Weapons of War - Introduction
Other sections of this site devote themselves to considerations of the causes and personalities behind the conflict.
However no history of the war would be complete without an overview of the weapons of war, in all their varying forms. Thus this area of the site provides summary information of the tools by which the armies conducted war, and include many of the innovations war always brings to the development of weaponry.
For example, while not new the development of poison gases took on a new urgency during 1914-18. Long-range gun development was hastened. Some developments were more successful than others: the tank, first developed by the British, was here to stay: but the flame-thrower, aside from its initial terrifying aspect, was short-lived.
|Bayonets||Chiefly used as a psychological weapon|
|Flamethrowers||How 'sheets of flame' terrorised the British in 1915|
|Grenades||Mills Bombs and Jam Pots: both forms of grenades|
|Machine Guns||How the German Army saw its potential before 1914|
|Pistols||The officer's weapon|
|Poison Gas||First used by the French and popularised by the Germans|
|Rifles||Still the infantry's greatest asset|
|Tanks||The design and use of tanks during wartime|
|Trench Mortars||An ancient weapon given fresh life in the trenches|
Flak was a term used to describe anti-aircraft fire.
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