rd Army, described their effect on the battlefield during one of the Japanese assaults as follows: “Three of nine searchlights that the Russians appear to possess are playing incessantly on this section of the battlefield, and star bombs or rockets are bursting continually, their incandescent petals spreading fanlike and falling slowly to the ground. So brilliant are the lights that the moon, now nearing the horizon, is but a faint slip of silver in the sky. The color of this night warfare is what Whistler would have reveled in, the deep purple of the mountains against the nocturnal blue, the pale lemon of the moon, the whitish rays of the searchlights, the warm incandescent glow of the star bombs, the reddish spurt from the cannon’s mouths, and the yellow flash from the exploding shell, all tempered to a mellowness by a thin haze of smoke, ever clinging to the hill-top and valley, make the scene the most weird and unique I have ever looked on during all the many wars I have witnessed.” 
An American coast-artillery searchlight and controller used at the time In this excerpt from a report by Richard Barry, the only American correspondent with the Japanese forces, he described the cunning tactical use of the Russian searchlights in the following words: “In August, for seven days and seven nights without cessation, a great battle was fought—the first grand assault which failed and failed and failed until Nogi learned his lesson. Maneuvers as intricate and almost as extensive as those in the north at Liaoyang were conducted alternately under sun, moon, and searchlight. The crux of this action rested on one of Stoessel’s search-light tricks, played on the night of the seventh blow of Nogi’s hammer, desperately driving a wedge into the fortress. All the afternoon the Japanese artillery had been fiercely bombarding the ridges of the Cockscomb, the Eternal Dragon, and the Two Dragons. One by one the Russian batteries ceased firing. It seemed that they were silenced. Night fell, with prospects fair for assault. A rising storm increased the Japanese hope, for in wind and rain the search-lights would be nullified. Then, as night and rain came down together, the search-lights struggling with both, the Japanese shrapnel opened up against the lights. They had tried before, unsuccessfully, to reach the dynamos hidden in the hills. This time the attempt apparently succeeded. The man behind the light waited until a Japanese shell burst in the line of vision between him and his foes, and then turned off the switch, giving the Japanese the impression that the light had been shattered. In this manner, one after another, three of the search-lights playing over the center of the field were “shattered.” With lights and guns apparently out of the contest, and favored by the storm and night, Japanese expectations rose higher. “After midnight the most desperate of the eleven assaults conducted through the seven days was made against the Cockscomb and the Eternal Dragon. Half-way up the slope of the cockscomb the three “shattered” lights, converging at one point, threw the advance out in silhouette against the red earth and the white shale. At the same moment the “shattered” lights, opened up, every gun alive. Simultaneously a regiment of Siberian sharp-shooters sortied from the Two Dragons, caught the flanks in their onslaught, and all but annihilated the two regiments in front.” Nevertheless, General Stoessel wound up surrendering on January 2, 1905; with 24,000 effective and slightly wounded and 15,000 wounded and sick men, the remnant of his original 47,000 soldiers. The total losses of the 3rd Japanese Army during the siege of Port Arthur were about 92,000 men (58,000 casualties and 34,000 sick). For much more carbon arc searchlight history, see The Electric Mirror on the Pharos Lighthouse and Other Ancient Lighting.
This page was last modified on Wednesday, August 18, 2010
| |