Original subtitles

Weapons have existed

as long as human kind.

(gun bangs)

For millennia, they have determined

the destiny of generations.

(explosion rumbles)

Weapons bring suffering and death.

They show what humans can inflict upon other humans.

(explosion rumbles)

But they're also intended to keep the peace

and pave new ways for technology.

(upbeat music)

Three weapons that increase the bloodshed in battles.

Deadly innovations, their invention

changed the course of global history.

(gun bangs)

Detailed experiments reveal the secrets of these weapons.

(metal clangs)

The Henry Rifle, making it rain bullets

in the American Civil War.

This weapon was a game changer.

It made world history.

(metal clangs)

The long sword, the medieval super weapon.

In battle, a real life battle,

this could mean life or death.

The Scorpio, Roman high tech tool

with enormous impact.

That's gone straight through a millimeter of steel.

Our first weapon is known as a Scorpio.

It is a Roman ranged weapon.

What makes it so special?

(typing clacks)

Lower Saxony, Germany, 230CE.

(thunder cracks)

Thousands of Roman Legionnaires are marching south

in heavy armor and with heavy equipment.

Along the western end of the Harz highland area,

they faced Germanic warriors in battle.

The Romans storm a hill and claim the victory.

(soldiers fight and yell)

How did they do it?

(swords clang)

Archeologists have been unearthing remains

of the battle since 2008.

The Harzhorn is one of the most important

dig sites in Germany.

The experts are surprised about one thing in particular;

the large number of bolt heads.

Many of them are bent.

They must have hit their goal at full speed.

(speaks in foreign language)

The archeological finds

from the Harzhorn suggest that the Romans

used catapults with bolts in a very targeted manner there.

Hundreds of bolts were found still buried

deeply within the ground.

Experts were able to reconstruct the trajectory

and based on the direction the shots were fired in,

they think the Romans actively tried to stop

a Teutonic attack with those catapults.

The Romans call their bolt catapult

scorpio, probably because their form

bears a similarity to the dangerous arachnids.

A Legion of 5000 men carries up to 60 of these weapons.

The Scorpio must have been really efficient

to make it worth the cumbersome transportation.

In addition to the bolt heads found in the excavations,

the detailed documentations by Roman engineer,

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, revealed the most

about how the weapon was constructed.

His work on ancient technology and engineering skills

are still astonishing to this day.

This copy of his ten books on architecture

dates back to the 15th Century.

In this work, written in the First century BCE,

he describes a scorpio as a weapon

that has, "been invented for safety's sake

"and as a protection against danger."

There are depictions of a scorpio

on the famous Trajan's Column from a 113CE as well.

We can easily see two large cylinders,

left and right, from the arm's trajectory.

Is this the secret behind its enormous impact?

How does this weapon work?

Why do Germanic warriors dread the scorpio?

Military historian Stephen Bull is fascinated

by the Roman art of engineering.

Today, he wants to conduct an experiment

with a scorpio built according to historical examples.

One weapon, various ways of building it.

They all have one thing in common;

they have a firing channel for the bolt,

a sinew, and throwing arms.

Ideas that the Romans did not come up with themselves.

When the Romans got hold of good ideas

they invariably improved them and with the Scorpio

they take a Greek Hellenistic throwing engine

and they turn it into a useful battle field weapon.

This isn't just a siege machine,

this is now part of the way the Roman Army fights

battle as well as siege, so they make it lighter

they make it more portable, they make it

easier to move and they make it more effective

by increasing the power and increasing

the quality of the projectiles.

There's just an all round upgrade.

(upbeat battle music)

How much impact does a scorpio

really have and how precisely can you hit a target?

Distance to target in the first experiment, 20 meters.

Stephen Bull and his team prepare the scorpio

for firing, they push the adjustable slay forwards,

pull the sinew into place, and push the slay back again.

The last step is aiming the artillery at the target.

So I'm ready with the bolt.

And I'm ready to shoot.

(machine clacks)

(machine bangs)

(wood rattles)

Not bad, it's on target.

