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MORE WEAPONS OF THE 1920'S, AND HOW TO BLOW AWAY CULTISTS WITH THEM (or, When Tommy Guns Just Aren't Enough)

In deference to Katya's increasing confusion about the efficacy of armed rebellion to achieve lasting social change for the better, this week's fun fact will avoid references to the use of these weapons against the bloated dead beached whale of capitalist culture, etc., and concentrate on their efficacy in eviscerating cultists.

To begin:

FLAMETHROWERS:

Contrary to what we had thought, flamethrowers were introduced fairly early on. They were first employed by the Germans at the battle of Hooge on July 30, 1915. Flamethrowers consisted of a backpack with a resevoir of compressed nitrogen and a tank containing about ten pints of "liquid flame", usually a mixture of coal tar and benzine. A hose ran from the fuel tank to a nozzle, on which was an ignition device; on pressing the trigger, gas forced the liquid through the nozzle and at the same time the ignition device fired the liquid. The result was a stream of burning liquid with an effective range of about 45 meters.

Flamethrowers proved to be a terrifyingly effective weapon, and they were quickly adopted by the British, French, and American forces. They had a somewhat shorter range than many of the other weapons of The Great War which, in conjunction with their efficacy, meant that flamethrower operators quickly became targets; no one wanted an enemy flamethrower anywhere near them. It became customary for flamethrower operators to go into combat surrounded by an infantry squad to protect them until they could be usefully deployed.

An advantage of flamethrowers is that they don't require that much skill to operate; anyone who can aim a garden hose can aim a flamethrower, which makes them, oddly enough, a good weapon for novices. Even an untrained combatant can cause massive damage against large numbers of opponents, as long as they can get within range (as a caveat, one should make sure the novices are bright enough to avoid rather literal "friendly fire" casualties, which are somewhat easy to achieve with this weapon.) In addition, their use as a psychological weapon of terror is unparalleled. Katya suspects that flamethrowers might also prove rather effective against creatures which are immune to certain forms of more conventional weaponry.

BAYONETS:

Bayonets (blades affixed to gun muzzles) were a common weapon deuring The Great War; the French preferred a long needle bayonet, the Germans adopted a "pioneer" bayonet with the rear edge formed into a saw, and the British used the standard sword bayonet. All were relatively useless ' by World War I, the bayonet was an outdated weapon. Once guns became fairly reliable and reloading time became negligable, they became pretty much unnecessary - why stab when you can still shoot? There are, of course, situations where they can be effective; if you run out of ammunition or your gun jams, they allow you to turn your weapon into an unwieldy sword instead of an unwieldy club. But it is a telling fact that bayonets accounted for a whopping 0.3% of wounds received during World War I.

HAND GRENADES:

Hand grenades (small missiles, usually containing an explosive charge, and generally thrown by hand) can, in a pinch, be made fairly easily at home. "Jam Bombs", for example, is a simple version that can be handily created out of empty cans, gunpowder, stones, and cord (Katya claims it's easy and fun!) Somewhat better are the manufactured versions which were commonly issued to Great War infantry. The three most common types after the War were the British Mills Bomb, the French pineapple grenade, and the German stick grenade.

A trained soldier could throw a grenade about 35-40 meters. In untrained hands there is, of course, the danger that they may not be thrown accurately. Grenades were generally fitted with some sort of time fuse that burnt for about 4 seconds - sufficient time for the grenade to reach the enemy, but not enough time for it to be picked up and thrown back. A modified version of the Mills Bomb, the number 23, was outfitted with a steel rod at the base so it could fired from a rifle.

In addition to explosive grenades, smoke and gas grenades were also used. Poison gasses used in World War I include acrolein, benzyl bromide, blue cross gas, bromacetone, bromo-benzyl-cyanide, chlorine, chloropicrin, cyanogen bromide, cyanogen chloride, dimethul sulphate, diphenylchorarsine, ethyldichlorarsine, green cross gas, mustard gas, phenyldichlorarsine, phosgene, xylyl bromide . . . all of them were quite nasty.

