20th Century

Overview

No century changed weapons faster. In 1900 the standard infantry arm was a bolt-action rifle with a five-round magazine, artillery was aimed by eye, and cavalry still carried lances. By 1991 a rifleman carried a selective-fire assault rifle, a squad had guided anti-tank missiles, and the two superpowers held enough thermonuclear weapons to end civilization. WarPast splits this century into one era because the weapons form a single line of descent; the wars themselves are covered as historical contexts, from World War I and World War II to the Cold War, Korean War and Vietnam War.

Industrialized war, 1900–1918

The First World War exposed the mismatch between weapons and tactics. Armies expecting mobile campaigns met the combined power of the bolt-action rifle, barbed wire, the water-cooled machine gun and quick-firing artillery, and the Western Front froze into trenches. Artillery caused most of the deaths, by most estimates well over half. The response was a burst of invention: the hand grenade and trench mortar became standard infantry weapons, poison gas appeared in 1915, tanks crossed the trench lines in 1916, aircraft went from scouting to fighting within two years, and in 1918 the German MP 18 introduced the submachine gun.

Rifles and pistols

Every major army fought with a bolt-action rifle. The German Mauser Gewehr 98 had a five-round internal magazine and the strongest action of the war; the British Lee-Enfield Rifle held ten rounds and cycled so fast that trained regulars fired fifteen aimed rounds a minute, the "mad minute" of 1914; the French Lebel Model 1886 carried eight rounds in a tube under the barrel and was obsolescent but sound; the Russian Mosin-Nagant M1891 and the American M1903 Springfield, a Mauser derivative, each held five. Officers and specialists carried the toggle-locked Luger P08, the Mauser C96 bought by Germany as a substitute standard, the .455 Webley Revolver and the .45 M1911 Pistol, which stayed in American service past the next war.

Machine guns

The machine gun made the frontal assault across open ground ruinous. The German MG 08, a water-cooled Maxim on a sled mount firing 400 rounds a minute, was the dominant defensive weapon of the Western Front; the British Vickers Machine Gun, another Maxim derivative, could fire for hours on end. The air-cooled Lewis Gun with its 47-round pan was the first practical light machine gun, the French Chauchat was issued by the hundred thousand despite its unreliability, and the water-cooled Browning M1917 arrived with the Americans in the last months.

Trench weapons

The trenches bred their own close-quarters arms. Hand grenades were essential for clearing them, above all the British Mills Bomb and the German Model 24 Stielhandgranate; the British Stokes mortar gave infantry plunging fire of their own; the German Flammenwerfer cleared bunkers at short range. Raiding parties went out at night with trench clubs, lead-weighted or spiked, with the Mark I Trench Knife and its knuckle-duster guard, and with the sharpened Entrenching Tool. Steel helmets returned to war after three centuries: the British Brodie Helmet, the French Adrian and the German Stahlhelm all appeared in 1915 and 1916.

Artillery, gas, tanks and aircraft

The field guns of 1914 were quick-firers on recoil carriages, led by the French 75 mm, which fired fifteen rounds a minute without relaying, the German 77 mm and the British 18-pounder, and behind them stood heavy pieces up to the German 42 cm "Big Bertha" howitzers that broke the Belgian forts and the Paris Gun that shelled the French capital from eighty miles. Poison gas began with chlorine at Ypres in April 1915; phosgene caused most of the gas deaths, and mustard gas, a blistering agent, was the most feared. Britain's lozenge-shaped Mark I to Mark V tanks, armed with 6-pounder guns or machine guns, crossed the trench lines from the Somme onward, France's two-man Renault FT introduced the rotating turret that every later tank copied, and Germany built only a handful of its clumsy A7V. In the air the Fokker Eindecker, the first fighter with a gun synchronized to fire through the propeller, gave way to the Sopwith Camel and the SPAD XIII, and both sides were bombing cities by 1917.

Between the wars, 1918–1939

The twenty-one years of peace were a period of intense development rather than stagnation. The lesson of the trenches was firepower per soldier, and it drove the self-loading rifle, led by the American M1 Garand of 1936, the first standard-issue semi-automatic rifle of any major army. Submachine guns such as the Thompson Submachine Gun matured into military weapons, the M1918 BAR and the Bren gave squads a light automatic, and the German MG 34 created the general-purpose machine gun. Tank doctrine split between infantry support and independent armored formations; Germany chose the latter and proved it in 1939 and 1940. Pistol design produced the Browning Hi-Power and the Walther P38, both still influential.

