Shrapnel wounds were particularly brutal for soldiers. It was named for English officer Henry Shrapnel, who invented the design in the late 18th century. Artillery was more destructive than ever before. French artillery was always pointed toward Germany - even in practice. The Big Bertha was a German mm howitzer, named for a family member of the Krupp Arms manufacturer. In contrast to the infantry and the cavalry, the artillery could not enter into combat on its own.
By the same token, other weapons required artillery support in order to be effective in battle. Artillery is divided, technologically and tactically, into light and heavy artillery. Light artillery was generally referred to as "field artillery" and intended for mobile warfare , which was the norm until This required that it be able to bear up under long marches and cope with difficult terrain.
As result, there were natural weight limits for artillery materiel, which was pulled by horses. This restricted both the caliber and the range, for large distances required powerful charges and hence heavy gun barrels and mounts.
The field artillery from , which consisted mainly of cannons with flat trajectories, had calibers of between 7. France devised a groundbreaking innovation in , when it introduced a field gun with long barrel recoil. With conventional guns, the barrel was firmly connected to the mount.
They consequently jerked backwards when fired, and had to be both reloaded afterwards, and returned to their initial position and reset. The new type of gun featured a barrel in a cradle which could be slid backwards in the cradle. A brake mechanism elastically absorbed the barrel and returned it to its initial position.
The weapon itself remained steady and it was no longer necessary to reset the weapon after each shot. The rate of fire increased exponentially, as a consequence, but so did the required supply of ammunition. Its proper domain was siege warfare in attack and defense. Mobility was of secondary importance. Of greater importance were the distance and impact of the individual shells. In , Germany had an obvious lead in this type of artillery. Heavy artillery also included heavy mortar fire.
This encompassed special guns with calibers of over thirty centimeters that were utilized for fighting against modern armoured turret fortifications. Along with caliber and distance, the trajectory of a round was an important criterion for judging the capabilities of guns. Cannons fired with flat trajectories; howitzers and mortars, by contrast, had curved lines of fire. The latter were thus able to shoot over high cover or hit targets behind them, since the shells descended at a steep angle at the end of their flight paths.
Their range of fire, however, remained inferior to that of guns of the same calibre. In , mobile warfare largely came to a standstill within several weeks and transformed into trench warfare. As a result, siege warfare became the norm. The importance of heavy artillery increased to the degree that field fortifications were driven deeper into the ground vertically and structured with greater complexity horizontally.
Thousands of old siege guns from the 19 th century, still lacking recoil mechanisms, made their way to the front lines. While their firing rate was low and maneuverability minimal, they could nevertheless shoot high-caliber shells across great distances. Even though every effort was made to push ahead with the manufacture of modern recoil artillery, many of the old heavy guns remained in use through the end of the war and even after.
Light artillery was supplemented - not replaced - by heavy artillery. Small guns with rapid rates of fire continued to be indispensable for many artillery-related tasks. Below are 12 of the most important artillery weapons used in the war. Alarmed by a void in their artillery at the start of the war, the French adapted existing, static weapons to meet the challenges of modern warfare.
The GPF was a product of this process. Starting in late the French produced over GPFs and soon were receiving requests for them from incoming American forces. It proved a reliable and effective artillery piece on the battlefields of the Western Front. The standard British field-gun of the war, the pounder was a general purpose gun.
At the Armistice there were 3, pounders in service on the Western Front and the gun had fired approximately 99,, rounds. It was also deployed for the home defence of Great Britain. This model was particularly effective as a counter-battery weapon, and was even occasionally used as an AA weapon. The German Army was forbidden from producing and possessing this gun in the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and ordered to scrap their arsenal, but some were hidden and subsequently deployed in World War Two.
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