Essential Questions:

1.What weapons were used during the first World War?

2.How did the weapons of World War I impact the conflict?

Machine Guns

• Machine guns were ill-suited for portability

• Machine guns could fire 400-600 small-caliber rounds per minute

• The Germans quickly grasped the importance of machine guns

• Machine guns were especially used on the Western Front

• Machine guns were also eventually mounted on aircraft

Poison Gas

•Development and use was necessitated by the requirement of wartime armies to find new ways of overcoming the stalemate of unexpected trench warfare

• French were the first to use gas

•The debut of the first poison gas was at the start of the Second Battle of Ypres

•Wind could shift and quantities of the smoke and gas could be blown back into the Allied trenches

•The German army ended the war as the heaviest user of gas

Rifle

• The pistol and the rifle,

both key weapons on the

battlefield

• Was a crucial element of

the sniper's armory

• Trained marksmen

would function as

assassins, often targeting

any moving object behind

enemy lines

•German Mauser - The

standard weapon in the

German army

•U.S. Springfield - It was

reliable and produced in

the U.S.

Grenades

• Regarded as practical for siege operations since Napoleonic times

• The British bombing team usually consisted of nine men

• At first the British high command could not see much use for the hand grenade

• Grenades - either hand or rifle driven - were detonated in one of two ways; they were either detonated on impact (percussion) or via a timed fuse

• Undoubtedly the greatest grenade battle of the war occurred on the Pozieres Heights

Tanks• The first truly successful demonstration of the tank was at the Battle of Cambrai on November 20, 1917

• When planning the tank its requirements were that it must boast a minimum speed of four miles per hour, be able to climb a five foot high obstacle, successfully span a five foot trench, and be immune to the effects of small-arms fire

• It had to possess 2 machine guns, have a range of 20 miles and be maintained by a crew of ten men

Tank Numbers:

The British: 2,636 tanks

The French: 3,870 The Germans: 20

Flamethrowers

• The earliest flamethrowers date as far back as the 5th century B.C.E.

• The German army tested two models of flamethrower - one large and one small

• The first notable use of the flamethrower came in a surprise attack launched by the Germans upon the British at Hooge in Flanders

• The flamethrower was used in groups of six during battle, each machine worked by two men

• It was entirely feasible that the cylinder carrying the fuel might unexpectedly explode – so the men operating the flamethrowers were marked men

Bayonets

• Bayonet was used by all sides

from 1914-18, even if its use

was more psychological than

practical

• The German army developed

more types of bayonet than all

other armies combined

• A bayonet is simply a blade

that is attached to the barrel of

a rifle for use in close combat

• It was deemed a positive

example of a so-called

'offensive spirit'

• One advantage of using a

bayonet in close crowded

combat, as opposed to a rifle or

hand-gun, was its avoidance of

risk in injuring one's fellow

soldiers