Ancient Super Navies | Ancient Discoveries (S4, E2) | Full Episode | History

[Music] deep beneath the ocean's surface buried in forgotten manuscripts lie the naval inventions of our distant past the ancient discovery's team of model makers underwater detectives and elite naval commandos are seeking to rediscover these lost military designs they are performing a series of life-threatening experiments their results reveal that today's naval devices are based on the ingenious blueprints laid down by naval engineers thousands of years ago this is the story of ancient naval technology to explore ancient naval warfare we must first piece together the story of the sea two-thirds of the earth's surface is covered with water it has been a battleground for over 5 000 years it doesn't matter where you are on planet earth if you're by the sea you had to have a navy crossing land masses was both expensive and very inefficient taking a boat from one area to the other was approximately six times quicker it was a no-brainer the drive to build quicker larger more powerful battleships launched an ancient naval arms race we are finding evidence of highly toxic biological warfare high impact explosive grenades underwater attack units that operate like u.s navy seals and visionary devices able to turn sea into solid land every ancient civilization from the egyptians to the greeks to the romans lived and died by their innovations in naval technology and perhaps the most lethal of all such inventions came not from the west but the east south korea is a glittering jewel of eastern asia yet for centuries it has been a target for invasion by its two monster neighbors china and japan japan created some of the most terrifying soldiers in history the samurai warriors and china had the largest standing army in all antiquity korea stood at a crossroads surrounded by two aggressive superpowers to defend their shores the small and vulnerable nation of korea was forced to turn to technology to survive in the later koryo dynasty the development of science meant we had advanced military technology in 1591 the koreans developed a vessel that would become known as the turtle ship within six months turtle ship crews were being trained for a conflict that would become known as the imjin war it pitted korea against a japanese force over three times greater in number at the time of the imjin war six gun ports were installed on each side of the ship and a gun port at each side of the dragon's head these cannons could unleash barrages of ballistic missiles you might imagine that blasting powder balls were used in the cannons but in the early ages wooden arrows with iron wings were used the wooden arrows were six feet long and designed to make a huge hole in the enemy ships and the secret behind the weapons potency was that iron wings were attached to make the arrow more deadly these ship-to-ship missiles struck at speeds of over 200 miles per hour the secret of their power lay in the pioneering design developed by the korean engineers with its superior firepower the turtle ship was able to demolish japanese targets at long range safe from counter-attack just as u.s aircraft carriers do in the 21st century in spite of the lethal firepower of the turtle ship the koreans were facing a superior force if the enemy broke the first attack and managed to get in close the ships and the battle might be lost the korean military engineers were forced to invent a contingency strategy unbelievably the solution was to convert the turtle ship into a mobile floating tank the war museum in seoul korea here one of these extraordinary battleships has been reconstructed the turtle ship deserves to be compared to a tank because it acted as a ramming ship its primary role was breaking through enemy lines and destroying their front line of ships then the rest of the korean fleet struck forward the ship was designed to ram directly against enemy vessels 400 tons of boat powered by 80 oarsmen would crash into enemy ships but in order to withstand such collisions its design was critical the ship's crew and rowers were shielded inside the vessel outside the turtle ship was clad in iron plating and these spikes were not just for decoration japanese ships would approach the korean ships at high speed and jump on the deck to kill the korean soldiers this was because their ships were much higher in the water in order to prevent this happening spikes were nailed to the roof each plate carried a two foot long spike that would impale enemy invaders who risked an aggressive boarding the turtle ship had become a giant iron cactus but the spikes were not its only defense mounted on the front of the destroyer were the gaping jaws of a majestic dragon yet this was no decorative figurehead ancient stories claim that contained within its mouth was a deadly secret weapon the front part of the turtle ship was designed as a dragon head with a mouth which served as a gun port and a small cannon of mythical power was placed there a projector was also installed that could release dense toxic smoke generated by burning a mixture of sulfur and saltpeter the dragon head was a prototype chemical weapon it had the potential to deliver poison gas at an enemy this predated the use of mustard gas in world war one by 500 years and began the technology of chemical warfare a terrifying military option to this day but poison gas is only effective if the soldier can direct it at the enemy away from his own troops richard windley is an historian and one of the world's leading model makers he is fascinated by stories that the koreans had mastered the ability to deliver chemical gas to their enemies he has constructed a replica of the dragon's head he is about to test the effectiveness of the