The First World War is known for its massive casualties in small, concentrated areas.
Industrialized carnage like that is impossible to imagine today. To try and break the stalemate
created by this kind of warfare, both sides of the war created a variety of weapons to
give them an edge. Though there were a lot of ways to die on the battlefield,
these four weapons were among the deadliest a soldier could encounter on the battlefield.
Phosgene Gas When people think
of World War One, chemical warfare is probably the first thing that comes to mind. After all,
though it wasn't the first or last conflict to use chemical weapons, it saw their greatest
use in human history. The most iconic of these chemical weapons was mustard gas.
This sickly yellow substance would creep forward menacingly towards the poor souls on all sides
that used it. If a soldier did not put his gas mask on quick enough, he could end up
breathing in a fatal dose of the gas and die a long, painful death where he would drown
in the fluid which would start building up in their lungs. Worse still, even if a soldier put
on his gas mask, he could still face serious chemical burns on any exposed areas of skin.
But even though mustard gas injured the most soldiers in World War One, it was not particularly
deadly. That grim title goes to phosgene gas. Phosgene gas was one of many poisonous gases
employed by all sides of the war. After first being used in December 1915 against
the British in Belgium, it soon started a race to develop more and more of the stuff.
Of the roughly 90,000 poison-gas deaths in the war, about 85,000 of them were caused
by phosgene gas. What made it so deadly wasn't necessarily what it did but what it did not do.
When a person breathes in phosgene gas, the chemicals cause the blood in your
body to no longer carry oxygen. Because oxygen no longer reaches your organs,
soldiers who breathed in a big enough dose would typically die of suffocation or a heart attack.
Unlike mustard gas, the effects of the poison could take up to 48 hours to manifest themselves,
meaning that a sleeping soldier could breathe in the deadly gas without realizing.
It also did not help that phosgene was colorless and almost odorless. Though some troops claimed
it smelled like old hay, most survivors of these attacks reported no smell at all.
It also didn't help that troops frequently thought that artillery shells that carried
the gas were duds since they did not explode, luring them into a false sense of security.
But even if they did, phosgene was much heavier than other poison gases, meaning that when it
got to the dugouts and trenches, it would sink rapidly to where soldiers were most vulnerable
when they were hiding, sleeping, or eating. However, thankfully for the troops, even though
this poison gas was very deadly, it wasn’t often used in battle. After all, neither side wanted
to inadvertently expose their own troops to it if the wind shifted. Also, neither side could fire it
during an attack since troops would refuse to take ground that was recently exposed to phosgene gas.
Because of this, phosgene gas attacks were limited to weakening the other side
while they waited to plan their next move. The French 75mm Field Gun
Statistically, artillery fire was the number one killer of World War One. According to British
medical reports, about 58% of all casualties were caused by artillery, with the Germans reporting
similar numbers. This figure makes sense as forntal troop assaults didn’t happen daily.
Instead, most of the fighting in World War One involved waiting around in trenches for weeks or
months on end while each side blasted the other with artillery until the next big offensive.
Because of this, troops were exposed to artillery fire quite
literally 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. And for artillery, the numbers involved were
massive. During the war, both sides fired tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of shells
daily. With all of that firing, both sides needed guns that could stay on target
while shooting large amounts of shells. Early artillery would recoil once shot, meaning their
crew would have to push them back into position. The French solved this problem with their Model
1897 75mm Field Gun. Whenever the gun was fired, the barrel would recoil while the gun remained
locked in place, keeping it on target. As the name suggests, it was developed at the end of
the 19th century and surpassed all nations in terms of firing capability and accuracy. Other
countries tried at first and eventually succeeded in developing a recoil system for their guns,
but the French came out swinging since no one could beat its 30 rounds per minute firing rate.
In the first weeks of the war, with French infantry falling back en masse,
French military leaders credited the 75mm field gun as what saved France since its rapid firing,
accurate shells would decimate troops in the open. However, even as the war evolved into trench
warfare, the French still relied on the 75mm gun as the centerpiece of blanketing German
positions with fire. Approximately 70% of French shells fired during the war came from this gun.
Because about 60% of German casualties came from artillery, it’s safe to say that when considering
allied contributions, approximately one in four German losses resulted from this gun.
