The Battle of Hamel: An ‘All Arms Battle’ or ‘AIF Small Arms Fire Superiority’?

Abstract

This paper examines the origins and evolution of Australian Imperial Force (AIF) overhead machine gun fire tactics and how success correlated not just with its presence, but failure in its absence, throughout the First World War. The machine gun tactics used in the capture of the northern half of the Hamel objective on 4 July 1918 are used as an example as to why this correlation may also be causal.