The development of
Tanks in World War I began as a solution to the stalemate which
trench warfareTrench warfare was a form of warfare in which both combatants occupied static fortified fighting lines, consisting largely of trenches, in which troops were largely immune to the enemy's small arms fire and were substantially sheltered from artillery. It has become a byword for stalemate in...
had brought to the
western frontFollowing the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the German army opened the Western Front by first invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The tide of the advance was dramatically turned with the Battle of the Marne...
. The first prototype of the
Mark I tankThe British Mark I was a tracked vehicle developed by the British Army during World War I and the world's first combat tank, entering service in August 1916, and first used in action on the morning of 15 September 1916...
was tested for the
British ArmyThe British Army is the land armed forces branch of the British Armed Forces. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England and Scotland and...
on 8 September 1915. Although initially termed "land ships" by the British Army, initial vehicles were referred to as "water-carriers" (then shortened to "tanks") to preserve secrecy.
While the British took the lead in
tankA tank is a tracked, armoured fighting vehicle designed for front-line combat which combines operational mobility and tactical offensive and defensive capabilities...
development, the
FrenchFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
were not far behind and fielded their first tanks in 1917. The
GermansThe German Empire is the name commonly used in English to describe Germany from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871 to 1918, when it became a German republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of Wilhelm II .The term Second Reich...
, on the other hand, were slower to develop tanks, concentrating on
anti-tankAnti-tank refers to any method of combating military armored fighting vehicles, notably tanks. The most common anti-tank systems include artillery with a high muzzle velocity, missiles , various autocannons firing penetrating ammunition, and anti-tank mines.In the area of anti-tank warfare, three...
weapons.
Initial results were mixed, with reliability problems causing considerable attrition rates during
combatArmoured warfare or tank warfare is the use of armoured fighting vehicles in modern warfare. It is a major component of modern methods of war....
deployment and transit. The heavily bombed-out terrain was impassable to conventional vehicles, and only highly mobile tanks such as the Mark I and FTs performed reasonably well. The Mark I's
rhomboidTraditionally, in two-dimensional geometry, a rhomboid is a parallelogram in which adjacent sides are of unequal lengths and angles are oblique.A parallelogram with sides of equal length is a rhombus but not a rhomboid....
shape meant it could navigate larger obstacles, especially long trenches, better than many modern
armoured fighting vehicleAn armoured fighting vehicle is a military vehicle, protected by armour and armed with weapons. AFV's can be wheeled or tracked.Armoured fighting vehicles are classified according to their intended role on the battlefield and characteristics. This classification is not absolute; at different times...
s.
The tank would eventually make the trench warfare of
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
obsolete, and the thousands of tanks fielded by French and British forces made a significant contribution to the war effort.
Along with the tank, the first
self-propelled gunA self-propelled gun is a gun, whether it be an artillery piece, anti-tank gun, or anti-aircraft gun, mounted on a motorized wheeled or tracked chassis...
and the first
armoured personnel carrierAn armoured personnel carrier is an armoured fighting vehicle designed to transport infantry to the battlefield.APCs are usually armed with only a machine gun although variants carry recoilless rifles, anti-tank guided missiles , or mortars...
were also introduced in WWI (the Mark V tank was built with space inside for a small squad of
infantryInfantrymen are soldiers who are specifically trained for the role of fighting on foot to engage the enemy face to face and have historically borne the brunt of the casualties of combat in wars. As the oldest branch of the Combat Arms they are the backbone of armies...
).
Conceptual roots of the tank
The conceptual roots of the tank arguably go back to ancient times, with strange siege engines and the like. The famous 'tank' design of
Leonardo da VinciLeonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian polymath, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer....
marked the first attempt at workable concept but was never brought beyond paper drawings. Whether it influenced anything later is unknown. With the coming of the
Industrial RevolutionThe Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, and transport had a profound effect on the socioeconomic and cultural conditions in the United Kingdom. The changes subsequently spread throughout Europe, North...
and the demonstrable power of steam, it was not too long before James Cowan presented his proposal for a Steam Powered Land Ram in 1855, towards the end of the
Crimean WarThe Crimean War was fought between the Russian Empire on one side and an alliance of the British Empire, France, the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Sardinia on the other. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...
. Looking like a helmet on 'footed' Boydell wheels, early forerunners of the
Pedrail wheelThe pedrail wheel is a type of wheel developed in the early 20th century for all-terrain locomotion. It was used in agricultural machinery and was considered as a possible technique for the development of the tank in World War I, but was ultimately replaced by the more robust continuous track...
and
caterpillar trackContinuous tracks are large tracks used on the so-called caterpillar tanks, construction equipment and certain other off-road vehicles. Unlike the Kégresse tracks which use a flexible belt, most continuous tracks are made of a number of rigid units that are joined to each other...
