War
on
an industrial scale.
The first truly global conflict.
World War I was a dark turning point for humanity, and unleashed the full might of modern science
and industry on the battlefield for the first time in history with these 3 deadliest weapons
of World War I. Number Three: Tanks
German infantry hunkers in a trench, awaiting an enemy attack they know is coming.
It’s hard to see past the mists of steam and gunpowder that swathe no-man’s land
after the last enemy bombardment, but machine gunners train their weapons on the fog knowing
that sooner or later, the attack will come.
Suddenly, there’s an odd, mechanical rumbling sound.
German infantrymen look to each other in confusion.
The sound grows in intensity, becoming a dull roar, and then- something in the fog.
Something big, a mass of metal, black smoke, and gun barrels lumbering down on the German
position.
There are few weapons as synonymous with World War One as the tank.
These armored beasts received their first serious testing during this conflict, and
the challenges they faced would lay the foundation for tank design and tactics for generations
to come.
However, these fascinating weapons are shrouded in mystique and there are a lot of rumors
to dispel not only about their creation but their use or disuse by each side in the war.
Though it is commonly stated that the impetus for tanks came about in 1916, the idea came
from Winston Churchill’s appointed Landship Committee in February of 1915.
In fact, the word ‘tank’ was not even part of the vocabulary back then for these
weapons since this was the code word used to describe the project, instead early designs
were called landships, and were supposed to be the equivalent of a battleship on land.
However, early versions of the landship were less than stellar.
The first prototype, Little Willie, was prone to mechanical failure and was painfully slow,
with infantrymen easily able to outpace it.
Additionally, this prototype and later models had little armor, which would prove to be
a death sentence for many crews.
Once the British figured out the engine and mobility problems, they designed a tank with
the now well-known rhombus shape that became known as the Mark I.
The Mark I was designed to cross trenches and spearhead the advance of infantry waves.
However, the tanks were designed to work with other tanks to support one another.
British designers made two versions: a male and female version.
The male version was equipped with a six pounder cannon and several machine guns while the
female version was equipped with five machine guns only.
The goal of the two tanks was the female tank would support the male tank’s advance by
pinning down attacking infantry, machine gun nests, and artillery observers.
As the war dragged on, the British would expand on their initial Mark I design with the Mark
II through V tanks with the Mark IV model being the most widely produced British tank
of the war.
The tanks definitely served a great tactical advantage in its early uses starting at the
Somme Offensive in 1916, but the Germans quickly designed ways to defeat them.
The Germans built larger trenches, funneled tanks with minefields, created armor piercing
artillery rounds, and built the world’s first anti-tank rifle.
All of these weapons and tactics degraded the effectiveness of the tank and it was the
French that would step in to save the idea with their own design.
The French, inspired by British successes in 1916, started designing their own tank
in 1917 called the Renault FT-17.
The FT tank was much smaller than the Mark series tanks, sporting a crew of just two
men and a single cannon or two machine guns, but it was much faster.
It was also much smaller than the British tanks and for these reasons it was a much
more effective weapon on the battlefield.
Since both the British and French tanks lacked effective armor, a direct artillery round
and even machine gun bullets could penetrate the skin of the tank.
Combine that with rough terrain and one could see how speed and maneuverability were what
was going to make a tank survive.
The FT-17 quickly became the most widely produced and popular tank of the war.
Debuting in May of 1918, it was a battlefield success instantly and was used not only by
the French but by the Americans and British as well.
The FT-17 was not the only tank that saw widespread combat on the Western front.
The Sain-Chramond heavy tank was the rarely seen duckboat model produced by the French
with a heavy 75mm gun protruding from the front.
This tank had a production run of several hundred models by the summer of 1918 and was
used extensively from the spring of 1917 onwards.
The main problem with this tank was the difficulty it had in traversing trenches since it was
quite top heavy.
As a result, it went from a direct attack kind of vehicle to a mobile assault gun role
which it served quite well, being able to reposition itself quickly on the battlefield
to engage new targets and evade German counter fire.
We have talked a lot about the French and British tanks but what about the famous German
A7V Heavy tank?
This tank was Germany’s response to the thousands of enemy tanks they faced on the
Western Front.
Debuting in 1918, only about 20 of these vehicles entered service and had limited use on the
battlefield due to their low numbers.
The Germans produced so few due to a variety of factors, the main reason being a lack of
industry and raw materials, since by this stage in the war the British blockade of Germany
had done a number on German capacity to produce war material.
Additionally, by this late in the war, German leadership was less focused on wonder weapons
then on ways to realistically win the war with what they had.