delivery system if we think about the use of gas say in the first world war obviously it was a very very dangerous technique it only needed the wind to change and the gas could actually affect the people who were trying to deploy it rather than the enemy so it is a risky stratagem right i've got one of the little charges here i'm going to light this pop him in the pot put the lid back on fairly fairly quickly and then hopefully we should get some smoke at first the smoke lingers around the head this would be lethal for attacking troops but then the wind picks it up the assumption is with with something like this that it was projecting the smoke a considerable distance well if you try blowing anything in air you can't blow it more than probably about 10 feet at most so really it was just a way of getting this stuff into the air and dispersing it but i think that with given the right kind of maneuverability of these turtle ships it probably was a viable option and what we have to remember is these guys were heavily outnumbered and anything that would give them an advantage or that would save their culture and their civilization and their country was something that they would fight very hard to realize if the turtleship captains had been able to position themselves upwind of the enemy the poisonous gas could have been delivered without the korean commanders killing their own troops the use of toxic gas remained at the mercy of the wind until the delivery of gas by mortar in the trenches of world war one from its lethal arsenal to the ramming potential of its spiked cladding the turtle ship was a weapon capable of changing the tide of war but eastern asia was home to an even more lethal seafaring superweapon one of the greatest underwater discoveries of the modern age has shown how high explosives rocked the high seas almost a millennium ago nearly a thousand years ago a great mongol warlord launched a naval fleet that would dwarf any modern navy it had over 10 times more battleships than all the ships of the entire american navy today on board was the most lethal military hardware available at the time evidence lying 50 feet beneath the waves is suggesting that the mongol generals supplied their marines with high explosive grenades in the 13th century kubla khan was the ruthless warlord who commanded an aggressive expansionist superpower at the height of its power the mongol empire covered 12 million square miles over three times the size of the entire united states but one nation held out against the might of the largest continuous superpower in history that nation was japan kublai khan wanted to stamp out the japanese pirates from the east whose raids were crippling mongol trade routes in the summer of 1281 japan's fate hung in the balance if japan lost it wouldn't be the same country this was the first invasion attempt from abroad and the fact that people came together to repel it perhaps engendered a sense of nationhood he prepared an invasion fleet of epic proportions the largest fleets ever put together in the medieval world were those that kublai khan produced for his invasions of japan in 1274 and 1281 the second and largest of these comprised more than four thousand ships and a hundred thousand soldiers this was probably the largest naval flotilla ever assembled prior to d-day just as with the normandy landings in the second world war committing such an enormous fleet to sea was a huge gamble if it paid off it would destroy japan but just off the coast a fierce storm blew up severe gales whipped the seas into a churning fury that destroyed the entire fleet thousands of lives were lost japanese people believed that their nation was protected by god and when the mongols attacked historical records indicate that there was a great typhoon and people believe that this wind was brought by gods they called it divine wind which in japanese is pronounced kamikaze this would be the rallying cry of japanese suicide bomber pilots who destroyed american ships and morale in world war ii 500 years later just off the japanese coast at a place called takashima bay archaeologists have made one of the world's most incredible discoveries khan's lost fleet has at last been found beneath the waves at takashima museum the exquisite remains are preserved takashima underwater archaeology site is one of the first underwater excavation that took place and it's one of the biggest center for the underwater archaeology there are iron swords stone catapult balls and this huge anchor these are wooden artifacts that were excavated and it is mainly parts of ships and maybe shipboard material but the most intriguing of all the artifacts from the takashima bay rex are these simple hollow spheres closer inspection reveals evidence of explosion damage and intriguingly the damage appears to come from a force inside the objects themselves [Music] were these devices the world's first high explosive grenades in the sacred confines of the hakozaki shrine museum in fukuoka japan lies a clue that could be the final piece in the puzzle an ancient scroll guarded by the high priests of one of japan's three great shrines scroll depicts events from around 700 years ago from this area where the mongol invasion first started the mongols were an equestrian people but had a device that utilized gunpowder the japanese had never before encountered explosives and were very surprised upon close inspection one sequence in the scroll contains exciting evidence of the use of the balls at the takashima bay wreck the scrolls tell of a lethal explosive weapon like a modern grenade the ancients called it a tetsuho [Music] six of these weapons have actually been discovered by archaeologists proving that the contemporary evidence was correct and that