Scott Addington - First World War Weapons: 5 Minute History

CONTENTS

THE FIRST WORLD War was the first conflict that had a truly global reach. It was also one of the most deadly, with 35 million casualties, of which 14 million were killed. It was a brutal war of attrition with thousands of soldiers killed and seriously wounded every day; indeed, the true casualty numbers are very difficult, if not impossible, to comprehend for those of us who were not actually there to witness the carnage.

It was also a war of technology and of invention. The science of killing advanced so rapidly during the four years of the conflict that the weapons and tactics employed by the relevant armies, navies and air forces of 1918 were unrecognisable from those in use when war broke out in the late summer months of 1914.

Many technologies that are now the staple of modern warfare can trace their origins to the First World War, such as the tank, the fighter plane and anti-aircraft guns. More traditional weapons, such as the machine gun, grenades and artillery, also enjoyed significant tactical and technological advancement during the war, allowing them to become even more effective killing machines than they were before.

In putting this 5 Minute History together it has been impossible to include every weapon that was used during the war. Instead I have included those that had the greatest impact on the soldiers who lived, fought and died in the trenches, on the water or above the lines in the skies of Europe.

I hope you enjoy the brief overviews of some of the main weapons and technologies that were used during the war, and are inspired to go out and read some of the more in-depth analysis of these weapons that can be found in bookshops or online.

SMA

Spring 2014

WITHOUT DOUBT, ARTILLERY was the king of the battlefield. Despite the devastating firepower of the machine gun, the threat of the tank and the daring and dash of the fighter pilots high above the trenches, it was to the artillery gun that all the combatant armies turned to when they were in search of a breakthrough.

The artillery in use during the First World War could be split into two distinct groups: field artillery and heavy artillery. Field artillery at that time consisted of light, horse-drawn guns that were relatively quick to set up and break down, enabling them to keep pace with infantry and cavalry. The heavier guns were much bigger and less easy to move around; they were transported on wheeled carriages, transported in pieces to the front and assembled in situ, or carried on the back of modified railway carriages.

At the beginning of the war, field artillery was the order of the day. Most armies had decent numbers of field guns, as they were ideally suited to the mobile wars of the nineteenth century. There were two main types of field artillery. The first fired a high-velocity round using a relatively flat trajectory, often against targets that were in the open and within sight of the guns. The second type was the howitzer, which fired a slower round at a higher trajectory. These were more effective against an enemy that was taking cover behind buildings or earthworks. Field artillery was able to fire relatively rapidly. The famous French soixante-quinze (seventy-five) gun boasted a revolutionary recoil system in which only the barrel moved and not the whole gun; this allowed up to twenty-five rounds per minute to be fired by a well-drilled crew. In comparison, the crew of a similar-sized British gun would only be able to muster around eight rounds per minute.

The light field guns dominated proceedings in the early months of the war, but as the trench system began to take shape towards the end of 1914 and the mobile war disappeared, at least on the Western Front, all of the belligerents began to appreciate the immediate need for much heavier guns that were able to smash enemy defences, disperse barbed wire and destroy dugouts and strongpoints. It wasnt long before factories all over Europe were churning out vast quantities of heavy guns and equally heavy ammunition.

As in other areas of First World War weaponry, Germany initially had the upper hand in terms of numbers and technological advancement when it came to big artillery guns. In August 1914 a handful of Krupp-made 42cm guns (nicknamed Big Berthas) and a dozen or so Skoda 12in howitzers reduced the supposedly impregnable fortress complex of Lige to rubble in a matter of days, much to the shock of the Allies. The Allied manufacturing machine quickly got up to speed, however, and achieved some level of parity.

I WAS THERE

You had to thrust the shell into the breech, ram it home, and then push in the charge that would fire it, which was explosive held in a canvas bag shaped somehing like a mushroom with two smaller charges in canvas bags behind it. They were called cores and it was physical hard work. The gun-drill was just as it had been in the old days and the weapon was really obsolete. Once youd loaded the gun it was fired by pulling a lanyard and, of course, the guns themselves took a fair bit of man-handling.

Gunner N. Tennant, 11th Howitzer Battery, Royal Artillery

With the design of artillery there was always a trade off the bigger and heavier the shell became, the shorter the distance it could be fired over. As the war progressed, the general trend on all sides was to make heavier shells to cause maximum damage. In 1914 the shell of a standard German howitzer was 15Ib. In 1916 that had grown to 28Ib, with a range of 23,500yd, and then a year later the 21cm-long mortar boasted a shell of 261Ib but with a range of only 11,200yd. The biggest guns on show during the war were those mounted on railway carriages. Some had a specialist mount that allowed the gun to be pivoted to provide a large field of fire. Others had a fixed direction of fire, but the wagons they were mounted on could be moved along a curved piece of track. These guns, although they had potentially massive destructive power, were easily spotted by enemy air observation crews and as a consequence had to be constantly on the move, which limited their effectiveness.

DID YOU KNOW?

German manufacturer Krupp made the biggest gun of the war. Nicknamed the Paris Gun, it was capable of firing a 260lb shell over 80 miles. From March to August 1918 it fired over 300 shells at Paris.

As the general shift towards bigger guns continued, transporting them into place became a serious issue, especially in remote regions. In 1914 the standard means of moving artillery pieces around were wheeled wagons pulled by horses or mules. By 1918 the horse and wagon was still the primary mode of transport, despite the huge weight of the guns. Many of the roads up to the front were under constant enemy fire and often smashed to pieces, while the rest of the landscape was often a churned up muddy bog; as a result, mechanised transportation was limited in where it could be effectively used.

The manning of the guns varied according to the size and type of gun, but for a typical field artillery piece a team of six was common: a non-commissioned officer in command who received and gave out orders, a layer who was responsible for the guns alignment and elevation, a gunner responsible for opening and closing the breech, and three men for handling shells and fuses.

Apart from for the very long-range guns, artillery targeting was directed by watching where the shells landed. This role was mostly carried out by a forward observation officer, who occupied a post near to the front and relayed messages back to the gun by flags or telephone. This role was also taken on by aerial artillery spotters in balloons, kites or planes. For the very big guns, aerial spotting was the only way to confirm accuracy of fire. Pilots would drop notes of where the shells landed for the gunners.