Rise of the Tank: Armoured Vehicles and Their Use in the First World War

By Michael Foley

Rise of the Tank will be concentrated on the period of the development of the tank and its use in the First World War. This will appeal to those interested in new developments in war and those interested in the First World War generally. The book will be especially relevant due to the forthcoming centenary of the beginning of the war and for this reason it will be easy to promote the book as there will be a lot of media interest.Using the resources of the Imperial War Museum, The National Archives and the Tank Museum, Rise of the Tank will have lots of information available on the development and use of the early tanks as well as personal reminiscences of those who fought in them.The author, Michael Foley, has also collected a great deal of material from the period such as the First World War field service pocket book of a 2nd lieutenant of the 10th Tank Battalion and copies of various magazines of the period. He will have also be accessing First World War newspapers to find original and rare archive sources.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781473840812

Michael Foley

Michael Foley was born in Derry, Northern Ireland, but since 1972 he has lived in London, working as a Lecturer in Information Technology. He is the author of two previous books, of which one, The Age of Absurdity, was a bestseller.

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To

SNAP Special Needs and Parents Charity, Warley, Essex.

For being there for so many people

when no one else was.

*   *   *

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

London’s 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

Britain’s Railway Disasters Pen & Sword 2013

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

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by

PEN AND SWORD MILITARY

an imprint of

Pen and Sword Books Ltd

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Barnsley

South Yorkshire S70 2AS

Copyright © Michael Foley, 2014

ISBN 978 1 78346 393 0

eISBN 9781473840812

The right of Michael Foley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1    The Idea of a Land Ship

Chapter 2    Development of the Tank

Chapter 3    The Tank in Action

Chapter 4    The Men in the Tanks

Conclusion

Appendix:    Tank Banks and Tanks in London

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

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.

*   *   *

Author’s note:

Every effort has been made to trace original copyright holders and any infringement is unintentional.

Introduction

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 army’s 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 man’s 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 army’s 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.

CHAPTER 1

The Idea of a Land Ship

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 enemy’s 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 wasn’t 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.

Throughout history there have been attempts to create machines that could protect soldiers. During the First World War these weapons from the past were often mentioned in the press after the tank was first used. The types of early war machines were discussed in the Illustrated War News on 13 December 1916. The article described Egyptian chariots as being the first war machines. Although originally the chariot’s only weapons were those held by the person in the chariot, once large knives were fitted to the wheels the chariot became an offensive machine in itself.

There were also a number of other early machines that offered some level of protection to forces attacking fortifications. Battering rams to break down the gates of fortified towns would often have a roof above them to protect the operators from missiles dropped from castle walls and from arrows and spears.

An early type of machine for attacking castles. There is some protection for the attackers inside.

Siege towers high enough to allow attackers to gain access to the top of castle walls would often have some form of defensive shields to protect the attacking force. The Roman form of these machines was known as Turris Ambulatoria or moving towers. They would have a drawbridge that could be lowered onto the castle walls allowing the tower’s occupants to gain access.

These examples show that the idea of protecting members of armed forces is far from a modern idea. The invention of gunpowder and the firearm was, however, to make armour almost obsolete and the invention of artillery was also to see the end of the early siege machines. The idea of armoured weapons was not entirely forgotten though. In the fifteenth century Leonardo Da Vinci drew a man-powered vehicle armed with cannon.

According to the War Illustrated there were designs for other offensive machines during the same period. One of these was a cart driven before a horse with a shield and a gun fitted facing forwards. In the sixteenth century a war cart driven by horses carried men within in it on an upper floor. This protected the men and the horse that drove it. This machine was designed during the reign of Henry Vlll but may never have been built.

An early form of a tank. This was a design from the sixteenth century with protection and guns.

When real machines appeared that were aimed at offering protection to men in conflict they did not always end up well for their inventor. One such machine was invented as early as 1769 by a Frenchman named Cugnot. Powered by a steam engine on the body of a wagon, it could move at two and a half miles per hour but had to stop every twenty minutes to get up steam. One would think that such an invention would have impressed the French authorities, however when Cugnot exhibited his machine for members of the government he accidently knocked down a wall. As a result he was put in prison.

There was also an idea for a locomotive land battery which was patented in England in 1855. It was a steam-driven fort armed with 14-pounder carronades protected by scythe blades similar to ancient chariots. The machine was also protected by armour plating.

Although armoured men may seem to have been left behind in the Middle Ages this was not the case. There were examples of personal armour being used in the First World War. The War Illustrated in 1915 described the introduction of steel helmets for French troops as a return to the Middle Ages with armour for infantry. Soft hats had been worn before the introduction of the helmet.

Far from being a thing of the past armour was used in the war. This is an Italian armoured soldier from the First World War.