, it was essentially an armoured steam tractor equipped with
cannonA cannon is any tubular piece of artillery that uses gunpowder or other usually explosive-based propellants to launch a projectile. Cannon vary in caliber, range, mobility, rate of fire, angle of fire, and firepower; different forms of cannon combine and balance these attributes in varying degrees,...
and (shades of
BoudicaBoudica , formerly known as Boadicea and known in Welsh as "Buddug") was a queen of the Brittonic Iceni tribe of what is now known as East Anglia in England, who led an uprising of the tribes against the occupying forces of the Roman Empire.Boudica's husband, Prasutagus, an Icenian king who had...
) rotating
scytheA scythe is an agricultural hand tool for mowing grass or reaping crops. It was largely replaced by horse-drawn and then tractor machinery, but is still used in some areas of Europe and Asia.- Structure:...
s sprouting from the sides.
Lord PalmerstonHenry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, KG, GCB, PC was a British statesman who served twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century...
is said to have dismissed it as 'barbaric', but in truth, it was mechanically impractical.
From 1904 to 1909, David Roberts, the engineer and
managing directorManaging director is the term used for the chief executive of many limited companies from English speaking countries...
of Hornsby & Sons of
GranthamGrantham is a market town within the South Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England. It stands athwart the East Coast Main Line railway , the historic A1 main north-south road, and the River Witham. Grantham is located approximately south of the city of Lincoln, and approximately east of...
, built a series of
tractorA tractor is a vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a trailer or machinery used in agriculture or construction...
s using his patented 'chain-track' which were put through their paces by the
British ArmyThe British Army is the land armed forces branch of the British Armed Forces. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England and Scotland and...
, a (small) section of which wanted to evaluate
artillery tractorArtillery tractor is a kind of tractor, also referred to as a gun tractor, a vehicle used to tow artillery pieces of varying weights. The first such devices were designed prior to the outbreak of World War I, often based on agricultural machines such as the Holt tractor. Such tractors allowed the...
s. At one point, in 1908, a perceptive officer remarked to Roberts that he should design a new machine with armour, capable of carrying its own gun. But, disheartened by years of ultimately fruitless tinkering for the Army, Roberts failed to take up the idea.
An Austrian engineer,
Gunther BurstynGunther Burstyn was a technician and officer of the Austro-Hungarian Army....
, inspired by Holt tractors, designed a tracked armoured vehicle in 1911 carrying a light gun in a rotating turret; equipped also with hinged 'arms', two in front and two at the rear, carrying wheels on the ends to assist with obstacles and trenches, it was a very forward-looking design, if rather small. The
Austrian governmentAustria–Hungary, also known as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the k.u.k. Monarchy, or Dual State, was a monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in Central Europe...
said it would be interested in evaluating it if Burstyn could secure commercial backing to produce a prototype. Lacking the requisite contacts, he let it drop. An approach to the German government was similarly fruitless.
In 1912, A
South AustraliaSouth Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories....
n,
Lancelot De MoleLancelot Eldin De Mole CBE, was an Australian engineer and inventor. He suggested the idea of what would become the tank to the British authorities before the First World War but his idea was not taken up at the time and the tank was brought to fruition later by others.-Life:De Mole was born in...
, submitted a proposal to the British
War OfficeThe War Office was a department of the British Government, responsible for the administration of the British Army between the 17th century and 1963, when its functions were transferred to the Ministry of Defence...
for a "chain-rail vehicle which could be easily steered and carry heavy loads over rough ground and trenches". De Mole made several more proposals to the War Office after 1912, in 1914 and 1916, with a culminating proposal in late 1917, accompanied by a huge one-eighth scale model, yet all fell on substantially deaf ears. De Mole's proposal already had the climbing face, so typical of the later WWI British tanks, but it is unknown whether there was some connection. Inquiries from the government of
AustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the continental mainland , the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans...
, after the war, yielded polite responses that Mr De Mole's ideas had unfortunately been too advanced for the time to be properly recognised at their just value. The Commission on Awards to Inventors in 1919, which adjudicated all the competing claims to the development of the tank, recognised the brilliance of De Mole's design, even considering that it was superior to the machines actually developed, but due to its narrow remit, could only make a payment of £987 to De Mole to cover his expenses. As an aside, De Mole noted in 1919 that he was urged by friends before the war to approach the Germans with his design, but declined to do so for patriotic reasons.
Before
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
, motorised vehicles were still relatively uncommon, and their use on the battlefield was initially limited, especially of heavier vehicles. Armoured cars soon became more commonplace with most belligerents, especially in more open terrain. In fact, on August 23 1914, the French Colonel
EstienneJean-Baptiste Eugène Estienne was a general of artillery and a specialist in military engineering, one of the founders of modern French artillery and French military aviation; and the creator of the French tank arm...
