Zusammenfassung der Ressource
New Weapons
- Aircraft Development
- On the Western Front, both sides used planes
and balloons to find enemy weak points
- The Germans used Zeppelins to carry out bombing raids
- 1915 - new planes included synchronised machine
guns where on man could fly and shoot the gun
- Both sides developed planes for long-distance bombing raids
- May 1917 - 71 people were killed at Folkestone
- Tanks
- Tracks on tanks allowed soldiers to
cover rough ground and through barbed
wire, and they where heavily armoured
- Development of tactics:
- Battle of the Somme 1916 - First tank use,
Haig sent in 49 tanks, captured 2km of
German territory but couldn't hold on to it
- Cambrai 1917 - More successful, 500 tanks,
captured 6km of land but, again, couldn't hold it
- Poison Gas
- Germans firstly used chlorine gas which
killed many at the Second battle of Ypres
- The British used it later on but
some gas blew back on themselves
- Disadvantage of being highly visible
- Germans used phosgene in 1915 - it
was invisible and deadly, but slow-acting
- Mustard gas caused horrible blisters and internal bleeding
- Gas became a standard weapon,
but not a war-winning one
- Masks, pads and helmets were used as countermeasures
- Creeping Barrage
- Tactic - an advancing curtain of artillery fire preceding the advancing infantry
- First used at the Battle of the Somme
- It was difficult and dangerous as it depended on precise timing
- When the barrage outpaced the infantry, the
gap between them allowed the Germans to
re-emerge and man their positions
- If the infantry moved too fast, they ran into their own shellfire