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World War I · Arsenal
Weapons of World War I
Machine guns, quick-firing artillery and barbed wire made attacking across open ground almost suicidal. To break the deadlock, both sides turned to poison gas, flamethrowers, tanks and aircraft. Here are the weapons that made the Great War so deadly, and the new inventions that changed warfare forever.
A British Mark I “male” tank at the Somme, September 1916, the year tanks first went into battle
Quick facts
The weapons at a glance
| Deadliest | Artillery: shellfire caused roughly 60 percent of battlefield casualties on the Western Front | |
| Machine guns | Maxim-type guns like the Vickers and German MG 08 fired 400–600 rounds a minute | |
| Gas | First large chlorine attack April 22, 1915, at Ypres; phosgene and mustard gas followed | |
| Tanks | First used by the British at Flers-Courcelette on the Somme, September 15, 1916 | |
| Aircraft | From unarmed scouts in 1914 to fighters, bombers and the Royal Air Force (April 1, 1918) | |
| Airships | German Zeppelins bombed London and English towns from 1915 | |
| Infantry | Bolt-action rifles: Lee-Enfield (Britain), Mauser Gewehr 98 (Germany), Lebel (France), Springfield M1903 (U.S.) |
The big picture in 30 seconds
Why the weapons mattered
- Defense was far stronger than attack, which is why the Western Front froze into trenches.
- Industry mattered as much as courage: the war became a contest of factories.
- Tanks, aircraft and submarines from this war shaped every war since.
- Gas was so hated that it was banned by the Geneva Protocol of 1925.
~60%
of casualties from artillery
500
rounds a minute from one machine gun
~90,000
deaths from poison gas
~200,000
military aircraft built in the war
Machine guns
The gun that ruled no man’s land
Hiram Maxim’s machine gun of 1884 used the force of each shot to load the next. By 1914 every army had a version: the British Vickers, the German MG 08 and the Russian PM M1910 were all Maxim designs, while the French used the Hotchkiss. Mounted on heavy tripods or sledges and cooled by water jackets, they could fire for hours. Two or three well-placed guns could stop an attacking battalion in minutes.
Lighter guns that one man could carry, such as the British Lewis gun and the French Chauchat, gave attacking infantry firepower of their own, and by 1918 machine guns were also fitted to aircraft and tanks.
Artillery
The real killer of World War I
More soldiers were killed or wounded by shellfire than by any other weapon. Armies fired more than a billion shells during the war. Bombardments could last days, and the constant shelling caused the mental breakdown soldiers called “shell shock.” By 1917 gunners had learned to fire a “creeping barrage” that moved forward just ahead of their advancing infantry.
Poison gas
A terrible new weapon
On April 22, 1915, near Ypres in Belgium, German troops opened about 5,700 cylinders of chlorine gas and let the wind carry a greenish-yellow cloud into the French and Algerian lines. The defenders fled or choked, and a four-mile gap opened in the front. Both sides were soon using gas. Phosgene was deadlier and harder to see. Mustard gas, first used by Germany at Ypres in July 1917, blistered skin and lungs and lingered in the ground for days.
Gas masks improved quickly, from cloths soaked in water or urine to rubber masks with filter boxes, so gas caused far more injuries than deaths: about 1.3 million gas casualties and roughly 90,000 deaths. It was feared out of all proportion, and the Geneva Protocol of 1925 banned its use in war.
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Tanks
Landships to break the deadlock
British engineers built an armored vehicle on caterpillar tracks that could crush barbed wire, cross trenches and shrug off machine-gun bullets. To keep it secret, workers were told they were building water “tanks” for Mesopotamia, and the name stuck. Early tanks were slow (about 4 mph), broke down often and were hot and full of fumes inside, but by 1918 hundreds of them led the Allied victories.
The war in the air
From scouts to aces
In 1914 airplanes were fragile machines used to scout enemy positions. Soon pilots shot at each other with pistols and rifles. In 1915 Anthony Fokker gave German planes a machine gun that fired through the propeller, and the “Fokker Scourge” began. Both sides raced to build faster, deadlier fighters. Pilots with five or more victories were called “aces,” and the newspapers made them heroes. By 1918 aircraft were also bombing cities and supporting troops on the ground.
Infantry weapons
Rifles, grenades and bayonets
Every army went to war with a bolt-action rifle that held five or ten rounds. The British Lee-Enfield was prized for its fast action and ten-round magazine. The German Mauser Gewehr 98 and the American Springfield M1903 were accurate at long range. Many U.S. soldiers actually carried the M1917 Enfield, because it was easier to mass-produce.
In the trenches, though, range mattered less than close-quarters weapons: hand grenades like the British Mills bomb and German “potato masher,” trench mortars, clubs, knives and sharpened shovels. Germany’s storm troopers carried flamethrowers and the first submachine gun, the MP 18, in 1918.
Firsts
A timeline of new weapons
Next: the war at sea
Ships of World War I
Dreadnoughts, battlecruisers, U-boats and convoys: how the war was fought on and under the oceans.
Go deeper
Books and sources
- The First World War, by John Keegan (1998)
- The Social History of the Machine Gun, by John Ellis (1975)
- Tank Men, by Robert Kershaw (2008)
- More recommended books