weapons of this level of sophistication and deadliness were in fact used as early as 1281 x-rays of unexploded tetsuho revealed that they were filled not just with gunpowder but also with deadly shards of iron the tetsuho could have been launched using catapults or simply thrown by hand like a modern infantry grenade the results would have left the japanese shocked and terrified japanese has never seen such a weapon that makes loud noise and explode and also it's going to slice the enemy's armors and hand and everywhere so it's going to lower the moral of the enemies but just how devastating these ancient bombs really were has never been tested until now ancient technology expert richard windley is investigating the killing potential of the ancient tatsuhau he has created a reconstruction of the fabled japanese grenade these are made of kind of heavy stoneware pottery very crude very roughly made but quite heavy and quite large what we're looking at is something which probably replicates what we now call a modern fragmentation grenade so this is intended to cause as much physical damage as is possible to cause it was actually quite a nasty weapon now comes the moment of truth for the ancient tatsuhara our weapons test will involve highly dangerous live explosives so we've called in the pyrotechnics team behind james bond and other hollywood blockbusters we're gonna look around the hay bales so we've got to be close enough protect that sort of hay bales and sandbag wall between that and the explosive charge an ancient tetsuho has not been exploded for nearly a thousand years the exact blast radius is not known so the team has retreated 200 feet the tatsuhau is believed to create an incredible blinding flash upon ignition to capture this we've brought in specialist slow motion cinematography [Music] captured at 10 000 frames per second this footage unveils the terrifying inferno that would have engulfed the japanese warriors the tetsuho ignites at temperatures of up to 700 degrees fahrenheit the explosion would have a 100 percent lethality rate at a blast radius of 20 feet our groundbreaking experiment has proved that the mongols could have literally incinerated japan's navy but not all naval innovations involved complicated explosive chemistry the romans developed a piece of wooden military hardware that looks as dramatic as it really is it changed the course of an entire war in only a few hours two thousand years ago the dominant superpower in the ancient world was the great empire of rome policed by the legions the first full-time professional army in history the roman empire spanned across two and a half million square miles of land but in the third century bc a rival superpower grew up in the desert of north africa its name was carthage carthage initially an outpost of phoenicia in palestine becomes the trading superpower of the mediterranean and the struggle between roman carthage is a struggle for power and control over trade and land and critical supplies most important of which are things like grain on one hand stood rome's colossal army of over 350 000 well-drilled and well-armed soldiers on the other carthage's domination of the sea they fight first over sicily which is an enormous granary either for rome or for carthage and it's life and death no grain no bread no success at the heart of carthaginian naval power was its magnificent circular harbor built to house over 200 super destroyers the harbor was carthage's military headquarters while a modern u.s aircraft carrier takes five years to build carthaginian engineers constructed warships in the blink of an eye ancient accounts tell of such ships being built in 40 days from the moment the tree was first felled between carthage and rome lay the mediterranean sea a battlefield of almost one million square miles the mediterranean became the focal point for a fearsome power struggle key ancient navies could outperform others not by numbers but by skill the athenians the rhodians the carthaginians had major advantages in seafaring skills but two and a half thousand years ago the roman navy was almost non-existent save for a few river patrol boats the remains of which now lie in mainz museum germany the mines type a boats were elegantly designed they are very narrow and long there's definitely no evidence that these ships had been used for fighting because they are too small too narrow but they were evidently used to control the river but rome's riverboats would be no match for the might of carthage's navy how could the roman generals bring their military superiority onto the open ocean they copy carthaginian vessels they mass produce them and they develop new tactics to negate carthaginian skill and replace it with roman power they turn sea battle into land battle the roman military engineers started building boats with a super destroyer known as the queen kareem at the head of the fleet a hundred feet long it was the fast attack heavy troop carrier of the ancient world the queen cream was a huge naval vessel there are probably 700 people rowing it these are incredibly expensive incredibly complex bits of machinery but the troops carried by the queen kareems were not marines or navy seals they were legionnaires men used to fighting on land the romans needed to develop a way of getting their legions onto the decks of the punic warships as quickly as possible roman naval engineers proposed an ingenious solution a 40-foot long two-ton bridge called a corvus it's basically a boarding ramp with a large spike on the front you drop the ramp the spike sticks in the enemy ship and your roman legion rushes across and chops up the catholians who are not expecting to fight this kind of battle they're expecting to fight a ship on ship battle not