![]() The result was entirely self-supporting it did not require any vertical posts. During the 1930s, German Horst Dannert developed concertina wire of this high-grade steel wire. Oil-tempered barbed wire was developed during World War I it was much harder to cut than ordinary barbed wire. Today, concertina wire is factory made and is available in forms that can be deployed very rapidly from the back of a vehicle or trailer. Such an obstacle is not very effective by itself (although it will still hinder an enemy advance under the guns of the defenders), and concertinas are normally built up into more elaborate patterns as time permits. Several such coils with a few stakes to secure them in place are just as effective as an ordinary barbed wire fence, which must be built by driving stakes and running multiple wires between them.Ī platoon of soldiers can deploy a single concertina fence at a rate of about a kilometer ( 5⁄ 8 mile) per hour. ![]() Ĭoncertina wire packs flat for ease of transport and can then be deployed as an obstacle much more quickly than ordinary barbed wire, since the flattened coil of wire can easily be stretched out, forming an instant obstacle that will at least slow enemy passage. There was what might be called a concertina craze on: innumerable coils of barbed wire were converted into concertinas by the simple process of winding them round and round seven upright stakes in the ground every new lap of wire was fastened to the one below it at every other stake by a twist of plain wire the result, when you came to the end of a coil and lifted the whole up off the stakes was heavy ring of barbed wire that concertina'd out into ten-yard lengths. Barbed wire concertinas could be prepared in the trenches and then deployed in no-man's-land relatively quickly under cover of darkness. Learning this lesson, World War I soldiers would deploy barbed wire in so-called concertinas that were relatively loose. Effective as these obstacles were, their construction took considerable time.īarbed wire obstacles were vulnerable to being pushed about by artillery shells in World War I, this frequently resulted in a mass of randomly entangled wires that could be even more daunting than a carefully constructed obstacle. More elaborate and formidable obstructions could be formed with multiple lines of stakes connected with wire running from side-to-side, back-to-front, and diagonally in many directions. Horizontal wires were attached to these diagonals. The double apron fence comprised a line of pickets with wires running diagonally down to points on the ground either side of the fence. ![]() ![]() At its simplest, such a barrier would resemble a fence as might be used for agricultural purposes. In World War I, barbed wire obstacles were made by stretching lengths of barbed wire between stakes of wood or iron. Concertina wire can be a feature of prisons. ![]()
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