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Artillery. Modern Weaponry of WWI. World War I was a war of artillery - The Big Guns. Rolling barrages destroyed the earth of France and Belgium and the lives of many. Millions of shells were fired in single battles, with one million shells alone fired by the Germans at the French Army in the first day at the 1916 battle of Verdun, France.
- Introduction
- Shell Technology and Employment Pre-1914
- Advances in Shell Technology and Employment
- Legacy
Shell types are divided into those fired from field artillerysystems (guns and howitzers), and those fired from mortars.
The most common type of shell fielded by the prewar Allied armies was shrapnel, a hollow steel projectile filled with metallic shot and a gunpowder bursting charge, exploded by a time fuse. Timed properly, shrapnel shells would cut through exposed enemy troops with an explosion of shot. The picric acid high explosive (HE) shell, employed principall...
Despite having sent observers to the Russo-Japanese War, the European armies were surprised to find their prewar shells, particularly shrapnel, were insufficient to destroy earthworks and cut wire obstacles. Attempts to use long bombardments to overcome shell limitations proved counterproductive, as the resulting craters and debris hindered the man...
Before August 1914, artillery was viewed as a useful adjunct to the decisive infantry and cavalry arms. After the start of the world war, the artillery arm established its primacy on the battlefield, forcing a fundamental change in the tactics of the time. Major improvements in tactics and technology ensured the dominance of the artillery arm throu...
Artillery of World War I. The artillery of World War I, improved over that used in previous wars, influenced the tactics, operations, and strategies that were used by the belligerents. This led to trench warfare and encouraged efforts to break the resulting stalemate at the front. World War I raised artillery to a new level of importance on the ...
- The heaviest shell used in the war weighed 3,130 lbs. It was used by the 520mm French Schneider Howitzer (pictured above).
- The guns with the longest range were the German Paris guns. The guns’ range was so great Parisians initially believed they were under attack from high altitude zeppelins because the gun could be neither seen nor heard at such a distance.
- Most artillery was transported by horses. Motorised transport was still in its infancy and the majority of artillery was transported by horses throughout the war.
- Field guns typically had a crew of 6. The first shot fired by British forces in the First World War was fired by an African soldier in Africa. Historian David Olusoga presents three 1418 Now art commissions that will highlight the often overlooked role played by African soldiers.
Two technologies that were crucial in shaping the First World War were railways and artillery. Railways provided the enormous logistical capacity needed to support huge armies in the field for years on end, including transportation of millions of artillery shells. Here shells are being unloaded at Brielen, just north of Ypres, on 3 August 1917.
As the Western Front stagnated into static trench warfare, shrapnel shells, designed to kill and maim troops in open formation, were found to be ineffective against fixed defence works. Here the requirement was for high explosive shells that could blast their way through barbed wire entanglements. At first local engineering companies grouped ...
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Sep 10, 2018 · Berlin by Christmas. Artillery was still a blunt instrument at the beginning of the Battle of the Somme in July 1916. Britain hoped that, simply by launching millions of shells at the Germans, you could move forward, occupy, smash ground and break through towns behind the German line by nightfall. The good old phrase “Berlin by Christmas ...
