A New Excalibur

The Development of the Tank 1909–1939

A. J. Smithers

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military Classics
• Year: 1986
• ISBN:
  9781473816732
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

The story of the inventors, engineers, soldiers, and politicians behind the emergence of the armored fighting vehicle. The birth and infancy of the tank had an enormous number of technical problems to be solved—but the issues with its construction paled in comparison to the endless squabbles among the people involved. This fascinating study of the vehicle which was born out of the stalemate of the Western Front in the First World War looks at all the obstacles that had to be overcome. As is inevitable in almost any work of history set in the first half of the century, the figure of Winston Churchill looms large—but the role that he played in this instance is remarkable even by his standard, when it is remembered that at the crucial time he was First Lord of the Admiralty and theoretically had nothing to do with warfare on land. Foremost among the leading actors in the drama are Sir Eustace Tennyson-d'Eyncourt, Sir Ernest Swinton, Bertie Stern, Sir William Tritton, and Walter Gordon Wilson. This is the first exhaustive study of the men behind the earliest tanks. The story of their furious quarrels and the machines they produced combine to make a remarkable and compelling study.

Contents

	Acknowledgements
	Introduction
	PART ONE
1	VICTORIAN AFTERGLOW
2	FAREWELL TO THE SWORD
3	THE LANDSHIP COMMITTEE
4	‘MOTHER’
5	NOW THRIVE THE ARMOURERS
6	INNOCENCE LOST
7	COMPLICATIONS
8	EVIL DAYS
9	MUD AND BLOOD
10	TROUBLE UP AT PLANT
11	‘DID WE REALLY SEND MEN TO FIGHT IN THAT?’
12	ENTER UNCLE SAM
13	THE DAY OF THE CATAPHRACTS
14	PRESENT TENSE: FUTURE IMPERFECT
15	THE PENDULUM BEGINS TO SWING
16	THE END COMES IN SIGHT
17	THE LAST FOOTHILLS
18	To THE GREEN FIELDS BEYOND
19	END OF ROUND ONE
	PART TWO
20	VICKERS TAKE OVER
21	YEARS OF FUTILITY
22	’EAVY-STERNED AMATEUR OLD MEN
23	As WE SOWED
	Appendices
	Bibliogaphical Note
	A Note on Sources
	General Index
	Index of Tanks

Acknowledgements

ANYBODY WHO ATTEMPTS such a book as this must first visit the Tank Museum at Bovington and seek the benevolence of those in charge of that admirable institution. There I received help far beyond anything I might have expected. The late Lieut-Colonel Kenneth Hill and the present Librarian, Mr Fletcher, did far more than merely answer questions put by an imperfectly educated stranger; they provided information from their important (and underused) archives that I did not know existed. David Fletcher, author of many books and probably the world’s best informed man on the subject, most kindly found the time to direct me to a number of papers containing essential information that could not be found elsewhere. That done, he initiated me into the workings of Tanks of the first generation. I cannot sufficiently thank him.

On published material, I gratefully acknowledge permissions given to me to draw upon books and papers still under copyright. To Colonel A. J. Aylmer and the Estate of the late Major-General Sir Edward Spears for quotations from Prelude to Victory. To A. P. Watts Ltd. and the Estate of Lieut-Colonel Sir Albert Stern for those from Tanks: the Log-book of a Pioneer. To Newnes Books, a division of the Hamlyn Groups Ltd, for leave to quote from Mr Winston Churchill’s The World Crisis 1911–1918. To Mr Roderick Suddaby of the Imperial War Museum for telling me of the whereabouts of the Stern Papers and to the trustees of The Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives at King’s College London for making me free of them; my particular gratitude goes to Dr Patricia J. Methven of that Centre for her unfailing help.

Several gentlemen of military antecedents have been good enough to read and comment upon the original typescript, now by no means the same as when it was first submitted. They know of my feelings towards them; I do not mention their names for there is no reason why they should share the blame for such criticisms as are bound to be made.

Last, my thanks to Philippa Arnott who turned a mass of heavily amended paper into the fairest of typescripts, and to Bill Oakes, who spawned the idea of this book.

Acknowledgements to illustrations

Photographs obtained from the Imperial War Museum appear on the following pages: Front end-paper, title-page, 24, 68, 95, no, 133, 136, 137, 150, 166, 172, 195, 196.

