INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT WWI WEAPONS

1. A WWI machine gun could fire 600 bullets per minute. It had a range of 3,000 yards.  A competent infantryman armed with a bolt action rifle could fire 15 rounds in a minute.  The average rifle had a range of 1,500 yards.
2. The first flamethrower was used by the Germans in 1915. It could shoot flame up to 130 feet.
3. Artillery was the biggest killer in the war. German statistics determined that for every 22 soldiers wounded by bullets, 49 were hit by artillery shells.  By 1916-18, the statistic was 85 artillery injuries for every 6 bullet wounds.  The most effective cannon was the French 75mm.  The Germans called it the “Devil Gun”.  The Germans had the most famous artillery piece called “Big Bertha”.  It weighed 47 tons and could hurl a 1,700-pound shell over 6 miles.  Germany’s Krupp manufacturer produced 12.  Each required a crew of 240 men.  It was used to destroy forts.   Often mistakenly called “Big Bertha”, the Germans used railway guns against Paris in 1918.  These “Paris Guns” could fire a 234-pound projectile 80 miles.  Their barrels were 112 feet long.  It took 550 pounds of gunpowder.  The shell went as high as 26 miles into the stratosphere.  About 250 Parisians were killed.
4. The tank was invented by the British. They called it a “tank” so people would think it was a type of water tank.  It was first used in the Battle of the Somme in 1916.  British tanks came in either “male” (a cannon and machine gun) or “female” (only machine gun) versions.  The British built 3,000 tanks and the French 3,000.  The French pioneered the revolving turret.  The Germans produced only 20.
5. Both sides dug tunnels under no man’s land to below the enemy trench. When the tunnel was the right length, the end of it would be packed with explosives which would be set off to blow a hole in the enemy front line.  The biggest mine was under Messines Ridge by the British.  The explosion was so loud it was heard 140 miles away in London.
6. There were 1.2 million victims of poison gas. Only 3% were fatal.  The Germans used 68,000 tons in the war and the British and French combined for 51,000 tons.  The first use of chemicals was tear gas by the French in August, 1914.  The first use of poison gas (chlorine) was by the Germans at Ypres in 1915.  1,100 French soldiers were killed.  Chlorine ended up being the most used of the 50 different chemicals used in battle.  Phosgene was the second most common.  The first gas masks were urine-soaked cloths.
7. 70 types of planes were used by all sides. The most revolutionary development was the synchronized machine gun by Anthony Fokker.  It allowed the machine gun to fire through the propeller.  The biggest bomber was Germany’s “Giant” which had a wingspan of 138 feet and four engines.  It was used to bomb London.
8. The most effective weapon was the submarine. German u-boats sank 10 battleships and 18 cruisers.  They sent 5,708 merchant ships to the bottom with 15,000 people.  The Germans lost 178 u-boats with 515 officers and 4,894 submariners.

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French Renault tank