What was the earliest flamethrower used by

Advancing troops needed portable fortifications and ways to defeat the shells and traps around the trenches. The solution was the creation of "Land Ships" later codenamed "Tanks," by the workers building the machines which they thought looked like huge water tanks. Winston Churchill felt that the use of tanks was too important to be discarded and his influence ultimately formed the Landship Committee tasked with developing an armored vehicle capable of 4 mph, climbing a 5 foot parapet, crossing an 8 foot gap, and carrying an armament of machine guns and a light artillery piece.

The result was the rhomboid—shaped Mark I tank. Its unique configuration, along with its caterpillar tracks, allowed it remarkable mobility in difficult terrain. The Mark I was first fielded during the Battle of the Somme in While many broke down, a good deal of them penetrated the enemy lines. They sheltered the advancing troops, smashed through barbed wire, crossed impassable terrain, and harried the enemy with their guns. They worked, and the lessons learned from their successes and failures lead to more life—saving innovations in armored vehicles.

Before the Great War, naval warfare was limited almost exclusively to the surface of the sea. But this global conflict introduced the maritime equivalent of guerrilla warfare: submarines.

Using the new torpedo as its primary weapon, submarines brought a deadly level of stealth to the high seas in that they could function both above and below the water and could fire on a target without warning.

The German U—boat fleet became infamous for its indiscriminant destruction of any enemy ships they encountered, military or merchant. World War I also saw the introduction of what was then called the Dreadnought Battleship.

By the end of the war, the dreadnoughts had only seen one major confrontation against each other in the Battle of Jutland, but they had set the new navel standard. The dreadnought would eventually be replaced by another vessel developed during the war: the aircraft carrier. As the airplane was developed and improved, daredevils and inventors began pushing the limits.

Prior to the war, Eugene Ely accomplished the first airplane takeoff from the deck of a navy ship, followed by the first successful onboard landing the subsequent year. Eventually, the HMS Ark Royal a converted merchant ship was commissioned as the first modern aircraft carrier. During the war, the Germans used 30, dogs while Great Britain, France and Belgium used over 20, and Italy only 3, These remained in use throughout World War II, as well.

While the first grenade had a seven-second fuse, this was shortened after the Battle of France in after the delay gave troops enough time to flee the explosion or toss the grenade back. Shortly before World War I broke out, the British saw the potential for anti-aircraft armaments. This began with the British government dotting the coasts of the British Isles with towers that were armed with special guns.

This also applied to naval installations. Soon other countries followed suit, extending to all armies involved in the conflict. However, the problem with these news forms of anti-aircraft defense was that very few had experience using them.

When commonly employed on embankments and other ad-hoc locations, soldiers could not properly measure targets or get the trajectory correct. During the inter-war years, the British Textbook of Anti-Aircraft Gunnery included five points for weaponry, which helped refine design methods. American troops mount the Swedish Bofors 40mm anti-aircraft gun near the Algerian coastline in The gun was lethal against light, medium and even some heavy tanks.

When the dust had settled on the Dambusters raid in , there was an emphasis on creating a new system capable of taking out low-flying aircraft in a single round. This new system involved a search and targeting radar, which made calculations and then sent electrical commands to the gun. Operators only had to select their target. The idea of a tank is an ancient concept. The key innovations that led to the tank were the internal combustion engine, armor plating, and the continuous track.

These armored vehicles were meant to break the deadlock of trench warfare on the Western Front. However, they were first rolled out by the British Army on September 15, during the Battle of the Somme. Battle of Kursk was the largest tank battle ever fought, with each side deploying nearly 3, tanks. There are a few explanations as to where it originates:. Though Britain and France constructed thousands of tanks between them, Germany, who were still skeptical, built only around Foremost among them was Landwehr officer Bernhard Reddemann , formerly the chief fire officer of Leipzig.

In late , Reddemann was tasked with setting up a specialist flamethrower detachment. Among his recruits were a number of firemen. Reddemann was convinced that the flamethrower was best used to add a shock-effect to infantry assaults. His unit carried out its first attack, against the French at Malancourt, on 26 February In the following month, he was given the opportunity to create and command a larger flamethrower unit, the 3 rd Garde-Pionier-Bataillon. This unit benefited from the patronage of Wilhelm, Crown Prince Germany , but the use of flamethrowers also chimed with parallel tactical developments, which saw the creation of experimental infantry storm detachments.

Some of these units called on the support of flamethrowers which had been retained by pioneer units in defiance of their "recall". This became the principal flamethrower unit in the German army for the remainder of the war. It did not fight as a single entity, but detached individual companies to support important attacks. It saw its heaviest action during the German offensives on the Western Front in , with its personnel making attacks between March and July.

The Germans passed on their expertise to their allies, providing training for the Austro-Hungarian and Turkish armies. The former developed its own models of flamethrower. The British army experimented with flamethrowers but, with the notable exception of a handful of huge, static flame projectors, did not adopt them.

However, in the raid on Zeebrugge harbour , both fixed and portable flamethrowers were employed by the Royal Navy. The use of flamethrowers in the French army was pioneered by sapeurs who had formerly served as Paris firemen.