Also, in another variation from the book, they have deflector shields. The writers understood quite well that military technology of the 1950's would make short work of the machines described by HG Wells, so the George Pal version was upgraded to be invulnerable to Korean War era weapons.
They also have the classic heat-ray and a disintegration beam, both of which easily penetrate armored vehicles and can vaporize humans almost instantly.
These machines prove to be indestructible. They easily withstand massive conventional attacks by military forces around the world, and even survive getting hit by a ~200 kiloton atomic bomb. Naturally, the Martians are able to run amok and bring us to the brink of extinction before they are killed by our native diseases. But since I was a kid, I always wondered...were the Martians really invincible? Or were the humans just not using the correct tactics?
Now naturally, there would be no defense we could have against their weapons. Even heavy tanks melted in seconds when confronted by the heat ray. But if we had been able to penetrate their shield, we could have won. We would have suffered heavy losses to be sure, but three machines vs a whole division of Marines? They just wouldn't have the numbers to win. It'd be a battle of attrition in our favor. But we'd have to penetrate their shields first. How could we do that?
Well first we need to quantify how powerful their shields are. Unfortunately, there is no way to easily do this. Unlike in Star Wars / Star Trek where we have numbers in tech manuals or we can use visuals on screen to estimate weapon strength (and thus shield strength if they can resist those weapons), there's very little on screen in War of the Worlds that we can actually use. We know that tank shells and field rocket systems simply bounce off, so that's a good start. But we never see anything bigger be used. Would the shields have been able to be penetrated by something like a battleship shell? We never actually see the Navy engage the Martians that landed at Huntington Beach, and all they get is a passing mention that there are some Martians there.
What about bombs? We know the Air Force launched a bomber attack on the Martians but again, we never actually see it happen. What size bombs were used? Were there any direct hits or were they all shrapnel / concussive hits? We know that if a tank shell can bounce off, then maybe ONLY a direct hit from a bomb the size of a tallboy would do any damage. But again, we never see it.
Finally, an atomic bomb. Sadly, again we don't see much of this. We know a Flying Wing bomber dropped a fission weapon of a roughly ~200kt yield (based on dialogue). We know they targeted a large group of machines outside of Los Angeles, but that's all. We don't know how close the bomb was when it detonated...bombers of that era were still very inaccurate (which is why they made nukes much bigger than we do today, because they had a higher probability of missing). So it could have been a direct hit on a machine, or it could have been a mile or two away, which would have lessened the damage considerably.
In short, we don't know what it takes to penetrate the shields. We don't ever actually see anything bigger than a tank shell or a rocket hitting the shields, so we don't know if a direct hit from a large bomb, battleship shell, or a nuke would penetrate or not. We can reasonably assume that there were some direct hits but we don't know anything for sure. So we have to assume that nothing we can throw at the shields would get through. But perhaps they have a weakness?
Look again at the shields:
They are open at the bottom. When the shields flare up due to weapon impacts, they are open at the bottom. There is no sign of anything stopping an attack from underneath the machine. Furthermore, as the machines move, the shields flow around the plants and rocks. They don't carve a path through the vegetation. That right there could be an avenue for attack.
Suppose a large bomb was buried in the path of the machine and detonated as it walked overhead? Or a "suicide squad" of soldiers armed with bazookas laying in camouflage or in a pit? We don't know how strong their hull armor is, but Dr. Forrester was able to chop through one of their periscopes with a fire axe so their metals can't be completely invincible. Also in the later TV series from the 80's, the machines are able to be blown up with C-4 planted inside them.
So despite their power, it's quite possible that the Martians could have been defeated by laying traps in their paths. They didn't move very fast so this could have been fairly easy.
Thoughts? Is there a way to quantify the shield strength that I have overlooked? Would laying traps in front of the machines be successful?