The Illustrated War News also showed a number of examples of body armour including, in August 1917, a Canadian soldier wearing captured German body armour. I wonder about the propaganda value of these reports as they seemed to show that the German troops were somehow not as brave as the British because they wore body armour. The German armour, found after the battle at Vimy Ridge, was shown to King George V when he visited the Western Front. It consisted of a steel breast-plate with hoops of steel protecting the abdomen while allowing some flexibility.

There was another side to this story, however, as during a War Cabinet meeting in March 1917 the Master General of Ordnance, Major General Furse, reported that body shields were being sent to British battalions on all fronts at the rate of 400 per battalion. The Cabinet was shown a number of types most of which were not proof against machine-guns at close range.

Major General Furse undertook to obtain for the War Cabinet a full report on the extent to which body armour of various types had been used at the front. He would also report how effective these body shields had been. The fact that the British were also using body armour does not seem to have been reported in the War Illustrated.

A later report in the Illustrated War News in January 1918 showed a German prisoner taken by the Canadians wearing similar body armour. The report went on to explain that many ancient military items had made a comeback in the war. These were catapults for throwing bombs and even steel helmets whose origins went back to the earliest conflicts. Perhaps the re-introduction of personal armour for the men on both sides was a spur in the introduction new forms of armoured vehicles.

Armoured vehicles, apart from these ancient examples, were known and in use before the First World War began. In 1901 the war correspondent A.G. Hales said that the bayonet charge was as dead as the Greek phalanx due to the quick-firing rifle. Yet this type of attack was still used continuously during the Boer War. Hales pointed out that an armoured car would have been very useful in leading attacks against the Boer so the idea was obviously well known by then.

The press gave the impression that Germans wore armour because they were scared. In fact British troops were also being provided with body shields.

As early as 1902 Frederick Sims had exhibited a motor war car at Crystal Palace. It was armoured and armed with two Maxim machine-guns in revolving turrets. It had been offered to the War Office in 1899 but had not been taken up by them.

Despite Hales’s view that the bayonet charge was outdated in 1902 it was still widely used in the First World War twelve years later. Although the idea of a weapon that could stop this was to be put forward from the early days of the war it was ignored by those responsible for sending the men ‘over the top’.

The weapon that was to eventually have a huge effect on the war, and that has developed into a modern necessity for the armed forces, was the tank. What made the tank different to other armoured vehicles, such as armoured cars, were the caterpillar tracks that made it possible for it to cross barriers. In the case of the First World War this was in the form of trenches and barbed wire. The caterpillar track was an idea that preceded the tank by a number of years.

Just as armoured vehicles were not a new idea, neither was the tank’s use of tracks. A primitive version of the tank was invented by Richard Lovell Edgeworth, in the eighteenth century. It was described as being driven by a continuous track system. It was in the nineteenth century that a number of more successful caterpillar tracks were invented often fitted to steam-powered tractors. Some examples of these machines were used by the military to pull large guns as early as the Crimean War.

The use of tractors as a military transport had been in operation for many years. Layriz in his Mechanical Traction in War said in 1900 that a reform of army transport had been needed for some time due to the use of heavy guns. He also went on to say that there had been enormous progress in the use of mechanical tractors in the previous 100 years.

Layriz mentioned how the Boydell System had been used in the Crimean War for pulling wagons over ground that no other vehicles could cross. He then went on to say that they were then forgotten about during the following time of peace. This was not quite true, however. There had been experiments in the use of tractors to pull guns in a number of countries since the mid-nineteenth century. These tractors were used in the years between the Crimean and the First World War. In 1870 the Germans used Fowler’s steam traction engines for moving baggage in the Franco-Prussian war. They would pull a line of wagons giving the appearance of a train that ran across any terrain without tracks. They were found to travel fifteen miles a day on poor roads and up to thirty miles on good roads pulling guns, the same distance that infantry could travel. The French experimented with tractors at Champs de Mars in Paris in 1875. They used an Aveling traction engine to pull twelve field guns.

The Russians in 1876 at Krasznoje-Salo Camp near St Petersburg tried an Aveling and a Fowler. The Fowler was too heavy for a wooden bridge but managed to cross the stream under its own power by driving through the water. The Russians went on to use Avelings and Fowler traction engines in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78.

Italy tried their first traction engine for military use in 1873; they had ten by 1874 and by 1876 had sixty machines of various makes. An Italian machine, the Enrico, had been tested at Verona by the 8th Field Artillery Regiment. The Swiss had tried an Andermatt traction engine to pull heavy guns in 1892.

What Layriz said about the use of traction engines being forgotten after the Crimean war in England was also not quite the case. In 1858 a Bray Traction Engine was used to take a 68-pounder gun from the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich to Plumstead Common. Following this a report on the difference between Boydells and Brays stated that Boydells were better for softer ground but Brays were better for hard ground.

