Tesla coil (Red Alert 1)

&nbsp The Tesla Coil was a Soviet defensive structure that first saw combat production in World War II. It used a combination of elecrticity generation and atmosphere ionization to hurl artificial lightning bolts at hostile attackers. It's construction was based off practical blueprints created by Nikola Tesla, but it's ability to throw it's electricity at specific targets was a feature that was added by USSR military scientists. The device proved so reliable that it would see combat in all three of the following world wars, albeit in the form of new models with substantial upgrades.

Pre-War Years
The true origins of the Tesla coil lay with the devices namesake, the scientist Nikola Tesla, who created the first working prototype in 1891. Tesla originally intended the device to have practical or recreational applications, seeing it as both a possible energy source and a source of light-hearted amusement, hardly a weapon of war. Tesla had already begun the development of a feasible death ray for that particular niche, but a combination of impracticality and lack of funds prevented it from ever seeing the light of day. As for the original Tesla coil, it never managed to achieve the public recognition Tesla hoped for, and thus it remained largely forgotten in the proceeding years after his death in 1943. The original Tesla coil blueprints and prototype were stashed away in a family owned hotel safe in New York, along with many of the inventors other creations.

Five years later, under the pretense of a house cleaning service, a group of Russian NKVD agents broke into the safe and stole the majority of it's contents, including the coil prototype and design schematics. The stolen contents were then transported back to the USSR in secret via a communist fishing company stationed in Mexico, hidden inside a series of wooden crates. Upon arrival to their destination, the contents of the crates were granted to the Red Army for reverse engineering and testing under the secret codename of "Operation Nikola."

Unsurprisingly, the very first item that caught the Russian military's interest was Tesla's death ray schematics; unfortunately, they quickly discovered that there was a reason Tesla never built the thing, that reason being that it simply didn't work. Never the less, for the next two years, many scientists would attempt to complete the construction of Tesla's ray, stubbornly ignoring the obvious impossibility of what they sought. Many of Tesla's other creations fell into the shadow of the death ray in terms of funding, including Tesla's "earthquake machine" and the electric coil that shared his namesake. The Red Army was ready to pull the plug on "Operation Nikola" when a freak accident ended up saving it; an accident involving the strange little electric coil nobody though was important.

The accident in question occured in a laboratory break room, during lunch hour. Many scientists, all the upper ranking ones as fate would have it, were dining together and conversing calmly, mostly about how frustrating the death ray was. Nobody paid a great deal of heed to the cobbled together Tesla coil recreation that sat practically forgotten in the corner of the room, nor did they pay any attention to the fact that it had accidentally been switched on by one of the adle brained junior scientists a few minutes earlier. There suddenly came a great commotion from one of the tables near the coil as one of the scientist jumped screaming into the air, pointing at a rather large and disgusting cockroach that was crawling around on the floor. The scientists nearby made ready to jump in and squish the obtrusive vermin when suddenly, to everybodies surprise, the Tesla coil let forth a loud crackling sound and fired a bolt of electric energy at the cockroach, reducing it to ashes. It was only after a long period of stunned silence that every person in the room (including the lunch lady) realized what the implications of this event meant.

The very next day, "Operation Nikola" quickly scrapped the death ray project and diverted all funds to the Tesla coil, and the results quickly proved that the late Tesla's work had not been made in vain. Following Russian military doctrine, the Tesla coil was made bigger, stronger, and more powerful, until it became clear that the next major breakthrough in weapons technology had just been achieved. It was only a matter of time before the coil, and all the technologies that branched off from it, would see use in the coming war in Europe.

World War II
The Tesla coil saw widespread use in the second world war, going so far as to become one of the staples of the Soviet military installation. The standard coil stood about twenty feet tall and was surmounted with a bulbous electric diode, typically one brimming with excess electricity. The base of the coil hid an underground control bunker that contained a single operator, typically a Soviet technician, whose purpose was to direct the coils attacks at enemy targets. This would be done by ionizing the air between the coil's diode and the target, completing the circuit and creating a lightning bolt.

Tesla coil's were typically installed near reinforced walls and defenses, though it was not unheard of for them to be grouped together to form a solid defense on their own merits. It was still much more tactically accepted to place them near walls though, as the coil's were considerably fragile and could be destroyed quite quickly by a well ordered tank force. The device soon became the most feared sight of any Allied attack party, as it usually signified that someone would most definately lose their lives in the assault; it was simply a matter of who was reduced to ashes first.

The Tesla coil was established on nearly every major Soviet base during the war, and proved a superb anti-ground weapon. Depite what the Red Army preferred to believe however, the device was not impregnable; it had no ability to strike airborn targets due to the fact they were non-grounded and therefore immune to lightning strikes, and it only had the ability to attack one target at a time due to it's energy needs. In fact, energy itself was a major weakness of the Tesla coil; if power were cut off from the base it was defending, the unit would go dead and become useless. This tactic was commonly used by the Allies to circumvent the towers deadly force.

Nevertheless, the Tesla coil and it's "children," the lightning trooper and the Tesla Tank, were easilly among of the pinnacle technologies of the second world war, and would see duty in the coming conflicts with added modifications.