From the Bill Oakes collection: pages 80, 81, 93, 99, 103, 107, 165, 167, 170, 171, 174, 177, 182, 185, rear end-paper.

From various books: pages 19, 20, 25, 28, 37, and from War Monthly, page 125 (both subjects).

All the remainder are from the Tank Museum at Bovington.

Introduction

SOMEBODY – I wish I could remember who it was – once said that if Napoleon Bonaparte had only put up a reward of a million francs for the invention of a weapon superior to the flint-lock musket he would have become master of the world. In this there is much truth, but only because Napoleon controlled his War Office. It would have been technically possible to have put a percussion rifle, breech-loading like the Ferguson, into the hands of French soldiers in the early 1800s with incalculable results.

In England we arrange matters differently. It would have been equally possible to have produced a tracked and armoured vehicle driven by an internal combustion engine in the early 1900s. The inventor, however, would not have been rewarded. He would have been lucky to avoid a visit by two doctors accompanied by men in white coats. The story lingers of the Nottingham plumber who submitted designs of just such a machine; they were, naturally, placed in a War Office file with a minute on them saying, ‘The man’s mad.’

It seems impossible to pick up any book on the subject without encountering the trite observation that nobody invented the tank. John Charteris, Sir Douglas Haig’s Director of Military Intelligence was, more often than not, wrong in his conclusions but here he hit the nail on the head. ‘The idea of a mobile strong-point, out of which the tank developed, probably occurred to most minds after our first experiences of attacking strongly entrenched positions. I first heard it suggested by an Intelligence Corps officer as early as the Battle of the Aisne. His idea took the form of a group of men carrying a section of bullet-proof shield. Very elementary calculations of weight proved that idea impracticable and the suggestion of using the ‘Caterpillar’ tractor, which had been experimented with at Aldershot in 1914, immediately arose. I remember discussing the possibility of this with Colonel Swinton in 1914. But it was so obvious a development that it must have occurred simultaneously in many regimental and Staff messes.’

That the Army had fared as well as it had under a Liberal Government was due entirely to one man, Richard Burdon Haldane. Even so, it did not fare well. The Navy, the sure shield, got, however grudgingly, its Dreadnoughts, its turbines and its big guns. The Army, up to 1914, was still Wolseley’s army. It was given a superb rifle, better field guns and sensible webbing equipment but that was about all. A man going into battle either walked or was carried by an animal. Should he and his fellows need to dig a hole in the ground they did it in the same way and using the same tools as the builders of the Great Wall of China and the Pyramids of Egypt. And this at a time when mechanical and electrical engineering had reached a degree of skill not far behind that of today. The steam engine was obsolescent but the petrol and Diesel ones were widely used and of high efficiency. British engineers were held in respect everywhere; but nobody asked them to take an interest in military affairs. These were not for civilians, compendiously regarded by the highest military authorities as outsiders and not to be trusted.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was possessed of a fertile imagination allied to robust common sense. His articles in the Strand Magazine, foretelling exactly what would happen when the Germans unleashed their submarines, were regarded as highly entertaining. When, early in the war, he buttonholed Mr Montagu at the Ministry of Munitions to demand the making of some form of shield he found himself pushing on an open door. ‘Sir Arthur, there is no use your arguing here, for there is no one in this building who does not know that you are right. The whole difficulty lies in making the soldiers accept your views.’ When all was over Sir Arthur wrote of it again. ‘We can never be grateful enough to the men who thought out the Tank, for I have no doubt at all that this product of British brains and British labour won the war, which would otherwise have ended in a peace of mutual exhaustion. Churchill, d’Eyncourt, Tritton, Swinton and Bertie Stern, these were in sober fact, divide the credit as you may, the men who played a very essential part in bringing down the giant’. Even the well-informed Conan Doyle seems to have been unconscious of the existence of a man quite as important as any of these. If Walter Gordon Wilson meant nothing to him it is hardly surprising that most people never heard of him. Yet, but for him there would have been no tank. Not, at any rate, in 1916.

Another well-worn apophthegm is that the effect of tanks in the First War was largely moral. There is something in this, but it calls to mind a remark by Scheibert, the historian of the American Civil War: ‘The difference between a Spencer carbine and an Enfield rifle is by no means a mere matter of sentiment.’ A great many infantrymen owed their lives to the tank; and to it the Army owed a good part of its greatest victories.

