The first aerial attackers don't fly,

they launch. In 300 BCE, Alexander the

Great devastates his enemy from the sky

with a highly engineered machine raining

down stone, fire, and fury.

>> In 336 BCE, a new king takes the throne

in Macedonia. His name [music] is

Alexander the Great.

He's young, he's ambitious, and he's

looking not just to rule, but also to

conquer.

First Greece, and then Asia.

>> Alexander is a creative [music] thinker,

and he uses innovation on the

battlefield. He's one of the few

generals who actually has a team of

engineers that follow his army around.

>> Alexander's engineers build massive

machines to attack the walled cities in

Alexander's path. They're called siege

engines.

>> A key siege engine is a catapult. Now,

the catapult preexisted, but they were

primarily used to shoot arrows at

defenders on a wall, but Alexander sees

more potential in these machines.

[music]

>> His engineers make key changes to the

design. They scale it up so that it can

launch much more than an arrow.

>> Alexander the Great's catapults are a

complex feat of engineering. The largest

are 12 ft tall with a giant V-shaped

frame. At the top are two enormous

torsion springs.

>> To understand a torsion spring, imagine

a bundle of ropes, and then you stick a

piece of wood through it, and you rotate

it over and over again until the ropes

end up in this tightly wound bundle just

waiting to pop. Once it's ratcheted

back, a 100-lb stone is loaded into the

sling attached to the [music] rope, and

then it's fired.

>> When a gunner releases the mechanism,

the springs unleash the rope with enough

force to launch a stone nearly 300 ft

toward the enemy.

>> Think about the leap in power from a

musket to a cannon. That's the size of

impact this new catapult has on warfare.

>> But the biggest challenge to Alexander's

new catapult will come in a place whose

defenses are fortified

by the ocean.

>> In 332 BCE, Alexander is marching

through Phoenicia, which is modern-day

Lebanon, and he's approaching the island

city of Tyre.

>> Tyre is an incredibly important city in

the Phoenician Empire because it

controls trade across a vast region.

>> But Tyre's unique topography won't make

things easy.

>> You see, the city of Tyre has an unusual

dual setup. While half the city is on

the mainland, the other half is on an

island a half mile off the coast. And

that island is completely surrounded by

a wall.

>> Ancient accounts, probably exaggerated,

make the claim that Tyre's walls are 150

ft high.

Regardless of their actual height, Tyre

is a very well-defended city,

>> [music]

>> and it's going to be tough to invade.

>> Imagine rolling up on a city and seeing

that it has a moat, which is the ocean.

Any sane human who sees those sorts of

fortifications would probably say to

themselves, "Hey, let's make a trade

agreement." But not Alexander.

>> Then Alexander comes up with a bold plan

that he hopes to make his catapults even

more effective.

>> Rather than loading the catapults onto

siege towers like he's done in previous

battles, he has a new idea. He orders

his engineers to anchor them to the

decks of his new naval fleet.

>> On his command, Alexander orders his

navy to fire their catapults at the

southern walls of Tyre.

They rain down literal tons of these

100-lb stones that are obliterating the

walls and also structures inside the

city.

>> The fortress walls crumble around the

Tyrians. The Macedonian army finally

breaches the defenses and takes the

city.

>> Stories of Alexander's catapults

leveling Tyre spread fast. Other cities

and ports along the coast surrendered

[music]

to him without a fight.

>> Much of the credit goes to these

catapults, [music]

turning them into city-conquering

machines.