Making it even deadlier was the fact that as the French-built better and more accurate guns,
they transitioned the 75mm to fire their poison gas shells, making the gun even deadlier.
The Type UC II Minelaying U-Boats The Germans are credited with
revolutionizing the art of submarine warfare. Their much-feared U-Boats created the manual
for conducting offensive submarine operations. While it’s hard to quantify the exact damage
U-Boats did in the First World War, one thing people can quantify is their success. U-Boats
sank just over 7,600 merchant ships and allied warships during the war.
Of these, about 1,800 were sunk by just one U-Boat type, the Type UC II Minelaying boats.
The German Imperial Navy had 34 different types of U-Boats they employed during the war,
and the UC II was one of the most popular models, with 64 constructed.
With such a small number built, the average number of ships sunk per U-Boat goes up to almost 30, and
the average number of vessels sunk alone makes it the most successful submarine type not just in the
First World War but in all of submarine history. A few new innovative design features made it
extremely deadly for merchants and warships alike. The new double-hull design was the most important
one for the crew's survivability. In previous submarines, the boat had just one hull; if that
got punctured or damaged, it was lights out for that crew. With a double-hull design, a thicker,
armored hull would protect the outside of the sub while the pressurized inside hull housed the crew
and provided secondary protection. Because of this, allied warships had to get through both
hulls to kill the submarine, as many U-Boats could survive a penetration of their outer hull
while still keeping their inner hull secure. The new model was also about three times bigger
than its predecessor, the UC I. With all that extra room, it could house more powerful engines.
With that, the boat could travel about 10,000 nautical miles while surfaced and about 54
nautical miles while below the surface. This enabled it to visit far-flung places
around Europe where few expected a submarine to be lurking. Even worse for allied mariners,
the submarine was heavily armed with seven torpedoes in the bow and stern tubes, 18 mines,
and a deck gun. That means that after laying out mines, the submarine could still attack convoys.
The damage these boats could do was massive. The most successful one in the class, the UC 65,
racked up an impressive 106 ships sunk in just one year. They were able to do this due
to the new submarine tactics they developed. When attacking a merchant vessel, these U-Boats would
purposefully get behind them. If their initial torpedoes missed, they could close in and finish
them off with their deck gun. It was only when merchant ships started moving as a convoy that
this tactic stopped being used. The Maxim Machine Gun
Machine guns had been around for a few decades before the First World War.
These guns were quite rudimentary and suffered mechanical and reliability issues. It wasn’t
until Hiram Maxim invented his iconic weapon in 1883 that the machine gun became a reliable weapon
of war. Once it came out, the armies and navies of the world scrambled to get their hands on it.
Maxim knew this would be his crown jewel and wanted to make as much money as possible from it.
Because of this, he licensed the design to anyone willing to pay for it, and everyone did. Germany,
Russia, the UK, and the US all lined up to buy the rights to make their own slightly different
machine guns based on their design principles. The British created the iconic Vickers gun,
the Germans made their own called the Spandau, and the Russians made a copy of the Vickers.
All of the major powers adopted Maxim's design due to its simplicity, the parts were cheap,
countries could easily change the gun, and it would rarely misfire as long as gunners
fed it bullets and water into its cooling jacket. Once the war broke out, it was clear that warring
armies would soon use machine guns to great effect like the Europeans had done to their
colonies over the past thirty years. Only this time, they would develop new tactics
that would change the history of war forever. Contrary to popular belief, the average infantry
soldier would rarely charge head first into certain death against machine guns.
Rather, as studies from the Somme have shown, troops would crawl or make quick dashes from
crater to crater while crossing no man’s land. But that did not stop either side from
consistently firing hundreds of thousands of rounds per day from their machine guns.
In fact, by 1917, Germany was devoting 90% of its small arms ammo production to
its machine guns. 40% of the casualties on each side were caused by small arms,
with machine guns causing most of them. But why were troops firing so many rounds?
Instead of firing into waves of infantry, machine guns began to be used for suppressing fire.
The warring sides also created specialty machine gun units where gunners would train just on that
weapon system, unlike before when the standard rank and file soldier would be good enough.
With deadlier, better-trained gunners given free rein to fire day and night,
it was no wonder that most machine gun casualties came from the daily small engagements.