, later a major proponent of tanks, declared:
Messieurs, la victoire appartiendra dans cette guerre à celui des deux belligérants qui parviendra le premier à placer un canon de 75 sur une voiture capable de se mouvoir en tout terrain ("Gentlemen, the victory will belong, in this war, to the one of the two belligerents who will be the first to succeed in mounting a 75 mm gun on a vehicle capable of moving in all types of terrain").
Armoured cars did indeed prove useful in open land such as in deserts, but were not very good at crossing obstacles (e.g. trenches, barriers) or in more challenging terrain. The other issue was that it was very hard to add much protection or armament.
The main limitation was the wheels, which gave a high
ground pressureGround pressure is the pressure exerted on the ground by the tires or tracks of a motorized vehicle, and is one measure of its potential mobility, especially over soft ground. Ground pressure can be measured in kilopascals or pounds per square inch...
for the vehicle's weight. This could be solved by adding more wheels, but unless they also were driven, the effect was to reduce traction on the powered wheels. Driving extra wheels meant more drive train weight; in turn requiring a larger and heavier engine to maintain performance. Even worse, none of this extra weight was put into an improvement of armour or armament carried, and the vehicles were still incapable of crossing very rough terrain.
The adoption of
caterpillar trackContinuous tracks are large tracks used on the so-called caterpillar tanks, construction equipment and certain other off-road vehicles. Unlike the Kégresse tracks which use a flexible belt, most continuous tracks are made of a number of rigid units that are joined to each other...
s offered a new solution to the problem. The tracks spread the weight of the vehicles over a much greater area, which was all used for traction to move the vehicle. The limitation on armour and firepower was no longer ground pressure but the power and weight of the power-plant.
The remaining issue was how to utilise and configure a vehicle, which would be figured out first by the
Landship Committee and
Inventions Committee. A variety of other concepts would be combined, such as special steel for armour, a climbing face for the tracks, and weapons mounted in rotating turrets.
But before this could happen some individual would have to set the entire process into motion. This person was to be Major
Ernest Dunlop SwintonMajor General Sir Ernest Dunlop Swinton KBE, CB, DSO, RE was a military writer and British Army officer. Swinton is credited as having an influence on the development of the tank and for coining the phrase "no-mans land", the latter popularised when using the pseudonym 'Eye-Witness' reporting on...
REThe Corps of Royal Engineers, usually just called the Royal Engineers , and commonly known as the Sappers, is one of the corps of the British Army. It provides combat engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces...
, British official war correspondent serving in France in 1914. Swinton recounts in his book
Eyewitness how he first got the sudden idea to build a tank on October 19, 1914, while driving a car in northern France. It is known however that he in July 1914 received a letter from a friend, the South-African engineer Hugh Merriot, asking his attention for the fact that armoured tractors might be very useful in warfare. November 1914 Swinton suggested the idea of an armoured tracked vehicle to the military authorities, by sending a proposal to Lieutenant-Colonel Maurice Hankey. Hankey in turn tried to interest
Lord KitchenerField Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener,
KG,
KP,
GCB,
OM,
GCSI,
GCMG,
GCIE,
ADC,
PC was a British Field Marshal, a diplomat, and a statesman.-...
in the idea; when this failed he sent in December a memorandum to the
Committee of Imperial DefenceThe Committee of Imperial Defence was an important ad hoc part of the government of the United Kingdom and the British Empire from just after the Second Boer War until the start of World War II...
, of which he was himself the secretary; First Lord of the Admiralty
Winston ChurchillSir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill KG, OM, CH, TD, FRS, PC was a British politician known chiefly for his leadership of the United Kingdom during World War II. He served as Prime Minister from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. A noted statesman and orator, Churchill was also an officer...
was one of the members. Hankey proposed to build a gigantic steel roller, pushed by tracked tractors, to shield the advancing infantry. Churchill in turn on January 5 wrote a note to Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, in which he warned that the Germans might any moment introduce a comparable system. A worried Asquith now ordered Kitchener to form the
Inventions Committee headed by General Scott-Moncrieff to study the development of armoured vehicles; this committee concluded however in February 1915 that such vehicles were wholly impractical and advised not to develop any.
