Machine Guns and Artillery: Industrialized Firepower

The First World War was the first major European war fought with the full output of industrial economies, and firepower dominated the battlefield. Machine guns, descended from Hiram Maxim's design of the 1880s, could fire hundreds of rounds a minute and made attacks across open ground extremely costly. Yet artillery, not the machine gun, caused the majority of battlefield casualties. Heavy guns pounded trenches, cut wire and broke up attacks, and armies fired shells by the millions.

Over the war, gunners developed new techniques: the creeping barrage, a curtain of shellfire that advanced just ahead of attacking infantry; sound ranging and flash spotting to locate enemy guns; and predicted fire that needed no warning shots. By 1918 artillery was planned with scientific precision. The war showed that industrial production had become as important to victory as courage or generalship, because whoever could make and move more shells held an advantage.