Best WW1 Weapon.

Would suggest the machine gun as the grandpappy general winner, and the infant submarine being the ultimate growed up all around winner.

 

... the neophyte Tank, defeater of the "machine gun, grandpappy general winner".

 

Hey. Mr Smartypants. Did you see a question mark above? I joke, i joke...Tanks are expensive. Every 2 bit army has a machine gun.... And of course, the sub has become a mobile, mostly undetectable NUKE missile base capable of taking out all other defense/offense... Snap.

 

Not the weapon that kills someone fast, its the PTSD! It kills on a psychological way the person that suffers on it. But to give a real weapon, to me it is the submarine.

 

I don't get out much..PTSD?

 

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder aka Shell Shock!

 

I'll see your smartypants and submarines and PTSD and raise you a Spanish Fly, I mean Flu!


Nyuk nyuk

 

I'm going to be controversial here, I'd say the German use of poison gas, the effects of the gas attack at Ypres in April 1915 were devasting.

 

Don't know about best since the gas cloud was easily blown the wrong way by the wind, but in the beginning it was certainly a huge tactical advantage.

 

I too would chose the Maxim and the submarine as the two more influential (not best) weapons widely used during WW1. Both American BTW, Hiram Maxim for the machine gun, most others were license built copies of his weapon, and the Holland submarine. I think (without research) that Maxim's brother also developed a different type of smokeless powder for his brother's machine gun, but don't hold me to that. The early Browning "potato digger" was unique, but not as effective as the water cooled Maxim, and the Hotchkiss (also an American) of the French Army was also rather second place to the Maxim.

The machine gun made the tank a necessity and effectively ended the use of the cavalry as anything more than recon., and the submarine truly altered the way war was fought at sea.

 

The Fixed Wing Aircraft. Subs Could devestate a city, Airplanes did! (Many infact)

 

Good point.

 

But in a WW1 context planes were still much too unreliable, you can't wage a strategic bombing campaign when you are likely to suffer 10% non combat losses. I would go for the MG (BTW the French mitailleuse predated the Maxim and the Gatling and not all WW1 MGs were based on the Maxim design). All considered the Krupp steel cannon was possibly more important than the Maxim, but IMO the real show changer was not exactly a weapon but smokeless powder that allowed all sort of weapons to be developed. Try developing a naval turret with a QF gun, an MG or even a fast firing field gun with black powder that will foul a barrel after a dozen rounds, black powder rifles required calibers of 1cm or more to avoid fouling which severely limited the amount of ammo a rfleman could carry.

 

Best?
An exceptionally hard to define proposition.

Artillery? :
[video=youtube;xu0VW658eqc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu0VW658eqc[/video]

Rifle? Five Rounds Rapid? :
[video=youtube;eh-pgRhi_Lo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh-pgRhi_Lo[/video]

The spade?


Tanks?
The hand-thrown Bomb?
Stormtrooper tactics?
Mines?
MGs?
Fuzes?
The individual soldier?
The aggressive mobility strategy that ended things?

etc. etc.
'Best' is too ethereal a concept for me I think.

~A

 

Too true, I should have qualified that by including the statement that the; “bulk of water-cooled” heavy machine guns used in WW1 were license built Maxims. The German, Russian, and British used that design. Many of the air-cooled designs were of course not "Maxim". Browning, Hotchkiss, Lewis, Thompson (Americans), Madsen, Schmisser, and other air-cooled machine guns used a different principle of attaining repeated fire powered by the weapon's internal energy. I was speaking only of the "bulk" of water cooled machine guns used in WW1 and how they influenced future combat/tactics/logistics.

The lesser known water-cooled 1912 Schwarzlose M7/12 8mm of Austro-Hungarian construction was different than the Maxim design, as was the Italian Fiat-Revelli of 1914. The early Fiat-Revelli is still considered an overly complex design which led to many problems with the “care and feeding” of the weapon in combat conditions during the war itself. It got better, but not until the 1920s.

Those two were water cooled also, and used a slightly different feed/reload system so as not to infringe on Hiram S. Maxim’s patents. That said and acknowledged, Maxim’s 1886 design was the first true “machine gun”. The others mentioned (mitailleuse and Gatling) as pre-Maxim repeating weapons required input from the operator to function. Rapid fire by manual cranking, or an external power source really isn’t a “machine gun”. Which (ironically) also excludes the electrically powered, rotating multi-barrel weapons which are so popular today. If the electrical motor fails, the weapon stops working.

Just for fun, I looked it up and it was Hiram’s brother Hudson who improved the smokeless powder. His contribution is “cordite”, something we all recognize today? Other smokeless powders had been invented, and used of course. But Hudson’s chemical cordite formula is the one which, with variations, endures. That Maxim family must have been one interesting group to be around. Hiram’s son (also Hiram), invented both a silencer for firearms and the muffler for automobile engines.

You would have two Maxim brothers (Hiram the elder and Hudson) trying to shoot stuff fast and blow things up, and a young Hiram trying to “tone it down”.
​

 

On hand held firearms, I would go for the model 1887 trenchgun, in a trench it's just handheld brutallity

 

I agree TOS. Indeed, the ww1 airplane was weak. 1 sub might(?) have been many times more valuable than a squadron of bombers or fighters. It was shipping and the supplies it brought that Great Britain needed. Guessing they feared the sub wayyy more than aircraft back in the day.

 

How about dependable quick firing breech loading field artillary?? From what I saw on a WWI war documentary recently shelling killed more than the machine gun or rifle ..

 

Thinking about something Urgh said...do we have a candidate for the worst weapon in the spade?! After all, in Europe at least it encouraged the defensive mentality which probably helped prolong the war.

 

Definately a tank...how do you get a submarine over the top? It would get stuck in the mud...Mind you the tank aint much good at sea I suppose...Gas? Machine gun definately...But at Mons the Germans thought we were using em when it was well aimed rifle fire...No ...has to be the airplane and the tank a second run thing...but if I was to choose just one....An officer with a map would just about do it...Best weapon the enemy could hope to be deployed against em...