So this has been a pretty effective shot.

It's actually gone all the way into the board

a couple of centimeters thick,

and doubtless you can see the end of the arrow,

the bolt, projecting on the other side of the board.

A mobile, artillery weapon,

the scorpio combines firing power and precision.

(upbeat dramatic music)

Thin wooden pieces enable its relatively light construction.

In order to transport it, the Romans disassemble

the scorpio into separate parts

and put it back together where they want to use it.

The scorpio depended on the principle of torsion.

It's levers were embedded in skeins of tightly twisted rope.

When the trigger was released, that force was released

and the arrow shot forward with tremendous power.

In ancient times, the torsion bundles

are made of horse or human hair,

or animal sinew braided into bundles.

They store energy when twisted.

The energy is transmitted directly

to the projectile upon firing.

(metal clangs)

Our scorpio reconstruction has two

of these tightly twisted ropes,

housed in a typical bronze cylinders.

One assistant has to re-tighten them regularly.

In our reconstruction, they are made

of synthetic fibers that are more weather resistant

than the animal sinew used by the Romans.

In a final step, Stephen Bull inserts a pointed bolt

which is 60 centimeters long.

The Roman Empire had very few essential

weapons, the gladius is one of them,

the pilum, things like this, the scorpio

is one of the weapons that helps them

to improve their performance and we know

that they use it in some very interesting places.

In Britain it's used to capture

some very large Iron Age fortresses on the Tor hills

so it's a very useful artillery piece

to bring up for assault operations

and to use in battle.

Gaul, 52BCE

The Roman troops under Gaius Julius Caesar

have been trying to conquer the land

for five years.

Time and again they have to defeat revolts

of Gaelic rulers, and now Caesar

is facing a new threat;

the Gauls are intending to unite

under their leader, Vercingetorix.

Vercingetorix is significant because he's the first

person to persuade all of the Gauls,

or almost all of them that unless they want

to be compiled with there universal Roman Empire

and lose their identity, they're gonna have to fight

and it's no good one of the tribes fighting,

all the tribes have to fight, they all

have to fight together and they have to believe

in something more than they're small tribal groups

and he makes enormous progress in building

this sense of identity which some French people

will look back on as the beginnings of a modern France.

But the Legionnaires are merciless.

Also, when it comes to using the scorpio.

Caesar wrote, "A Gaul before the gate of the town

"was pierced with a bolt from a scorpio

"on the right side and fell dead.

"Another Gaul stepped over him to fight in his place.

"He got shot by an arrow from a scorpio as well."

Caesar defeats the Gauls.

Their leader, Vercingetorix, is forced to surrender.

The Gaul's resistance is broken.

Legend has it that Vercingetorix had to lay down

all his weapons in front of Caesar's feet

after his capitulation.

The scene has also been immortalized in drawings

and in a first book from the Asterix comic book series.

The many adventures of Asterix and Obelix

are based on historical facts;

the Roman occupation of Gaul.

In a comic series, the Gauls unwilling to surrender

defend their last stronghold, a small village

at the northern shore of France.

They have plenty of clever ideas, and magic potion.

The life of Gauls and Romans, and often also

their weapons, are a recurring topic in the Asterix series.

The drawings of siege weapons and fortifications

impress with their level of detail and accuracy.

Generally speaking, they correspond to the originals.

(dramatic music)

Whether it's a Roman camp with correctly

depicted tent rows, or their famous battle formation.

It has all been captured in the comics.

Reality, however, is probably far crueler.

Every Legion deploys about 60 scorpios.

According to Caesar's accounts, they basically

mowed down their enemies.

(crowd screams and yells)

(dramatic music)

Once aimed, the weapon is said to reliably hit

the same target with every shot.

Stephen Bull wants to find out if that is really possible.

That way, that's it, now that's okay,

yeah, looks good to me.

Stephen Bull has his men aim the scorpio.

Fire at will.

(machine clacks)

(wood clacks)

Ah.

Will the next shots really hit the same spot?

