CHAPTER I

THE ORIGINS OF THE TANK

In war the main problem to solve is--“How to give blows without receiving them”; it has always been so and is likely always to remain so, for battles are two-act tragedies: the first act consisting in hitting and the second in securing oneself against being hit.

If we look back on the 4,000 years of the known history of war, we shall find that its problems are always the same: thus in battle the soldier has to think of four main acts:

(i) How to strike his opponent when at a distance from him;

(ii) How to move forward towards him;

(iii) How to strike him at close quarters;

(iv) How to prevent himself being struck throughout the whole of this engagement.

In these four acts must be sought the origins of the tank, the idea of which is, therefore, much older than the Trojan horse; indeed, it dates back to some unknown period when aboriginal man raised his arm to ward off the blow of an infuriated beast or neighbour.

To ward off a blow with the bare skin is sometimes a painful operation; why not then cover the arm with leather or iron, why not carry a shield, why not encase the whole body in steel so that both arms instead of one may be used to hit with, for then man’s offensive power will be doubled?

If we look back on the Middle Ages, we find that such a condition of fighting was actually possible and that knights clad in armour cap-à-pie were practically invulnerable. As regards these times there is an authentic record concerning twenty-five knights in armour who rode out one day and met a great mob of insurgent peasants which they charged and routed, killing and wounding no fewer than 1,200 of them, without sustaining a single casualty themselves. To all intents and purposes, these knights were living tanks--a combination of muscular energy, protective armour, and offensive weapons.

Knights in armour remained practically invulnerable as long as the propellant for missile weapons was limited to the bow-string and as long as the knights fought within the limitations which their armour imposed upon them. At Crécy and similar battles, the chivalry of France suffered defeat more through the condition of ground they attempted to negotiate, than through the arrows of the English archers. They, in fact, became “ditched” like a tank in the mud, and being rendered immobile, fell an easy prey to the enemy’s men-at-arms. A fact which proves that it was not the arrow which generally destroyed the knight is that the archers were equipped with maces or leaden hammers[8] by means of which the knight could, when once bogged or “bellied,” be stunned, rendered innocuous, his armour opened, and he himself taken prisoner for ransom.

The true banisher of armour was gunpowder, for when once the thickest armour, which human energy would permit of being worn, could be penetrated, it became but an encumbrance to its wearer. Though gunpowder was introduced as a missile propellant on the battlefield as early as the twelfth century, it was not until the close of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth centuries that its influence began to be felt, and it is interesting to note that directly it became apparent that the hand gun would beat armour carried by men, other means of carrying it were introduced. These means took the form of battle cars or mobile fortresses.[9] Conrad Kyeser,[10] in his military manuscript, written between 1395 and 1405, pictures several “battle cars.” Some of these are equipped with lances, whilst others are armed with cannon. A few years later, in 1420, Fontana designed a large “battle car,” and the following year Archinger another, to enclose no fewer than 100 men. All these cars were moved by means of muscle power, _i.e._ men or animals harnessed inside them. A picture of one of these is to be found in Francis Grose’s _Military Antiquities_, vol. I, p. 388 (see Diagram 1). Its crew consisted of eight men, the same as the Mark I Tank. The following extract concerning these carts is of interest:

“Another species of artillery were the war carts, each carrying two Peteraros or chamber’d pieces; several of these carts are represented in the Cowdry picture of the siege of Bullogne, one of which is given in this work; these carts seem to have been borrowed from the Scotch; Henry, in his History of England, mentions them as peculiar to that nation, and quotes the two following acts of parliament respecting them; one A.D. 1456 wherein they are thus described: ‘it is tocht speidfull that the King mak requiest to certain of the great burrows of the land that are of ony myght, to mak carts of weir, and in elk cart twa gunnis and ilk one to have twa chalmers, with the remnant of the graith that effeirs thereto, and an cunnard man to shute thame.’ By another Act, A.D. 1471, the prelates and barons are commanded to provide such carts of war against their old enemies the English (Black Acts, James II, Act 52, James III, Act 55).”

