Post by simon darkshade on Jul 22, 2018 12:55:39 GMT
British Tank Development Part I: Origins and The Great War
Britain was responsible for the introduction of the tank into modern warfare. Armoured vehicles has been used support roles for over 50 years after the first ironclad steamwagons powered by the Megatherium war horse were introduced in the last year of the Crimean War for ammunition transport and moving heavy artillery around the siegeworks outside Sevastopol. They proved suitable for their specific role, particularly the movement of Mallet’s Mortar into firing positions. In the US Civil War, similar vehicles were used behind the lines of battle in positional warfare, but were too slow and prone to breakdowns to be of utility in even semi-mobile roles. The armoured train proved to be the main means of mobile support in the wars of the latter half of the 19th century and the steamwagon was confined to a supporting role.
The major breakthrough that paved the way for the tank was the development of the continuous track in 1898 by the Hornsby heavy machinery company of Lincolnshire and the latter invention of the pedrail. These allowed a steam or petrol engined armoured vehicle to move cross country or through broken ground. This coincided with the War of the Worlds and the South African War, both of which saw the impact of modern artillery, machine guns and rifles on infantry and cavalry moving in the open. Encounters with Martian leviathans proved a sharp shock to British forces used to military supremacy over the inhabitants of the Red Planet.
By 1903, the British Army had begun trialing tracked steam tractors for towing artillery across the battlefield and they began to enter service in 1905. The 1904/05 Russo-Japanese War provided strong evidence of the power of defensive firepower on the modern battlefield and the deadlock of trench warfare and a number of proposed developments were explored as an offensive counter-measure. The Royal Navy also began several studies on landships as part of planning for combined operations against the German High Seas Fleet and for the support of the Royal Marines.
The war scares of 1910 and 1911 stimulated British Army weapons development further and initial plans for an experimental tracked armoured vehicle began in 1912, after a number of proposals were received from Lancelot de Mole and several other inventors. The War Office Experimental Inventions Subcommittee, chaired by Colonel Ernest Swinton, gave a number of positive recommendations to the Committee of Imperial Defence over the course of 1912 and 1913 regarding the viability of such a vehicle. The Admiralty’s plans for larger landships also advanced in this time, with a prototype reduced scale vehicle being tested in mid-1913.
After discussions between First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for War Sir Richard Haldane and Sir Maurice Hankey, a joint Landships Committee was established in November 1913 with a view towards developing armoured tracked vehicles for the Army and Royal Navy over the next three years, given growing expectations of a general European war by 1915 or 1916. A 25t prototype codenamed Little Willie was manufactured by William Foster & Co. of Lincoln and first tested in June 1914, reaching a maximum speed of 4mph. It was armed with two 6pdr guns in side sponsons, a fixed 12pdr firing forwards and four machine guns. The Royal Navy prototype, HMLS Leviathan was tested in mid-August after the outbreak of war; it weighed 120t, had a maximum speed of 2.5mph and was armed with two 15pdr guns, several 3pdrs and half a dozen machine guns.
The initial war of movement ended with the conclusion of the Race to the Sea in mid-October and both the Allies and the Germans began a process of entrenchment along the Western Front. This gave great priority to the deployment of armoured tracked vehicles and both types went into production in late November. The Army vehicle was given the name of ‘tank’ as a security measure, with their paperwork describing them as water carriers for use on the Mesopotamian Front. The first production Mark I tanks were accepted by the Army in February 1915, with the landcruisers being delivered to the Royal Navy from March. The operational Mark I weighed 36t, was powered by a 200hp engine and was protected by over half an inch of armour plate.
Both vehicles were used successfully for the first time in the Battle of Loos (September 25-November 26 1915) where they proved effective in breaking German lines and securing a tactical British victory. A full breakthrough was stymied by the small numbers of tanks available and various operational issues, including a lack of coordination of artillery; additionally, the defence retained the advantage of interior lines of transport and communication. 2 landcruisers and 58 tanks saw action at Loos, with most breaking down after the first four days after having made the initial penetration of German lines in combination with the first use of poison gas by the British Expeditionary Force. The Battle of Loos failed to deliver a knockout blow to the German Army, but marked the first Allied success in offensive action on the Western Front after the defensive victories at Mons and the Marne. The Army tanks were operated by the Machine Gun Corps, with the eight companies grouped together as the Heavy Section of the MGC. A decision was made by the Admiralty to keep the remaining five landcruisers in strategic reserve for the great offensive planned for 1916. A total of 200 Mark I tanks and 7 landcruisers were built in 1915.
