1897 French 75 mm

In 1898 the French army adopted a revolutionary new piece of field artillery, the Matériel de 75mm Mle 1897 or as it came to be called in English, the French 75. The gun is considered to be the first modern artillery piece because of its rapid firing system. It used a hydro-pneumatic recoil absorbing mechanism that allowed the crew of six to fire the gun repeatedly at a target without re-aiming after every shot. By the end of WWI, about 12,000 had been produced and were in use by many different armies including the British and Americans.

Flintlock Pistol

Eighteenth century flintlock dueling pistol.

Flintlock Rifle

Early 18th century flintlock rifle.

1851 Colt Navy Revolver

The 1851 Colt Navy six-shot revolver was the iconic hand gun of mid-nineteenth century America. It was originally developed as an U.S. Navy officer’s side arm and, with various revisions, was used by the army as well as civilians and law enforcement in the civil war and the western migration. The navy model of 1851 used .36 calibre ammunition while later models were made or adapted to several other calibres.

U.S. Army M-1 Rifle

Working in the U.S.A., Canadian citizen John Garand designed the 30 caliber, semi-automatic M1 Garand rifle for the U.S. Army. It was the standard infantry rifle from 1936 until 1959. Modeled in Blender and rendered with Cycles.

WWI British Mark IV Tank

The British Mark IV tank was first used at the battle of Messines Ridge, Belgium, in 1917. The tank was eight meters long, 4.12 meters wide and weighed 28 tons. It carried a crew of eight and was powered by a Daimler-Foster, 6-cylinder in-line sleeve valve 16 litre petrol engine which developed 105 bhp at 1,000 rpm. Six different manufacturers were contracted to build a total of 1,220 units. Interestingly, captured Mark IV’s were repainted and used by the German army during the war. The tank came in male and female version; the difference being in the armament. This model was made and rendered in Blender.

American WWI Tank M1917

When preparing for its entry into WWI, the American military noticed that it had no tanks. Lacking time to develop one of its own, the US Army negotiated a licence to copy the existing French Renault FT tank. It was called the M1917 “Six Ton”.  It was designed to carry a two-man crew and was about the size of Jeep Cherokee or Range Rover. Due to initial problems arising from the fact that the French plans were in metric measurements that the American manufacturers couldn’t understand (or maybe the first prototypes were either very small or very large) manufacturing was severely delayed and none of the tanks were ever used in combat. This model  uses Canadian markings: after the war, the Canadians purchased 250 of the M1917s from the US Army at a cost of $240 each, which they used for training purposes. This model was built and rendered in Blender.