Depth of War - Episode 6

The most commonly used weapons in WW1 were rifles, with the British using the SMLE rifle and the Germans using the Karabiner. Other weapons included machine guns, bazookas, bayonets, grenades, and tanks. Gas attacks, flamethrowers, and tanks were particularly devastating in the war. Germany developed the first anti-tank mine and also used stick grenades. While many weapons were used in WW1, this section will be about the most used, commonly by the British and the Allies. In WW1, both sides mainly used rifles. There were of course snipers and fire pilots, machine guns and bazookas, bayonets and grenades, but those are just some of the fraction of the armies. The most used rifle on the British side was the SMLE, or the Lean In Field. This gun was a bolt action, repeating rifle that used magazines. The ammunition type was a 0.303 British, a round nose, copper and nickel, full metal jacket with a lead core. This ammunition type is used for penetration, due to the fast twist rate, which itself was the fastest, most effective gun in WW1. They kept the standard for infantry. This gun was also used as a sniper, as it had long range, as mentioned above with a standard scope that times two zoom. While there are many effective weapons, there are also some that are very useful, but only under certain circumstances. One of these is the bayonet, which is generally used as a last resort CQC, which means close quarter combat weapon. The bayonet is a knife that is attachable to most rifles. There are many different bayonets with different capabilities. One of these is the spike bayonet, which as the name suggests, is a long, sharpened spike that is attachable to rifles. This bayonet was excellent against cavalry charges, as it had a long spear-like appearance. However, the spike bayonet was proven useless when separated from the firearm, as its strange shape stopped most people from holding it and using it effectively. Other minor weapons in the war were small arms and light weapons. Small arms types of weapons are things like handguns, submachine guns, light machine guns, saw, which means squad automatic weapons, or personal defense weapons. Most of these have low caliber ammunition, as they are meant to be easily portable. Along with these firearms, soldiers often brought along ammunition and some grenades. Light weapons are generally things like portable incendiary or explosive weapons. These include anti-tank weapons, anti-air weapons, recoilless rifles, and grenade launchers, both underslung and normal. Germany used all kinds of powerful, first-of-a-kind weapons in World War I, but the most famous ones by far were gas attacks, flamethrowers, and tanks. On April 22, 1915, at 5 p.m., cylinders carefully embedded by the German specialist troops containing asphyxiating gas suddenly smothered the Allied line on the northern end of the Ypres island. This caused large-scale fear and panic, as the Allies struggled to find a way to survive a new form of weapon. This wasn't the first deadly weapon used on the Allies by Germany, though, as the German 3rd Guards Pioneer Regiment used flamethrowers in a successful small-scale attack against French trenches near Verdun on the Western Front. While the previously mentioned weapons were all very powerful, by far the most devastating one that plays a major role today was the tank. While Germany wasn't the first to use the tank, as the British had begun deploying tanks on the 15th of September 1916, Germany began using them after previously having been decimated by them when the British first used the tanks. The German Empire at the time contained some of the world's best engineers and rapidly began upgrading their tanks and designing them to be even more devastating than before. This trend would also play a major role in the Second World War. Of course, German infantry did use rifles, the most common being the Karabiner or the Kar98k. This rifle was developed and used from the 1930s onwards, having slightly less accuracy than the British Lee-Enfield, while also having a bolt-action mechanism. After the wide-scale success of tanks in the middle of the First World War, many nations began designing forms of weapons to counteract the tanks. One of these forms of weapons was the anti-tank mine. Germany designed the first anti-tank mine, named the Flachmine 17, which was highly effective against Allied armed vehicles. It was mass-produced after the arrival of French and British tanks, and over three million had been produced by the end of the war. Another minor weapon used by Germany was the stick grenade. Aside from its unusual appearance, the stick grenade used a special friction igniter system that was uncommon internationally at the time. These weapons were very effective as BB traps, as German forces fled the front lines. Germans also used bayonets. The most useful on the side was the one that goes by the nickname of Butch's Blade, used along the Kar98k, which is symmetrically shaped on both sides, but isn't recognized.