The Landships Committee
Winston Churchill however decided that if the Army wouldn't take up the idea, the
NavyThe Royal Navy of the United Kingdom is the oldest of HM Armed Forces . From the beginning of the 18th century until well into the 20th century, it was the most powerful navy in the world, playing a key part in establishing the British Empire as the dominant world power from 1815 until the early...
should proceed independently, even if it were to exceed the limits of his competence. He created — against the objections of his bewildered subordinates — a
Landships CommitteeThe Landships Committee was a small British war cabinet committee established in February 1915 to deal with the design and construction of what would turn out to be tanks during the First World War...
in February 1915, initially to investigate designs for a massive troop transporter. As a truer picture of front-line conditions was developed the aims of the investigation changed. Together with the older
Inventions Committee a requirement was formulated for an armoured vehicle capable of 4 mph (6 km/h), climbing a 5 feet (1.5 m) high parapet, crossing an 8 feet (2.4 m) wide gap, and armed with machine guns and a light
artilleryArtillery is a military combat Arm that employs weapons capable of discharging large projectiles in combat. They are generally capable of adding considerable fire power to the military capability of an armed force...
piece. A similar proposal was working its way through the Army GHQ in France and in June the Landship Committee was made a joint service venture between the War Office and the Admiralty. The Naval involvement in AFV design had originally come about through the
Royal Naval Air ServiceThe Royal Naval Air Service or RNAS was the air arm of the Royal Navy until near the end of the First World War, when it merged with the British Army's Royal Flying Corps to form a new service , the Royal Air Force...
Armoured Car Division, the only British unit fielding AFVs in 1914; surprisingly until the end of the war most experimentation on heavy land vehicles would be done by Naval air service unit N°20.
At first protecting heavy gun tractors with armour appeared the most promising line of development. Alternative early 'big wheel' designs on the lines of the
RussianThe Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia, and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
Czar tank of 1915 were soon understood to be impractical. However, adapting the existing Holt Company caterpillar designs — the only robust tracked tractors available in 1915 — into a fighting machine, as France, Germany and the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
did, was decided against as Holt indicated to be unable to deliver a sufficient number for extended mass production. While armour and weapon systems were easy to acquire, other existing caterpillar and suspension units were too weak and existing engines were notably underpowered for the armoured behemoths that the designers had in mind. The Killen-Strait tractor with three tracks was used for the first experiments in June but was much too small to be developed further. The large British Pedrail monotrack vehicle proved to be unsuitable. Trials to couple two small American Bullock tractors failed. There also were considerable differences of opinion between the several committee members. Col R.E.B. Crompton, a veteran military engineer and electrical pioneer, drafted numerous designs with Lucien Legros for armoured troop carrying vehicles and gun-armed vehicles, to have used either Bullock tracks or variants of the Pedrail. At the same time, Lt Robert Macfie, of the RNAS, and Albert Nesfield, an
EalingEaling is a town in the borough of Ealing, London. It is a suburban development situated 7.7 miles west of Charing Cross. It is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the London Plan and is often referred to as the "Queen of the Suburbs".-Etymology:The Saxon name for Ealing was...
-based engineer, devised a number of armoured tracked vehicles, which incorporated an angled front 'climbing face' to the tracks. The two men were to fall out bitterly as their plans came to nought, Macfie in particular pursuing a vendetta against the other members of the Landships Committee after the war.
To resolve the threatened dissipation of effort, it was ordered in late July that a contract was to be placed with William Foster & Co. Ltd, a company having done some prewar design work on heavy tractors and known to Churchill from an earlier experiment with a trench-crossing supply vehicle, to produce a proof-of-concept vehicle with two tracks, based on a lengthened Bullock tractor chassis. Construction work began three weeks later.
Fosters of LincolnWilliam Foster & Co Ltd was an agricultural machinery company based at Lincoln, UK and usually just called "Fosters of Lincoln".The company can be traced back to 1846, when William Foster purchased a flour mill in Lincoln. William Foster then proceeded to start small scale manufacturing of mill...
built the 14 ton "
Little WillieLittle Willie was a prototype in the development of the British Mark I tank and the first completed tank prototype in history.-Number 1 Lincoln Machine:...
", which first ran on 8 September. Powered by a 105 hp (78 kW) Daimler engine, the ten-foot high armoured box was initially fitted with a low Bullock caterpillar. A rotating top turret was planned with a 40 mm gun but abandoned due to weight problems, leaving the final vehicle unarmed and little more than a test-bed for the difficult track system. Difficulties with the commercial tracks supplied led to Tritton designing a completely new track system different from, and vastly more robust than, any other system then in use. The next design by Lieutenant
Walter Gordon WilsonMajor Walter Gordon Wilson was an engineer and member of the British Royal Naval Air Service. He was credited by the 1919 Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors as the co-inventor of the tank, along with Sir William Tritton....