Self-loading rifles and submachine guns

The bolt-action's flaw was that the shooter had to leave the sight to work the bolt, and the answer was the self-loader: the gas-operated, eight-round Garand, the Soviet SVT-40 Rifle, reliable but costly to make, and the German Gewehr 41 and 43, the second a capable rifle that came too late in numbers. Submachine guns became standard for vehicle crews, paratroops and close-quarters fighting: the Thompson in .45 with its drum and box magazines, the German MP 28 and Bergmann MP 35 that grew out of the MP 18, the Finnish Suomi KP/-31 with its 71-round drum, and the Soviet PPD that copied it.

Light machine guns and pistols

The BAR in .30-06 served as the American squad automatic, the British Bren in .303 with its curved top magazine became the Commonwealth standard, and the belt- or drum-fed MG 34, usable as a light or a heavy gun at 900 rounds a minute, set the pattern for every general-purpose machine gun since. The Browning Hi-Power, John Browning's design completed by Dieudonné Saive at FN, carried thirteen rounds of 9 mm; the Walther PP and PPK introduced the double-action automatic, and the P38 brought it to a service pistol meant to replace the Luger.

Tanks, aircraft and artillery

Two schools of armor came out of 1918: tanks parceled out to support infantry, the French and British orthodoxy, or concentrated with motorized infantry and aircraft in independent formations, the doctrine of Guderian in Germany and of Fuller and Liddell Hart in Britain. Germany chose the second. Its Panzer I and II were training and light tanks, inadequate for battle, but they were the vehicles the Panzer divisions learned on; the Renault FT served on in many armies, Britain's Vickers Medium was the standard tank of the 1920s, and the Soviet T-26 and the fast BT series led toward the T-34. Air forces converted from biplanes to all-metal monoplanes, the Junkers Ju 87 and the Douglas Dauntless proved dive bombing, Douhet's theory of strategic bombing shaped the RAF's Bomber Command and the US Air Corps, and the American and Japanese navies worked out carrier doctrine. The German 8.8 cm Flak, built as an anti-aircraft gun, became the most versatile artillery piece of the age; anti-tank rifles were effective until armor outgrew them around 1942; and the Soviet Katyusha Rocket Launcher and the German Nebelwerfer brought back rocket artillery.

The Second World War, 1939–1945

World War II was a war of production as much as of tactics, and the side that could build and replace weapons fastest prevailed. Every category advanced at once. The MG 42 fired 1,200 rounds a minute; cheap submachine guns such as the Soviet PPSh-41, the German MP40 and the British Sten Gun were made by the million; shaped-charge weapons like the bazooka, the Panzerfaust and the PIAT gave infantry a real answer to tanks. The most consequential small arm was the German StG 44, the first practical assault rifle, which fired an intermediate cartridge from a thirty-round magazine and set the pattern for everything that followed. The war ended with jet fighters in service and two atomic bombs dropped on Japan.

Rifles and the assault rifle

The Garand was arguably the best standard rifle of the war, and the only semi-automatic issued to every infantryman. Germany fought with the Karabiner 98k, Russia with the Mosin-Nagant M91/30, which Soviet snipers used with a 4x scope to deadly effect (see the Mosin Nagant 1891/30 Sniper Rifle), Britain with the Lee-Enfield No. 4 and Japan with the 7.7 mm Type 99 Rifle. The StG 44 fired the 7.92x33 mm Kurz cartridge, less powerful than a rifle round but controllable in automatic fire, from a selective-fire rifle with a thirty-round magazine, and it directly inspired the AK-47.

Submachine guns and machine guns

The PPSh-41 with its 71-round drum was made in millions and fired 900 rounds a minute; the MP40 with its folding stock was the German standard; the Sten cost a few dollars and armed the Commonwealth and the resistance movements; the American M3 Grease Gun replaced the Thompson; and the Italian Beretta Model 38 was among the best made. The MG 42, air-cooled with a quick-change barrel and the "buzz saw" sound of its rate of fire, was the war's outstanding machine gun. The M1919 Browning Machine Gun served as infantry, vehicle and aircraft gun, the Bren remained the Commonwealth light machine gun, and the pan-fed Degtyaryov DP-27 was the Soviet one.

Anti-tank weapons

As armor thickened, infantry got weapons that could kill a tank. The American Bazooka fired a 60 mm shaped-charge rocket from the shoulder; the German Panzerfaust, a disposable single-shot launcher made in millions, could stop any Allied tank at close range, and the reusable Panzerschreck was an enlarged copy of the bazooka; the British PIAT threw its bomb from a spring-driven spigot with no backblast, so it could be fired from a room.

