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    Tank Warfare
    Tank Warfare
    Tank Warfare
    Ebook431 pages9 hours

    Tank Warfare

    By Jeremy Black

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    “An “insightful and informative” overview of the role of tanks in combat from the First World War to the present day (Dennis Showalter, author of Armor and Blood).

    The story of the battlefield in the twentieth century was dominated by a handful of developments. Foremost of these was the introduction and refinement of tanks. In Tank Warfare, Jeremy Black, a recipient of the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize from the Society for Military History, offers a comprehensive global account of the history of tanks and armored warfare in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

    First introduced onto the battlefield during World War I, tanks represented the reconciliation of firepower and mobility and immediately seized the imagination of commanders and commentators concerned about the constraints of ordinary infantry. The developments of technology and tactics in the interwar years were realized in the German blitzkrieg in World War II and beyond. Yet the account of armor on the battlefield is a tale of limitations and defeats as well as of potential and achievements. Tank Warfare examines the traditional narrative of armored warfare while at the same time challenging it, and Black suggests that tanks were no “silver bullet” on the battlefield. Instead, their success was based on their inclusion in the general mix of weaponry available to commanders and the context in which they were used.

    “An excellent overview of the subject.” —Alaric Searle, author of Armoured Warfare: A Military, Political and Global History
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateOct 27, 2020
    ISBN9780253052711
    Tank Warfare
    Author

    Jeremy Black

    Jeremy Black is Professor of History at the University of Exeter, UK, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, USA.

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      Tank Warfare - Jeremy Black

      ONE

      THE START

      DEFINITIONS

      Combining mobility with firepower was a longstanding goal of commanders. The tank added power in the shape of the internal combustion engine. It was a variant on the steam power of an armored train, itself potentially a source of great firepower. However, caterpillar tracks gave the tank much greater maneuverability due to its ability to cross different terrain as opposed to vehicles that were dependent on wheels, whether they moved on roads or rails. That helps offer a clear definition of the tank, one made readily apparent by the series of emblematic photographs that are used so often, whether showing scenes of the world wars or depicting Chinese tanks facing a lone protestor in Beijing in 1989, as reproduced, for example, in the London Sunday Times of April 21, 2019.

      Guns, armor, internal combustion engine, and tracks. Of course, however, that definition encompasses many fighting vehicles not classically defined as tanks: tank destroyers and self-propelled guns, obviously, but also armored fighting vehicles carrying guns, including if one of their main functions is transporting infantry. In turn, the latter overlap with wheeled vehicles that do the same. Moreover, wheeled vehicles can do so more effectively. Modern suspension systems, with the wheels individually suspended, offer major advantages in terms of the equations (or trade-offs) of coverable terrain versus speed and maneuverability. Vehicles with these systems do not have the load-sharing characteristics of those with tracks, especially wide tracks, but otherwise can readily match the specifications of light tanks.

      Light vehicles, whether with tracks or wheels, have been of particular significance from the 1990s due to greater interest in transportability by air, a product of the US engagement with worldwide interventionist capability. To a degree, these vehicles return attention to the early tanks that were solely armed with machine guns, rather than also with a main gun, the latter being the usual modern view of a tank.

      These points encourage a definition of tanks in terms of vehicles that are called tanks. That is helpful as a working premise but also faces difficulties. First, there are past definitional usages that pose issues, notably that of tankettes, or small tanks used mainly for infantry support in the 1930s, which were used in practice by all powers with tanks. Second, the term tank leaves unclear how best to handle tank destroyers, which in the American and German armies were operated by the artillery. On the one hand, they are armed and armored vehicles tasked with destroying tanks, but, on the other, they are tanks with a particular function and specifications accordingly. As such, they are on a continuum with tanks armed with flamethrowers. Armor itself as a term includes, for example, combat engineer vehicles, some of which are tracked and some not. Possibly, therefore, a tank is what could be tactically used as a tank employing twentieth-century technology.

      A tank, after all, is defined more by its function than by its construction or constituent parts. The Swedish S-Tank had no turret while the US M10 tank destroyer had one. Not all tanks have conventional guns as their main armament; the US M551 Sheridan, in service from 1969 to 1996, fired a wire-guided MGM-51 Shillelagh missile from its gun barrel as well as conventional ammunition.