RNAS, a pre-war motor engineer, added a larger track frame to the hull of "Little Willie". In order to achieve the demanded gap clearance a rhomboidal shape was chosen—stretching the form to improve the track footprint and climbing capacity. To keep a low centre of gravity the rotating turret design was dropped in favour of sponsons on the sides of the hull fitted with naval 6-pounder (57 mm) guns. A final specification was agreed on in late September for trials in early 1916, and the resulting 30 ton "Big Willie" (later called "Mother") together with "Little Willie" underwent trials at Hatfield Park on 29 January and 2 February. Attendees at the second trial included
Lord KitchenerField Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener,
KG,
KP,
GCB,
OM,
GCSI,
GCMG,
GCIE,
ADC,
PC was a British Field Marshal, a diplomat, and a statesman.-...
,
Lloyd GeorgeDavid Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor OM, PC was a British statesman and the only Welsh Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; he is also the only one to have spoken English as a second language, Welsh having been his first.During a long tenure of office, mainly as Chancellor of the...
,
Reginald McKennaReginald McKenna was a British banker and Liberal. He notably served as Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer during the premiership of H. H. Asquith.-Background and education:...
and other political luminaries. On 12 February an initial order for 100 "Mother" type vehicles was made, later expanded to 150.
Although
landship was a natural term coming from an Admiralty committee, it was considered too descriptive and could give away British intentions. The committee therefore looked for an appropriate code term for the vehicles. Factory workers assembling the vehicles had been told they were producing "mobile water tanks" for desert warfare in
MesopotamiaMesopotamia "land between the rivers" is a name for the Tigris–Euphrates region in the eastern Mediterranean, largely corresponding to Iraq, as well as northeastern Syria, some parts of southeastern Turkey, and some parts of the Khūzestān Province of southwestern...
.
Water Container was therefore considered but rejected because the committee would inevitably be known as the WC Committee (
WC meaning
water closet was a common British term for a
toiletA flush toilet is a toilet that disposes of human waste by using water to flush it through a drainpipe to another location. Flushing mechanisms are found more often on western toilets , but many squat toilets also are made for automated flushing...
). The term
tank, as in water tank, was in December 1915 finally accepted as its official designation. From then on, the term "tank" was established among British and also German soldiers, but rejected by the French. While in German
Tank specifically refers to the World War I type (as opposed to modern
Panzer), in English, Russian and other languages the name even for contemporary armoured vehicles is still based on the word
tank.
Legend has it that after completion, the tanks were shipped to France in large wooden crates. For secrecy and in order to not arouse any curiosity, the crates and the tanks themselves were then each labelled with a destination in Russian for Petrograd. In fact the tanks were never shipped in crates: the inscription in Russian was applied on the hull for their transport from the factory to the first training centre at Thetford.
The first fifty had been delivered to France on 30 August. They were 'male' or 'female', depending upon whether their armament was the 57 mm gun or only multiple smaller
HotchkissThe Hotchkiss M1909 machine gun was a French designed light machine gun of the early 20th century, developed and built by Hotchkiss et Cie. It was also known as the Hotchkiss Mark I and M1909 Benet-Mercie....
or
Vickers machine gunThe Vickers machine gun or Vickers gun is a name primarily used to refer to the water-cooled .303 inch machine gun produced by Vickers Limited, originally for the British Army. The machine gun typically required a six- to eight-man team to operate: one to fire, one to feed the ammunition, and the...
s. The crew was eight, four of whom were needed to handle the steering and drive gears. The tanks were capable of 6 km/h (4 mph), matching the speed of marching
infantryInfantrymen are soldiers who are specifically trained for the role of fighting on foot to engage the enemy face to face and have historically borne the brunt of the casualties of combat in wars. As the oldest branch of the Combat Arms they are the backbone of armies...
with whom they were to be integrated to aid in the destruction of enemy machine guns.
After the war, The
Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors decided that the inventors of the Tank were Sir William Tritton, managing director of Fosters and Major Walter Gordon Wilson.
Trial by fire
The first use of tanks on the battlefield was the use of 49 British Mk.I tanks at the
Battle of the Somme (1916)On the Western Front, French forces under General Joseph Joffre had born the brunt of the 1914 German offensive into Belgium and France, only managing to halt the wheeling advance well inside French territory...
on 15 September 1916, with mixed, but still impressive results as many broke down but nearly a third succeeded in breaking through. Of the forty-nine tanks shipped to the Somme, only thirty-two were able to begin the first attack in which they were used, and nine made it across "no man's land" to the German lines. The tanks had been rushed into combat before the design was mature enough, and the number was small, but their use gave important feedback on how to design newer tanks, the soundness of the concept, and their potential to affect the course of the war. On the other hand, the French Army was critical of the British employment of small numbers of tanks at this battle. They felt the British had sacrificed the secrecy of the weapon while employing it in numbers too small to be decisive.
