Machine Guns Of World War I

Author : Robert Bruce
Publisher : Crowood Press UK
ISBN 13 : 9781847970329
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.2X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Machine Guns of World War I written by Robert Bruce and published by Crowood Press UK. This book was released on 2008-11-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All the guns examined in this new paperback edition of Machine Guns of World War 1 belong to the class known as "automatic" and seven classic World War 1 weapons are illustrated in some 250 color photographs. Detailed sequences shows them in close-up: during step-by-step field stripping, and during handling, loading and live firing trials with ball ammunition, by gunners wearing period uniforms to put these historic guns in their visual context. These fascinating photographs are accompanied by concise, illustrated accounts of each weapon's historical and technical background. The reader will learn exactly what it looked like, sounded like and felt like to crew the German, British and French machine guns which dominated the battlefields of the Western Front in 1914-18, and which changed infantry tactics forever.

Author : Stephen Bull
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1472815181
Total Pages : 163 pages
Book Rating : 4.87/5 ( download)

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Download or read book German Machine Guns of World War I written by Stephen Bull and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-05-19 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World War I's defining weapon for many, Germany's MG 08 machine gun won a formidable reputation on battlefields from Tannenberg to the Somme. Although it was a lethally effective weapon when used from static positions, the MG 08 was far too heavy to perform a mobile role on the battlefield. As the British and French began to deploy lighter machine guns alongside their heavier weapons, the Germans fielded the Danish Madsen and British Lewis as stopgaps, but chose to adapt the MG 08 into a compromise weapon – the MG 08/15 – which would play a central role in the revolutionary developments in infantry tactics that characterized the last months of the conflict. In the 1940s, the two weapons were still in service with German forces fighting in a new world war. Drawing upon eyewitness battlefield reports, this absorbing study assesses the technical performance and combat record of these redoubtable and influential German machine guns, and their strengths and limitations in a variety of battlefield roles.

Author : Charles River Charles River Editors
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN 13 : 9781542734073
Total Pages : 84 pages
Book Rating : 4.7X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Weapons of World War I written by Charles River Charles River Editors and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-01-25 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Profiles weapons such as superartillery, poison gas, rifles, grenades, flamethrowers, planes, and more. *Includes a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "God would never be cruel enough to create a cyclone as terrible as that Argonne battle. Only man would ever think of doing an awful thing like that. It looked like 'the abomination of desolation' must look like. And all through the long night those big guns flashed and growled just like the lightning and the thunder when it storms in the mountains at home...And it all made me think of the Bible and the story of the Anti-Christ and Armageddon. And I'm telling you the little log cabin in Wolf Valley in old Tennessee seemed a long long way off." - Alvin C. York World War I, also known in its time as the "Great War" or the "War to End all Wars," was an unprecedented holocaust in terms of its sheer scale. Fought by men who hailed from all corners of the globe, it saw millions of soldiers do battle in brutal assaults of attrition which dragged on for months with little to no respite. Tens of millions of artillery shells and untold hundreds of millions of rifle and machine gun bullets were fired in a conflict that demonstrated man's capacity to kill each other on a heretofore unprecedented scale, and as always, such a war brought about technological innovation at a rate that made the boom of the Industrial Revolution seem stagnant. The arms race before the war and the attempt to break the deadlock of the Western and Eastern Fronts by any means possible changed the face of battle in ways that would have previously been deemed unthinkable. Before 1914, flying machines were objects of public curiosity; the first flights of any account on rotor aircraft had been made less than 5 years before and were considered to be the province of daredevils and lunatics. By 1918, all the great powers were fielding squadrons of fighting aircraft armed with machine-guns and bombs, to say nothing of light reconnaissance planes. Tanks, a common feature on the battlefield by 1918, had not previously existed outside of the realm of science fiction stories written by authors like H.G. Wells. Machine guns had gone from being heavy, cumbersome pieces with elaborate water-cooling systems to single-man-portable, magazine-fed affairs like the Chauchat, the Lewis Gun and the M1918 BAR. To these grim innovations were added flamethrowers, hand grenades, zeppelins, observation balloons, poison gas, and other improvements or inventions that revolutionized the face of warfare. These technological developments led to an imbalance. Before the introduction of the man-portable light machine gun (which took place in the second half of the war), not to mention tanks (which also joined the fight late in the game), defensive firepower vastly outweighed offensive capability. Massed batteries of artillery, emplaced heavy machine guns, barbed wire entanglements, and bewildering fortifications meant that ground could not be taken except at incredible cost. This led to the (somewhat unjustified) criticism famously leveled at the generals of World War I that their soldiers were "lions led by donkeys." Certainly, every army that fought in the Great War had its share of officers, at all levels of command, who were incompetent, unsuitable, foolish, or just plain stupid, but there were plenty of seasoned professionals who understood their job and did it well. The main problem facing commanders in the war was that there was such a bewildering array of new armaments, with such vast destructive potential, that previous military doctrines were virtually useless. The Weapons of World War I analyzes the technological advancements in weaponry that produced the deadliest conflict in history up to that time. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the weapons of World War I like never before, in no time at all.