      Moreover, the term tank is something of a catchall that does not translate literally into other languages. The German is panzer, and the French char d’assault; neither means tank. The only reason they are called tanks in the English-speaking world is because the vehicles were referred to as water tanks in World War I to hide what they were intended for because they resembled water tanks.

      A common approach is to see what is properly a tank as what is now called a main battle tank (MBT), with everything else as an armored fighting vehicle (AFV), and a light tank as essentially a reconnaissance vehicle. However, MBT was not a term in use until the 1960s, and hence everything prior to that was a tank, with modifiers being applied to define what sort of tank. Functional intentions and attributes affected weaponry. Thus, during World War II, tanks were multirole platforms and generally had a coaxial machine gun whereas, in most cases, tank destroyers or antitank guns did not have such a machine gun as their role was set. However, to argue that there is something properly a tank—so that, for example, a flamethrower tank of World War II was a specialized AFV and not a tank—is unhelpful. If an MBT engages in an assault role, so can other vehicles that are tracked, such as tank destroyers, or wheeled. More generally, for all forms of armored vehicle, there has been a seesawing among speed, protection, firepower, and reliability, rather than a fixed goal or means.

      The value of a loose definition of tanks will probably become more apparent in the future as miniaturized tanks play a greater role in urban combat. Like drones, and building on the technology of unmanned mine and explosive-tackling vehicles, these tanks will be operated from a distance.

      In consequence of these points, there is a need for considering a broader narrative, and more open-ended analysis, than has usually been the case. This approach involves readers testing their assumptions not only about tanks but also concerning what they think should have been the trajectory of their development. Best practice, whether in doctrine, procurement, tactics, or operational planning, appears different if wider definitions of tanks and armor are adopted.

      HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

      To consider the particular strengths and deficiencies of the tank, however defined, it is useful to go back and assess the potential and problems of other means of combining mobility with firepower, even if they were very different in type. The most significant means was the chariot, which came to be seen as a fundamental military element in parts of the ancient world. As with the tank and the internal combustion engine, a new power source and the working of metal were crucial for chariots. The domestication of animals—notably horses—was the key prelude to the use of chariots. Indeed, it was a precursor to the widespread expansion in the tactical, operational, and strategic flexibility of armies. This was denied to societies, such as those in the Americas, Australasia, and Oceania, that lacked the horse.

      Elsewhere, the horse was the fundamental technology that opened up a range of possibilities, rather as the internal combustion engine was to do. Long before the development of stirrups, most of these possibilities had already been explored with success: the Scythians were feared horse archers, and the Sarmatians had heavy cavalry. This variety in cavalry prefigured later variety in armor. Nevertheless, there were important environmental constraints in the development of cavalry, particularly with disease and terrain. Thus, horses could not be used in the extensive tsetse fly belt of Africa or in the mountainous terrain of Norway.

      CHARIOTS

      The development of wheeled transport was closely linked to that of draft animals. The beginnings of the wheel are unclear and possibly stemmed from log rollers. Wheeled vehicles were in existence in Southwest Asia by about 3500 BCE. Bronze Age societies had horse-drawn carts; from about 1700 BCE, lighter chariots requiring only two animals were employed. Chariots were prominent in the Middle East in the Middle and Late Bronze Age while, in Mycenaean Greece and Iron Age Britain (700 BCE–50 CE), the powerful were buried with their chariot and spear.

      Mentioned as an important background to the idea of a mobile fortress or battle car by J. F. C. Fuller in his Tanks in the Great War, 1914–1918 (1920),¹ chariots proved effective as part of combined weapons systems. In China, the use of chariots, composite bows, and bronze-tipped spears and halberds developed in the second millennium BCE. By the third century BCE, however, the rise of mass armies, a product of population growth and the introduction of conscription, ensured that chariots no longer played an important role in China.

      There was a similar trade-off with tanks. They appeared most necessary when manpower was in short supply, and they could act therefore as a replacement for manpower. Moreover, tanks, like other high-specification weaponry, also seemed able to overcome large numbers of troops. As such, they were a substitute in a very different fashion.