a man-to-man combat but would the ambitious new weapon work in battle richard windley is investigating he has created a half-size version of the corvus the real corvus was something like 36 to 40 feet in length it was four feet wide probably weighing two to three tons possibly even more and the mass with the pulley on the top was something like 20 to 25 feet high this was an enormous piece of kit lifting two tons of war machine on a single hemp rope with only manpower requires coordination if the team or the ropes slip richard and his assistants could be badly injured steez off gently tied off okay i've got it clear please when released there were no second chances aim had to be perfect three two one right well um it looks as though we're pretty well impaled it is effective at locking the two ships together and it would have been reasonably effective in the right circumstances however richard's experiment has revealed a weakness with the corvus it would have needed probably quite a lot of training to get the timing exactly right the release exactly right again with the ships pitching and waving moving one against the other the timing would have been absolutely crucial even this scaled down example is a struggle for richard and his assistants to raise a second time and richard's model is revealing further problems the problem with this is we're on dry land we're on a stationary position you know one can imagine that uh ships at sea amidst all the turmoil of battle ships waving twisting moving around this thing would be really very very difficult to maneuver the 40-foot height upset balance and turned a slick attack ship into a clumsy vessel difficult to maneuver the immense weight towering above the deck of a rolling cruiser made the vessel unstable if the seas picked up the top heavy device could easily flip the ship over but carthage needed to be crushed at sea despite the risks the romans installed the device would the calculated gamble pay off in 245 bc the romans launched the largest fleet of attack ships they had ever put to see all armed with a corvus but only a few miles out of harbor they hit rough seas the instability of the vessel caused by the corvus was too much for the captains and they could not control their ships it's too cumbersome it's too bulky it breaks all the rules and the romans invariably find themselves in a storm and not being very good semen they don't see it coming and they don't know how to deal with it so they lose their fleet 270 vessels went down with the loss of a hundred thousand men the greatest loss of any maritime force in history all because of these simple planks of wood this is a very young gain encumbersome machine and really it was a quick fix it was a very ad hoc solution to a problem the actual application of it had huge detrimental effects to the maneuverability of the ship which was slow and ponderous already the romans abandoned the idea of the corvus and it was never adopted by any military force ever again but not all naval battles were fought above the waves the quest for maritime supremacy drove ancient military engineers to look beneath the ocean's surface pushing human endurance and sub-aqua technology to the limit transforming ordinary seamen into the most high-tech elite special forces in history [Music] the strategic importance of the oceans has been vital throughout history we're looking at a world connected by oceanic transport it's the only way of moving anything that weighs more than a few hundred pounds the need to control the sea produced a technological and tactical arms race that has created most of the breakthroughs in military technology it is the world's naval forces that have produced most of the innovations in warfare throughout the ages most of the modern sophisticated weapons in use today including aeroplanes bombers tanks you name it they had to be the best because otherwise they were going to lose the war at sea from the u.s battle fleet of the 21st century through the british domination of the waves during her empire to the massive expansion of greece across the mediterranean three thousand years ago the nation that ruled the waves ruled the world but there was then and still is today a need not just to rule the oceans but rule the water beneath submarine technology and special forces groups in modern armies are the rapier by which generals can turn battles and even wars because undersea attacks can be secret unseen by enemy sentries every modern navy has its own elite squadron of highly trained specialist underwater attack troops [Music] paul haynes is a retired commando from the royal marines the station of the land generally quiets vehicles all these are less discrete or less covert than deploying personnel subsurface but many special forces men and women might be surprised to discover that covert diving technology has been around much longer than we imagined and the most important technology for underwater missions is to supply something we all need it's oxygen so that's the fundamental requirement of any diver a means of delivering oxygen to him to sustain life the simplest way to do this is with a tube or snorkel twenty-five hundred years ago in ancient greece there are accounts of a spy named cillis mounting an audacious underwater mission to release enemy persian ships from their moorings without being detected the ancient accounts say that the secret behind his success was a mysterious hollow device like an ancient snorkel richard windley has been investigating diving technology in the ancient world it's often thought that the idea for using snorkels was derived from watching elephants when they were swimming these are actually bamboo the original would have been the giant reader rondo dernax which grew all around the mediterranean it grew to fairly large sizes the device at the bottom is something i've added myself because obviously if you've simply got a tube in your mouth you've got to look up woods all the time it's been difficult to achieve any kind of underwater tasks the texts show the diver at a depth of 15 feet but due to increased pressure on the lungs snorkels are only effective down to around two feet so paul believes the ancient illustrations are wrong all snorkels have limitations depends upon the length of the snorkel primarily if it's too long you'll have significant challenges in trying to breathe so there is an optimal length for any snowball richard's replica ancient snorkel is three feet long longer than the optimum two feet paul takes the snorkel to its maximum depth the results impress even this experienced military diver it was actually quite comfortable i felt like a normal small it always book shallow really comfortable became quite apparent as you submerge and went deeper you could begin to feel an additional strain and pressures on your lungs the test reveals that the ancient snorkel will supply oxygen to the diver very effectively but only to a maximum operating depth of three feet at this depth the diver might be visible to centuries for an operation to be truly covert military technicians have tried over centuries to create equipment that leaves no trace even modern scuba gear leaves a trail of bubbles that might be spotted by a keen-eyed sentry to solve this problem modern special forces use a device known as a rebreather incredibly this device allows the diver to breathe back in the air they have just breathed out leaving no bubbles at all what we have here today is the stealth food breather which is the most modern military underwater life support system there is at the moment the divers breeding from these bags or culture lungs as they called and breathing through the hoses into the bags and the gas then goes through what's called a scrubber and that absorbs the carbon dioxide that you produce and background to the diver so it inhales fresh gas but amazingly this ultra high tech equipment might have its roots in a device created for assault troops thousands of years ago in 1000 bc assyria was a major superpower of the ancient world controlling an empire of thousands of square miles within its dominion and along its borders were plateaus and fertile valleys crisscrossed with rivers as the empire grew her armies needed to attack across these waterways there is evidence 300 miles away in london england that offers a clue as to how they approached this the british museum in london contains the world's largest collection of ancient artifacts here dr john bevin is investigating evidence that suggests the ancient assyrians used a re-breathing device nearly three thousand years ago the museum contains a relief carving that depicts an assyrian military assault siege tactics chariots and heavy infantry are all shown but a portion of the relief tells the story of a river assault this depicts a river crossing of the assyrian army possibly the euphrates and it's a massive operation huge logistical problem you've got to get all your troops and your horses and your chariots across the river and it's a wonderful illustration of the problems they're facing in crossing a river there is evidence in the carving of a mysterious piece of military technology this has puzzled people for a long time it shows an assyrian soldier holding what appears to be a goat an inflated goatskin or bladder underneath him it's strapped to his body he's got a tube into his mouth now some people have thought that this depicts a diver swimming along underwater in a clandestine or covert way the swimmer would have breathed oxygen in and out of the bag many believe that this is evidence of the world's first underwater rebreather others predict that the device would never have worked entering the debate is the ancient discoveries team richard windley has created a replica of the ancient assyrian rebreather today for the first time our intrepid trio of scholar ancient model maker and military commando have returned to pinewood's diving stage to test richard's creation the trials will require paul to submerge beneath the water with no oxygen supply he will only be able to breathe the air he has already breathed out there is evidence from nearly 3 000 years ago of covert underwater assault technology these images suggest that the ancient assyrians developed a device that allowed them to mount an attack while breathing air underwater without leaving any trace of bubbles the perfect weapon for a covert subsurface attack ancient model maker richard windley has built a model of the device we think possibly the original versions of these may have been an entire animal skin and these had to be sealed and the way they did that was to stitch them and then use like a slurry of all sorts of bizarre mixtures like honey and beeswax this actually does a fairly good job of waterproofing today ex-royal marines commander paul haynes is going to test the model is this the first ever completely covert military equipment the experiment gives a clear result the challenges straight away it's positive buoyancy so it immediately wants to lift you to the surface air has 800 times less density than water causing the breathing bag to shoot upwards to the surface underwater operations would have been almost impossible yet ancient reliefs clearly show it being used in operation ancient historian john bevin has interpreted this evidence the soldier of course would have been trying to get across a river wearing heavy equipment heavy dress and of course maybe carrying some heavy weapons so you certainly couldn't swim with all that kit on