The global war that tore apart the world also known as The Great War. 9 million combatants were killed. The clash between 20th century technology and 19th century military tactics gave birth to some of the weirdest looking military tech.
Have a look at some of them below:
At the beginning of the war, soldiers were not equipped with steel helmets. Most of them wear caps made out of fabric. As the head injuries rose during the war, the commanders made the decision and adopted the well known steel helmets
German Lancer
French grenade catapult
British soldiers equipped with body armor
Italian artillery 1918
German observation post Belgium 1917
German observation balloon 1915
French mobile AA gun 1918
Artillery guns played a massive role in shaping the battlefield
The biggest gun was ‘’Paris-Geschütz’’ with a range of 130km . When fired the temperature and pressure inside the barrel rose to 2000°C. After every round fired a slightly higher caliber had to be used since the barrel would have widened after the previous shot. The gun was mainly used to bombard Paris.
Caliber rounds used for Paris-Geschütz
Machine gunners wearing gas masks
Poison gas In the beginning the gas was released out of cannisters from own positions. The great weakness of this strategy was that it was dependent on the wind. On many occasions, the wind even changed and blew the gas back to where it was released. Later, gas grenades were fired directly into enemy positions..
In order to break the deadlock the British military introduced the tank on the battlefield.
