The First World War

by Hew Strachan

The so-called ‘bi-blocs’ helped overcome France’s shell shortage, but their weaknesses generated shortages in other areas: over 600 French guns were destroyed - and their crews killed or injured - by premature explosions in 1915. Germany likewise used turning lathes to produce what it called ’auxiliary ammunition’ from cast iron: in 1915 it lost 2,300 field guns and 900 light howitzers to premature explosions, as many as were disabled by enemy action. The difficulties were not just those of materials and plant. Expansion had overtaken the procedures for quality control. In January 1915 one German observer reckoned that half the shells fired by the French were duds. Some failures were the result of incompetence and haste, but others were the fruit of profiteering and fraud. At the battle of the Somme in July 1916 25 per cent of British guns were put out of action as a result of design faults and inferior materials, and 30 per cent of shells failed to explode.