WW1 was the first industrial war, as it was marked by the new weapons and military technology introduced to aid in fighting. As the level of fighting increased, military technology advanced throughout the war. Machine guns, planes, tanks, and artillery were some of the most used and advanced weapons.
Most of the machine guns at the start of the war were heavy and needed a team of soldiers to operate it. This shows how when they were first used, they weren’t very well developed as it was new, primitive technology, and were mostly used as defensive weapons due to their immobility. They didn’t have cooling mechanisms, so they would quickly overheat and become unusable until they would be cooled by either water or air. Machine guns started becoming
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This didn’t particularly affect the war as sometimes the weather wasn’t clear enough to see, due to clouds blocking the view, and most reconnaissance reports weren’t paid enough attention by military officials when planning and preparing for battles. Forward-firing machine guns began to be installed onto planes by 1915, but the invention of an interrupter mechanism that allowed machine guns to shoot through moving propellor blades was the real advancement that happened. Planes were starting to be used to bomb key areas once bomb racks were attached, targeting sites related to military production, and even attacking civilians to damage public morale and reduce support for the war. This explains how planes evolved from only being used for military spotting and gathering information, to being able to attack and bomb the enemy using machine guns and artillery stored on the plane, weapons that were previously only used by the army troops. Planes didn’t affect the war much until weapons started being mounted onto planes, introducing aerial bombing, which became an important part of the war and changed how it was fought. Planes faced some advancements, the breakthrough happening with the interrupter mechanism, however, they didn’t advance much apart from the mounting of