Author : Paul Cornish
Publisher : Casemate Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1844688380
Total Pages : 291 pages
Book Rating : 4.88/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Machine-Guns and the Great War written by Paul Cornish and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2009-09-19 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An in-depth study of how these direct fire weapons were actually employed on the battlefields and their true place in the armory of World War I. The machine-gun is one of the iconic weapons of the Great War—indeed of the twentieth century. Yet it is also one of the most misunderstood. During a four-year war that generated unprecedented casualties, the machine-gun stood out as a key weapon. In the process it took on an almost legendary status that persists to the present day. It shaped the tactics of the trenches, while simultaneously evolving in response to the tactical imperatives thrown up by this new form of warfare. Paul Cornish, in this authoritative and carefully considered study, reconsiders the history of automatic firepower, and he describes in vivid detail its development during the First World War and the far-reaching consequences thereof. He dispels many myths and misconceptions that have grown up around automatic firearms, but also explores their potency as symbols and icons. His clear-sighted reassessment of the phenomenon of the machine-gun will be fascinating reading for students of military history and of the Great War in particular. “For those wanting a little more in-depth information about the role and development of machine guns during the war, this book offers an excellent, well written and easily accessible account of what became the iconic weapon of the war, mainly due to the massive casualties it was able to inflict . . . This really is well worth reading.” —Great War Magazine

Author : U. S. Army (Ret ). Col George T. Raach
Publisher : Booklocker.com
ISBN 13 : 9781634910200
Total Pages : 362 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Withering Fire written by U. S. Army (Ret ). Col George T. Raach and published by Booklocker.com. This book was released on 2015-12-10 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Withering Fire is the history of American machine gun battalions in World War I. It describes how these units evolved from a few small detachments armed with obsolete weapons to more than 200 battalions that supported all operations, and by their power saved countless American lives. It explains in detail the organization, training, equipment, and combat employment of machine gun units and in so doing adds to the understanding of how Americans actually fought.

Author : John Hamilton
Publisher : ABDO Publishing Company
ISBN 13 : 1617861774
Total Pages : 34 pages
Book Rating : 4.72/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Weapons Of World War I written by John Hamilton and published by ABDO Publishing Company. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to the artillery, poison gas, guns, tanks, and U-boats and torpedoes used in World War I.

Author : Gordon L. Rottman
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1849086575
Total Pages : 162 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Browning .50-caliber Machine Guns written by Gordon L. Rottman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Browning “50-cal” has become the longest serving weapon in the US inventory. The “fifty” has been employed in every imaginable role for a machine gun. It is considered such an effective and reliable weapon that few countries ever attempted to develop an equivalent weapon. Even the Japanese created a copy of it during World War II when the US was producing literally thousands every month to use in every theater. This is a history of the development of this famous weapon, its most critical operational use and the variants that have been produced to keep it at the forefront of the action.

Author : Robert Bruce
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.38/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Machine Guns of World War I written by Robert Bruce and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Frederick Victor Longstaff
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 426 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Book of the Machine Gun written by Frederick Victor Longstaff and published by . This book was released on 1917 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : John Walter
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1472836154
Total Pages : 81 pages
Book Rating : 4.51/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Hotchkiss Machine Guns written by John Walter and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-11-28 with total page 81 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Created by a long-forgotten Austrian nobleman, Adolf Odkolek von Augezd, the air-cooled Hotchkiss machine gun was the first to function effectively by tapping propellant gas from the bore as the gun fired. Although the Hotchkiss would be overshadowed by the water-cooled Maxim and Vickers Guns, it proved its effectiveness during the Russo-Japanese War. The gun, quirky though it was, was successful enough to persuade Laurence Benét and Henri Mercié to develop the Modèle Portative: a man-portable version which, it was hoped, could move with infantrymen as they advanced. Later mounted on tanks and aircraft, it became the first automatic weapon to obtain a 'kill' in aerial combat. Though it served the French and US armies during World War I (and also the British in areas where French and British units fought alongside each other), the Odkolek-Hotchkiss system was to have its longest-term effect in Japan. Here, a succession of derivatives found favour in theatres of operations in which water-cooling could be more of a liability than an asset. When US forces landed on Saipan, Guam and Iwo Jima, battling their way from island to island across the Pacific, it was the 'Woodpecker' – the Type 92 Hotchkiss, with its characteristically slow rate of fire – which cut swathes through their ranks. Supported by contemporary photographs and full-colour illustrations, this title explores the exciting and eventful history of the first successful gas-operated machine gun.