The British introduced a large number of tanks to the battlefield for the first time in September 1916 during the battle of the Somme. One way to break out of the trenches along the Western Front was to bust through with newly developed armored-tracked vehicles dubbed tanks. "The Americans, by 1917, have to figure this out." Kyle Hatzinger, a history instructor at the U.S. "It becomes, 'How do we get out of the trenches?' " said Maj. Such fighting was new to most American forces, who had been trained in the tactics of mobile warfare, always advancing. It compelled opposing forces to dig hundreds of miles of trenches, with a deadly "no man's land" between the two sides where troops were liable to be mowed down. Hand-cranked, high-capacity, rapid-firing firearms had been used as far back as the Civil War.īut it was American inventor Hiram Maxim's 1880s design for a single-barrel, portable machine gun and other later versions that became ubiquitous on both sides during World War I. Here's a look at inventions that were new to the doughboys but that we now take for granted: The world's first mechanized war introduced enhanced weaponry and equipment, most of it designed to take lives, but some aimed at saving lives. 11, 1918, more than 4.7 million Americans had served, and 115,000 had died. entry into World War I, some of the innovations that were developed or came into wide use during the conflict remain with us today.Īmerica entered more than 2 1/2 years after the war began, joining Britain, France and Russia in the fight against Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
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