World War I: Artillery
Artilleries played a significant role in World War 1 in achieving victory. In spite of the discovery of armored vehicles, new types of fighter planes, and modern-day ammunitions, the traditional artillery was majorly used and had the maximum impact in terms of the number of casualties in World War I. There were different types of artillery used in the war ranging from light, medium, and heavy. It was extremely effective in combating infantry as well as tanks. Further, field guns were employed to fight directly against the enemy within sight whereas mortars and howitzers supported the firing indirectly. Lightweight artillery was drawn by horses, while heavier ones like howitzers were maneuvered by tractors and assembled upon sturdy platforms.
Out of the 14,000 kinds of artillery used in WW1, the 75 mm French Model became the popular artillery on the battlefields, having developed in 1897. (Militaryfactory.com, 2017) These had far range and were capable of causing large-scale destruction to human lives if aimed properly. This particular model had a duplicate steel tube of 460 kg weight and mounted while assembling. The inside of the machine was equipped with a capacity of 75 mm and comprised 24 spiral grooves. The mechanism of combined recoil enabled the gun to have one shot after the other without relaying the gun.
As important it was to have a great artillery machine, equally important was to target the enemy and fire accurately. Initially, both sides used to “register” on the target. (The Long, Long Trail, 2015) this was the method to observe long-range shots being fired and rectified if the target was missed. This was a very cumbersome process and often gave hints to the enemy as to where the guns were located. However, by 1918 enough research was done on this matter and artillery could be fired precisely to hit the target in the first attempt itself and was defined as “predicted fire”. (The Long, Long Trail, 2015)
Along with the artillery shells, another complicated and intricate mechanism was the fuze that ignites the device. (Civilwarartillery.com, 2017) The escalating demand for the manufacture of the weapons necessitated the advent of a new production house and its suppliers, to meet the demand. However, owing to the crunch of an efficient production process, lack of trained personnel, and a quality control system in place, mass-scale production had a tough time producing precision parts. This rendered the shells as unreliable since few would either not fire properly or get fired at the wrong time creating more hurdles than advantages. With time things became better and the ammunitions started to perform better. In 1916 England developed Number 106 Fuze built using existing French technology. Another major manufacturer of it was Switzerland. Though Switzerland was a neutral country in the war the foreign law allowed a neutral state to trade with both sides. (Switzerland and the First World War, 2017) The artillery was designed with an extremely sensitive contact fuze, which would explode it the moment it came into contact with barbed wire. The 106 fuzes, designed during World War I, proved to be of much premium quality to eradicate barbed wire barricades.
References
Civilwarartillery.com. (2017). How Artillery Fuzes Worked. [online]
The Long, Long Trail. (2015). How the British artillery developed and became a war-winning factor in 1914-1918 - The Long, Long Trail. [online]
Switzerland and the First World War. (2017). Swiss munitions manufacturing during the First World War. [online]
Militaryfactory.com. (2017). World War 1 Artillery (1914-1918). [online]