The Mark I's were capable of performing on the real battlefield of WWI, one of the most difficult battlefield terrains ever. They did have reliability problems, but when they were working they could cross trenches or craters of 9 feet (2.7 m) and drive right through barbed wire. It was still common for them to get stuck, especially in larger bomb craters, but overall the rhomboid shape allowed for extreme terrain mobility.
Most WWI tanks could travel only at about a walking pace at best. Their steel armour could stop small arms fire and fragments from high-explosive artillery shells. However they were vulnerable to a direct hit from artillery and mortar shells. The environment inside was extremely unpleasant; the atmosphere was contaminated with poisonous
carbon monoxideCarbon monoxide is a colorless, odorless and tasteless gas, yet very toxic to humans. It consists of one carbon atom and one oxygen atom, connected by a covalent double bond and a dative covalent bond...
, fuel and oil vapours from the engine and
corditeCordite is a family of smokeless propellants developed and produced in the United Kingdom from 1889 to replace gunpowder as a military propellant. Like gunpowder, cordite is classified as a low explosive because of its slow burning rates and consequently low brisance...
fumes from the weapons as ventilation was inadequate. Temperatures inside could reach 50
°CCelsius is a temperature scale that is named after the Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius , who developed a similar temperature scale two years before his death...
(122
°FFahrenheit is the temperature scale proposed in 1724 by, and named after, the physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit . Today, the scale has been replaced by the Celsius scale in most countries; it is still in use for non-scientific purposes in the United States and a few other nations, such as...
). Entire crews lost consciousness or became violently sick when again exposed to fresh air.
To counter the fumes inside and the danger of bullet splash or fragments and
rivetA rivet is a permanent mechanical fastener. Before it is installed it consists of a smooth cylindrical shaft with a head on one end. The end opposite the head is called the buck-tail. On installation the rivet is placed in a punched or pre-drilled hole. Then the tail is "upset" A rivet is a...
s knocked off the inside of the hull, the crew wore helmets with goggles and chainmail masks. Gas masks were also standard issue, as they were to all soldiers at this point in the war (see
chemical warfareChemical warfare involves using the toxic properties of chemical substances as weapons to kill, injure, or incapacitate an enemy....
). The side armour of 8 mm initially made them largely immune to small arms fire, but could be penetrated by the recently developed armour-piercing
K bulletAlso: Patrone SmK 7.92x57 mm MauserThe K bullet is a 7.92x57 mm Mauser caliber armor-piercing bullet which has a tool steel core and which was designed to be fired from a standard Mauser rifle. It was used by the German infantry against the first British tanks in World War I...
s. There was also the danger of being overrun by infantry and attacked with grenades. The next generation had thicker armour, making them nearly immune to the K bullets. In response, the Germans developed a larger purpose-made
anti-tank rifleAn anti-tank rifle is a rifle designed to penetrate the armour of vehicles, particularly tanks. The usefulness of rifles for this purpose ran from the introduction of tanks into the Second World War, when they were rendered almost entirely obsolete...
, and also a
Geballte Ladung ("Bunched Charge")—several regular stick grenades bundled together for a much bigger explosion.
Engine power was a primary limitation on the tanks; the roughly one hundred horsepower engines gave a power-to-weight ratio of 3.3 hp/ton (2.5 kW/ton). By the end of the 20th century, power-to-weight ratios exceeded 20 hp/ton (15 kW/ton).
Many feel that because the British Commander
Field MarshalField Marshal is a military officer rank. Today, it is the highest rank in the armies in which it is used, one step above a general or colonel-general.-Usage and hierarchical position:...
Douglas HaigField Marshal Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig,
KT,
GCB,
OM,
GCVO,
KCIE,
ADC was a British soldier and senior commander during World War I. He commanded the British Expeditionary Force from 1915 to the end of...
was himself a horse cavalryman, his command failed to appreciate the value of tanks. In fact,
horse cavalryCavalry were soldiers or warriors who fought mounted on horseback in combat. Cavalry were historically the second oldest and most mobile of the combat arms...
doctrine in World War I was to "follow up a breakthrough with harassing attacks in the rear", but there were no breakthroughs on the Western Front until the tanks came along. Despite these supposed views of Haig, he made an order for 1,000 tanks shortly after the failure at the Somme and always remained firmly in favour of further production.
French developments
France at the same time developed its own tracked AFVs, but the situation there was very different. In Britain a single committee had coordinated design, and had to overcome the initial resistance of the Army, while the major industries remained passive. Almost all production effort was thus concentrated into the Mark I and its direct successors, all very similar in shape. In France, on the other hand, there were multiple and conflicting lines of development which were badly integrated, resulting in three major and quite disparate production types. A major arms producer, Schneider, took the lead in January 1915 and tried to build a first armoured vehicle based on the
Baby Holt tractor but initially the development process was slow until in July they received political, even presidential, support by combining their project with that of a mechanical wire cutter devised by engineer and politician Jean-Louis Bréton. In December 1915, the influential Colonel Estienne made the Supreme Command very enthusiastic about the idea of creating an armoured force based on these vehicles; strong Army support for tanks would be a constant during the decades to come. Already in January and February 1916 quite substantial orders were made, at that moment with a total number of 800 much larger than the British ones.