(wood clacks)

(metal whirs)

(wood clacks)

So we've got a couple of shots

which are pretty close together here.

That's reasonable.

Maybe 45 centimeters, 50 centimeters away

from the other side of the group.

And we also had a couple of misses.

For the ancient world,

this is remarkably accurate.

But what about penetrating power?

Can the scorpio bolt also pierce

through armor and shields?

What we have here is a one millimeter steel plate.

We're not really going for accuracy.

We're going for penetration.

Let's see how it does.

(metal clacks)

(metal clangs)

(metal clangs)

(metal clangs)

(metal clangs)

That's gone straight through a millimeter of steel.

The heavy bolt head has focused the force on the point.

It's not come all the way through the wood,

but it's nailed the metal to the wood.

If you'd been this metal as armor,

the result wouldn't be very pleasant.

So we're gonna try and get the arrow

out of the steel plate.

I think it'll come given some effort.

(groans)

Yes.

It appears to have gone maybe a centimeter

and a half, so it's gone through the armor

and then more than a centimeter behind.

Quite a nasty injury.

The scorpio has passed this test

but can it perform even better?

So we've succeeded in penetrating

one millimeter of steel.

Just to make life difficult for ourselves,

we've added a second plate to make it

two millimeters of steel.

This is going to be a serious test of penetration.

(wood clacks)

(metal clangs)

(metal bangs)

Hit the target, bottom right.

How deep did the bolt head go into the steel?

Not very deep.

But certainly through both steel plates.

(metal clangs)

So the first plate's come off,

and we can see the second plate underneath.

The penetration through the second plate

is obviously not as serious

as the penetration through the first plate,

but it's still gone all the way through.

So this is the first hole, all the way

through the plate, and this is the second hole,

not so deep, but still all the way through

and I can feel the wood behind.

Based on the archeological excavations

at the Harzhorn, experts estimate

that it was possible to fire deadly shots

with a scorpio over a distance of up to 500 meters.

It is one of the most efficient ranged weapons

of the ancient world.

The Romans built the scorpio for several centuries.

It remains unclear when it disappeared

from the Legions' equipment.

It is possible that the torsion technique

which is quite complex to operate

was replaced by the more simple mechanism

of the swinging arms of the catapults.

Our next weapon, the sword.

It is intrinsically tied to the medieval world of knights.

But the sword is more than just a weapon of war.

It is a status symbol, the epitome of power.

The stuff legends are made of.

The Battle of Lechfeld near Augsburg,

South Germany in 955.

King Otto I defends the Christian

east Francia against the attacking Hungarians.

The extremely mobile and light Hungarian riders

have spread fear and terror in the Empire

for decades, but this time, they stand no chance.

With their swords, Otto's knights cause

substantial loss for the Hungarians.

(men scream and yell)

Stefan Roth has been forging for more

than 20 years, copying historical models

and knows that swords are far more

than just brutal cutting weapons.

For me, personally,

medieval swords are incredibly fascinating

and long swords in particular, because I know

precisely how these weapons are manufactured

and how elaborate the whole forging process is.

The earliest finds

from Esentepe in Turkey date back

more than five thousand years.

This means a history of swords is older than writing.

The Romans use their short sword, the gladius.

In late antiquity, they switch to

a longer version, the spatha.

Teutons and Vikings also love longer swords

and enshrine their favorite weapon in legends.

To this day, the myths around Excalibur

from the Arthurian legend live on.

It rests within a stone.

It is said to have magical powers.

(speaks foreign language)

The one who manages to take

Excalibur out of the stone, is said

to be the rightful ruler of Britain.

The swords represent power, claim to power,

and are an integral part of many

coronation ceremonies as regalia.

But real swords are also

the subject of many myths, just like

the Ulfberht, a Germanic sword

from the early Middle Ages, forged between

the eight and eleventh century.

Archeologists have found about 170 copies

of it all over Europe.

They all share one distinctive feature;

the inscription Ulfberht.

What we're looking at here, is a trademark.

It's a brand, it's a way of selling

a product by saying this is a quality product.

