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The Weapons and Technology of World War One Essay example

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The Weapons and Technology of World War One World War One brought about many new weapons and advancements in technology on both sides. Both took huge steps towards modern technology and these carried on even after the war had begun. Yet these weapons could not be of much advantage to one side for very long, because the other side immediately researched every new weapon introduced when it was found out. So whilst one side would be developing something new the other would be playing catch up or possibly coming in from another angle. These advancements were made on all sides of the war; the air, the ground, and the sea, although I shall mainly be looking at the changes on the ground. Apart …show more content…

The idea was thought up by a British man in 1916 and they were first used in battle at of the Somme where forty-nine tanks were driven into battle unsuccessfully due to the lack of numbers. Yet in November 1917, 450 tanks rampaged through the enemy line causing havoc near Cambrai. Soon after that the Germans brought out their first tank, the "Schwerer Kampfwagen A7V" and instantly the race had begun to improve them. Here are pictures of the British Mark IV and the Schwerer Kampfwagen A7V, which were used in Cambrai and the Somme to blast through the enemy lines, capturing 800 of the enemy and 100 guns in the primary case. These first tanks had only enough fuel to power them for 8-km due to the weight and bulk of them but since then they have been improved and now they can go for well over a hundred miles in one stretch. The Machine Gun The Machine Gun has claimed the most lives in World war One although this is only on hospital counts so the actual amount of people killed is not certain. However what is certain is that it was thought of as a massacre weapon and it certainly lived up to its name. Before the war, guns had to be manually loaded but in 1916 Hugo Schmeisser designed the Maschinen Pistole 1918 Bergmann which was brought in during the last few months of the war. This had a catastrophic effect on the war as did the Maxim machine-gun, which is

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