Army enthusiasm and haste would have its immediate drawbacks however. As a result of the involvement of inexperienced army officers ordered to devise a new tank based on the larger 75 hp Holt chassis in a very short period of time, the first French tanks were poorly designed with respect to the need to cross trenches and did not take the sponson-mounting route of the British tanks. The first, the
Char Schneider CAThe Schneider CA1 was the first French tank. It was inspired by the need to overcome the stalemate of the trench warfare of the Great War.-Caterpillar development:...
equipped with a short 75 mm howitzer, had poor mobility due to a short track length combined with a hull that overhung front and rear. It was unreliable as well; a maximum of only about 130 of the 400 built were ever operational at the same time. Then industrial rivalry began to play a detrimental role: it created the heavy
Char St ChamondThe St Chamond was the second French heavy tank of the First World War.Overall an inadequate design born of commercial rivalry, the war ended before it was replaced by British heavy tanks.-Development:...
, a parallel development not ordered by the Army but approved by government through industrial lobby, which mounted much more impressive weaponry — its 75 mm was the most powerful gun fielded by any operational tank up till 1941 — but also combined many of the Schneider CA's faults with an even larger overhanging body. Its innovative petro-electrical transmission, while allowing for easy steering, was insufficiently developed and led to a large number of breakdowns.
But industrial initiative also led to swift advances. The car industry, already used to vehicle mass production and having much more experience in vehicle layout, in 1916 designed the first practical light tanks, a class largely neglected by the British. It would be
RenaultRenault S.A. is a French automaker producing cars, vans, buses, tractors, and trucks. Due to its alliance with Nissan, it is currently the world's fourth largest automaker. Headquartered in Boulogne-Billancourt, Renault owns the Romanian automaker Automobile Dacia and the Korean automaker Renault...
's excellent small tank design the
FT-17The Renault FT 17 or Automitrailleuse à chenilles Renault FT modèle 1917 was a French light tank; it is among the most revolutionary and influential tank designs in history...
(which won out over a
PeugeotPeugeot is a major French car brand, part of PSA Peugeot Citroën, the second largest European carmaker.Peugeot's roots go back to 19th-century coffee mill and bicycle manufacturing. The Peugeot company and family is originally from Sochaux, France. Peugeot retains a large manufacturing plant and...
model), incorporating a proper climbing face for the tracks, that was the first tank to incorporate a top-mounted turret with a full rotation. In fact the FT was in many respects the first truly 'modern' tank having a layout that has been followed by almost all designs ever since: driver at the front; main armament in a fully-rotating turret on top; engine at the rear. Previous models had been "box tanks", with a single crowded space combining the role of engine room, fighting compartment, ammunition stock and driver's cabin. The FT-17 would have the largest production run of any tank of the war, with over 3700 built more numerous than all British tanks combined. That this would happen was at first far from certain; some in the French army lobbied for the alternative mass production of super-heavy tanks. Much design effort was put in this line of development resulting in the gigantic
Char 2CThe Char 2C was a French super-heavy tank developed, although never deployed, during the First World War. It was the largest operational tank ever.-Development:...
, the most complex and technologically advanced tank of its day. Its very complexity ensured it being produced too late to participate in WWI and in the very small number of just ten, but it would be the first tank with a three-man turret; the heaviest to enter service until late in WWII and still the largest ever operational.
French production at first lagged behind the British. After August 1916 however, British tank manufacture was temporarily halted to wait for better designs, allowing the French to overtake their allies in numbers. When the French used tanks for the first time on 16 April 1917, during the
Nivelle OffensiveThe Nivelle Offensive was a 1917 Allied attack on the Western Front in World War I. Promised as the assault that would end the war within 48 hours, with casualties expected of around 10,000 men, it failed on both counts. It was a three-stage plan...
, they had four times more tanks available. But that would not last long as the offensive was a major failure; the Schneiders and chars St Chamond (which saw their first action on 5 May) didn't have the ability to cross trenches as the British could and were torn to pieces by concentrated German artillery fire.
Battle of Cambrai
The first really successful use of tanks came in the Battle of Cambrai in 1917. British Colonel
J.F.C. FullerMajor General John Frederick Charles Fuller CB, CBE, DSO, commonly J.F.C. Fuller, , was a British Army officer, military historian and strategist, notable as an early theorist of modern armoured warfare, including categorising principles of warfare...