In Berkshire in 1893 a number of engines were tested for pulling guns. These included Avelings, Porters, Fowlers and Howards. They were used again at Salisbury in 1898. A report by Sir Garnet Wolseley said that it showed clearly that mechanical tractors were an efficient supplement to animal traction. While the British were still using steam tractors, the Austrians were experimenting with petrol-driven vehicles.

One of Fosters’ early traction engines. They were used in a number of countries for pulling heavy guns in the years before the First World War.

When the Boer War began it was soon obvious that the use of animals for moving supplies and guns was far from ideal. Apart from the terrain, there were diseases that seriously hampered the use of oxen and horses. Fifteen traction engines, mainly Fowlers, were sent and a traction engine corps was formed under Major Templar.

It seems strange then that with the use of traction engines to move large guns being quite widespread in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it should have seemed such a problem when war broke out in 1914. It seems that every generation has to rediscover what had been in use in the past and by the First World War the idea once again seemed a new one.

It was their use in pulling guns that led to the widespread adoption of caterpillar track-type vehicles. The version that seemed to have most influence on the development of the tank was the Holt tractor produced in America by the Holt Manufacturing Company. They were manufacturing them from early in the twentieth century. Benjamin Holt had been to England in 1903 to look at the development of the tracked tractor. What he saw was not particularly efficient and when he returned to America he began to develop his own version of the continuous track.

What is surprising is that an American version seemed to have so much influence when a British company, Hornsby of Grantham, had not only been producing similar machines since 1905 but had even been showing them to the army as a means of pulling artillery in the pre-war years. It seems that those in positions of power still preferred to use horses. In 1908 the Hornsby Chain Tractor was exhibited at Aldershot at an army display attended by Edward Vll. The tractor managed to get across several obstacles and also pulled out a group of horses that had got trapped in some boggy ground. The Times mentioned that the tractor was inspected by His Majesty.

There were suggestions that the tractor could also carry a gun and the inventor, Mr Roberts, was awarded £1,000 by the War Office. However the Director of Artillery, Major General Sir Stanley Von Donop, saw only the negatives in the machine and refused to use it. It was a pattern of senior officers refusing to accept new inventions that was to be repeated throughout the coming war.

In May 1910 what was described as a new military tractor of the caterpillar type was trialled at Aldershot. Again the inventor was David Roberts, managing director of Hornsby. It was much smaller and lighter than the previous one shown at Aldershot and could run for 100 miles. It had a 70-horse power engine and ran on paraffin. The tractor pulled a 60-pounder gun across hills, heather and bog land. It managed to move the gun through mire that at times reached its axles although at some points it had to use the hauling gear with which it was equipped. The Times said that it was watched by Colonel H.C.L. Holden of the Royal Gun and Carriage factories. If reports were favourable the tractor would be purchased by the government. Once again it wasn’t and in 1911 Roberts eventually sold the patent to the American company Holt.

Hornsby Tractors were well known however. A book called Gas and Oil Engines by Bryan Deakin, written in 1905, was updated by Professor Bunstall and T.G. Smith in 1910. The book discussed the developments in the internal combustion engine and mentioned the Hornsby Tractor, known as the Caterpillar. It described it as the ‘War Office Hornsby Tractor’. A report in The Times of the Royal Tournament in May 1914 described the Caterpillar as a ‘mechanical masterpiece’.

Despite the knowledge of the ability of these caterpillar-type tractors, when the war began other types of tractor were to be the first used for moving large guns. These were actually built by the company that was to go on and develop the tank, William Foster & Co Ltd of Lincoln.

When war first broke out there was a problem with large guns such as the 15-inch howitzers produced by the Coventry Ordnance Works. Due to the difficulty of moving such guns the government was reluctant to buy them in large numbers despite their usefulness in battle. The managing director of the Coventry Works, Admiral Bacon, asked William Tritton, managing director of William Foster, to make a proposal for a method of moving these guns. This was because Fosters had been producing large tractors for many years. This led to a meeting between Bacon, Tritton and Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty and Lord Fisher, First Sea Lord which eventually resulted in a plan for the guns to be pulled by petrol tractors. Strangely, when one considers that the capability of caterpillar tractors was known, the order for these tractors was to be for those with wheels. The order was actually put in place for nearly 100 of these tractors without any government inspection. Churchill was very interested in the tractors as he had ideas beyond their use in pulling large artillery pieces. He asked if they could carry men and guns themselves.

The first tractor was tested in November 1914 and was able to move heavy loads over rough ground.

Reviews for Rise of the Tank

[charlesferdinand_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Just one damn fact after another. The author has done considerable research, but it seems as if he has just written up his notes. There little coherent narrative, let alone analysis. That being said, there is a lot of information in the pages. Mainly of interest to the tank enthousiast, not so much for the casual reader.