Everybody knows this mark equals good.

Precious swords are also

a status symbol for noblemen in the Middle Ages.

Archeologists, however, regularly find blades

marked Ulfberht of significantly lower quality.

Were these just cheap copies of the popular brand?

Product counterfeiting in the Middle Ages?

(speaks foreign language)

A renowned brand,

probably a forger called Ulfberht,

who manufactures a special weapon gets copied.

Usually the material is inferior,

but just like today, there were different buyers

for different quality levels.

There were swords of high quality

and those of rather poor quality

in the Middle Ages, depending on the amount

of money the buyer was willing to spend.

If you want a superior weapon, you have

to be willing to invest in it too.

Over the course of the Middle Ages,

simple armor evolves into more stable plate armor.

Knights no longer need shields,

but can use both hands to swing

a longer, heavier sword at the enemy.

And they have to, because their opponents

are also clad in massive iron suits of armor.

Knights fighting with a light, single-handed sword

no longer stand a chance.

(dramatic music)

Around the same time, but on the other

side of the world, in Japan, Samurai warriors

fight with a katana, another two-handed sword.

It's a very, very aggressive weapon.

Whereas a sword and shield combination

gives you options, a two-handed sword

gives you no option, you attack.

You attack until you kill the enemy.

And the strokes you use to kill the enemy

which the Japanese still teach in Kendo,

mostly involve chopping off the head and right arm.

Stefan Roth has examined

both long swords for years.

The katana is known as the masterpiece

of Far Eastern weapons technology.

The blade is curved, single-edged,

and 60 to 75 centimeters long.

The long sword, on the other hand,

has a broad, double-edged blade,

with a very sharp point and measures 80 to 120 centimeters.

The expert knows the advantages

and disadvantages of both weapons.

Which one is the better sword?

The historical forging technique

is basically the same for both.

Stefan Roth folds the scorching hot iron bars

several times in order to obtain

steel which is as stable as possible.

This folding process is a cleaning process.

We have to get rid of the slag, ashes

and charcoal that remain within the material.

If I want to forge a sword, I need

the best material I can get, and of course,

I am trying to make it as refined as possible

in order to obtain steel that is relatively homogenous.

In the beginning, the carbon molecules

within the steel are not distributed equally.

By folding the steel repeatedly, however,

Stefan Roth can blend them together

in a more homogenous way.

Unlike the belief held by some Samurai fans,

Medieval Japanese blacksmiths neither had

better steel nor superior forging techniques.

Roth is convinced Europe's sword manufacturers

could compete with them, and in some cases,

even produce better weapons.

When it comes to stability,

European long swords totally out-perform

their Japanese counterparts.

For example, because the blade

is completely hardened throughout,

this is not the case for Japanese swords.

This can be achieved by heating the steel

and quickly placing it in water to cool it.

This way, the metal becomes much harder.

(intense music)

(speaks in foreign language)

This means the Japanese sword

cannot withstand impacts from the side.

It bends, it doesn't bounce back.

This sword has a rhombic section,

depending on how thick the blade is,

it is technically almost like a crow bar

that you place on the armor where you

intend to penetrate and then, well,

for the man wearing the armor, this

is anything but comfortable.

The direct comparison shows

both swords are about eight millimeters thick

but the long sword has a rhombic cross section.

This makes it more stable.

In addition to that, it is completely hardened throughout,

whereas this is only the case

for the sharp edge of a blade on a Japanese katana.

But how well do both swords perform in real life?

Stefan Roth wants to find out.

Together with katana warrior, Alexander Manti,

who is an expert in Asian martial arts.

Can the long sword cut through

a 1.5 millimeter thick metal plate?

And how will the extremely sharp Japanese katana perform?

(dramatic music)

(metal clangs)

Despite Alexander's targeted blow,

the katana can only cut through half of the steel.

With his long sword, Stefan Roth

manages to get through the entire steel plate.

Our next test, how well do both weapons penetrate?

And indeed, the katana pierces through

the steel plate with its point.

(speaks foreign language)

The European sword

is of course, predestined for penetrating

because it is long, pointed, and most of all, straight.

This means the energy can be directed at one point.

You can see very nicely how deep

the blade has penetrated the metal.

Just imagine you'd have a knight

wearing armor of maybe not the best quality

it could very well be possible

that the sword goes through it.

The direct comparison reveals

the long sword penetrated the steel twice as deep.

But both swords would have probably failed

if the steel had been any thicker.

Nevertheless, the massive blows of the long sword

have a particularly brutal effect.

Also, on the armor clad knight.

(speaks foreign language)

Like the name suggests,

the long sword must be a certain length.

It comes with a certain weight too.

If you strike a blow, it's very important

to calculate the energy resulting

from this movement, and energy

can be calculated mainly based on two factors;

one the weight, and two the speed.

A long sword is of course suitable

if it's used very quickly to transfer

a very large amount of energy.

And even if the opponent is wearing armor,

the energy still hits their body.

Depending on where it hits them,

they can suffer injuries like subcutaneous bleeding,

broke bones, or internal bleeding

that can later reach the brain, for example.

To this day, the prevailing image

is that the Japanese Samurai battle techniques

are superior to those of Medieval knights.

But is it really true?

Stefan Roth and katana warrior Alexander Manti

want to compare the options that both weapons offer.

The single-edged katana comes first.

(dramatic music)

Alexander cuts through the rolled mat

four times without any effort.

The double-edged European long sword

allows for other sword play techniques.

(sword clangs)

The difference between

the single-edged and the double-edged swords

is that he has to turn his hand.

(wood smacks)

(wood smacks)

We have a natural hand position

and maybe only save a millisecond,

but in battle, a real life battle,

this could mean life or death.

In reality, the two swords

never actually met blade to blade on a battlefield.

The Medieval European long sword, a supreme discipline.

Books on battle techniques provide proof

of the degree of sophistication of

the European sword combat techniques.

Like the Italian Fiore Della Battaglia,

The Flower of Battle, from the early fifteen century.

Such books mostly present the techniques

used in duels or exhibition fights

and seem quite brutal to a modern audience.

I think the depictions of the violence

that we used with the long swords

in the Middle Ages was completely, very barbaric.

If we compare to modern times, however,

I don't think that they were necessarily

any more barbaric than things that we've seen

in recent years.

We've seen levels of torture over the past

hundred years that are just as barbaric

as the things we see in the Middle Ages.

So I think it was just a different time

with different weapons that could do

horrific amounts of harm.

The Codex Wallerstein is another

martial arts manual dating back to the fifteen century.

It does indeed depict the versatility

of long swords, but it also shows

how merciless the fighting techniques were.

We see, for example, the half-sword thrust.

You hold the sword like a billiard cue

and thrust into the gaps of the opponents armor.

The names of other techniques speak for themselves.

Translated they mean, mouth blow,

murder strike, or testicle strike.

In the late Middle Ages the long sword

is less frequently used in battle,

but still plays an important role

in duels between knights.

It often serves to establish the truth, as they say.

The outcome of the duel, is seen

as a judgment of God.

The katana also holds a particular

symbolic value for the Samurai,

the Japanese warrior elite.

Over the course of time, the lethal

military weapon becomes a prestige object

laden with ritual meaning.

The sword is something of enormous

mythic significance across all cultures

but in some particularly for Japan,

the sword is the ultimate expression of identity.

Both as a personal possession and as a way

of representing who the Japanese think they are.

Swords and their successors

remain dreaded close combat weapons

well into the modern era.

They were eventually phased out

for soldiers and replaced with firearms,

pikes, and lastly, bayonets.

(guns fire)

But this doesn't mean swords fall into oblivion.

The Medieval wonder weapon lives on

to this day, for representative purposes

and in the various disciplines of fencing.

(dramatic music)

The triumphal march of fire arms

does not only end the age of swords,

constant improvements also make rifles

the dominating weapon of an entire era.