With all these war carts the limitations imposed upon them by muscular motive force must have been considerable on any save perfectly firm and level ground, consequently other means of movement were attempted, and during the last quarter of the fifteenth century the battle car enters its second phase. In a work of Valturio’s dated 1472, a design is to be found of one of these vehicles propelled by means of wind wheels (see Diagram 2). Ten years later we find Leonardo da Vinci engaged in the design of another type of self-moving machine. Writing to Ludovico Sforza he says:

“I am building secure and covered chariots which are invulnerable, and when they advance with their guns into the midst of the foe, even the largest enemy masses must retreat; and behind them the infantry can follow in safety and without opposition.”

What the motive force of this engine of war was is unknown, but the above description is that of the tank of today, in fact so accurate is this description that Leonardo da Vinci, nearly 350 years ago, had a clearer idea of a tank operation than many a British soldier had prior to the battle of Cambrai, fourteen months after the first tank had taken the field.

A somewhat similar self-moving wagon was designed for Maximilian I and in 1558 Holzschuher describes a battle car a picture of which shows it in action preceded by infantry and flanked by cavalry (see Diagram 3).

In 1599 Simon Stevin is supposed to have constructed for the Prince of Orange two veritable landships; these consisted in small battleships fully rigged, mounted upon wheels (see Diagram 4).

“The earliest English patent for a self-moving wagon which could, if desired, be used in war, was probably that taken out by David Ramsey in 1634. In 1658 Caspar Schott designed one to inclose 100 men and to be employed against the Turks.”[11]

All the users of these inventions were destined to disappointment, for the science of mechanics was not sufficiently advanced to render self-movement practical and it was not until the middle of the eighteenth century that a fresh attempt was made to reintroduce so essential a weapon as the war cart. The following account of this reintroduction is quoted from Mr. Manchester’s most interesting article:

“After the practical application of steam by Watt in 1765 we find an early attempt to apply it to land transportation in what must be considered the first steam automobile. As early as 1769 Cugnot in France set a steam boiler upon the frame of a wagon and succeeded in making the wagon go. His idea was that this invention could be used in war, and on this presumption he was the next year assisted by the government to construct an improvement. The speed, however, was scarcely more than 2½ miles an hour, and the machine would run only twenty minutes before it had to stop for fifteen minutes to get up more steam. In his first public trial he had the ill-luck to run into and knock down part of a stone wall. This led to his being temporarily cast into jail, and his experiments were abandoned. Napoleon must have visualised the possibilities of Cugnot’s machine for military purposes, for when the great general was selected a member of the French Institute, the subject of his paper was ‘The Automobile in War.’”

The “battle car” had now, at least experimentally, evolved into the steam wagon which could run on roads; the next step was to invent one which would move in any direction across country, in other words to replace the wheels by tracks. The evolution of the caterpillar tractor brings us to the fourth phase in the evolution of the “battle car.”

The idea of distributing the weight of a vehicle over a greater area than that provided by its own wheels is by no means a novel one; one year after Cugnot produced the first steam automobile Richard Lovell Edgeworth patented a device whereby a portable railway could be attached to a wheeled carriage; it consisted of several pieces of wood which moved in regular succession in such a manner that a sufficient length of railing was constantly at rest for the wheels to roll upon. The principle of this device was but a modification of that upon which the tracks of tanks now depend, and all subsequent ideas were founded on this basis.[12]

The endless chain track passed through various early patents. In 1801 Thomas German produced “a means of facilitating the transit of carriages by substituting endless chains or a series of rollers for the ordinary wheels.” This definitely cut adrift from the idea of wheels and replaced it by that of tracks. In 1812 William Palmer produced a somewhat similar invention, and in 1821 John Richard Barry patented a contrivance consisting of two endless pitched chains, stretched out and passing round two chain wheels at the end of the carriage, one on each side, which formed the rails or bearing surface of the vehicle.

Footed wheels were not, however, abandoned, and in 1846 a picture of the Boydell engine shows the wheels of this machine fitted with feet. In 1861 an improved wheel-foot was patented by Andrew Dunlop which was modified by other inventors and by degrees evolved into the pedrail, trials of which were carried out at Aldershot under the War Office in 1905.