      Firepower and mobility were important to chariots and later to tanks. The combination of the compound bow with the light, two-wheeled chariot, beginning in the seventeenth century BCE in the Middle East, has been seen by some commentators as a tactical revolution that, in the later Bronze Age, ushered in mass confrontations of chariots acting as missile platforms by carrying archers. At the same time, it is important to avoid an account of military history in which the nature of the weaponry determined success or, indeed, constituted a revolution. That is generally an overly simplistic approach.

      The Egyptians learned chariotry from the Palestinian Hyksos, who conquered Egypt at the end of the Middle Kingdom (c. 2040–1640 BCE). Impressions of chariotry can be gained from Egyptian temple reliefs of the Late Kingdom (c. 1550–1070 BCE), which show a use of bowmen mounted on chariots. Their employment by Thutmose III over a Syrian coalition at Megiddo (in modern Israel) in about 1460 BCE helped win the day by giving force and speed to the device of enveloping attacks. Ramses II faced the Hittites at the battle of Kadesh in about 1285 BCE, with both sides employing large numbers of chariots. The bas-relief monument at Thebes in Egypt depicts Ramses as a chariot rider, indicating the prestige of the role, which is matched by photographs over the last century of leaders on, or reviewing, tanks.

      The Assyrian Empire, founded in 950 BCE, benefited from its great ability to supply horses, on which chariot strength depended, rather as tanks were to depend on the availability of oil supplies. The Assyrian preference was for heavy chariots, with four rather than two horses and carrying four men rather than two, thus greatly increasing firepower.

      A very different type of mobile firepower was provided by siege towers, although that again raises issues of definition. Attackers needed to come to close quarters with an enemy in order to seize a fortified position and, notably, offset the missile weapons used by the defenders. Siege towers, a form of fortified gantry, were developed. The dramatic stone reliefs from the palace of Nineveh, the Assyrian capital, depict the sieges of walled cities in the mid-seventh century BCE. The Assyrians used battering rams. As shown in carvings, men fought from the tops of the towers that protected the rams: these were siege towers with battering rams or vice versa. Siege towers were supported by catapults. As later with artillery, these had different purposes; large catapults were employed to inflict damage to the structure while small ones provided an antipersonnel capability to enable the use of siege engines close up against the walls. The corollary with tanks was armament with guns or machine guns.

      The comparison with the use of tanks in World War I is interesting but not clear-cut. Tanks were not used to surmount or smash enemy fortifications, for it appeared clear from the outset that they could prevail against barbed wire but not against concrete walls. The former was an obstacle—an aspect of the field fortifications, including trenches and earth bastions—that infantry (and therefore infantry-support tanks) had to overcome. Walled fortifications, in contrast, were a matter for artillery.

      From that perspective, there is a clear distinction between siege towers and tanks. The former primarily appear not as an ancient form of self-propelled heavy artillery but rather as a troop carrier: an armored mobile bridge or landing craft designed to carry and protect infantry until they could jump onto an enemy-held walled fortification. That might not appear to be the role of tanks, but the distinction is less clear in practice. It was the normal role of tanks in many contexts to carry infantry, especially Soviet tanks on the Eastern Front in World War II. Tanks, moreover, often have been used against structures—for example, in confronting the Iraqi insurrection after the Second Gulf War. In addition, siege towers could carry machines as well as individuals firing projectiles and thus could act as mobile artillery.

      After the fall of the Assyrians in the seventh century BCE, chariots continued to play a role, but it was secondary to that of cavalry, which offered greater flexibility than chariots, not least in difficult terrains, and was less expensive. The Persians, who rose to far-flung regional power in the sixth century BCE, used chariots, but cavalry warfare was more significant for them.

      The chariots provided a way to disrupt opposing battle lines; to that end, chariots equipped with scythes on their wheels were particularly successful, although the understanding of equestrian factors has led to questions about whether chariots charged en masse and therefore were really formidable in battle. Scythed chariots are first on record in the early fifth century BCE and were, like elephants, probably more of a scare tactic than an effective tactical option, or, at least, the former was very important. As such, there was an important similarity with the initial use of tanks in World War I.