Despite these views, that did not stop the Germans from employing at least several dozen
if not several hundred captured British and French tanks on the battlefield.
It was quite common for these tanks to become bogged down in the mud or be broken down and
abandoned after a battle.
The Germans took advantage of this and pressed an untold number into service.
Though little concrete information exists on how extensive this practice was, the photographic
evidence suggests it was actually fairly common.
However, while a lumbering landship may have been a terrifying sight to behold, nothing
struck fear in the heart of an infantryman more than the thought of being incinerated
alive.
Number Two: Flamethrowers The enemy attack comes as expected, but as
the infantrymen scramble to their firing positions they’re met by walls of flame.
Men are consumed alive by sheets of fire as the trenches fill with red-hot death.
The defender’s nerve is broken, and men scramble out of their trenches- better to
meet death with a bullet than be incinerated alive.
Unlike the landships, the flamethrowers of World War One were spearheaded by the Germans
in both development and application.
Being first designed in 1901 by German engineer Richard Fiedler, the early prototypes of the
Flamenwerfer were large and unwieldy.
Despite this, the German army accepted his first design into regular service by 1906,
though Fiedler did not stop working to produce a smaller and more practicable model.
He did this by shrinking the overall size of the flamethrower but still kept the same
two canister and rubber hose design.
This model, known as the Kleif model, could shoot flames only about half as long as its
previous counterpart, with a range of about 60 feet.
Nonetheless, this model was soon adopted by the German army as well in 1912 into the special
pioneer regiments but would take several years before seeing active service.
When deployed, the German Kleif flamethrower was operated by two men.
One man would carry the unwieldy apparatus itself, weighing in at about 70 pounds before
firing, and the other would direct the flow of fire from the weapon at the end of the
nozzle.
These men obviously faced a very dangerous existence on the battlefield, which is why
they never travelled alone and usually had at least two soldiers as bodyguards to accompany
them.
The flamethrower teams were designed to be employed in groups of four to six teams in
cases of major offensives, whereby their goal would be to push ahead of the first wave of
infantry to scare the enemy into the open with shock and awe.
The reason why this is was because the flamethrowers of World War One did not have the binding
agent inside the propellant like the flamethrowers of World War Two and beyond would have.
Rather, the flames produced by these weapons were more similar to starting an actual fire
and would be effective for drawing enemies into the open to escape the intense heat and
suffocation from lack of oxygen rather than direct injuries from being burned alive.
This tactic was employed to a tee by the Germans for the first time in a major combat operation
against British troops on the Western front in July of 1915 but had been used intermittently
in the Vosges mountains of the Alsace-Lorraine region of France since 1914.
When employed en masse against British positions, the weapon absolutely frightened the bewildered
and unprepared defenders.
The attack was a roaring success and over 700 British troops died in this assault that
took control of several trench lines.
However, British medical data from autopsies of recovered British soldiers in this attack
found that true to German military planning, the vast majority of the British casualties
did not die as a direct result of burns, but had instead been pushed out into the open
from the security of their trenches and shot to pieces.
As the war progressed, both the British and French decided they too wanted to develop
their own models of man-portable flamethrowers.
The British were quick to abandon the idea all together by 1916 with only four prototypes
produced and two of these being destroyed in combat test trials.
The French were much more successful and developed their own similar flamethrowers based off
of captured German models.
However, data for their use is quite limited and though they were certainly used frequently
by the end of the war it is unknown to what extent.
The Germans on the other hand were undeterred to produce better and better flamethrowers.
In 1917, they came out with their latest version, the Wechselapparat or Wex for short.
This made the Kleif model even smaller and enabled a single man to carry and fire the
weapon.
Data for this weapon too is sparse but it certainly was popular with the Entente forces
since the British based their post war models off captured versions of this flamethrower.
By the end of the war, the Germans had used flamethrowers in at least 650 recorded attacks.
Despite this rather large number, this does not take into account attacks conducted by
the Germans on the eastern front against the Russians or attacks by their Austro-Hungarian
allies who used the weapon extensively on both the Italian and Eastern fronts.
It was undoubtedly a popular weapon by Central Powers forces and was used to great effect
by them.
Why the Entente powers failed to fully appreciate a flamethrower program similar to the German
one has begged the questions of historians for many years, but the consensus is that
the weapon yielded too much risk for its users with little tactical advantage.
The fact that the German army had already been practicing with flamethrowers for years
before World War One also gave them more confidence and experienced personnel that could use it
better than their enemy counterparts.
Our deadliest weapon of World War I would go on into global infamy, prompting the banning
of its use in any future war by civilized nations.