These things did not come about painlessly. As most if not all, of the men involved are long dead it is possible to give a candid account of their doings, successful and otherwise, without hurting the feelings of all who tried their best. That they quarrelled – furiously at times – is hardly surprising, for these were strong-willed men and great affairs were at stake. Who was right and who was wrong no longer matters. There is honour enough for all of them.

When the prophet Joel’s palmerworms and locusts had done with the next twenty years the Pioneers were summoned back. By then, however, they were no longer Pioneers but had become in their turn nearer to Mr Kipling’s ‘eavy-sterned amateur old men. There is a moral in this, somewhere.

PART ONE

from the tents

The armourers, accomplishing the knights,

With busy hammers closing rivets up,

Give dreadful note of preparation.

KING HENRY V

CHAPTER 1

---

Victorian Afterglow

WHEN THE LEGATE, later Emperor, T. Flavius Vespasianus led the IInd Legion Augusta across Hardy’s Egdon Heath to its assault upon the great Iron Age fortress of Maiden Castle he did not require his foot soldiers to advance unprotected against expert slingers. On the command being given Augusta carried out a well-practised drill movement. Each shield was raised above the head of its bearer, interlocking with those of his neighbours and the defenders looked helplessly down as the testudo, the great tortoise, advanced upon them. Iron-hard pellets rained down, bounced off and the legionaries arrived at the East Gate practically unscathed. Once there the swords of Rome made a swift and bloody end to the business. To Augusta it was second nature, an exercise that had been carried out times without number by them and their predecessors. Their lesson was not wasted upon posterity. Only a few miles across the heath lies Bovington Camp, home since 1916 to the British armoured forces.

The Roman Army had always been an infantry army; its artillery, in the form of catapults of all shapes and sizes, was efficient for siege work but horses had never been important on the battlefield. Auxiliary cavalry were always useful for scouting and for the pursuit of a broken enemy but had never been the queen of battles. The edged weapon was master and everything else existed only to help the swordsmen get to hand strokes with their adversaries. The next of the really mighty armies to arrive worked on the opposite principle. Mongols were horsemen, excellent horsemen, but they were not cavalry as the West knew it. Their sovereign weapon was not edged but missile, the short bow, and they used it from the saddle with devastating effect. No armour was needed. For a Mongol, as for ‘Jacky’ Fisher, speed was armour enough, speed coupled with overwhelming numbers. None of their opponents stood a chance. From a professional point of view it would have been of the greatest interest if time and space problems could have been overcome in order to have allowed them to meet in open field the armies of the English longbowmen. It would take some hardihood to pontificate on which side would have come off best. The same may be said of the Swiss phalanx. Though it was the terror of Europe it had the good fortune never to have to take on a missile weapon of such power and precision.

In Western Europe armour had a long and probably undeserved run of success. The mailed knight upon his barbed horse was irresistible, again until he came face to face with the same simple weapon in very skilled hands. In the Near East, however, he had a less easy time of it. From Manzikert in 1071 to Dorylaeum fifteen years later and finally to the disaster of the Horns of Hattin in 1187 the Frankish-style charge proved ineffective against an enemy who would not stand still to receive it. The Turkish bow was a feeble thing compared to the English but it was good enough to puncture horses, and camel-loads of arrows furnished generous supplies of missiles. The truth was that cavalry ought to have been obsolete hundreds of years before it finally vanished from the field. It continued to exist, as a battering force, only for sentimental reasons and because regular armies had not come into existence. Great numbers of animals were always needed for draught and pack purposes; hunting was the traditional sport of the richer strata of society and it would have been unthinkable that, in the midst of so much horseflesh, a man of high degree should walk into battle.

The old problem remained until our own day. Very possibly it remains still. In essence it is obvious. How do you break a body of armed and determined men if you cannot shoot them down from a distance? Something must hit them with great force, but, before it can do that, it must reach them without being itself destroyed. Many devices were invented over the centuries, most of them never getting further than the drawing board. The majority can be of no more than antiquarian interest, for there are no records of them having achieved anything worth while. Froissart tells of a device called a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents