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Machinery of War

From the beginning of the twentieth century to today, war was radically transformed. Through mechanization and industrialization, the methods used to settle conflicts have made the art of war more hi-tech, more expensive, and more devastating than ever before. Violence, it seems, is the mother of invention. This six-part series explores the evolution of engineering in warfare; as glamorous cavalry units were forced from the battlefields and replaced with tanks. As artillery entered the realms of science fiction and even the infantryman became a lethal weapons system. This mechanization of war demanded the rapid growth of armaments factories, all competing to build weapons bigger, better, faster, and deadlier. In the twentieth century war took over the skies, biplanes evolved into drones and randomly dropped bombs into pinpoint weapons that can level entire cities. Naval combat has also been revolutionized, where the most potent weapons are now launched from the angled decks of aircraft carriers or from deep beneath the waves. From tanks to bombers, howitzers to aircraft carriers, Machinery of War features expert interviews and cutting-edge animation to help explore why these machines were created and follows their journey from the factory floor to the battlefield.

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Cast & Crew See All

Robert Lee
Self - Narrator
John Connor
Self - Australian Centre for the Study of Armed Conflict and Society, University of New South Wales, Canberra
Paul Hazell
Self - School of Engineering and Information Technology, University of New South Wales, Canberra

Season 1 Episode Guide See All

Episode 1

Battlefield Behemoths

Explore the behemoths of war, the grumbling armored monsters like the Panzer III and the gravity-defying bulk of the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy, that dominate their arenas of war with their size and power.

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