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There were a meager 12,000 guns by the time the war broke out in 1914. That number, however, would explosively grow to become 100,000 guns in a very short time. By 1917, the Germans were reporting that the majority of their small arms ammunition, 90% to be exact, were going into the chambers of their machine guns. This was a sobering thought.
May 20, 2021 · In all, the machine gun was a devastating weapon that was a major contributor to the casualties produced by World War I. The war led to the machine gun being developed and used in the battlefield in a number of new and deadly ways. All of the major countries involved in World War I would come to develop their own versions of the machine gun.
May 26, 2024 · The Lewis Gun used by British and American forces weighed 13 kg and could be carried by a single soldier. The French Chauchat was even lighter at 9 kg. While less powerful than heavy machine guns, these weapons gave the infantry a crucial source of mobile automatic fire. *A British soldier with a Lewis gun in 1918.
- Overview
- Technology of war in 1914
The planning and conduct of war in 1914 were crucially influenced by the invention of new weapons and the improvement of existing types since the Franco-German War of 1870–71. The chief developments of the intervening period had been the machine gun and the rapid-fire field artillery gun. The modern machine gun, which had been developed in the 1880s and ’90s, was a reliable belt-fed gun capable of sustained rates of extremely rapid fire; it could fire 600 bullets per minute with a range of more than 1,000 yards (900 metres). In the realm of field artillery, the period leading up to the war saw the introduction of improved breech-loading mechanisms and brakes. Without a brake or recoil mechanism, a gun lurched out of position during firing and had to be re-aimed after each round. The new improvements were epitomized in the French 75-millimetre field gun; it remained motionless during firing, and it was not necessary to readjust the aim in order to bring sustained fire on a target.
Machine guns and rapid-firing artillery, when used in combination with trenches and barbed-wire emplacements, gave a decided advantage to the defense, since these weapons’ rapid and sustained firepower could decimate a frontal assault by either infantry or cavalry.
The planning and conduct of war in 1914 were crucially influenced by the invention of new weapons and the improvement of existing types since the Franco-German War of 1870–71. The chief developments of the intervening period had been the machine gun and the rapid-fire field artillery gun. The modern machine gun, which had been developed in the 1880s and ’90s, was a reliable belt-fed gun capable of sustained rates of extremely rapid fire; it could fire 600 bullets per minute with a range of more than 1,000 yards (900 metres). In the realm of field artillery, the period leading up to the war saw the introduction of improved breech-loading mechanisms and brakes. Without a brake or recoil mechanism, a gun lurched out of position during firing and had to be re-aimed after each round. The new improvements were epitomized in the French 75-millimetre field gun; it remained motionless during firing, and it was not necessary to readjust the aim in order to bring sustained fire on a target.
Machine guns and rapid-firing artillery, when used in combination with trenches and barbed-wire emplacements, gave a decided advantage to the defense, since these weapons’ rapid and sustained firepower could decimate a frontal assault by either infantry or cavalry.
Apr 14, 2011 · The machine gun is a potent symbol of the First World War’s Western Front. It takes little reading, however, to discover that its reputation as the arbiter of battle in France and Flanders is unjustified. We know that at least 60% of casualties incurred there were caused by artillery munitions.
The opening months of the First World War caused profound shock due to the huge casualties caused by modern weapons. Losses on all fronts for the year 1914 topped five million, with a million men killed. This was a scale of violence unknown in any previous war. The cause was to be found in the lethal combination of mass armies and modern ...
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Between 1914 and 1918, the machine gun played an ever-increasing role on the battlefield. Today, even though artillery was responsible for the majority of deaths, the machine gun is the weapon most commonly associated with the First World War in the popular imagination. This overestimates its importance, but also fails to comprehend real advances made in the field of automatic weapons during ...