The Mark II tank featured improved armour and more powerful engines and entered production at Fosters, Metropolitan Cammell, Armstrong-Whitworth, Beardmores, Vickers from January 1916. 132 Mark IIs joined 84 Mark Is and the 5 landcruisers at the Battle of the Somme, the British Empire’s major effort on the Western Front in 1916. The battle, which lasted from July 1 to October 3rd, was a hard fought Allied victory against skilled and valiant German opposition and succeeded in relieving pressure on the sorely pressed French at Verdun. The winter of 1916/17 saw the Germans driven back across the front back to the defensive shelter of the formidable Hindenburg Line and the entry of the United States of America into the war. The year also saw Mark I tanks attached to the Desert Army, where they spearheaded General Allenby’s conquest of Sinai and Palestine. A total of 826 Mark IIs were built in 1916. The end of the year also saw the separate establishment of the Royal Tank Corps on December 20th.
The heavy tanks had proved their worth at Loos and the Somme, but a lighter, more mobile vehicle was required to exploit the breakthroughs achieved by tanks, infantry and heavy artillery so that the cavalry could finally get loose and wreck havoc on the German lines of supply and communication. Sir William Tritton presented a proposal to the Tank Supply Department in September for a lighter, faster tank and formal development approval was given by the War Office on October 2nd 1916. The Light Mark A or ‘Whippet’ was a 12t vehicle armed with a turreted 1” Maxim Gun and a maximum speed of 12mph. Field Marshal Haig, acting under his considerable authority as Commander of the British Expeditionary Force, saw the prototype tested in December 1916 and ordered the manufacture of 1000 light tanks, with the first vehicles to be delivered by May. 3269 Whippets were built over the course of 1917 and 1918 and the type encountered great success in support of British, American, French and Japanese forces on the Western Front.
The lessons of the Somme were also reflected in the Mark III and Mark IV tanks that entered service in 1917. The Mark III was to be used primarily for training purposes in Britain and France, although 40 out of a total production run of 165 were shipped to the Far East where they saw action on the Chinese Front. The Mark IV was the first major change to the design of the British tank, incorporating a 360hp Rolls Royce engine, increased armour and a rotating turret for the 12pdr. These improvements came at a considerable cost in weight and mobility. Supply tank and 25pdr gun carrier variants were also developed on the chassis of the Mark IV, with the latter proving to be decisive in the battles of the next two years. The Mark IVs saw sterling service in the great battles at Arras, Messines and Ypres in 1917, with British production totaling some 2436 vehicles. A further 390 tanks were built in the United States in the latter half of the year.
The most significant use of tanks during the year was at the Battle of Cambrai. 732 heavy and 287 light tanks were used to spearhead the well-coordinated attack of the British 3rd Army that broke the German defensive lines, captured the town and the controlling heights of Bourlon Ridge and inflicted over 65,000 casualties on the German Second Army.
The Mark V was an evolved version of the Mark IV equipped with new engines and an improved transmission that entered service with the B.E.F. in October 1917; a total of 1248 were built by the end of the war. The Mark VI and Mark VII, slightly improved versions of the Mark V, were cancelled in late 1917 in favour of Anglo-American tank development cooperation that had been underway since June 1917. This took the form of the 48t Mark VIII ‘Liberty’ tank, which were manufactured in dedicated plants in Britain and the United States in November 1917; a total of 1529 British and 1032 American vehicles were built by the end of production in 1920. The Mark VIII would prove its mettle in the titanic battles of June and July 1918 which stopped the last German offensives dead in their tracks. The first large-scale engagements between tanks occurred at Villers-Bretonneux in early April and saw British and Australian Mark Vs and Mark VIIIs defeat German A7Vs and Oberschlesien tanks in a desperate melee.
