This Day in World War 1 History: MARCH 23, 1918 : PARIS HIT BY SHELLS FROM NEW GERMAN GUN

At 7:20 in the morning on March 23, 1918, an explosion in the Place de la Republique in Paris announces the first attack of a new German gun.

The Pariskanone, or Paris gun, as it came to be known, was manufactured by Krupps; it was 210mm, with a 118-foot-long barrel, which could fire a shell the impressive distance of some 130,000 feet, or 25 miles, into the air. Three of them fired on Paris that day from a gun site at CrÉpy-en-Laonnaise, 74 miles away.

The gun sent Paris, a city that had withstood all earlier attempts at its destruction, including scattered bombings, reeling. At first, the Paris Defense Service assumed the city was being bombed, but soon they determined that it was actually being hit by artillery fire, a heretofore unimagined situation. By the end of the day, the shelling had killed 16 people and wounded 29 more. It would continue throughout the German offensive of that year in four separate phases between March 23 and August 9, 1918, inflicting a total of somewhere under 260 Parisian casualties. This low total was due to the fact that the residents of Paris learned to avoid gathering in large groups during shellings, limiting the number of those killed and wounded by the shells and diminishing the initially terrifying impact of the weapon.

Almost all information about the Pariskanone, one of the most sophisticated weapons to emerge out of World War I, disappeared after the war ended. Later, the Nazis tried without success to reproduce the gun from the few pictures and diagrams that remained. Copies were deployed in 1940 against Britain across the English Channel, but failed to cause any significant damage.

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March 23, 1918 : Paris hit by shells from new German gun

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  History.com Staff

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  History.com

• Year Published

  2009

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  March 23, 1918 : Paris hit by shells from new German gun

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  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/paris-hit-by-shells-from-new-german-gun

• Access Date

  March 23, 2015

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  A+E Networks

This Day in World War 1 History: MARCH 20, 1915 : BRITAIN AND RUSSIA DIVIDE FUTURE SPOILS OF WAR

Just two days after its navy suffered a demoralizing defeat against Turkish forces at the Dardanelles, the British government signs a secret agreement with Russia regarding the hypothetical post-World War I division of the former Ottoman Empire.

By the terms of the agreement, signed on March 20, 1915, Russia would annex the Turkish stronghold of Constantinople, the Bosporus Strait (a waterway connecting the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara and marking the boundary between the Asian and European halves of Turkey), and more than half of the European section of Turkey. Britain also promised Russia future control of the Dardanelles (the crucially important strait connecting the Black Sea with the Mediterranean)—which the British navy had unsuccessfully attacked two days earlier—and the Gallipoli peninsula, the target of a major Allied military invasion (which would also result in failure) launched late the following month. In return, Russia would agree to British claims on other areas of the former Ottoman Empire and central Persia, including the oil-rich region of Mesopotamia.

The Anglo-Russian agreement of March 1915 illustrated the vast degree to which traditional relationships between nations had been changed by World War I. The agreement represented a complete turnaround from past British policy toward Russian control of Constantinople, which they previously thought threatened the British dominance in the region that had been achieved through its colonial administration of India. As part of a coalition including France, Sardinia and Turkey, Britain had in fact gone to war with Russia in the Crimean Peninsula in 1854 (a conflict known as the Crimean War) to prevent Russia from claiming Constantinople and the strait. In 1878, Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli had sent the British fleet to the Dardanelles to warn the Russians away from Constantinople during the Russo-Turkish War. Now, in a secret agreement, Britain was promising away the very territory it had so assiduously defended—territory it was simultaneously trying desperately, with little success, to win.

Article Details:

March 20, 1915 : Britain and Russia divide future spoils of war

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  History.com Staff

• Website Name

  History.com

• Year Published

  2009

• Title

  March 20, 1915 : Britain and Russia divide future spoils of war

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  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/britain-and-russia-divide-future-spoils-of-war

• Access Date

  March 20, 2015

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  A+E Networks

This Day in World War 1 History: MARCH 19, 1916 : FIRST U.S. AIR-COMBAT MISSION BEGINS

On this day in 1916, the First Aero Squadron, organized in 1914 after the outbreak of World War I, flies a support mission for the 7,000 U.S. troops who, six days earlier, had invaded Mexico on President Woodrow Wilson’s orders to capture Mexican revolutionary Francisco Pancho Villa dead or alive.

On March 9, Villa, who opposed American support for the newly elected president of Mexico, Venustiano Carranza, had led a band of several hundred guerrillas across the border on a raid of the town of Columbus, New Mexico, killing 17 Americans. The mission to capture Villa, which eventually involved some 10,000 U.S. troops, was commanded by U.S. Brigadier General John J. Pershing, the future commander in chief of American troops during World War I. It was the first U.S. military operation to employ mechanized vehicles, including automobiles and the airplanes of the First Aero Squadron, which were used to scout enemy activity and relay messages for General Pershing.

Despite numerous mechanical and navigational problems, the American fliers flew hundreds of missions for Pershing and gained important experience that would later benefit the pilots over the battlefields of Europe. However, during the 11-month mission, U.S. forces failed to capture the elusive revolutionary, and Mexican resentment over U.S. intrusion into their territory led to a diplomatic crisis.

The aggressive U.S. pursuit of Villa and the popular support Villa enjoyed in Mexico had led Germany’s foreign minister, Arthur Zimmermann, to think Mexico might welcome the opportunity to launch a full-scale invasion of Texas. This thought led directly to the famous Zimmermann Telegram, a secret message sent by Zimmermann in January 1917 to the German ambassador to Mexico proposing a Mexican-German alliance in the case of war between the United States and Germany and promising Mexico financial aid and territory—including Texas, New Mexico and Arizona—in return for its support.

In late January 1917, with President Wilson under pressure from the Mexican government and more concerned with the war overseas than with bringing Villa to justice, the Americans were ordered home from Mexico. The Zimmermann Telegram, intercepted and decoded by British intelligence, reached the U.S. government in February; Wilson authorized the State Department to publish it in early March. Americans were outraged, and public sentiment began to move ever closer to support of U.S entrance into World War I on the side of the Allies. Furthermore, Villa’s aggression in the Southwest had aroused safety fears among the region’s inhabitants, leading many Western states to support defense bills that would become necessary to support the U.S. war effort, which Congress formally declared on April 6, 1917.

For his part, Villa continued his guerrilla activities in northern Mexico until Adolfo de la Huerta took power over the Mexican government and drafted a reformist constitution. Villa entered into an amicable agreement with Huerta and agreed to retire from politics. In 1920, the Mexican government pardoned Villa. Three years later, still a symbol of popular resistance against governmental repression, he was killed at his ranch in Parral by an unknown assailant.

Article Details:

March 19, 1916 : First U.S. air-combat mission begins

• Author

  History.com Staff

• Website Name

  History.com

• Year Published

  2009

• Title

  March 19, 1916 : First U.S. air-combat mission begins

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  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-u-s-air-combat-mission-begins-2

• Access Date

  March 19, 2015

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  A+E Networks