The first fighter planes were only equipped with machine guns fixed onto the top wing. They had two seats for a pilot and a gunner. Dogfights were extremely difficult because the pilot had to dodge other enemy aircraft while listening to the instructions from the gunner as to where to fly to get the enemy in their sights. The first dog fight is believed to have taken place on 28th August 1914. Pilots did not have long to destroy their target. Fighter aircraft only carried enough ammunition to fire at an enemy for about 50 seconds. Pilots had to use machine guns wisely. Rene Fonck, a French flying ace, usually took no more than five or six rounds to down an enemy aircraft. Pilots only received 30 hours of training. 

Zeppelins were large airships. By the outbreak of WWI the German army owned seven of these airships. These were fast travelling up to 136 kph. They had five machine guns and could carry bombs. 

Zeppelins were used in for bombing raids. A Zeppelin bombed Liege in Belgium on 6th August 1914 but was destroyed by ground forces. Although easy to hit the Germans continued to use them on attacks on France. The first Zeppelin raid on London took place on 31st May 1915. The raid killed 28 people and injured 60 more. British fighter pilots and anti-aircraft gunners became very good at bringing down Zeppelins. 

The British army used the first grenade in the opening months of the war. It was an iron tin on an 18inch stick. They were dangerous to use and often killed their own men. Both sides tried to make them safer. By 1915 the Mills Bomb was the most popular grenade used by British troops. The bomb had a central spring loaded firing pin and spring loaded level locked by a pin. It had a four second delay which allowed the thrower to take cover. When the grenade went off the cast iron casing shattered producing a shower of metal fragments. During the next three years more than 33 million Mills Bombs were issued to soldiers in the British army. Rifles were made to fire them which had a range of over 600 feet. 

The first ever gas attack was on 22 April 1915. The Germans released gas from cylinders and allowed the wind to carry it over French soldiers. The French panicked and ran. A six kilometre gap opened up in the French lines but the German’s did not have enough men to mount a serious assault (although they did take 2000 prisoners). An opportunity like this never happened again but gas proved its worth as a weapon of terror. Soon both sides were using gas. There were two main types:

Chlorine gas (or phosgene) - This suffocated the lungs and left the victim gasping for air.

Mustard gas – rotted the body – skin blistered, eyes bulged. A victim could cough up the lining of his lungs in clots. The pain was so intense these victims had to be tied down.

Tanks were first used in battle in 1916. The British invention scared the Germans so much that they panicked and fled. However these armour plated machines could only travel at about 4 miles per hour and broke down easily. The British and French produced over 5000 whilst the Germans made only 20. At the Battle of Cambrai in 1917, over 400 British tanks crossed no man’s land, broke through barbed wire and crushed machine gun nests to clear the way for soldiers behind them.

Although invented in 1862, the machine-gun was still an untested weapon of war. However, it soon became recognised as one of the war’s deadliest weapons. A water-cooled machine gun like the Vicker gun could fire up to 10 bullets per second. In the first 12 days of fighting, the French reported losses of over 200,000 men, mostly through machine gun fire. According to British estimates, machine guns caused about 40% of all wounds inflicted on British troops during the war.

Artillery is another word for the large heavy guns that could shoot bombs, or shells over long distances. It was common to bombard the enemy trenches for several hours before starting to attack in the hope you might kill lots of soldiers as they sheltered in their dugouts.  In 1915, 400,000 shells (some as big as soldiers) were fired every month on the Western Front. Some big guns could fire shells over a distance of 13 miles. When they exploded, the red hot metal splinters (called shrapnel) would cut an enemy to pieces. The noise damaged men’s brains and made their ears bleed. It causes shell-shock, a condition similar to a ‘nervous breakdown’. Artillery was responsible for about 60% of all wounds.

The Germans used submarines to stop supplies from America helping the British. These vehicles could travel faster than many ships and could fire torpedoes at enemy ships from great distances underwater. They were very efficient at destroying cargo ships. They were very difficult to destroy although they did take a long time to reload.

A canister of oil was strapped to the back and forced through a nozzle to ‘fire’ at enemy soldiers. The oil was ignited by a spark to create a sheet of flame that could travel up to 15 metres. Hand-held flame-throwers were deadly in small spaces, like dugouts, and caused fear and panic if one was spotted during an attack. Defending soldiers would try and shoot the canister of oil before it got anywhere near. 

Each man who joined the British Army was issued with a Lee-Enfield bolt-action rifle and a 40 centimetre steel bayonet to fit onto the end. These rifles had a slow rate of fire (approximately 20 bullets fired per minute) but they were very dangerous and accurate. Snipers used them effectively to pick off any soldier who lifted his head above the parapet.