The German Spring Offensive of 1918 was finally blunted and exhausted by mid July and the scene was set for the final act of the war, in which the tank would play a key role. In addition to the heavy and light tanks of the Royal Tank Corps, three further armoured vehicles played their own part in the great victories to come: the Mark IX transport, the Dreadnought and the Medium Mark A. The need for infantry to keep up with tanks on the deadly modern battlefield lead to the introduction of the 36t Mark IX armoured troop transport tank, which could carry two sections and their equipment in relative safety at a speed of 6mph. 532 were built in 1918 and they saw extensive service in the breakthrough battles that were later termed the ‘Hundred Days’.
The Admiralty had not set aside its abiding interest in armoured vehicles after the relative lack of success of the Landcruisers at Loos and the Somme, but continued to develop and refine the superheavy assault vehicle over the course of 1916 and 1917 in increasing cooperation with the War Office. The four divisions of the Royal Marines had employed Mark IVs successfully at Ypres and on the Zeebrugge Raid, but could not break through heavy German fortifications along the coast of Flanders. On January 12th 1918, the first superheavy tank jointly developed by the Royal Navy and the Army entered production. It was named the Dreadnought. Weighing 125 tons and armed with a converted 4.7” naval gun, a brace of 3pdrs and eight machine guns, the Dreadnoughts could move at a speed of 8mph and were effectively invulnerable to German machine guns, anti-tank rifles and field guns. 18 were built by the end of the war and they accumulated a fearsome reputation in their five months of active service.
The success of the light Whippet tanks in the 1917 campaigns had resulted in an improved 25t medium tank design being submitted by Tritton and Wilson on September 4th 1917 and approved for production in December. It was armed with a 6pdr in a rotating turret and four machine guns and had a top speed of 10mph. They proved to be the foundation for British medium and cruiser tank development in the 1920s and 1930s. After the initial breakthrough at the Battle of Amiens, the ‘black day of the Imperial German Army’, the Mediums and the Whippets played their role to the hilt, smashing through secondary lines of resistance and destroying German supply dumps, railheads and headquarters. The tanks were finally able to fulfill their original role and loosed the armoured cars and cavalry into the German rear, beginning a pursuit that would not halt until they stood on German soil. 876 Medium Mark A tanks were produced before the Armistice, equipping eight battalions of the Royal Tank Corps in the big push across France, Belgium and the Netherlands to the Rhine, alongside the Whippets, the gun carriers, the Mark IX troop carriers and the Dreadnoughts.
Thus it was that the British tank emerged from her industrial might and colonial wars of the 19th century, began secret development in the twilight of the days of peace and then triumphed in the crucible of the Great War. Victory was not simply a product of the tank or any other weapon such as the steam dragon, the ironclad ram, the railway supergun or the rocket. It came from the planning and strategy of the high command, ranging from Kitchener to Haig; from the national mobilization of industry, labour, capital, science, agriculture and munitions production in Britain and the Empire; from the countless glorious efforts of the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force; and from the hard work, undaunted courage and valiant devotion of the artillerymen, machine gunners, engineers, pioneers, miners, wizards, medics, chaplains, signalers, cavalrymen and infantry who made up the 125 divisions of the British Army in the First World War. The machines and men of the Royal Tank Corps played an important role in the defeat of Germany and looked to have secured their future in the uncertain peace to come.
Whilst peace now reigned in Western Europe after the Armistice and subsequent Treaty of Versailles in 1919, the story was quite different elsewhere in the world. Newly reemerged Poland struggled to assert its full independence and sovereignty, Austria-Hungary and Germany were wracked by internal strife and revolution and Russia was rent asunder by Red revolution and a bitter civil war. Allied troops would continue to take part in the fighting in Russia until 1921. The map of the Middle East had been made anew by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the bloody mess of the Chinese Front would take years to repair. In the wars of peace to come, the British Army would need its tanks.
