Trench Digging Machines
Various Trench Digging Machines of the armies WWI
Various Trench Digging Machines in the closing days of WWI. Operating behind the front lines they were often used to build trenches for burying utilities like communication lines.
This newsreel clip, IWM IWM 508-45, released on Jan 19 1918 shows Italian sappers working with French Engineers keeping a WWI trench digger operating.
June 8 1918 American photographer MSE S.C. Squadrilli takes these photos of a machine used for excavating trenches during WWI.
Caption reads:
Members of the 307th. Field Signal Battalion, 82nd. Division digging with machine, trench which runs from Minerville to Heritage, Brig. Hdqrs. This trench is 6-8 ft. deep and 21 inches wide, it is used to bury cable so the lines of communication can be kept up under the enemys’s heavist fire. Anausville, France.
Two photos (IWM Q 70732, IWM Q 58204) also in the IWM collection but are dated as OTD July 25 1918:
Side View of Trench Digging Machine. 307th Field Signal Battalion. 82nd Division, Near Anausville, France.
Trench Digger Showing Belt that conveys the dirt from the shovelsand the manner in which it is camouflaged.Near Anausville, France.
Laying the cable alongside the trench. Note camouflaged brush screen which cuts off the view of the enemy. 307th Field Signal Battalion. 82nd Division, Near Anausville, France.
Machines are taking the place of men in trench digging in Europe! This picture first received in this country, shows mammoth trench diggers now being used in the French Army after thousands of miles of trenches have been dug by soldiers with picks and shovels. The new machines are patterned after trench diggers used in America, but much larger
Pg 830 Popular Science Monthly illustrations, Volume 88, shows various trench digging machines - Jan-Jun 1916 edition.
A disused German trench-digging machine (A7V-Schützengrabenbagger LMG trench digger) January 8, 1918. The vast majority of the thousands of miles of trenches were dug by hand, but some had mechanical assistance. Full article on the A7V-Schützengrabenbagger LMG trench digger in the tanks-encyclopedia.
June 19 1916 Near Grivillers, France, a French official photographer takes a photo, IWM Q 80277, of a French soldier operating an excavating machine for digging trenches.
