Weaponry Used In Wwi Essay Research Paper

Weaponry Used In Wwi Essay, Research Paper

Weaponry, Ground, Air and Water Warfare in WWI

World War I was called the Great War because so many countries were involved, and advanced weaponry was developed. The British and the Germans were the ranking pioneers in weapons development. All the countries that participated in the war used different types of attacking methods to destroy their enemies. The weapons that determined the outcome of World War I were tanks, airplanes, submarines, and very large guns called heavy artillery.

German artillery ranged from a twenty-millimeter assault rifle to a four hundred and twenty-millimeter long-range heavy howitzer. The two most popular were the 105mm and the 420mm (Big Bertha). Big Bertha was a giant mobile siege gun produced at the Krupp armaments factory in Essen, Germany. Its official name was the Krupp 420mm heavy howitzer, but became universally known as Big Bertha . (World Book Encyclopedia 798) This gun needed a crew of over one thousand men to fire it. It was capable of firing ten nine hundred and thirty-kilogram shells fifteen and one half miles in the air over a distance of seventy-six miles every hour. The one hundred and five millimeter heavy howitzer was a World War I relic and a mainstay of the German army. It was quite effective in its role. (World Book Encyclopedia 799) To minimize the weight of the 105mm they made it recoilless and used it as a surface to airgun also. The gun had an open back so that the gasses that would cause a normal gun to recoil would escape. The last role of the 105mm was its ability to be shipped piece by piece into the mountains for surprise attacks. Although the 420mm packed a bigger punch than the 105mm, the 105mm was put to greater use throughout World War I.

Upon the arrival of the I.C.E. (internal combustion engine) in 1885, patented by Gottlieb Daimler, people started dreaming about cars, tractors and other things we take for granted today. One man was not dreaming; he built his dream. It was a bulletproof car with a Maxim machine-gun mounted upon a revolving turret on each side of the massive metal machine. In 1889, Frederick Simms took this motor-war car to the British War Office and they rejected it. In 1914, the War Office decides that British aircraft needed to be protected from the ground. They used Frederick s motor-war car . The Germans defended against this motor-war car by digging trenches across all the roads and land. The first armored vehicles were just cars converted into soft tanks by putting steel armor around the frame and mounting light artillery on them. In 1915 a man named Wolseley developed a 30-cwt which was made with a Lorry chassis and armored sides. That tank packed a revolving turret with a Vickers-Maxim machine-gun. Richard Hornsby and his sons manufactured the Killen-Strait armored tractor. The Killen-Strait was the first tank to have treaded metal bars linked together with pins, and was tested in front of Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George. It cut through barbed-wire entanglements and went right over the tops of trenches. This armored tractor had a major influence on future tank designs. Little Willie , the first full-fledged tank, was made from Hornsby and sons tread and armor designs.

Next came the W.G. Wilson tank, a.k.a. Mother. Mother s weaponry consisted of four Vickers water-cooled machine-guns on the sides and a Hotchkiss machine-gun right in front. Wilson went on making a series of tanks called the Mark I, Mark II, Mark III, and Mark IV, all of which failed. The Mark V on the other hand was great because it had a six-cylinder engine; this bumped its speed up to 4.6 miles per hour. It had six men inside two frontal gunners, two side gunners one back gunner, and one man driving. Tanks have steadily improved over time. The development of heavy artillery and tanks decidedly affected the outcome of the Great War. Over the years, the element of destruction and loss of life has grown as weaponry has evolved into an amalgam of death.

The first response to the introduction of tanks during World War I was a variety of grenades and large caliber rifles that were designed to penetrate the tanks armor or to disable their tracks. Bombs and grenades were basically the main way to stop these massive tanks. In 1915, a grenade developed by William Mills was used by many British troops. The bomb had a central spring-loaded firing pin and a spring-loaded lever locked by a pin. When the Mills Bomb was thrown into the air the lever released the striker, which ignited a four-second timed fuse. When the explosive device went off the cast-iron casing shattered and produced a shower of metal fragments. More than 33 million of these bombs were issued to British soldiers. Land mines and artillery were also used. The larger rifles were originally 37 caliber and they fired certain ammunition. Particular ammunition types like shells tipped with harder alloys that improved the force to give higher velocities. The Germans developed an 88-millimeter anti-tank gun that was very effective in the war. The anti-tank gun was shaped as a hollow charged shell, which was intended to explode on impact and channel the explosive energy toward the target. As a result the penetration of the projectile was greater. These weapons had a huge impression on attacking ground machinery and stopping enormous armored personnel carriers.

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