      Chariots were used by the Persians against the Macedonians when Alexander the Great invaded the Persian Empire. At Arbela (Gaugamela) in 331 BCE, the Macedonians thwarted the Persian chariots and cavalry in part by the use of javelin throwers. This reflected the extent to which mobile attacking forces could be weakened by defending missile throwers. Well-deployed, well-led, and well-prepared infantry therefore could fend off chariot attacks, if necessary by opening up gaps in their formation and channeling the chariots through them.

      Alexander employed siege towers, such as at Halicarnassus in 334 BCE. After Alexander’s reign, they became heavier and better armed. At the unsuccessful siege of Rhodes in 305–4 BCE, by Demetrius Poliorcetes (the Besieger), there was a massive iron-plated mobile tower carrying catapults. The Hellenistic rulers also used battering rams sheathed with iron and mounted on rollers—early versions of armored vehicles. However, battering rams were veryshort-range, line-of-sight, projectile weapons that had to come close to their targets. Both the Romans and the Han Chinese used siege engines.

      In contrast, chariots by then were no longer central to military culture in Eurasia. The Romans, who did not rely on their use and preferred, instead, to focus on infantry, were able to defeat those who did emphasize chariots. Cavalry proved a more formidable challenge to the Romans, as with the Parthian mounted archers. Moreover, cavalry, not chariots, was the choice in the medieval world.

      On the other hand, from Antiquity on, elephants were used. These were tanks in that they had a crew, carried weapons that were used by the crew, were armored, and were employed to smash opposing lines and pursue the enemy. As with chariots, the form was different from twentieth-century tanks, but that did not mean the function necessarily was.

      WAGONS AND STEAM

      Wheeled platforms still proved to have a role in warfare in the medieval world, most notably with siegecraft. Siege towers, however, were cumbersome and, with the rise of the cannon, proved vulnerable to counterbattery fire from cannon in the besieged fortresses. These towers, nevertheless, were used into the sixteenth century. In the successful siege of Kazan in 1552, Ivan IV the Terrible of Russia employed a wooden siege tower that carried cannon and moved on rollers. However, the breaches through which Kazan was stormed were made by sappers undermining the walls and filling the mines with gunpowder.

      Separately, in battle, carts offered a base for archers, and later musketeers, and also an obstacle to cavalry charges. They were used widely in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries—for example, in the Hussite wars in Bohemia in the early fifteenth century and by the Ottoman Turks, notably against attacking Safavid Persian cavalry at the battle of Chaldiran in 1514, in each case successfully. However, these were generally defensive wagon forts, as in the Turkish tactic of the tábúr congí, rather than attacking deployments.

      There were ideas about using war wagons in an offensive manner. Enea Silvio Piccolomini, later Pope Pius II, wrote in his Historica Bohemica that the Hussites employed wagons to encircle their enemies and then slaughtered them within the wagon fort. This is definitely wrong, but it is interesting that their potential could be assessed thus: the idea resembles the later doctrine of using superior speed to surround an enemy from the flank. There is one case where they were used as mobile battering rams. In the battle of Maleschau (1424), Jan Žižka had wagons filled with stones rolled down a hill to break up the formation of his attacking enemies. His infantry charged down close behind and finished them off. This might be a unique occasion, but there is a picture in Konrad Kyeser’s Bellifortis (c. 1405), which Žižka probably knew, that shows this: a stone-filled cart with spikes to the fore rolled down a hill into the ranks of enemy soldiers in a trench. The book also shows other war wagons. This use resembles the initial use of tanks in World War I in helping break through enemy ranks. However, these examples were not typical for Hussite warfare, where war wagons were employed, instead, as a kind of mobile field fortification.

      Meanwhile, imaginative designers—most prominently Leonardo da Vinci—advanced ideas that could not have been manufactured at the time. His prototype armored vehicle for the duke of Milan, illustrated in about 1485, had a wooden covering strengthened by metal plates; the machine was powered by inside cranks operated by a crew of four while the vehicles were equipped with light cannon and a sighting turret. Designed to overcome defending infantry supported by artillery, this design, although presented with a model in the British Tank Museum at Bovington, was not viable mechanically or in military terms. Nevertheless, it reflected an interest in a combination of firepower, armor, and mobility.

