Foley - Rise of the tank: armoured vehicles and their use in the First World War

To

SNAP Special Needs and Parents Charity, Warley, Essex.

For being there for so many people

when no one else was.

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Also by the Author

Front Line Essex Sutton 2005

Front Line Kent Sutton 2006

Essex Ready for Anything Sutton 2006

Hard as Nails Spellmount 2007

Front Line Suffolk Sutton 2007

Front Line Thames History Press 2008

More Front Line Essex History Press 2009

Essex in the First World War History Press 2009

Prisoners of the British Bank House Books 2009

Essex at War Through Time Amberley 2009

London Under Attack History Press 2010

Havering Through Time Amberley 2010

Barking and Dagenham Through Time Amberley 2010

Londons East End Through Time Amberley 2011

Disasters on the Thames History Press 2011

Essex Through Time Amberley 2012

Essex at War in Old Photographs Amberley 2012

Pioneers of Aerial Combat Pen & Sword 2012

Martello Towers Amberley 2013

Britains Railway Disasters Pen & Sword 2013

www.michael-foley-history-writer.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by

PEN AND SWORD MILITARY

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Copyright Michael Foley, 2014

ISBN 978 1 78346 393 0

eISBN 9781473840812

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To James Payne of Through Their Eyes (http://www.throughtheireyes2.co.uk) for the use of some of his images. Thank you to Irene Moore for her hard work in editing this book.

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Authors note:

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The tank made its first appearance during the First World War and, after a poor start, became one of the most fearsome weapons of the conflict. Perhaps the most surprising thing about its origin was the lack of interest shown in the weapon by the army while ideas for its construction were being discussed in government. There were a number of plans for armoured vehicles leading up to the outbreak of war. The War Office had little interest in these and tended to dismiss them out of hand, as they did many other innovations, perhaps because those in command of the army were averse to new ideas of any kind. Even the use of machine-guns was seen by some senior officers as being not quite fair despite their widespread use by the enemy.

The idea of an armoured vehicle was far from new by the outbreak of the war in August 1914. Early armoured vehicles, including armoured trains, were used in the Boer War. Armoured cars were in use from the early years of the century by a number of countries. The problem was that trains were confined to tracks and armoured cars to roads. Neither of these were suitable for the Western Front. Tanks were supposedly not confined to anything but this was far from true as was seen on the battlefields of Ypres.

One of the early tanks, a Mark I with the wheels still on the back which were later removed .

There is of course nothing new in the armys refusal to consider tanks as the War Office was well known for being resistant to new ideas. Those in charge of the army were obviously of the same mind. Lord Kitchener was present at a number of early trials of machines that could have led to use as a tank but had little interest in the new inventions. H.G. Wells described those who commanded the army as men who walked and thought in spurs.

It seems as if those in command of British forces were prepared to send endless thousands of men across no mans land in the face of German machine-guns, perhaps because this was how wars had always been fought. It took some time for them to realise that the First World War was like no war fought before and that it needed new tactics.

The development of the tank was left to the navy with their experience of fighting in armoured craft. It was, it seems, a simple step to move from armoured ships on water to armoured land vehicles. The Royal Naval Air Service Armoured Car section had its origins in the ideas of men who were willing to make changes to what they had and try something new.

The support of men like Winston Churchill, himself an advocate of armoured vehicles, helped to force the issue despite the reluctance of others in government and the army. Unlike the conception of the armoured car, the tank had a slow and sporadic development. There was even a point where help was requested from suffragettes due to the armys refusal to allow any men to take part in the development of tanks.

Perhaps the most surprising event though was the refusal of the German army to consider the weapon even after it first appeared on the Somme. The tank played very little part in the German war effort, a lesson they obviously learnt from by the time of World War Two.

The idea of men going into battle wearing armour is far from a modern proposition. The very earliest warriors wore breastplates and helmets to protect them from the enemys weapons. Even before the widespread use of metal, materials such as leather could give some protection from early weapons. Although these were often individual forms of protection it did not take long for this to develop into more unified defensive formations.

Probably the best known of these from ancient times is the Roman Testudo (tortoise) in which the men interlocked their shields both in front of them and above their heads. This gave them the form of an armoured military force protected from the enemy. It wasnt only the Romans that had a co-operative form of protection. Shield walls were used by the Saxons and the Vikings where each man would help to protect his neighbour in the wall by interlocking their shields.