With the dawn of World War One, a new and terrifying weapon soon dominated the shell-shocked landscape. That weapon was the machine gun. From its humble origins of rejection to its eventual widespread use, the machine gun has become a staple of warfare from its inception. While this weapon has taken many forms in recent years, the focus here will remain on the pivotal role it played during “the war to end all wars.” Finding its origins in Hiram Maxim’s early designs in 1885, the machine gun as we know it began to take root. Utilizing a mechanism in which the force from a fired round would eject itself and load the next in rapid succession proved to be an invaluable asset. Gone were the days of a slow and methodical reloading process that …show more content…
Rather, around 500 rounds a minute could be fired during the course of a battle. The limiting factors now were the danger of running out of ammunition and the sheer weight of the guns (each crew contained at least two men to operate the weapon). In 1889, the British military acquired the designs to the machine gun, and soon all of the major European powers followed suit. In the following years, other famous manufacturers such as Browning and Vickers (Vickers would eventually buyout Maxim) would contribute to this proliferation of machine guns. This build up would eventual push into World War One and the devastation that would follow. With the dawn of World War One, the machine gun firmly asserted itself as a preeminent weapon of war. This came especially true in the later years of the war. In 1914 and 1915, the war …show more content…
The brave machine-gunners, with resolute look in shoulders and face, lay scarcely relaxed beside the oiled machines, which if you understood you could still use, and besides piles of littered brass, the empty cartridge-cases of hundreds of rounds which they had fired away before being bayoneted at their posts. On the other hand, facing those machine-gunners one saw how our men, rushing forward in extended formation, each man a good distance from his neighbour, had fallen, one here, another there, one directly he had started forward to the attack, and then others, one, two, three, four, five, all in a sort of sequence, here, here, here, here, here, one poor wretch had got far, but had got tangled in the wire, had pulled and pulled and at last been shot to rags; another had got near enough to strike the foe and been shot with a
There were many technological developments in WWl. Machine guns were invented to help soldiers kill many people at the same time. Machine guns could fire
The outbreak of World War One was accompanied by new strategies, innovations, and inventions that developed modern warfare. World War One saw the widespread use of everything from artillery to machine guns and airplanes to submarines. World War One also saw the world’s most powerful navy, Great Britain’s Royal Navy, pitted against the up and coming German Imperial Navy. From Britain’s effective use of the naval blockade to Germany’s terrifying unrestricted submarine warfare, both sides were constantly looking for new strategies to implement.
When we think of weapons that the soldiers used in War World I we think of them as defense. But what is sort of ironic is that the same weapons the soldiers used to protect them selves were the same weapons that killed them. "The development of poison gases took on a new urgency during 1914-18." (http://www.firstworldwar.com/weaponry/index.htm) Poison gas was a lethal or incapacitating gas used as a weapon in warfare. It was used extremely between the years of 1914-1918 in order to torture enemies during war. Another major weapon used during the war was the machine gun. "The machine gun was a fairly primitive device when general war began in August 1914." (http://www.firstworldwar.com/weaponry/index.htm) The machine gun is an automatic weapon that fires rapidly and repeatedly without requiring separate squeezes on the trigger each time. This weapon was one of the most affective weapons and murdered the most enemies. These weapons were similar to the weapons that Remarque described in the novel All Quiet on the Western Front.
World War I is marked by its extraordinary brutality and violence due to the technological advancement in the late 18th century and early 19th century that made killing easier, more methodical and inhumane. It was a war that saw a transition from traditional warfare to a “modern” warfare. Calvary charges were replaced with tanks; swords were replaced with machine guns; strategic and decisive battles were r...