      The development of the locomotive steam engine in the early nineteenth century provided further potential. At first, this form of power was for armored trains and other railed vehicles.² In his La Guerre de Railway, published in La Caricature on October 27, 1883, Albert Robida anticipated completely armored electric-powered gunned vehicles moving fast on rails. Subsequently, there was also interest in those operating freely off rails but still steam powered. The invention of the gasoline-powered internal combustion engine in the late nineteenth century greatly extended these ideas.

      TANKS AND WORLD WAR I, 1914–18

      Prior to World War I, at a time of considerable innovation in warfare and weaponry, there was military interest in the options offered by road vehicles as well as much nonmilitary speculation. In part, this reflected a commitment to operational mobility in order to give force to offensive strategies and, in part, the need to support the tactics of attack. Trains could not leave railways and move cross-country. In contrast, road vehicles could leave roads, provided the terrain was suitable. This capability brought a tremendous increase in maneuverability and mobility, as with the use of armored car units on the Western Front from 1915. The opportunities offered by such vehicles led to interest in enhancing off-road maneuverability. Alongside that were questions of protection (armor) and firepower.³

      As with aircraft, there was a sense of potential, but it is unclear what would have happened but for the added inducements provided by the outbreak of the war and its subsequent development in an unexpected direction. In 1909, Colonel Frederick Trench, the perceptive British military attaché in Berlin, reported that the Germans were proposing to develop power traction vehicles of a type suitable for military use.⁴ The British were interested in a motor-war car.

      Such interest was taken forward greatly during the war as both sides sought comparative advantage and in response to the apparently intractable problems posed by trench warfare. In a task-driven approach, tanks had not seemed necessary in 1914, but the situation was different by the end of the year as it became clear that the war would continue. The process of invention was complicated, as the ideas that were advanced were not always viable, but, nevertheless, these ideas contributed to the development of a practical weapon. In December 1914, Maurice Hankey, the influential secretary to the British Committee of Imperial Defence, suggested: Numbers of large, heavy rollers, themselves bullet proof, propelled from behind by motor engines, geared very low, the driving wheels fitted with ‘caterpillar’ driving gear to grip the ground, the driver’s seat armored, and with a Maxim [machine] gun fitted. The object of this device would be to roll down the barbed wire by sheer weight, to give some cover to men creeping up behind, and to support the advance with machine gun fire.⁵

      Tanks were invented independently by the British and their allies the French in 1915 as they took forward and sought to merge existing technologies and capabilities. Treads, multiple wheel and multiple axle assemblies, armored caprices (as in insect exoskeletons), and limited traverse sponsons appeared together in the form of the tank. Treads and multiple wheel and axle assemblies were a carryover from steam tractors, and armor, sponsons, and turrets were innovations from warships. Thus, tanks were the result of technological inputs from a variety of machines in both the civilian and military sectors—on land and at sea—and represented an ingenuously selective fusion of these machines, showing the strengths of industry and the flexibility of development processes.

      Earl Kitchener, the secretary of state for war, was not a supporter of the idea of a landship, but Winston Churchill, the innovative first lord of the Admiralty from 1911 to 1915 who was also an advocate of air power, was far more positive and backed the Landships Committee. The proposed vehicle was given the codename Tank because the initial design was like that of a water carrier. The first British tanks were built in January 1916.

      There was disagreement over how soon to use these tanks and, in particular, whether to wait until the design was improved and a large force of them had been built up. Although they were indeed underdeveloped in both specifications and numbers, Field Marshal Douglas Haig wanted to employ them swiftly. As a result, tanks were first used by the British in the Battle of the Somme on September 15, 1916, when the rhomboid-shaped Mark I was used in an attack on the village of Flers.⁶ Eleven days later, the use of a tank, as well as that of an aircraft, helped the infantry capture Gird Trench.

      The tank seemed a fitting means to, and symbol of, the overcoming of the impasse of trench warfare, and the Daily Sketch on November 23 made much of publishing the First Official Pictures of the Tanks, which were carried on the front cover. Intended as shock weapons, tanks could apparently be hit by rifle bullets and machine guns without suffering damage, and they could also smash through barbed wire and cross trenches. These advantages attracted attention and were magnified in reports.

