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Wikimedia Commons has media related to World War I machine guns. Machine guns produced or used during World War I.
Machine guns were one of the most important weapons of World War I. In particular, the First World War was primarily a defensive war in that countries established defensive trench systems where they stopped enemy advances.
The 1914 machine gun, usually positioned on a flat tripod, would require a gun crew of four to six operators. In theory they could fire 400-600 small-calibre rounds per minute, a figure that was to more than double by the war's end, with rounds fed via a fabric belt or a metal strip.
Rapid-firing, devastatingly effective, and widely-deployed, machine guns transformed combat and came to symbolize the mechanized slaughter of the Western Front. This article will explore the history, deployment, and impact of these fearsome weapons in The Great War.
The machine gun revolutionized combat efforts and quickly drove out nations with their horse-drawn carriages into submission. From its bare roots beginnings to the evolution of this iconic weapon that is still in use today, this infographic takes a look at how the machine gun came about, how it managed to almost single handedly change the ...
The Machine Gun is remembered for its role in the carnage of the First Day of the Somme. The gun though was in its infancy as the First World War began. Invented just 30 years earlier, the Machine Gun was developed and refined as a weapon over the course of the First World War.
World War I popularized the use of the machine gun—capable of bringing down row after row of soldiers from a distance on the battlefield. This weapon, along with barbed wire and mines, made movement across open land both difficult and dangerous.
Machine guns and rapid-firing artillery, when used in combination with trenches and barbed-wire emplacements, gave a decided advantage to the defense, since these weapons’ rapid and sustained firepower could decimate a frontal assault by either infantry or cavalry.
The machine gun is a potent symbol of the First World War’s Western Front. It takes little reading, however, to discover that its reputation as the arbiter of battle in France and Flanders is unjustified.
Machine guns inflicted appalling casualties on both war fronts in World War One. Men who went over-the-top in trenches stood little chance when the enemy opened up with their machine guns.