Total British Tank Production
200 Mark I
826 Mark II
165 Mark III
2436 Mark IV
1248 Mark V
1529 Mark VIII
(6404 heavy tanks)
532 Mark IX Armoured Carriers
624 Gun Carriers
3269 Light Mark A Whippet
876 Medium Mark A
18 Dreadnoughts
7 Landcruisers
Britain was responsible for the introduction of the tank into modern warfare. Armoured vehicles has been used support roles for over 50 years after the first ironclad steamwagons powered by the Megatherium war horse were introduced in the last year of the Crimean War for ammunition transport and moving heavy artillery around the siegeworks outside Sevastopol. They proved suitable for their specific role, particularly the movement of Mallet’s Mortar into firing positions. In the US Civil War, similar vehicles were used behind the lines of battle in positional warfare, but were too slow and prone to breakdowns to be of utility in even semi-mobile roles. The armoured train proved to be the main means of mobile support in the wars of the latter half of the 19th century and the steamwagon was confined to a supporting role.
The major breakthrough that paved the way for the tank was the development of the continuous track in 1898 by the Hornsby heavy machinery company of Lincolnshire and the latter invention of the pedrail. These allowed a steam or petrol engined armoured vehicle to move cross country or through broken ground. This coincided with the War of the Worlds and the South African War, both of which saw the impact of modern artillery, machine guns and rifles on infantry and cavalry moving in the open. Encounters with Martian leviathans proved a sharp shock to British forces used to military supremacy over the inhabitants of the Red Planet.
By 1903, the British Army had begun trialing tracked steam tractors for towing artillery across the battlefield and they began to enter service in 1905. The 1904/05 Russo-Japanese War provided strong evidence of the power of defensive firepower on the modern battlefield and the deadlock of trench warfare and a number of proposed developments were explored as an offensive counter-measure. The Royal Navy also began several studies on landships as part of planning for combined operations against the German High Seas Fleet and for the support of the Royal Marines.
The war scares of 1910 and 1911 stimulated British Army weapons development further and initial plans for an experimental tracked armoured vehicle began in 1912, after a number of proposals were received from Lancelot de Mole and several other inventors. The War Office Experimental Inventions Subcommittee, chaired by Colonel Ernest Swinton, gave a number of positive recommendations to the Committee of Imperial Defence over the course of 1912 and 1913 regarding the viability of such a vehicle. The Admiralty’s plans for larger landships also advanced in this time, with a prototype reduced scale vehicle being tested in mid-1913.
After discussions between First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for War Sir Richard Haldane and Sir Maurice Hankey, a joint Landships Committee was established in November 1913 with a view towards developing armoured tracked vehicles for the Army and Royal Navy over the next three years, given growing expectations of a general European war by 1915 or 1916. A 25t prototype codenamed Little Willie was manufactured by William Foster & Co. of Lincoln and first tested in June 1914, reaching a maximum speed of 4mph. It was armed with two 6pdr guns in side sponsons, a fixed 12pdr firing forwards and four machine guns. The Royal Navy prototype, HMLS Leviathan was tested in mid-August after the outbreak of war; it weighed 120t, had a maximum speed of 2.5mph and was armed with two 15pdr guns, several 3pdrs and half a dozen machine guns.
The initial war of movement ended with the conclusion of the Race to the Sea in mid-October and both the Allies and the Germans began a process of entrenchment along the Western Front. This gave great priority to the deployment of armoured tracked vehicles and both types went into production in late November. The Army vehicle was given the name of ‘tank’ as a security measure, with their paperwork describing them as water carriers for use on the Mesopotamian Front. The first production Mark I tanks were accepted by the Army in February 1915, with the landcruisers being delivered to the Royal Navy from March. The operational Mark I weighed 36t, was powered by a 200hp engine and was protected by over half an inch of armour plate.
Both vehicles were used successfully for the first time in the Battle of Loos (September 25-November 26 1915) where they proved effective in breaking German lines and securing a tactical British victory. A full breakthrough was stymied by the small numbers of tanks available and various operational issues, including a lack of coordination of artillery; additionally, the defence retained the advantage of interior lines of transport and communication. 2 landcruisers and 58 tanks saw action at Loos, with most breaking down after the first four days after having made the initial penetration of German lines in combination with the first use of poison gas by the British Expeditionary Force. The Battle of Loos failed to deliver a knockout blow to the German Army, but marked the first Allied success in offensive action on the Western Front after the defensive victories at Mons and the Marne. The Army tanks were operated by the Machine Gun Corps, with the eight companies grouped together as the Heavy Section of the MGC. A decision was made by the Admiralty to keep the remaining five landcruisers in strategic reserve for the great offensive planned for 1916. A total of 200 Mark I tanks and 7 landcruisers were built in 1915.
