Virtual Tour
World War I
Weapons of War
The Machine Gun
Machine-gun fire is far more deadly than rifle fire. The gun’s mount gives its fire precision and absorbs its recoil. Furthermore, once the gun has been ‘laid’, its aim cannot be disturbed by the effects of fear or excitement on its firer. Machine guns are fired in bursts, in which the bullets do not follow precisely the same trajectory, but instead form a ‘cone of fire’. Where this cone intersects with the ground a ‘beaten zone’ is formed: an elliptical area over which the bullets are distributed. A machine gun or, better, group of guns could therefore deny the enemy safe access to a chosen area of the battlefield. They could do this to ranges of 3km or more. At closer ranges, guns could sweep enemy parapets, fire on fixed lines, or conduct night fire on lines set during daylight. Fired from flanking positions, to catch advancing troops in enfilade, they were particularly deadly.
Poison Gas
Gas was invented (and very successfully used) as a terror weapon meant to instill confusion and panic among the enemy prior to an offensive. It was a sort of physiological weapon with the non-lethal tearing agents inflicting as much panic as the dreaded mustard gas. Sometimes the tear gas would be sent over first to get soldiers to remove their gas masks thereby making them more vulnerable to a later attack with one of the more deadly types. After the first German chlorine gas attacks, Allied troops were supplied with masks of cotton pads that had been soaked in urine. It wasn't until later, in the war, that soldiers were given gas masks.
The Warplane
The newly invented airplane entered World War I as an observer of enemy activity; however, On April 1, 1915 French pilot Roland Garros took to the air in an airplane armed with a machine gun that fired through its propeller. This feat was accomplished by protecting the lower section of the propeller blades with steel armor plates that deflected any bullets that might strike the spinning blades. It was a crude solution but it worked. on his first flight, Garros downed a German observation plane. Within two weeks, Garros added four more planes to his list of kills. Garros became a national hero and his total of five enemy kills became the benchmark for an air "Ace."
Submarine
By the eve of World War I all of the major navies included submarines in their fleets, but these craft were relatively small, were considered of questionable military value, and generally were intended for coastal operations. The most significant exception to the concept of coastal activity was the German Deutschland class of merchant U-boats, each 315 feet long with two large cargo compartments. These submarines could carry 700 tons of cargo at 12- to 13-knot speeds on the surface and at seven knots submerged. The Deutschland itself became the U-155 when fitted with torpedo tubes and deck guns, and, with seven similar submarines, it served in a combat role during the latter stages of the war. In comparison, the "standard" submarine of World War I measured slightly over 200 feet in length and displaced less than 1,000 tons on the surface.
Grenades
Modern grenades were by the British. Their version was the long-handed impact detonating grenade, which the French later improved upon with an antiquated ball grenade. The major grenade used by the German army was the impact-detonating ‘discus’ bomb and the M1913 black powder baller Kugel grenade with a friction-ignited time fuse. British forces however mainly used a different style of hand explosive that was at times more difficult to use, yet still useful in battle. This was the ‘jam tin’ which consisted of a tin filled with dynamite or cotton packed round with scrap metal or stones. To ignite, at the top of the tin there was a Bickfords fuse connecting the detonator, which was lit by either a cigar, or a second person.Hand grenades were being used and improved throughout the war, each side making attempts at more successful weapons