so the bag would have been there to provide him with the buoyancy to get across the river the mouthpiece would therefore have been simply there to maintain the bag in an inflated condition the experiment illustrates that the bags were used for surface swimming rather than underwater swimming this tactic is still used by special forces to swim distances with heavy weapons today of course it is completely incredible to us that the ancient world could have had any underwater devices to explore the marine world but richard is not giving up in his quest to discover ancient covert diving equipment he is examining textual evidence that claims the special forces of alexander the great conducted covert underwater attacks alexander was born in macedonia in northern greece in 356 bc alexander was universally considered in the ancient world the greatest general that ever lived he was a man who led from the front but also a man who took brilliant tactical decisions ancient accounts dating from the 4th century bc tell of alexander's siege at the phoenician city of tyre they have given birth to a legend alexander was said to have examined the city's defenses by mounting an underwater operation with a diving bell the model we have here is meant to represent a diving belt it would seem to me that this is probably the most likely and the most effective and easiest way of getting divers to undertake these kind of covert operations the concept of the bell is relatively simple air trapped under the dome provides a diver with an underwater reservoir from which to breathe we lower it down to the bottom of the tank approximately six meters depth we've provided sufficient length here to allow me to swim in underneath and place my head and shoulders within the bell area the air trapped in the bell will cause the device to float to stop it from shooting to the surface weights are attached to ropes around the container it's going to be difficult these weights provide a downward force under gravity exactly equal to the upward buoyancy force exerted on the bell by the trapped air while paul prepares to dive again technicians maneuver the bell into the water [Music] the operation is complicated but finally the bell sinks to the bottom [Music] while richard watches from the surface dr bevin observes from a reinforced viewing window beneath the tank with the bell on the bottom paul fills his lungs and dives once at the tank floor paul will perform two tests the first investigates whether he can move around using the bell as a permanent air source [Music] as he works paul is only breathing the compressed air from the bell into his lungs a second test investigates whether paul can make journeys into the open water and then return to the bell for more air but with only the compressed air from the bell in his lungs if he changes his depth the increase in pressure will cause his chest to explode [Music] this is an exceptionally dangerous operation paul relies on all his training to keep himself at the exact depth of the bell and alive for this reason he must exhale continuously as he returns to the surface once you get down and get settled i mean the breathing is quite comfortable and you've got good visibility quite readily move around you can use it as a stationary sort of um resupply of gas um to to work from um to do salvage work simple tasks our investigation proves that before the advent of modern scuba gear military engineers were capable of designing technologies that allowed their special forces to work at depth for long periods it's extremely successful it's exactly what i would have expected in the real world so to speak the bell has been placed on the seabed ready it's got a full charge of fresh air the dive has gone down he's made himself comfortable he's been able to go out do his dive do some work and then come back to the bell when he's comfortable and so he's been able to work away for quite a long time down there the tests at the deep tank have revealed that the ancients two even three thousand years ago did not just master the seas but conquered its depths devices like the snorkel would have allowed covert operations it functioned the way it auto that is the divers out of sight completely and you've just got a part of snorkel out of the water and that's not so easy to see the assyrian bladder while not as sophisticated as the high-tech rebreathers used by today's special forces divers did allow commandos to carry heavy weapons across the water quickly and more effectively [Music] they're the equivalent of a life jacket a buoyancyate modern buoyancy today so it would keep you well out of the water if you couldn't swim very well it would keep you safe and of course if you've got any heavy equipment it'll keep you high in the water again with buoyancy and alexander's bell has shown that even two and a half thousand years ago military engineers were capable of designing technologies that allowed their special forces to work at depth for long periods [Music] these technologies were being used by commandos millennia ago and the principles and tactics they initiated are still used in the modern theater of war nearly 3 000 years later the message that comes home to me is just how amazingly impressive and ambitious and technologically competent these people were that were building these ancient vessels from technological innovation and experimentation beneath the waves to the super destroyers that cruised upon them the ancient military engineers were continuously pushing back the boundaries of invention and as modern military engineers follow in their footsteps they rely every day on the debt they owe the naval inventors of the ancient world you

2021-09-09 16:13

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