In 1914, with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife from Austro-Hungarian Empire caused an enormous war called World War I, that killed and injured about thirty million lives. It also destroyed the economy later on. World War I changed combat tactics in a whole new way, where people would die in a blink of an eye. Commanders and soldiers did not know about the capabilities of their new arsenals. The new industrialized developed weapons devastated the battlefield with blood, mountain of corpses, and small craters. Some of the weapons that were used were machine guns, poison gas, mortars, and tanks. Soldiers described the battlefield as a nightmare. This was the start of a new era arising through warfare. A very dangerous way to bring great change to the world but was not intended. World War I brought great changes to the world but, considering the countless deaths, it was the worst war ever, an inhumane war.
Each shot couldn’t be more than inches from the center of the bull’s eye. At the end of these contests, 1,000 winners were enlisted in the 1st United States sharper shooters. The next generation of breechloaders, called magazine rifles, would prove ever more deadly to confederate opponents. “Guns such as Spencer and Henry repeating rifles were designed to carry preloaded magazine of seven to fifteen bullets which could be inserted into the rear of the gun. ”3
The First World War witnessed an appalling number of casualties. Due partly to this fact, some historians, developed the perception that commanders on both sides depended on only one disastrous approach to breaking the stalemate. These historians attributed the loss of life to the reliance on soldiers charging across no-man’s land only to be mowed down by enemy machineguns. The accuracy of this, however, is fallacious because both the German’s and Allies developed and used a variety of tactics during the war. The main reason for battlefield success and eventual victory by the Allies came from the transformation of battlefield tactics; nevertheless, moral played a major role by greatly affecting the development of new tactics and the final outcome of the war.
By December 1914 the First World War had reached a dilemma on the western front that neither the triple entente nor the triple alliance had expected. The war had reached a stalemate, a state where both sides are so evenly balanced that neither can breakthrough against the enemy. The advances in Technology played a big role in creating the stalemate through strong defensive weaponry such as Machine Guns and Artillery, this caused ‘trench warfare’ (BOOK 48). Trench war is when troops from both sides are protected from the enemy’s firepower through trenches. Many advances in technology also attempted to break the stalemate throughout the war with tanks, gas and aircraft, these however failed. Eventually the stalemate was broken through a combination of improved technology, new strategies and the blockading of the German ports.
You didn't have to aim, we just fired into them,' wrote one German machine-gunner. One British battalion was unable to advance because it could not climb over the bodies of the dead and wounded blocking the way. The British officers, ordered to carry only a pistol, and leading
Many have tried to improve the rapid firing power of guns throughout history (Bull 162). The first working machine gun was invented by "Hiram Maxim in the late nineteenth century" (163). World War I would be the place where the technologically advanced weapon would prove just how destructive the machine gun could be (163). The machine gun would also be used on tanks and airplanes (163). Many Euro...
A majority of weapons used in World War II were improved weapons from World War II. Most guns increased in power and abilities. In World War II people thought that pistols were useless but this was proved wrong due to the fact that the U.S. Mi...
The first guns used in America were a simple machine where the person did most of the work. The user measured and put the powder down the barrel of the gun. Next some shotgun pellets were put in the same way. This was then all compacted and the gun was ready to fire. This reloading took over a minute before each shot could be fired and the guns weren't very accurate by today's standards. If too much powder was used then the gun could explode or if the powder were wet then the gun wouldn't fire. One of inventions during the Revolutionary War was a way to reload faster. The powder was already pre-measured and kept in little sacks. This made reloading faster because the user no longer had to measure the powder between each reloading. These guns were crude but in that day was a powerful modern invention that was considered very useful. The American Revolution was a political war to obtain what the people of that era wanted. By today's standards the destruction of gun was minimal so war was used to obtain political objectives.
World War I is known as a war that occurred on extremely cruel terms; there were not many restrictions on what and when certain weapons could be used. Unfortunately, the Industrial Age brought with it many new ways to kill; the soldiers of World War I came in contact with many new weapons that they had never seen in combat.
...rounds per minute, all with just the pull of the trigger. The recoil operation was a milestone in machine gun development. Warfare had truly changed. “Point a machine, and killing men was like killing bugs” (Chivers, 2010, p.85). It used new forms of cartridges which were placed on a belt that was automatically fed into the gun via the recoil operation.