Weapons
Machine gun
A fully automatic, rifled firearm designed for sustained fire, usually fired from a bipod, tripod or fixed mount. Artillery caused more casualties in the First World War, but machine guns, combined with barbed wire entanglements, earned a fearsome reputation among the infantry who had to cross open ground.
In the ArsenalMentioned in
- Chapter I The Long Fuse §9 Armies and War Plans
- Chapter III The War of Movement §1 Mobilization: Trains, Horses and Millions§4 The Battle of the Frontiers and the Great Retreat§8 The Aisne, the Race to the Sea and First Ypres
- Chapter IV Deadlock §1 Why the Trenches? Firepower and the Shell Crisis§2 The Western Front: From Neuve Chapelle to Loos§4 Gallipoli: The Campaign That Failed§5 Italy Enters the War: The Isonzo and the Mountains§10 The Lusitania, Zeppelins and the War in the Air
- Chapter V The Year of Attrition §8 The Somme I: The First Day§9 The Somme II: From Bazentin to the Ancre§10 Romania's Gamble and Germany's New Masters
- Chapter VI The Year of Revolutions §2 America Enters, and the World Follows§4 Arras, Vimy and the Chemin des Dames§5 Messines and Passchendaele§6 Russia's Summer: Kerensky's Offensive, the July Days and Kornilov
- Chapter VII The Last Gamble §3 Operation Michael: The Kaiser's Battle§5 The Americans Arrive, and the Second Marne§6 Amiens: The Black Day of the German Army§7 The Hundred Days: Breaking the Hindenburg Line§10 The Eleventh Hour: Compiègne
- Chapter IX In the Trenches Overview§1 Anatomy of a Trench System§3 No Man's Land: Patrols, Raids and Wiring Parties§5 Going Over the Top
- Chapter X The Machinery of War Overview§1 Rifles and Machine Guns§4 Tanks: From Landships to Whippets§6 The Learning Curve: From Lines to Combined Arms§8 Medicine: Triage, Transfusion and Faces§9 Flames, Grenades, Mortars and Clubs
- Chapter XI War on Waves and Wings Overview§7 The Mediterranean, Black Sea and Baltic§8 The Birth of Air Power: Scouts, Fighters and Aces
- Chapter XII The Home Fronts §1 Total War and the Rise of the State