The Mark II tank featured improved armour and more powerful engines and entered production at Fosters, Metropolitan Cammell, Armstrong-Whitworth, Beardmores, Vickers from January 1916. 132 Mark IIs joined 84 Mark Is and the 5 landcruisers at the Battle of the Somme, the British Empire’s major effort on the Western Front in 1916. The battle, which lasted from July 1 to October 3rd, was a hard fought Allied victory against skilled and valiant German opposition and succeeded in relieving pressure on the sorely pressed French at Verdun. The winter of 1916/17 saw the Germans driven back across the front back to the defensive shelter of the formidable Hindenburg Line and the entry of the United States of America into the war. The year also saw Mark I tanks attached to the Desert Army, where they spearheaded General Allenby’s conquest of Sinai and Palestine. A total of 826 Mark IIs were built in 1916. The end of the year also saw the separate establishment of the Royal Tank Corps on December 20th.
The heavy tanks had proved their worth at Loos and the Somme, but a lighter, more mobile vehicle was required to exploit the breakthroughs achieved by tanks, infantry and heavy artillery so that the cavalry could finally get loose and wreck havoc on the German lines of supply and communication. Sir William Tritton presented a proposal to the Tank Supply Department in September for a lighter, faster tank and formal development approval was given by the War Office on October 2nd 1916. The Light Mark A or ‘Whippet’ was a 12t vehicle armed with a turreted 1” Maxim Gun and a maximum speed of 12mph. Field Marshal Haig, acting under his considerable authority as Commander of the British Expeditionary Force, saw the prototype tested in December 1916 and ordered the manufacture of 1000 light tanks, with the first vehicles to be delivered by May. 3269 Whippets were built over the course of 1917 and 1918 and the type encountered great success in support of British, American, French and Japanese forces on the Western Front.
The lessons of the Somme were also reflected in the Mark III and Mark IV tanks that entered service in 1917. The Mark III was to be used primarily for training purposes in Britain and France, although 40 out of a total production run of 165 were shipped to the Far East where they saw action on the Chinese Front. The Mark IV was the first major change to the design of the British tank, incorporating a 360hp Rolls Royce engine, increased armour and a rotating turret for the 12pdr. These improvements came at a considerable cost in weight and mobility. Supply tank and 25pdr gun carrier variants were also developed on the chassis of the Mark IV, with the latter proving to be decisive in the battles of the next two years. The Mark IVs saw sterling service in the great battles at Arras, Messines and Ypres in 1917, with British production totaling some 2436 vehicles. A further 390 tanks were built in the United States in the latter half of the year.
The most significant use of tanks during the year was at the Battle of Cambrai. 732 heavy and 287 light tanks were used to spearhead the well-coordinated attack of the British 3rd Army that broke the German defensive lines, captured the town and the controlling heights of Bourlon Ridge and inflicted over 65,000 casualties on the German Second Army.
The Mark V was an evolved version of the Mark IV equipped with new engines and an improved transmission that entered service with the B.E.F. in October 1917; a total of 1248 were built by the end of the war. The Mark VI and Mark VII, slightly improved versions of the Mark V, were cancelled in late 1917 in favour of Anglo-American tank development cooperation that had been underway since June 1917. This took the form of the 48t Mark VIII ‘Liberty’ tank, which were manufactured in dedicated plants in Britain and the United States in November 1917; a total of 1529 British and 1032 American vehicles were built by the end of production in 1920. The Mark VIII would prove its mettle in the titanic battles of June and July 1918 which stopped the last German offensives dead in their tracks. The first large-scale engagements between tanks occurred at Villers-Bretonneux in early April and saw British and Australian Mark Vs and Mark VIIIs defeat German A7Vs and Oberschlesien tanks in a desperate melee.
