General Characteristics Of The Wagons Armed With The First World War

The armed wagons used in the First world war were the first vehicles of the kind to appear on the battlegrounds, therefore they were totally innovative. You almost immediately manifested a differentiation between heavy (conceived for sustaining the infantry, therefore that they moved to the same footstep of the infantrymen) wagons and light (essentially destined to the exploitation of the success, therefore endowed with a comparable speed with that of the cavalry) wagons. Generally the motor was to gasoline (100-150 HP for the British or German wagons and 35-90 HP for the French wagons), the corazzatura, of varying thickness among 6 and 30 mm for the heavy wagons, it was spiked and the system of suspensions was almost absent using winding tracks or suspensions for tractor. The armament was in short beards, that is in side casematte, but already in 1917 the first wagons appeared with armament in rotating turret (Renault FT -17). The standard caliber of the principal armament for the heavy wagons was of 57.75 mm, while the light wagons were armed with guns of smaller caliber or machine guns.