      The tank, however, had its disadvantages. Many tanks broke down before reaching the assault point. At Flers, only nine of the forty-nine Mark I tanks that took part reached the German lines. The others broke down or got stuck in the mud. Moreover, in conflict, tanks rapidly became unfit for service—understandably so given their technical problems. In addition, the maximum speed of tanks, which even for the later Mark IV was only 3.7 miles per hour, increased their vulnerability.

      It was also unclear in 1916 how best to integrate tanks into British tactics and operations—in other words, what doctrine to employ. The number of tanks was too small to make much of a difference. For example, initially only one was provided with the 169th Infantry Brigade, the orders for which noted: The tank is to be considered purely as an accessory to the attack, and the attack must on no account be allowed to check if the tank should fail to carry out its programme.⁷ At this stage, British officers, such as Arthur Child-Villiers, were uncertain of the value of tanks.⁸

      Nevertheless, the British employment of tanks was an aspect of their search for greater effectiveness during the lengthy Somme offensive. This search is underrated due to the habitual emphasis on the tactics of the first day of the Battle of the Somme—July 1, 1916—when British troops advanced in lines into devastating machine-gun fire, leading to heavy casualties. However, there were subsequently significant developments. These primarily focused on infantry tactics and the use of artillery but included an increase in the consideration and scale of tank use.

      In the battle of Vimy Ridge in April 1917, an Allied success, only eight tanks were deployed. In the larger-scale third battle of Ypres (Battle of Passchendaele), which began on July 31, 1917, tanks were employed in a supporting role. However, as on August 22 and 27, they found themselves hampered by the Flanders mud, which, that year, was made more intractable by the heavy and persistent rain.

      In contrast, the British use of 348 tanks en masse at Cambrai on November 20, 1917, was certainly a shock to the Germans. The impressive commander of the Third Army, General Julian Byng, organized an effective combination of infantry, tanks, artillery, and aircraft and drove the Germans back four miles, breaking through their lines and capturing a considerable number of prisoners. The tanks played an arresting role in the initial British success, but a heavy, well-planned artillery bombardment, reflecting recent developments in British artillery tactics, was also important in combining surprise and impact.

      Nevertheless, celebrations and hopes in Britain proved premature, and effective German command led to the rapid movement of troops who sealed the breakthrough at Cambrai. The British tanks also took heavy losses. On November 20, thanks in part to German artillery fire, 179 were destroyed. When the attack resumed the next day, more tanks were lost as a result, in part, of inadequate infantry support. Harold Farmar, a British staff officer, informed his wife: I am afraid the Germans have been able to stop our progress. Anyway it has been a nasty blow to them and we have got a nice bit of unspoilt country and a haul of prisoners and guns.⁹

      Whatever its deficiencies, the tank opened up a clear difference between the Allies and the Germans. Tanks were first used by the French on April 16, 1917, when 128 FT tanks were deployed in the Chemin des Dames offensive, but they made no significant impact, instead breaking down or sticking in the mud. However, by 1918, France had three thousand tanks, including the Schneider-Creusot CA, which carried a powerful 75 mm gun but was not terribly maneuverable, and the faster and lighter-gunned Renault FT. Moreover, that November, France planned to deploy six hundred tanks to support an advance into Lorraine. In any event, the war ended first, but, by then, French infantry preferred to be supported by tanks if attacking.

      Italy, from 1915 an ally of Britain and France, attempted to develop its own tank, the Fiat 2000 Model 17, a heavy forty-ton tank with an impressive 65 mm gun. However, the first prototype, ready for display in June 1917, included only a wooden model for the superstructure and was not finished until 1918. By the end of 1919, six had been made, but they did not see combat. Only two were actually used. The first was publicly tested in Rome in 1919. One was sent to Libya, where it remained, while the other stayed in Rome as a sort of monument to tanks until the 1930s.

