Tank Warfare

Jeremy Black

• Editorial: Indiana University Press
• Año: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780253052711
• Categoría: Historia
• Categoría: Historia militar y marítima

"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

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 th...