In 1882 Guillaume Fender of Buenos Aires suggested and John Newburn patented certain improvements to endless tracks. Fender realised that the attempts to produce endless travelling railways had not met with great success owing to the shortness of the rails or tracks employed; he, therefore, proposed that their length should be the same as the distance between the vehicle’s axles. If it were desired to have short links the number of wheels must be increased; furthermore, should the tractor be used for hauling a train of wagons, the endless track should be long enough to embrace all the wheels. This is the original idea of the all-round track.

Among the many interesting patents of about this date were the Applegarth tractor of 1886 (see Diagram 5) and the Batter tractor of 1888. In the former the forward portion of the track was inclined and suggests the contour of the track as applied to the front of tanks. The track being raised in front gives an initial elevation when an obstacle is met with and very greatly assists in surmounting banks and other irregularities.

Diagram 6 depicts the Batter tractor and it clearly shows the basic ideas which have been employed in tank transmission and tank design. This tractor was patented in the U.S.A., it was furnished with two tracks, their contour very closely resembling those of the Medium Mark “A” (Whippet) and gun-carrier machines (see Plates III and VII) The motive power was steam, and two separate engines, fed by one boiler, were used, one to drive each track; apparently provision was made, if desired, for the crankshafts of these engines to be clutched together. Each track consisted of two endless belts, an inner and an outer; the outer belt, that which impinges on the ground, was composed of shoes arranged transversely and coupled together. Between the outer belt and the rollers ran the inner belt. The inner belt or link was of much less width than the outer and thus allowed the latter to swivel and adapt itself to irregularities of the ground, whilst the working of the rollers was not interfered with. A system almost identical with this one has recently been adopted for tank tracks.

The rollers were alternately flanged and plain, as on tanks. Two tails for steering and balancing the machine were fitted; a similar idea was adopted on Mark I machines and gun carriers, but subsequently discarded.

The general introduction of the internal-combustion engine and petrol as a fuel gave a further impetus to the tracked machine. In 1900 Frank Bramond patented a track which could be applied to pneumatic-tyred vehicles, either to single wheels or to two pairs of wheels. In 1907 a Rochet-Schneider was fitted with a track by Roberts and tested at Aldershot. This car was exhibited together with a 70 h.p. Hornsby chain-track tractor and took part in the Royal Review at Aldershot in May 1908. This same year Hornsby fitted up a 75 h.p. Mercedes motor-car with a track to demonstrate its advantages for high-speed work on sand. “This car was run daily for five months at Skegness, on loose sand, and it is understood that a speed of twenty miles an hour was obtained.”[13]

Of later years, American inventors and manufacturers have made great progress in chain-track tractors, but practically all the principles of design were originally applied in Great Britain. The Holt caterpillar is the outstanding American design for tractors which has been adopted during the war.

It is interesting to note with reference to the above inventions that neither Germany nor Austria ever appears to have contributed any basic suggestion relating to track-driven machines.

To return now to the military aspect of our subject, gunpowder did away with armour, for if armour can be pierced its defensive value is lost and it only becomes an encumbrance to the wearer by reducing his mobility and exhausting his muscular energy. Did this change the main problem in the art of war? Not at all, for “the giving of blows without receiving them” remains the unchangeable object of battle irrespective of the change of weapons, and all that happened was, that the soldier, no longer being able to seek protection by body-armour, sought it elsewhere--by manœuvring, by covering fire and entrenchments as typified in the drill of Frederick the Great, the cannonades and sharpshooters’ fire of Napoleon, the fortifications of Vauban, and later on the use of ground by Wellington as cover from fire.