Tanks, aircraft and the bomb

The tank war was fought by the German Panzer IV with its long 75 mm gun, the Tiger I with its 88 mm and near-impenetrable front, and the Panther with sloped armor; by the Soviet T-34, whose sloped armor, reliability and numbers outweighed German quality, and the IS-2 with a 122 mm gun that could kill a Tiger at long range; and by the American M4 Sherman, reliable, numerous and under-gunned against the late German tanks until the 90 mm M26 Pershing arrived in 1945. In the air the Bf 109 and the Fw 190 faced the Spitfire and the Merlin-engined P-51 Mustang, whose range let American bombers reach deep into Germany; the Japanese Zero ruled the Pacific until its lack of protection told against it; and the Me 262, the first operational jet fighter, came too late and in too few numbers. The B-17 carried the daylight bombing campaign over Europe, and the B-29 carried the atomic bombs, Little Boy to Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 and Fat Man to Nagasaki three days later, that ended the war and opened the nuclear age.

The Cold War, 1945–1991

Two superpowers able to destroy each other competed instead through proxy wars, arms races and technology, and the confrontation that never came shaped every weapon of the period. The assault rifle became universal: the AK-47 and its descendants armed most of the world's armies and insurgencies, while the West moved from the FN FAL and M14 to the M16 Rifle and the small-caliber, high-velocity cartridge. Infantry gained guided and rocket weapons, from the RPG-7 and the M72 LAW to wire-guided anti-tank missiles and shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles. Dedicated marksman rifles such as the SVD Rifle returned to the squad. Above all of it sat intercontinental missiles, nuclear submarines and the doctrine of mutually assured destruction. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 closes the era; the conflicts since are covered under Modern.

Assault rifles and machine guns

Mikhail Kalashnikov's AK-47 in 7.62x39 mm, gas-operated with a rotating bolt and a thirty-round magazine, is perhaps the most influential weapon design in history, with something over a hundred million made with its descendants: the stamped-receiver AKM of 1959, the 5.45 mm AK-74 of 1974, and the PK Machine Gun and RPK that fed the squad. The American M14 Rifle in 7.62 mm NATO lasted only a few years before Eugene Stoner's 5.56 mm M16, adopted in 1964 and troubled in Vietnam until it was refined, and its shortened M4 Carbine; the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon and the M60 Machine Gun gave the squad its automatic fire. Europe's answers were the FN FAL and the G3 Rifle.

Handguns and sniper rifles

The Soviet Makarov in 9x18 mm was the Warsaw Pact sidearm; the American M1911A1 served until 1985, when the fifteen-shot Beretta M9 replaced it; and the Austrian Glock 17, polymer-framed and striker-fired, changed the whole design of the handgun. Marksman and sniper rifles came back: the Dragunov SVD with its ten-round magazine, the M24 Sniper Weapon System on a Remington 700 action, and the Barrett M82, a .50 caliber semi-automatic that reaches vehicles and equipment beyond a kilometer.

Anti-tank, air defense and precision weapons

Wire-guided missiles gave infantry a reach against armor that no gun could match: the Soviet Sagger, which cut down Israeli armor in 1973, the American TOW on vehicles and helicopters, and the man-portable Dragon, followed after the era by the fire-and-forget Javelin. The RPG-7, introduced in 1961, became the most widely used anti-tank weapon in history, and the disposable M72 LAW replaced the bazooka. The shoulder-fired SA-7 was the first practical man-portable anti-aircraft missile, and the American Stinger in Afghan hands drove Soviet helicopters from the sky. Thermonuclear warheads rode intercontinental missiles that could reach any point on earth in thirty minutes, submarine-launched missiles that could not be found, and the B-52 and Tu-95 bombers, under the doctrine of mutually assured destruction. Vietnam introduced the laser-guided bomb, and by the end of the era the Maverick missile and the Tomahawk cruise missile, accurate to meters over a thousand miles, pointed at the precision warfare of the century's last decade.

Collecting from this century

Twentieth-century military arms are the most widely collected of any era, from Great War bolt-actions and trench knives to Cold War surplus. Many are still in service somewhere, and many are regulated: in the United States, select-fire weapons and destructive devices fall under the National Firearms Act, and WarPast does not sell firearms. Edged weapons, helmets, field gear, bayonets and deactivated or inert pieces remain open to collectors.

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