One particular crucial and destructive design

is the Henry rifle.

(gun bangs)

(typing clacks)

1861, the beginning of the American Civil War.

The Unionists from the North, fight

the Confederates from the Southern states.

The standard weapon of the North

is the Springfield rifle, a muzzle

loader with high accuracy.

But the reloading process is cumbersome

and it takes a lot of time.

A quite simple invention will change that.

Almost overnight, the Henry Rifle

increases the rate of fire remarkably.

Similar developments take place in Europe at the same time.

A shooting range near Gotha, Thuringia, Germany.

Wolfgang Stabe Builds and collects historical firearms.

There is hardly a nineteenth century weapon

that fascinates him quite like the Henry.

(gun clicks)

(gun bangs)

(gun bangs)

(gun clicks)

I feel like a pioneer

in the Wild West, this weapon was a game changer

not only for the American continent,

it's made world history.

The American gunsmith Benjamin Tyler Henry

gives the weapon its name.

The magazine holds 15 cartridges.

One additional round can be loaded in the barrel.

The rifle weighs about four kilograms,

the barrel is 51 centimeter long.

The most important detail, it can be reloaded

with a lever located below the barrel.

(speaks foreign language)

When you pull the lever,

the empty cartridge is ejected

and the next round is brought into position.

So you only need one movement to operate

the weapon with greater ease and reliability.

(speaks foreign language)

I push the lever down

and a new cartridge is loaded from the magazine

into the chamber using a spring,

and now it's in the chamber.

As easy as that.

Now I can fire, reload, and fire again.

(gun bangs)

(dramatic music)

The mechanism of the Henry repeating rifle.

Via a small bar, the lever action

transports a new cartridge into the barrel.

At the same time, it ejects the empty shell.

The hammer then files the cartridge.

(gun bangs)

(gun bangs)

(gun bangs)

(gun bangs)

(gun bangs)

(gun bangs)

This weapon was a master stroke.

This is a tubular magazine.

We have a spring that transports the projectile properly

and you turn the barrel at the front.

So this whole thing is the tubular magazine

and it can take a lot of bullets.

The Henry is not the first

lever-action repeating rifle, but the ammunition

used by its predecessors is often unpredictable.

Sometimes, when firing

the weapon, they hit the percussion cap

of the cartridge in the front, causing it to ignite.

That means that the whole magazine

goes off at once and blast the weapon completely.

This leads to bad accidents, sometimes even fatal.

The Henry will become famous

due to the stable rimfire cartridges it uses.

Those are much safer because they work

without a percussion cap.

In combination with the repeater mechanism

which allows the cartridges to be reloaded

very quickly, the invention becomes a deadly technology.

(gun clicks)

The magazine on the Henry rifle has a gap

on the lower side, a guidance bar

for the push bolt, this is a weakness

because mud can enter the magazine.

A disadvantage in battle, and there's more.

They soon realized that

the tubular magazine is a weak spot.

If the weapon falls, the magazine can be dented.

It's made of relatively thin metal

and then I can't reload the weapon anymore

and can no longer shoot obviously.

Never the less, compared

to the muzzle loader muskets of its era,

the Henry rifle is a major leap forward.

Benjamin Tyler Henry is smart.

He knows if his rifle is successful

with the military, he will become rich.

He files a patent application for the rifle

on the 16th October, 1860, about five months

before the outbreak of the Civil War.

A wise decision.

Because the history of war has shown

if new weapons technology proves to be successful,

everyone will try to copy it, including the enemy.

This has been the practice of bellicose conflicts

for millennia, but now, a new variable comes into play.

The patent law.

The earliest evidence of patent law traces back

to Ancient Greece, and it becomes a recurring topic

in Europe from the fifteenth century onwards.

The legal definition of patent law

develops in the early nineteenth century

and has close ties to weapons production.

Just before the age of industrialized,

mass production reaches hand weapons,

rifles, pistols, intellectual property law

changes so that it's possible to protect

the design, the intellectual property

in the construction of a weapon.

Not the weapon itself, but the design

and the principles on which its based.

