Barrage fire was a method that allowed troops to fire over the heads of their own soldiers. It was in 1916 that the British and Allied Forces created barrage fire. These specialty corps would develop new firing methods that would change the way we see war and how battles are fought from the inside out. No longer a weapon fired by just anybody, the machine gunnery moved forward as an expertise and by this time were handled by specialists corps. Even still, there were more changes on the horizon. The earliest, most primitive renditions of the machine gun worked entirely from a hand crank but by the ending of World War I in 1918, the machine gun was entirely automatic and was capable of producing an output of up to 600 rounds per minute. Changing Battle Tactics with the Introduction of the Machine Gun By 1917, the Germans were reporting that the majority of their small arms ammunition, 90% to be exact, were going into the chambers of their machine guns. That number, however, would explosively grow to become 100,000 guns in a very short time. There were a meager 12,000 guns by the time the war broke out in 1914. It was not until 1887 that the machine gun made its way to the German Army and with its mass capacity and devastating blow, it wasn’t any wonder that the Germans wanted to produce the gun in their own right as quickly and effectively as possible at a Spandau arsenal. Adopting the Machine Gun: Germany’s History with the Vickers Gun While this was good news in many ways, it was also about to be introduced into the wrong hands. At this time, it became known as the Vickers gun and was then capable of putting out 450.303 rounds of ammunition per minute. It did not take long until Maxim sold the gun he had created and watched as it quickly catapulted to even larger stardom on the battlefield. It was difficult to move in times when quick thinking was critical but its size and clunky demeanor did not stop it from doing its job and doing it well. The “Maxim” gun had a water-cooled jacket that stretched round the barrel, holding one gallon of water and while this innovative technology was nothing short of epic, especially in its time, it had one peak pitfall… it weighed a whopping 136.5 pounds. At this time, it released an initial 600 rounds per minute, what would be a detrimental number for the opposition in years to come. This kind of technology was unheard of and it was what prompted this primitive powerhouse to be first demonstrated by the British armed forces. Maxim’s machine gun was completely self-powered and worked by relying on the energy released in the firing cartridge that would then dislodge multiple bullets with nothing more than the pull of a trigger. Maxim in 1884, the first automatic machine gun was birthed in the United States. The Beginnings of the Machine Gun: Invention and Specs 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 outcome of WWI and subsequently change the art of war as we know it. The machine gun revolutionized combat efforts and quickly drove out nations with their horse-drawn carriages into submission. In the course of these four long years, one of the most iconic weapons of World War I was responsible for a massive amount of these statistics.
By November 1918, the end of the war as we knew it, a staggering 9 million soldiers never came home. Within the very heart of the war, soldiers were expected to fight in harsh, trench conditions, brave wreckage and carnage and do so unwaveringly. Lasting from Jto November 11, 1918, World War I is perhaps the most notable war in the history of mankind and while this war is so famously known for its great conflict, history buffs credit it for being the beginning of military and civilian technology.
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