, chief of staff of the
Tank CorpsThe Royal Tank Regiment is an armoured regiment of the British Army. It was formerly known as the Tank Corps and the Royal Tank Corps. It is part of the Royal Armoured Corps and is made up of two operational regiments, the 1st Royal Tank Regiment and the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment...
, planned the battle. The tanks made an unprecedented breakthrough but, as ever on the Western front, the opportunity was not exploited. Ironically, it was the soon-to-be-supplanted horse cavalry that had been assigned the task of following up the motorised tank attack.
Tanks became more effective as the lesson of the early tanks was absorbed. The British produced the Mark IV in 1917. Similar to the early Marks in appearance, its construction was considered to produce a more reliable machine, the long-barrelled naval guns were shortened (the barrels of the earlier, longer, guns, being prone to digging in the mud when negotiating obstacles) and armour was increased just enough to defeat the standard German armour-piercing bullet.
The continued need for four men to drive the tank was solved with the Mark V which used Wilson's epicyclic gearing in 1918. Also in 1918 the French produced the
RenaultRenault S.A. is a French automaker producing cars, vans, buses, tractors, and trucks. Due to its alliance with Nissan, it is currently the world's fourth largest automaker. Headquartered in Boulogne-Billancourt, Renault owns the Romanian automaker Automobile Dacia and the Korean automaker Renault...
FT-17The Renault FT 17 or Automitrailleuse à chenilles Renault FT modèle 1917 was a French light tank; it is among the most revolutionary and influential tank designs in history...
, the result of a co-operation between Estienne and Louis Renault. As mentioned before, it had the innovative turret position, and was operated by two men. At just 8 tons it was half the weight of the Medium A
Whippet but the version with the cannon had more firepower. It was conceived for mass production, and the FT would become the most produced tank of WWI by a wide margin with over 4,500 made, being also used and produced by the Americans.
In July 1918, the French used 480 tanks (mostly FTs) in 1918 at the
Battle of SoissonsThe Battle of Soissons was a World War I battle, waged during 18 July to 22 July 1918, between the French and German Army....
, and there were even larger assaults planned for 1919. The
EntenteThe Triple Entente was the name given to the loose alignment between the United Kingdom, France, and Russia after the signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente in 1907...
had hoped to commit over 30,000 tanks to battle in that year.
Villers-Bretonneux: tank against tank
The German General Staff did not have enthusiasm for the tank, but allowed the development of anti-tank weapons. Regardless, development of a German tank was underway. The only project to be produced and fielded was the
A7VThe A7V was a tank introduced by Germany in 1918, near the end of World War I. One hundred vehicles were ordered during the spring of 1918, but only 21 were delivered. It was nicknamed "The Moving Fortress" by the British because of the shape of the hull. By the Germans it is nicknamed "Munster"...
, although only fifteen A7Vs were built. The majority of the roughly hundred or so tanks fielded by Germany were captured British and French vehicles. A7Vs were captured by the Allies, but they were not used, and most ended up being scrapped.
The first tank-versus-tank battles took place 24 April 1918. It was an unexpected engagement between three German A7Vs and three British Mk. IVs at Villers-Bretonneux.
FullerMajor General John Frederick Charles Fuller CB, CBE, DSO, commonly J.F.C. Fuller, , was a British Army officer, military historian and strategist, notable as an early theorist of modern armoured warfare, including categorising principles of warfare...
's
Plan 1919Plan 1919 was a military strategy drawn up by J.F.C. Fuller in 1918 during World War I. His plan criticised the practice of physically destroying the enemy, and instead suggested a lightning thrust toward the command center of the German army...
involving massive use of tanks for an offensive, was never used because the
blockadeA blockade is an effort to cut off the communications of a particular area by force. It is distinct from a siege in that a blockade is usually directed at an entire country or region, rather than a fortress or city. Also, a blockade historically took place at sea, with the blockading power seeking...
of Germany and the entry of the US brought an end to the war. The plan itself would become the inspiration for
GermanNazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany between 1933 and 1945, while it was led by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party . The name Third Reich refers to the state as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages and the German...
blitzkriegBlitzkrieg is "a headline word applied retrospectively to describe a military doctrine of an all-mechanized force concentrating its attack on a small section of the enemy front then, once the latter is broken, proceeding without regard to its flank."During the interwar period, aircraft and tank...
tactics in
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. As a military planner and later journalist, Fuller continued to develop his doctrine of using tanks supported by infantry to break through enemy lines to attack communications in the rear.
Finally, in a preview of later developments, the British developed the Whippet. This tank was specifically designed to exploit breaches in the enemy front. The Whippet was faster than most other tanks, although it carried only machinegun armament. Postwar tank designs would reflect this trend towards greater tactical mobility.
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