Weapons designers now become millionaires

just like Samuel Colt, who applies for a patent

with his revolver mechanism in the mid-nineteenth century.

Other manufacturers are not allowed

to copy his design, this sparks the most bizarre ideas.

One competitor designs a revolver

with a horizontally placed magazine.

It turns like a record.

The ammunition is placed in six holes on the sides.

The turret pistol does not infringe

Samuel Colt's patent rights, but it is a threat

to the shooter's life.

The cartridges sometimes go off

uncontrollably into all directions.

(dramatic music)

It is also thanks to patent law

that the armament business is flourishing

today around the globe.

Every year, defense spending world wide

amounts to about 1.7 trillion US dollars.

Back to the shooting range near Gotha.

Wolfgang Stabe wants to find out how fast

he can fire 10 shots with

Benjamin Tyler Henry's patented rifle.

So I insert nine cartridges

repeat them once, making the whole thing safe,

releasing again, and then I open the weapon

and place the tenth cartridge into it.

And now, 10 shots of rapid fire.

We will stop the timer

after the last shot has been fired.

(timer beeps)

(gun bangs) (gun bangs)

(gun bangs) (gun bangs)

(gun bangs) (gun bangs)

(gun bangs) (gun bangs)

(gun bangs) (gun bangs)

We needed eight point eight seconds,

less than one second per shot.

That's fantastic.

(gun bangs)

More than one shot per second.

In the nineteenth century, this was a quantum leap.

For the Unionists of the American Civil War,

the Henry rifle should be an enormous advantage.

But the high rate of fire is exactly

what puts the generals off.

They think cartilages will be shot too fast.

The ammunition consumption would be too high

and that railway and horses could not

provide sufficient supply.

A superior weapon that is rarely deployed

for logistic reasons.

The weapon had enormous

fire power, that means troops needed

a lot of ammunition which was expensive

as was the weapon itself.

So the American generals were really hesitant.

They only bought 1700 of the Henry

because they were worried they couldn't

get hold of enough ammunition.

Soldiers who could afford it

get a Henry on their own.

Hoping that it will increase their chances of survival.

By the end of the war, about 7000

of these rifles are in use.

By comparison, more than one million

Springfield muzzle loaders are built during the same period.

Meanwhile, in Europe, another technology

conquers the battle grounds, with its extreme

rate of fire, the breechloading needle-gun

by German inventor von Dreyse,

leads European war tactics into cover.

The Henry rifle never makes it to Europe

and still many Germans know it.

As the Henry carbine used by Old Shatterhand,

a character from German author, Karl May's Winnetou series.

In the novels, the weapon is, however,

said to be able to fire 25 shots;

an exaggeration.

(dramatic music)

Which advantage does the real Henry bring in battle?

Weapons expert Wolfgang Stabe tests how efficient

the repeating rifle is compared to muzzle loaders.

Four experienced shooters are facing each other

in teams of two, left in turquoise,

the Northern states with the Henry rifle.

Right in red, the Southern states

with the Springfield musket, the most

frequently used weapon in the US Civil War.

How many targets will the teams be able

to hit in two minutes?

So, everything's safe, we can begin.

This is the timer, we'll start it in a moment.

Give it your best shot, I'll do the same.

We want to win.

Live experiment, North versus South.

(timer beeps)

Both groups have to load their weapons first.

The Northerners with the Henry

load 10 shots for the experiments.

The Southerners with the muzzle loader

can load just one at a time.

(gun bangs)

(gun bangs) (glass shatters)

(gun bangs) (gun bangs)

(gun bangs)

(gun bangs)

(gun bangs) (glass shatters)

Turquoise is in the lead.

The repeater rifle makes them faster

and the shots actually hit a couple of the targets.

(gun bangs)

(gun bangs)

(glass shatters)

The Southerners in red have to reload

after every shot, but their muskets are more accurate.

Who will win?

(timer beeps) (gun bangs).

Stop.

There's so much smoke

you can hardly see anything, but I'm glad

we hit something, this was a pretty cool experience.

