The story
On September 15, 1916, during the Battle of the Somme, British Mark I tanks attacked German trenches near Flers and Courcelette, the first armored fighting vehicles in battle. Forty-nine were available and fewer reached the start line, as many broke down in the mud, but they crossed trenches and wire and unsettled the defenders. 'Tank' came from a cover story that the machines were water carriers.
The stalemate on the Western Front had its roots in the Maxim machine gun, barbed wire and quick-firing artillery, which made infantry attacks ruinous. Caterpillar tracks, adapted from American Holt tractors, and the internal combustion engine offered a way across. Churchill sponsored the 1915 Landships Committee, and Walter Wilson and William Tritton at Foster's of Lincoln built 'Little Willie' and then the Mark I. At Cambrai in November 1917 the British used 476 tanks together, and the French Renault FT introduced the rotating turret. Interwar thinkers such as Guderian developed armored doctrine, and tanks decided battles in World War II such as Kursk in 1943.
Why it mattered
- Armored warfare changed the nature of battle in World War II, from the German invasion of France in 1940 to the Soviet T-34 victories on the Eastern Front.
- Mobile, mechanized warfare ended the trench stalemate that had defined World War I.
- Tank development drove advances in engines, armor and gunnery, and in anti-tank weapons.
- Doctrines of combined arms, with armor, infantry and air power working together, descend from interwar studies of the tank.
Sources
- How Britain invented the tank in the First World War Imperial War Museums
- How the Battle of Cambrai changed fighting tactics on the Western Front Imperial War Museums
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