How Did Military Technology Affect World War 1

How did military technology affect the way World War I was fought?

The way the First World War was fought was heavily impacted by the development and mass production of modern, deadly weapons. Weapons such as the machine gun were perfected prior to the war. The use of machine guns in aerial warfare was a further use of modern machinery that resulted in the total levelling of cities and decimation of entire battalions. As one side of the war would develop these new weapons, the enemy would be one step ahead which ment many stalemates broke out in world war one. The new military technologies in 1914 had a profound and long term impact on the way World War 1 was fought.

Artillery is an example of the new technology impacting the war. It may

The machine gun was invented well before WW1, with the inventor of the machine gun being Richard Gatling in 1861, who thought his new weapon would end all wars as the weapon was so devastating and heinous that no country would dare declare war due to the resulting loss of life. It is estimated up to 40 percent of the Great War's battlefield deaths are due to machine guns (‘The grim reapers’: The machine guns of world war one, 2017). His weapon used a crank handle with slower rates of fire and a constant need to reload, whereas by 1914 all sides had developed and deployed ammunition belt fed machine guns with high rates of sustain fire. Artillery shells were mass produced by both the allies and Germany and Austria-Hungary, with around 1500 million shells being produced from 1914-1918 (Schlenoff, D. (2016) War of the (Manufacturing) Machines, 1916). On both sides of the war engineers were trying to design new weapons to override the enemy's trenches, especially on the western front. However, just as quickly as one side would develop new technology, the enemy would find a way to counteract it. This ment many stalemates

The battle of Cambrai, 20 November 1917, used the largest number of tanks out of any battle during the war. In total the British deployed 476 tanks at Cambrai , including 378 in combat roles (How The Battle Of Cambrai Changed Fighting Tactics On The Western Front, 2023). The British made significant gains on day one using a combination of tanks, infantry and artillery, advancing five miles and taking a number of villages. The loss on germany's made the german public no longer have support for the german military, which led the German government to signing the Armistice later that year. Though tanks were not always a reliable piece of machinery. The Somme in the Battle of Flers-Courcelette, on September 15, 1916,