Number One: Poison Gas It’s a quiet night on the western front.
The enemy hasn’t attacked in days- not even a customary bombardment to keep the men pinned
down in their filthy trenches and demoralized, killing the unwary.
It’s been a welcome break in the fighting.
Across hundreds of meters of no-man’s land however, the enemy prepares a brand new kind
of attack.
Large metal canisters are pushed into position outside of friendly lines, and with the wind
finally just right, knobs are turned and the canisters unleash their deadly cargo.
It’ll float invisibly on the air, pushed along by the brisk breeze before settling
into the opposing side’s trenches.
The only clue the defenders will have they are under attack is a light fog creeping across
no-man’s land and washing over their positions.
Many will die never knowing what killed them.
Most of the poison gases were already known substances to mankind long before the war
started, such as chlorine which was discovered in the late 1700s, and whose harmful effects
to humans were already well documented.
However, weaponizing these kinds of chemicals for military use had not been thought of before.
Though poisons had been used on battlefields throughout ancient history, militaries around
the world were hesitant to use them in the modern era such as during the US Civil War
and Crimean War where these proposals were immediately shut down.
However, World War One was different.
Both sides used the logic that even if the weapons were absolutely horrible, if they
could be used to achieve a decisive military victory sooner, then more lives would be saved
in the long run.
However, contrary to popular belief, the French were the first to use chemical weapons in
August of 1914.
These first attacks did not use the deadly gases created later in the war but rather
used tear gas which had already been in service with police forces several years earlier.
The Germans would be the next belligerent to use gases but on a much larger scale.
In October of 1914, they fired several thousand shells of a non-deadly irritant gas similar
to tear gas against the British.
However, the British did not even know that they were being attacked with chemical weapons
since the explosive charges inside the artillery shells destroyed the gas before it could deploy.
The next time the Germans tried to use gas on a large scale was in Poland in January
of 1915.
While the shells were able to deploy the gas this time, they were not effective due to
the extreme cold preventing the gas from vaporizing..
Delivering the gas required the creation of special artillery shells that had enough explosive
in them to spread the gas but would not destroy it.
Additionally, they would need to account for factors such as temperature, rain, and, most
importantly, wind direction.
If any of these conditions were not favorable, then the gas could not be fired since it would
not work- or worse, blow back onto their own lines.
After some more experimenting, the Germans decided to use a deadlier gas called chlorine
gas.
This was a dramatic step forward; even though chlorine gas was only fatal in extreme doses,
it was the first time that true poison gas would be used.
That day was April 22, 1915 on the Ypres (pronounced ee-pruh) battlefield against French and colonial
Algerian troops.
The gas attack came as a surprise since the soldiers had never once before seen or experienced
such a horrifying weapon.
The men also did not know what to do when they saw the clouds of noxious gases coming
towards them.
Thinking that this gas was simply an irritant like tear gas, the men opted to stand their
ground and fight.
However, that would prove to be a fatal error... before long hundreds of men were wheezing
and coughing blood and fluids before losing consciousness.
Thousands of French soldiers retreated in panic and caused an almost eight mile sector
of their line to open up.
The Germans, though, did not exploit this resounding success because their troops were
also afraid of the effects of poison gas on themselves.
Despite their success, both sides wanted to create a deadlier and more potent gas.
That led to the development of the deadliest gas of World War I: phosgene gas, which caused
about 85% of the 90,000 chemical weapon deaths incurred during the war.
Phosgene gas was deadlier than chlorine gas not only because it required far less to kill
a man but because it was almost odorless.
Unsuspecting troops could be hit by this deadly gas during an artillery barrage and not even
realize it.
That is why some countries, like Britain, resorted to keeping pigeons in the trenches
not only as a source of communications, but as an early warning for this deadly gas since
they would die much quicker and at lower doses than people.
Despite being much deadlier, phosgene gas had a major problem: it took a long time to
kill someone.
There were numerous reports from the battlefield where men exposed to fatal doses of phosgene
gas would fight for up to a day before succumbing to its deadly effects.
A new, faster acting gas would have to be used and this was the iconic mustard gas.
Mustard gas was created and first used by the Germans starting in 1917 and became the
most prolific gas of the war.
Why it was so effective was despite its ominous yellow clouds that could be easily seen, once
it made contact with your skin or was inhaled, its effects were immediate.
Soldiers exposed to this gas would immediately develop grotesque chemical burns and instantly
start coughing blood and foam as their lungs were burned and blackened.
Though rarely deadly if medical treatment was sought soon after, it was these instantaneous
effects that made it a favorite of the Germans and a disdain of the Entente powers.