The Gewehr was a well-constructed and accurate weapon, but it was ill-suited to the conditions on the Western Front. German infantry, meanwhile, were issued with the Gewehr 98, a rifle with a bolt action designed by the famous Mauser company. In fact, it was so successful that further variants were used throughout World War II and, in some countries, for decades after that. A trained regular soldier could fire 15 rounds per minute with the weapon. Fed by a magazine that could hold 10 bullets, the bolt-action Lee-Enfield was a robust, reliable rifle well-suited to the harsh conditions of trench warfare. 303, a variation of a weapon that had been used by the army since 1902. The standard rifle of the British army during World War I was the Lee-Enfield. Here we look at 10 of the weapons that defined the nature of the conflict during the Great War, including innovations that would help to break the stalemate on the Western Front. This resulted in two well-armed, evenly matched sides slugging it out in a gruelling war of attrition, and led to further technological breakthroughs as each sought to gain an edge. 'At the start of the First World War, the major powers had armies steeped in the traditions of the 19th century but (they) were armed with the technology and firepower of the 20th century,' says Matt Brosnan, a historian at the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in London. On the home front, submarines and naval blockades threatened to starve whole populations, and civilians were killed in air raids for the first time. Instead, they soon found that recent technological developments had rendered such tactics obsolete, and before long they were mired in a grim stalemate, facing each other in networks of muddy trenches hundreds of miles long. Cavalry and infantry would engage in a few pitch battles, after which the loser would swiftly sue for peace. The Great Powers entered World War I expecting to fight it in much the same way as previous recent conflicts.

World at war guns list