Both explosive and gas grenades are extremely effective, especially in enclosed areas such as trenches, buildings, and underground cavern networks. Both might prove useful against creatures which have resistances to more conventional weaponry. Gas grenades should only be used if gas masks are also purchased (which might be a good idea anyway, Katya opines), for reasons which should be fairly obvious.

GUNS:

Guns are, of course, the weapon of choice of the discerning 1920's cult fighter. There are a great variety of types, ranging from tiny Saturday Night Specials, which are eaily concealable but do little actual damage, to Heavy Machine Guns, which are difficult to move (much less conceal), but which can practically wipe out entire armies by themselves if correctly positioned.

Most guns do require some training for effective use. The best weapon for a novice is probably a shotgun, which has a wide spread and makes aim less important. After that come submachineguns such as the already much-discussed Tommy Gun, and portable Light Machine Guns such as the Lewis Gun (the weapon of choice for Victoria Cross recipients, it was capable of downing planes.) These produce such a high volume of fire that once again, expert aim may not be quite as important. Both the shotgun and the Tommy gun are short-range weapons; the Lewis Gun and similar LMG's are longer range, but are heavy enough that they take a strong operator to use them.

The most common weapon of World War I was the rifle, with the best being the British Lee-Enfield. In the hands of a trained soldier, these long-range guns often had a distinct advantage over shorter-ranged weapons. Handguns of a variety of types were also popular sidearms, and of course an expert with a handgun is likely to be able to take out a duffer with any kind of gun, except perhaps a heavy machine gun.

MORTARS:

The most common mortar weapon of the time was the Stokes Mortar, invented in 1915, which was the prototype for every mortar since designed. It consisted of a smooth-bore barrel with a closed end, resting on a baseplate and held up at an angle of 45 degrees by a bipod. A screw mechanism allowed the barrel to be adjusted for angles of elevation. It fired a simple cylindrical bomb with a perforated tube at the rear end into which a shotgun cartridge filled with gunpowder was fitted. The front of the bomb carried a simple fuse based on the Mills grenade. The bomb was simply dropped down the barrel, to strike a firing pin fixed at the base; this ignited the shotgun cartridge and the explosion of the powder ejected the bomb. The first bombs weighed about 9 kilograms and had a range of about 900 meters. By 1925, bombs were lighter and had a much greater range.

This is a nice weapon for seige or trench warfare, but Katya does wonder about its efficacy in battling the cult. It takes a while to adjust the aim, especially for untrained operators. Probably we should only look for these if we find ourselves needing to beseige a cult stronghold. Against fast moving enemies, they're pretty much useless.

ARTILLERY:

Artillery (extremely large guns which fire explosive shells great distances) can be movable ("field" artillery), relatively stationary, or mounted on a large vehicle such as a ship. Larger artillery pieces in the Great War could have a range of fifteen miles. As such, they were one of the real "nuke them from orbit" options of World War I.

While of limited effectiveness against individual cultists, there are several scenarios in which these might come in handy. Like mortars, they are excellent seige weapons; however, unlike mortars, they are also useful in the "to prevent There-Is-No-Peace from manifesting, you must utterly destroy his Pyramid of Evil" scenario, or the somewhat less hopeful "Great Cthulhu is ten miles to the east, coming this way, and he looks pissed" scenario.

TANKS:

Tanks (armored ground vehicles) were relatively ineffective when they were first introduced in World War I, but by the end of the war they had been modified sufficiently to be very handy weapons: well-armored enough to protect their own crews, and able to support an advance with their own gunfire. Once the bugs were worked out of the caterpillar tread idea, they were pretty much all-terrain vehicles.

Katya can think of numerous situations where they would be useful against cultists; unfortunately, they are difficult to acquire, require multiple people to operate, and are all but impossible to conceal. The drawbacks of finding and operating such a vehicle probably outweigh the numerous advantages of facing, say, rioting madmen in an armored battlewagon.

SHIPS:

Ships were among the premier fighting machines of World War I; the larger ones were capable of practically unlimited armor and firepower. With proper artillery, a ship could attack a coastal city as easily as other naval vessels. Classes of ships included battleships, battlecruisers, light cruisers, torpedo boats, and submarines.

