world war 1 weapons?????

Question

which world war 1 weapons failed to do anything for the war
for example: the bayonet
wat other weapons though

thanx

Answer 1

Well there is a great difference between a weapon failing to do anything and not living up it hoped for potential.

The bayonet, in fact, was reasonably effective in hand-tohand combat in the trenches. Its shortcoming was that once the intervals between firing of weapons were reduced by the advent of repeating rifles and semi-automatic and automatic weapons, the baynonet charge across a field was no longer a viable field tactic. In the days of the Napoleonic wars, a century earlier, muskets and rifles were one shot muzzle-loaders and it was not uncommon for the two sides to fire off a couple of vollies as they closed on one another and then to fix bayonets once they got close enough to preclude another loading interval before being engaged by hand. By the time of WWI, rifles could be loaded and fired so quickly, and there were so many machine guns deployed that the casualty rate crossing the field in a bayonet charge was simply too high to make the tactic useful.

Now, as to other weapons that did not perform as well as had been hoped for in WWI, poison gas was one, tanks were another, and aircraft were not so very effective, though still quite useful.

Poison gas, first employed by the Germans, had a tendency to be very unreliable. Rain and fog reduced its effectiveness, and wind shifts could and often did send the cloud of gas released back onto the very troops who had released it. Later in the war some artillery shells were designed to fire gas cannisters into the enemy lines to better assure it struck its target, but the shells had limited payload capacity and by then both sides had distributed gas masks and protective clothing that limited the effectiveness of a gas attack.

Tanks, first deployed by thr British, proved to be very slow and cumbersome. Some had top speeds of only 5 mph and were mechanically unreliable. Additionally, as they were new to warfare, no one had really developed a comprehensive battle plan that made good use of their abilities. Early tank assaults involved too few tanks and not enough support troops to make them decisive weapons.

Airplanes proved quite useful in reconnaisance, and to some extent as a terror weapon in supporting ground troops, but generally speaking the suffered from too little lifting capacity to carry meaningful payloads for bombing. The Germans tried to address this early on with Zeppelins (rigid-framed airships) that did have good payload capacities, but the Zeppelins proved too slow and too easy of targets for airplanes. Worse still, as Germany had no sources of large quantities of non-flammable helium, the Zeppelins were filled with highly explosive hydrogen. Accordingly, when they were shot at with tracer rounds (bullets with burning phosphorous in them) the Zeppelins would catch fire and explode rather spectacularly.

Answer 2

World War One was basically a breeding ground for new weapons. Chemical weapons, aircraft, tanks, the aircraft carrier, refinements to artillery such as the "creeping barrage" and improved techniques for locating enemy artillery units were all new to this war.

Tanks had many early problems including a lack of proper tactics. But by the end of the war the British were makine significant progress with tank tactics.

The role for aircraft was largely undefined. Bombers were not terribly effective through most of the war, and didn't have much impact. Early attempts at strategic bombing were largely ineffective.

Chemical warfare proved to have limited use. You couldn't use it in the attack, since you wanted to move into the area you had just gassed, and you couldn't use it in the defense because you were already there. Only with the static front that trench warfare caused could you actually use it, and even then it was not really effective.

The artillery refinements were really the only things that could be seen to make a difference. The Canadians made very effective use of their new creeping barrage at Vimy Ridge.

As to your example of the bayonet, well it had been around for centuries, so it was hardly a new weapon. And it was used quite a bit actually. But a bayonet charge into a fortified position with machine guns did not yield the result it used to in open field combat. But with the close combat that resulted if the attackers made it to the enemy trenches, the bayonet was a very prominent weapon.

Answer 3

The sabre and the lance. Believe it or not, the British and French armies kept cavalry divisions behind the trench lines for four years, waiting for the inevitable breakthrough that each successive bloody offensive was sure to bring. They did have some value when German morale was thoroughly broken in the Fall of 1918, but their only other use after the open warfare of 1914 was in keeping French troops on line in the Spring of 1917 when mutinies broke out, as the cavalry were among the only units not have been repeatedly slaughtered.

Answer 4

The bayonet was not a failed WWI weapon. There were many effective bayonet charges throughout the war as trench after trench was taken and re-taken through mass bayonet charges.

"A bayonet is a weapon with a worker on both ends"

Answer 5

bleach