The German Spring Offensive of 1918 was finally blunted and exhausted by mid July and the scene was set for the final act of the war, in which the tank would play a key role. In addition to the heavy and light tanks of the Royal Tank Corps, three further armoured vehicles played their own part in the great victories to come: the Mark IX transport, the Dreadnought and the Medium Mark A. The need for infantry to keep up with tanks on the deadly modern battlefield lead to the introduction of the 36t Mark IX armoured troop transport tank, which could carry two sections and their equipment in relative safety at a speed of 6mph. 532 were built in 1918 and they saw extensive service in the breakthrough battles that were later termed the ‘Hundred Days’.
The Admiralty had not set aside its abiding interest in armoured vehicles after the relative lack of success of the Landcruisers at Loos and the Somme, but continued to develop and refine the superheavy assault vehicle over the course of 1916 and 1917 in increasing cooperation with the War Office. The four divisions of the Royal Marines had employed Mark IVs successfully at Ypres and on the Zeebrugge Raid, but could not break through heavy German fortifications along the coast of Flanders. On January 12th 1918, the first superheavy tank jointly developed by the Royal Navy and the Army entered production. It was named the Dreadnought. Weighing 125 tons and armed with a converted 4.7” naval gun, a brace of 3pdrs and eight machine guns, the Dreadnoughts could move at a speed of 8mph and were effectively invulnerable to German machine guns, anti-tank rifles and field guns. 18 were built by the end of the war and they accumulated a fearsome reputation in their five months of active service.
The success of the light Whippet tanks in the 1917 campaigns had resulted in an improved 25t medium tank design being submitted by Tritton and Wilson on September 4th 1917 and approved for production in December. It was armed with a 6pdr in a rotating turret and four machine guns and had a top speed of 10mph. They proved to be the foundation for British medium and cruiser tank development in the 1920s and 1930s. After the initial breakthrough at the Battle of Amiens, the ‘black day of the Imperial German Army’, the Mediums and the Whippets played their role to the hilt, smashing through secondary lines of resistance and destroying German supply dumps, railheads and headquarters. The tanks were finally able to fulfill their original role and loosed the armoured cars and cavalry into the German rear, beginning a pursuit that would not halt until they stood on German soil. 876 Medium Mark A tanks were produced before the Armistice, equipping eight battalions of the Royal Tank Corps in the big push across France, Belgium and the Netherlands to the Rhine, alongside the Whippets, the gun carriers, the Mark IX troop carriers and the Dreadnoughts.
Thus it was that the British tank emerged from her industrial might and colonial wars of the 19th century, began secret development in the twilight of the days of peace and then triumphed in the crucible of the Great War. Victory was not simply a product of the tank or any other weapon such as the steam dragon, the ironclad ram, the railway supergun or the rocket. It came from the planning and strategy of the high command, ranging from Kitchener to Haig; from the national mobilization of industry, labour, capital, science, agriculture and munitions production in Britain and the Empire; from the countless glorious efforts of the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force; and from the hard work, undaunted courage and valiant devotion of the artillerymen, machine gunners, engineers, pioneers, miners, wizards, medics, chaplains, signalers, cavalrymen and infantry who made up the 125 divisions of the British Army in the First World War. The machines and men of the Royal Tank Corps played an important role in the defeat of Germany and looked to have secured their future in the uncertain peace to come.
Whilst peace now reigned in Western Europe after the Armistice and subsequent Treaty of Versailles in 1919, the story was quite different elsewhere in the world. Newly reemerged Poland struggled to assert its full independence and sovereignty, Austria-Hungary and Germany were wracked by internal strife and revolution and Russia was rent asunder by Red revolution and a bitter civil war. Allied troops would continue to take part in the fighting in Russia until 1921. The map of the Middle East had been made anew by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the bloody mess of the Chinese Front would take years to repair. In the wars of peace to come, the British Army would need its tanks.
Total British Tank Production
200 Mark I
826 Mark II
165 Mark III
2436 Mark IV
1248 Mark V
1529 Mark VIII
(6404 heavy tanks)
532 Mark IX Armoured Carriers
624 Gun Carriers
3269 Light Mark A Whippet
876 Medium Mark A
18 Dreadnoughts
7 Landcruisers
