King of Battle: Artillery Operations in World War 1

All original World War One artillery operations film. I explain the three artillery techniques used during World War I, the last developed by the Germans and it may have won the war had not the Americans entered, bring fresh troops. One of the unexpected revelations of the Great War was the overwhelmingly destructive power of artillery. Never before had so many guns of such range and power been put into the field. Mechanization had increased the speed with which artillery could be maneuvered, allowing sheets of stell to be rained down upon opposing armies. When the Battle of the Marne ended on 15 September 1914, both sides had suffered over a quarter of a million casualties, most of them to artillery fire.

An estimated 1.5-billion artillery shells were reportedly fired on the Western Front during the Great War. During the Franco-Prussian War 45 years earlier, a cannon averaged forty rounds a month. By 1918, French and German cannons fired ten times that amount – in just one day.

The result was a stalemate for which the First World War is infamous.

Infantry dug trenches and deep dugouts to protect them from artillery shells. The Western Front turned from a battlefield into the world’s largest siege, with both sides repeatedly failing to break through each other’s defences. Generals had expected new technology such as tanks, telephones, airplanes and gas to bring forth offensive advantage, but instead, artillery turned the war into a defensive one.

Just as artillery had brought the war to a grinding halt, it ultimately broke the stalemate later in the war, which I will explain. Much of the artillery fighting during World War One was counter-battery – gunners aiming to destroy each other’s artillery across the breadth of no man’s land – but also used to support infantry attacks.