The Weapons of World War 1 essays

The Weapons of World War 1 essays Weapons were very important in WWI, more so than most wars. This was the first large industrialized ground war. In WWI, weapons were usually built to make other weapons useless. The invention of the Machine gun created trench warfare, which allowed soldiers to avoid machine gun fire. The tank was invented to make trench warfare useless, and artillery was made to destroy tanks. The most influential weapon in WWI was the machine gun. Before this point, soldiers could only fire 15 rounds per minute. The machine gun allowed them to fire 400, killing whole squads of troops in seconds. To defend against this, troops began digging trenches in which they could hide from the fire. The machine gun is what created the battleground of WWI. The next big advance in mechanized warfare was the tank, built to make both machine guns and trenches useless. The first tank battle was at Cambrai in 1917. They worked so well that the Germans ran away. The first tanks were not very good weapons, though: They could only travel at 5 mph, and they were terribly made. Only a fraction of the tanks brought to France actually fought at Cambrai, because the rest broke down. The final advance in technology was artillery. While artillery had been around for many years, in WWI it took a large leap forward. WWI was the first war in which Rail Artillery was used. Rail Artillery was the largest sort of artillery ever made, even to this day. With cannons sometimes 40 meters long, and shells that weighed 900 pounds. This was the weapon used to destroy tanks. There were other advances in weapons too. During this time period, Germany invented the first U-Boats. Also used for the first time in war were Zeppelins and Poison chlorine and Mustard gas. Zeppelins were used in bombing raids, and u-boats broke up british supply lines. The first chlorine gas attack was in 1915 at Ypres. Mustard gas was the most devastating weapon, though. It was o ...