The opening of the war in 1914 saw all sides equipped with similar weapons and in comparatively similar proportions. The great sweep of the Germans through Belgium was followed by the battle of the Marne, a generic term for a series of bloody engagements which raged from Lorraine to Paris. Then came the great reaction--the German retreat to the Aisne, the heights along which had been hastily prepared for defence. The battle swayed whilst vigour lasted and then stabilised as exhaustion intervened. At first cautiously, then rapidly, did the right flank of the German Armies and the left flank of those of the French and British seek to out-manœuvre each other. This led to the race for the coast. Meanwhile came the landing of the British 7th Division at Zeebrugge and then the First Battle of Ypres, which closed the German offensive on the British front for three years and four months.

The quick-firing field-gun and the machine-gun, used defensively, proved too strong for the endurance of the attackers, who were forced to seek safety by means of their spades, rather than through their rifles. Whole fronts were entrenched, and before the end of 1914, except for a few small breaks, a man could have walked by trench, had he wished to, from Nieuport almost into Switzerland.

With the trench came wire entanglements--the horror of the attack, and the trinity of trench, machine-gun, and wire, made the defence so strong that each offensive operation in turn was brought to a standstill.

The problem which then confronted us was a twofold one:

Firstly, how could the soldier in the attack be protected against shrapnel, shell-splinters, and bullets? Helmets were reintroduced, armour was tried, shields were invented, but all to no great purpose.

Secondly, even if bullet-proof armour could be invented, which it certainly could, how were men laden down with it going to get through the wire entanglements which protected every position?

Three definite solutions were attempted--the first, artillery; the second, gas; and the third, tanks--each of which is a definite answer to our problem if the conditions are favourable for its use. Thus at the battle of the Dunajec, in the spring of 1915, the fire of Mackensen’s massed artillery smashed the Russian front; this success being due as much to the fewness of the Russian guns as to the skill of that great soldier. At the Second Battle of Ypres the German surprise gas attack succeeded because the British and French possessed no antidote. At the First Battle of Cambrai, the use of tanks on good firm ground proved an overwhelming success, whilst at the Third Battle of Ypres, on account of the mud, they were an all but complete failure.

All armies attempted the first method by increasing the number of their guns, the size of their guns, and the quantity of their ammunition. So thoroughly was this done that whole sectors of an enemy’s front were blasted out of recognition. This, however, was only accomplished after all surprise had been sacrificed by obvious preparation during which notice and time were given to the enemy to mass his reserves in order to meet the attack. Further than this, though the enemy’s wire and trenches were destroyed all communications on his side of “No Man’s Land” were obliterated, with the result that a new obstacle, “the crumped area,” proved as formidable an antagonist to a continuous advance, by hampering supply, as uncut wire had done to a successful assault, by forbidding infantry movement.

Instead of solving the problem: “How could mobility be reintroduced on the Western Front?” the great increase in artillery, during 1915 and 1916, only complicated it, for, though the preliminary bombardment cut the wire and blew in the enemy’s trenches and the creeping barrage protected the infantry in a high degree, every artillery attack during two years ended in failure due to want of surprise at its initiation and the impossibility of adequate supply during its progress.

The Germans attempted the second method--gas, and from the Second Battle of Ypres the chemist fell in alongside the soldier. That gas might have won the war is to-day too obvious to need accentuation. Two conditions were alone requisite--sufficient gas and a favourable wind. Fortunately for us the German did not wait long enough to manufacture gas in quantity; unfortunately for them the prevailing wind on the Western Front is westerly, consequently when we and the French retaliated they got more than they ever gave us.

The introduction of gas still further complicated the problem, for, whilst it is easy for the defender to launch gas clouds, it is difficult for an attacker to do so, consequently once soldiers had been equipped with respirators the defence gained by this method of fighting and warfare became still more immobile.

As regards the British front the opening day of the First Battle of the Somme, July 1, 1916, showed, through the terrible casualty lists which followed, how far the defence had become the stronger form of war. At no date in the whole history of the war was a stalemate termination to all our endeavours more certain. The hopes of nearly two years were shattered in a few hours before the ruins of Thiepval, Serre, and Gommecourt, where our men fell in thousands before the deadly machine-gun fire of the enemy. Eleven weeks later, on September 15, a solution to the problem became apparent, a solution due to the efforts of a small band of men, of whose energy and endeavours the next chapter will relate.