It's great.

(speaks foreign language)

The first one went right through

and hit one of the targets, I'm not sure

about the second because like Rommie just said,

there is just too much smoke and you can't see well.

A soldier fires a lot

but does he actually hit something?

The evaluation shows

three out of five shots fired by

the muzzle loader group were a hit.

Whereas the Henry rifle shooters have fired

25 shots and have 10 hits.

(speaking foreign language)

We fired a lot, but if you

extrapolate that, we actually performed worse,

because we let ourselves get carried away

and fired quickly instead of aiming well.

The others took their time.

They knew they were slower, but in the end,

if you look at the outcome, they fired better.

The result, regarding the total

number of hits, the Henry prevails

over the muzzle loader, an additional advantage

is that soldiers feel superior in battle

when they can fire faster and more often.

(gun bangs)

(water sloshes)

The side that has the superior weapons,

will have a sense of power that we are

the stronger enemy and we can overtake you,

and therefore, you're inferior to us.

So they will feel confident and powerful

which will make them stronger and give them

more enthusiasm to be able to go on

and take their enemy.

For four years, the Civil War

tears the country apart.

Roughly 620 thousand people lose their lives.

On the 23rd June, 1865, the last

of the Southern troops surrender.

This marks a watershed in American history.

After this war, repeater rifles gain in popularity.

An advanced version of the Henry is just around the corner.

The Winchester is supposed to make up

for the downsides of its predecessor.

(speaks foreign language)

So, the successor.

Like all new designs, the first models

have their flaws, there are still construction issues.

But they soon found out that something

wasn't running smoothly and quickly modified it.

So this is the technical successor,

the Yankee rifle, manufactured by Winchester in 1866

and the differences were quite simple.

You see a front stock here, which protects

me from the heat of the barrel,

and of course, you see the tubular magazine.

They soon found out that the magazine

was easily damaged and then you couldn't

fire it anymore, it wasn't good for anything anymore.

So they changed it, and there's another novelty

and that is that you can load it

from here on the side, that means

if I take the weapon now, I'm able to reload it

from cover here, I don't have to take

that off like this if I want to reload.

Way too complicated,

that means this design that they came up with

in 1866 was truly an ingenious weapon.

(guns bang)

Eventually, the 1873 model will become

the most successful rifle of its time

and will later feature in many Westerns.

This is due to the fact that weapons designer

Oliver Winchester actively helped in building the myth.

Winchester is a canny operator, rather like

Samuel Colt, he's not the engineer,

he's the market man, he invents the idea

that this is the gun that won the West.

He creates a mythology about the Winchester

as something special, something defiantly American,

something unique and particular.

The Henry opens new ways

for the rate of fire of rifles.

Only 14,000 copies are made because the market

soon is flooded with successor models.

Today, original Henry rifles

are sought after collectibles.

Which deadly inventions will mark

the wars of the future?

After firepower has been optimized,

it seems like robots are about to take the lead.

Autonomous battle machines that make it

possible to fight wars without losing soldiers.

Will they decide on life and death on their own?

Of course in the future, the gun may be

in the hands of an autonomous robotic device

which will make reasoned choices about who to kill

and even then, it will still be the humans

driving the process because the program

will have been written by a human.

We're not yet in a world where machines kill people.

(machine whirs)

Not yet, but many armies

are already experimenting with autonomous machines

for transporting heavy loads or to

carry out other tasks.

This move towards autonomous weapons

towards weapons that we can fire without

having to actually get physically involved

in battle is inevitable, we have

the technology so we will do this.

Science-fiction isn't science or fiction

it's probably where we're going.

First tests have shown

machines are already able to keep up

with human beings in many situations.

And sometimes even outdo them.

But until now, it is still a human

who dictates every action a robot takes.

The advancements in artificial intelligence, however

will have an impact on warfare.

Life and death decisions made my a microchip?

From a technical point of view,

autonomous drone swarms will soon be able

to find and attack targets without human guidance.

The future has already begun.