Ships were capable of both naval combat and offshore bombardment - and both could be effective against cultists we know to both possess ships and operate in seaside, lakeside, and riverside communities . . . or at least, they could be useful in certain situations (see the section on artillery.) Boats are also actually to some extent more concealable than tanks, since the sea is enormous and (we fervently hope) largely empty.

However, actually military vessels would be almost impossible to obtain, short of piracy. Such vessels take ages to build, are expensive to maintain, and are fantastically effective combat units, which means that they are few in number and jealously guarded by the governments (and other extremely wealthy, powerful organizations) that have them.

It is, however, possible to outfit a ship for combat without actually obtaining a military vessel, and this is in fact a favorite technique of smugglers, pirates, and bankrupt governments worldwide. Although an ordinary vessel will not have the armor of a true military ship, a swift ship with some added artillery pieces can still be a powerful weapon to have in a fight that takes place at sea or on seaside.

Ordinarily, Katya would judge such a ship to have some of the insurmountable difficulties of tanks; they are complicated to crew and expensive to obtain. However, she estimates that given the connections of certain members of the current group, it may be possible to overcome these drawbacks with a bit of ingenuity.

ZEPPELINS:

Zeppelins (lighter-than-air flying units) saw limited but effective use in World War I, and were the only German units which actually did damage in London itself. Their use as a military weapon was already rapidly fading by the end of the war, however; advances in airplane technology made zeppelins seem slow, unwieldy, and vulnerable. They might come in handy if there's a place where a lot of bombs need to be dropped, but that's probably about it. Besides, they're quite expensive, and difficult to pilot.

AIRPLANES:

The First World War saw the advent of the airplane (heavier-than-air flying unit) as a viable military weapon. In a period of only a few years, military aircraft advanced from rudimentary flying craft to killing machines. Change was so fast that aerial superiority during the war tended to change hands whenever new designs were introduced. In 1916, the Germans controlled the skies over the trenches, and the English developed three fighters to regain control of the air war. The best and most famous of these three designs was the Sopwith Camel, which became the most common plane design and can serve as a representative example for period airplanes in general.

Small and lightweight, the Camel represented the state-of the-art in fighter design at the time. The Sopwith Camel shot down 1,294 enemy aircraft during World War I, more than any other Allied fighter. However, it was so difficult to fly that more men lost their lives while learning to fly it than using it in combat. The pilot, engine, armament and controls were all crammed into a seven foot space at the front of the airplane, which helped give the plane its phenomenal performance, but it also made the plane very tricky to control. In fact, the poor state of pilot training during most of the war meant that in 1916 and 1917, the average life expectancy of an English pilot was little more than two weeks.

In the hands of a skilled pilot, however, it was one of the deadliest weapons of the war, and proved tremendously successful in combat. The Camel featured twin Vickers machine guns which were mounted side by side in front of the cockpit - a first for British fighters and a design feature that became standard for nearly 20 years. Camels could also be fitted with up to eight air-to-air rockets, which even in their relatively primitive World War I state proved to be quite effective, and four bombs beneath the fuselage. (In the last year of the War, the superior Sopwith Snipe was introduced, which was similarly armed but had better speed, better handling, and a higher flight ceiling than the Camel. They are somewhat rarer than the Camel, but, had they been introduced into the combat theatre sooner, would undoubtably have proved an even more effective weapon.)

Perhaps surprisingly, airplanes were both cheaper and eaier to obtain than ships and tanks, largely because they were made mostly out of fabric and wood (which also, unfortunately, made them somewhat susceptible to fire.) Airplanes do have some drawbacks; they cannot be operated indefinitely without refueling, and they are useless without a skilled pilot. However, Katya considers neither of those problems insurmountable. In terms of effectiveness against cultists, it is Katya considered opinion that there are innumerable situations where air support could be of considerable value - particularly against flying creatures (and, for that matter, creatures and cultists who are unable to fly and therefore can fight back with only minimal effectiveness.)

Of course, this is an interesting Fun Fact in light of the fact that ever since Dashur, Katya won't even eat meat.

Pleasant dreams.

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