      Italy had asked for French tanks, but France was unenthusiastic about sending them. Neither Italy nor the British and French units sent to Italy used tanks. Instead, the Italians relied on their own armored cars, which they had produced since 1910 and successfully tested and employed in Libya from 1911–12. These armored cars were widely used in the second half of 1918 when the Italians attacked the Austrian forces. French FTs were the basis for the Italian Fiat 3000, of which 1,400 were ordered, delivery to begin in 1921.

      Russia, an ally of Britain and France from 1914, experimented with tank designs, notably the Tsar tank of 1914–15, which used a tricycle design rather than caterpillar tracks. The prototype carried three cannon, but, in tests in August 1915, it proved ineffective due to being insufficiently powered for its weight. This tank was followed by the Vezdekhod, which was a true tank but faced design problems relating to steering. Development was abandoned in December 1915. Subsequently, in response to British and French advances in tank development, work started on a second design in October 1916; although the government was supportive, no progress was apparently made before the revolution in 1917 stopped development. Later, the Soviet Union was to argue that the Vezdekhod was the first true tank in the world. It was not used in combat.

      In contrast to Russia, Germany did deploy tanks in 1918, but it did so in far smaller numbers, and to less effect, than Britain and France. German tanks, of which about 170 were captured from the Allies, did not influence the outcome of the German Spring Offensives. German industry was unable to manufacture tanks in sufficient quantities, and fewer than sixty of the large German A7V tanks were in service. In part, this was because of the amount of metal plate required for this large tank and other more urgent requirements for the plate, alongside metal shortages. Opportunity costs were a key element. In the spring of 1917, the tank program was superseded by the submarine one.

      As a reminder of the complexity of explanations, it was also the case that the German success at sealing the Cambrai breakthrough in November 1917 encouraged skepticism about the effectiveness of tank attacks—skepticism that had been present from the outset. At any rate, there were far more tanks on the Allied side throughout the war. German tanks also suffered from low ground clearance and large crew requirements.¹⁰

      The failure of the German Spring Offensives in 1918 was largely due to a repeated lack of focus in attacking on any particular axis, rather than a shortage of a specific weapon system; in short, a failure of operational-strategic goals, rather than tactical-operations means. The shortage of tanks was certainly an aspect of a more general weakness of motorization and mechanization on the part of the Germans. This weakness indeed proved operationally significant, and the German ability to sustain breakthroughs and breakouts in the Spring Offensives was thereby limited.¹¹ Yet strong Allied resistance was far more important. This resistance was a matter of infantry supported by artillery, good morale, and an effective defensive doctrine. Even with the initial collapse of the front, German failures—including of command and logistics—undermined their achievements, while Allied resources were superior. The mobile defense that tanks could provide in World War II—for example, for the Germans against Soviet attack on the Eastern Front—was not yet an option.

      The first tank battle was between several A7Vs and light Whippets and heavy Mark IVs on April 24, 1918, near Villers-Bretonneux during a German infantry attack. At least one A7V and one Whippet were knocked out by tank gunnery, and the Whippets retreated because they were outgunned, although they did not realize at the time that they had been engaged by enemy tanks. The A7V was a poor tank. The engagement was not indicative of its effectiveness but rather of the novelty of tank-versus-tank conflict and the inability of any tank of any nation to wage it. The tank was not designed to fight other tanks, and the concept of tank warfare had limited traction until well into the 1920s.

      At the tactical level, tanks, utilizing cavalry doctrine, seemed to overcome one of the major problems with offensives against trenches: the separation of firepower from advancing troops and the consequent lack of flexibility. By carrying guns or machine guns, tanks made it possible for advancing units to confront unsuppressed positions and counterattacks. The latter repeatedly served to blunt the impact of break-ins into opposing trench lines and breakouts through them. Tanks also offered precise tactical fire to exploit the consequences of the massed operational bombardments that preceded attacks. Moreover, tanks could also survive bullet strikes, although these caused a spall of metal to fly off inside of the panel adjacent to the strike. The damage this could create ensured that tank crews wore chainmail visors to protect their eyes.

      Commanders had to decide how best to employ tanks and combine them with infantry and artillery. This issue was made dynamic by the variety of tank types, actual and possible developments in the technology, and uncertainties about the likely moves of opponents. Tanks apparently offered

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