deadliest WWI trench warfare weapons

Entire generation of young Europeans lost their lives in the muddy trenches in the West and in the East. Which weapon would they be most terrified of back then? Machine guns are probably the first thing that comes to mind, but that only kills if you venture outside your trench, trench mortars or poison gas would be my nightmares.

 

Gas would be the biggy. It might not even kill you, but leave you a bed-ridden for the rest of your life, blinded and in pain from simply breathing.
Not nice.

Flamethrowers are another nasty one.

Oh, and snipers. Not too bad if you take reasonable precautions, but bloddy annoying if you fancy seeing a different view from the wall of your trench.

 

Gas, artillery and mines.

Not much you can do about either (At least against flamethrowers you can try to shoot the operator before he gets too close), but Gas would be the terror for the reasons Ricky stated, and artillery or mines because either will kill or maim you not by skill, but simply because you happened to be unlucky.

 

I believe artillary and machine guns were the two that accounted for overwhelming majority. Funky stuff like gas, flamethrowers and tanks might grab the imagination but in terms of loss of life they were only supporting acts.

 

Wow, incredible that u guys forgot the ultimate WW1 weapon: The hang grenade. It is a deadly weapon in trench warfare and all combatants realised that. The first hand grenades were simply a stick of tnt wrapped with nails, nasty

 

As Ebar mentioned, gas was ardly ever used and accounted for very few casualties - relatively. I'd go for artillery. Constant bombardments and nasty results of flying limbs and such would certainly crack my morale.

 

Yes, but where it was used the effects could be totally devastating, whereas artillery (and mines) were random and sporadic.

In any case the question was "Which weapon would they be most terrified of back then?".

I stick with my choices regardless of which was statistically more likely to kill me!

 

Hanbd grenades were not invented in WW1; they were rediscovered. Grenades went back to the seventeenth century, IIRC; they were always issued to the biggest, strongest soldiers in infantry units and so they became known as grenadiers, form into special companies in each infantry regiment. They faded from use by the end of the 18th century (again, IIRC).

 

Thanks for the breif discription of the hand grenades evolution corpscasselbury but if you would read my post carefully I never mentioned that handgrenades were invented in WW1. When i said the first hand grenades (in WW1) were made by a stick of tnt and some nails I meant in WW1 obviously.

By the way, were the first hand grenades cylinder like no? :-?

 

Yes, shaped like pomegranites, which is where 'grenade' derives from.

 

Oh ok, that would make sense.

 

has anyone thought of trench foot or mud?

 

Machine guns...probably the Maxim MG 08 caused more cassualties than any other sinle weapon..weapon Now according to GErman veterans,French Qf such as the 75 mm were equally deadly....

 

Thank you Simonr, sure artillery and MG killed the most, but if I am a doughboy or a Tommy in the trench, I will be totally terrified by the sound of a mortar over my head, even more horrified by the sight of poison gas drifting toward me. It's probably not that bad to be cut down by Maxims or blown away by artillery, imagine that the gas permeates your lungs and paralizing your respiratory muscles, copious secretions leads to pulmonary edema which further impaired your breathing and oxygen exchange, slowly and painfully you are suffocating to death..... okay maybe it's up there along with being burned alive by a flamethrower from a stormtrooper attack.

 

Just yesterday I read an article about a British offensive near the Belgian town of Mesen in the summer of 1917. In order to break through the German lines, situated uphill and therefore imposible to take by storm through the muddy fields, the British had spent nearly two years digging tunnels underneath the German lines to lay huge mines. When the offensive kicked off on June 7th, no less than 500 tons of explosives packed in just 19 mines was detonated right under the German trenches. Prime Minister Lloyd George claims to have heard the blast all the way at Downing Street 10 (some say the explosion was heard in Ireland); it was the biggest blast in the history of warfare, and would remain that until the detonation of the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Several thousand German soldiers completely evaporated in just 15 seconds between the first and the last explosion.

A possible candidate? :roll:

PS. The terrifying bit of this story is that four mines of calibres similar to the 19 that were detonated are still lying armed and dangerous underneath the town of Mesen. No mine-clearing team is willing to take the risks to disarm them...

 

Thats not good !!

Then the only thing one can hope, is that the mines have deteriorated with time and doesnt work anymore, or at least that the fuze doesnt work...

KBO

 

the problem is that the explosives are so old and unstable that any little think can triger an explosion, so on my personal opinios the only posible option and the safest, move the town to another location!!!!

 

According to my late Grandfather, the weapon they were most terrified of during WWI was poison gas. In reality the biggest killers were artillery and machine guns.

 

And i always thought some people would do anything for money. Maybe nonof the daredevils that volunteered were trained in mine defusing.

 

A few attempts were made but they were abandoned when one team was killed because their tunnel collapsed. The ground around Mesen is soft clay; it can't be very effectively supported.

The explosives are still in top shape, by the way - most of it was purposefully built to be water-resistant. One mine detonated by accident in 1955 when a telephone pole standing right above it was hit by lightning; the mine blew a hole 20 meters (60 feet) deep in the ground. Luckily only one cow was killed.