World War I.
This was when tanks first made their appearance, as a means of breaking
the stalemate of trench warfare – because poison gas wasn’t getting it
done. Hardly surprisingly, it was the
winning side, the Allies, which pioneered tanks. The Germans did too little, too late: and made up for it big time the next time
around (1939-45).
England. Mark I, IV & V tanks. These were the rhomboid “tracks around the
parallelogram” deals with twin sponsons, armed with either cannon (“male”) or
machine gun (“female”). The Mark I was
the initial model which debuted at the Battle of the Somme in September
1916. A total of 150 of these were made. This design had a crew of 8 men.
The Mark II and III models were training/experimental
models between the Marks I and IV which never saw combat.
Approximately 1200 of the Mark IV model were made; of
these most were combat models, the balance being supply, recovery, or
experimental. The Mark I & IV tanks
had a single 100 HP engine but weighed almost 30 tons. Small wonder the top speed was 4 mph, which
is essentially how fast your A/T equipped car goes if you simply take your foot
off the brake without giving it any gas.
The Mark V was a substantial improvement over the Mark
IV, with a new 150 HP Ricardo engine, giving a 20% increase in speed to…5
mph. Even more important, the Mark V
had a new transmission which only required one driver instead of two, allowing
the second driver to man a gun instead. Mark V production was 400: 200 male and 200
female.
The Mark V* (pronounced “five star”) was a
“stretch-limo’d” Mark V. “Stretch limo”
actually has some meaning here, as initially they hoped to make the V*
essentially the first armored personnel carrier, but the conditions inside the
tank were so horrendous, no soldier could stay inside long enough, so that idea
died for the moment. The next upgrade, the
Mark V**, had wider tracks and a 225 HP beast under the hood. Neither of these variants were produced early
enough, or in enough quantity, to supplant the Mark V as the main battle tank
of the British Army in WWI.
The Mark I served at the Somme (September 1916), the
Mark IV at Cambrai (November 1917), and the Mark V for the second half
of 1918 up to the Armistice.
The Whippet tank,
weighing in at 14 tons with 4 machine guns and a crew of 3 – production 200 –
acted as the British version of the Renault FT (see below): a lighter, faster
model equipped only with machine guns, to complement the heavier, slower Mark
IVs and Vs. Whippets served from March
1918 to the end of the war.
Germany. A7V (24) and Mark IV (captured) (30+). The A7V was Germany’s own design. It had a 57mm cannon in the prow and 4
machine guns on the sides. Since this
tank weighed 33 tons and had a 200 HP engine, surprise surprise: it galloped to
a top speed of 8 mph. In addition to the
A7V, the Germans captured considerable numbers of British Mark IV’s, repaired them, trained
their crews on them, painted Maltese crosses on the sides, and put them back
into action against the Allies – but none too effectively. The German general staff was never quite sold
on the premise of the tank and put very little priority on developing their own
fleet or cultivating the “Beutepanzers” (captured Mark IVs). It took so long – until late 1918, two years
after the tank’s debut at the Somme in September 1916 – for the Allies to
produce enough tanks and develop the appropriate tactics that by the time they
succeeded at getting tanks to make any substantial contribution, it was too
late for the Germans to ramp up their development and production to respond in
kind. Generally the Germans were on the
receiving end of tank attacks. Without a
sizable tank force of their own, their response was to bring up more of their
light field guns and heavy machine guns, and also to increase the width of
their trenches to make it more difficult for the Allied tanks to cross. By ramping up production and using fascines
to cross wider trenches, the Allies were able to overcome these obstacles.
France. Schneider, St Chamond, and Renault FT. The Schneider was mostly a big box with a
cannon on one side and a machine gun on the other – an odd asymmetrical design. It was slow and not very effective. The St Chamond was much larger, like a big
monster. It had a 75mm in the nose and
machine guns on the sides, but was not much more successful than the Schneider. One officer called it “an elephant with the
legs of a gazelle.”
The winning combo was the
much smaller Renault FT, which
actually had a real turret and could get out of its own way. The FT idea was a small tank made in large
quantities which could go fairly quickly and overwhelm the enemy like a swarm
of angry bees. Of all the tanks used,
this one had the best layout and essentially became the template for the future
development of the tank as a weapon – the Mark V, A7V, and the other French
designs were dead ends. The US made a
few of these; they made up the US’ first tank force (cue Patton & Eisenhower).
Although the Germans captured some
Renaults, they didn’t use any of them. This is the only tank referred to by the name of a mainstream auto manufacturer, as opposed to a unique military designation, like calling a tank a "Chevrolet" or a "Plymouth".
Naturally it was the
Western Front that the first tanks were used on.
The Allies didn’t send any to the Tsar while WWI was going on; the
Italian front was mountains; and in Africa the English pretty much had their
way most of the time in a fairly mobile environment without trenches. The British sent about 5 Mark IVs to the
Middle East, but they came too late to make a difference. Tanks at this point were so unreliable that
the British and French had to throw a large quantity together to expect any
meaningful number to make it to the German lines, and the industrial capacity,
as it was, could barely crank out the aggregate number. So they really couldn’t spare any tanks for
other theaters even if they wanted to.
After WWI the British sent
70 Mark Vs and 17 Whippets to the White Russian armies for their Civil War, which
were subsequently captured by the Reds, so most of the surviving ‘V’s are in
Russia. The IV/V in “War Horse” was in
fact a newly made replica, not an original.
The remainder of the Mark V’s were used as fairly effective fundraisers
in England – the spectacle of the noisy, bizarre beast did wonders to open
people’s wallets and contribute to the cause.
The sole surviving A7V is
in a museum in Australia – it was captured by Australian troops in WWI and
brought back with them as a 33 ton souvenir.
The Renault FT remained in
service in the interwar years, up to WWII, and was even found in Afghanistan in
the 1980s. But its most substantial
contribution was as a starting design for everyone else’s more modern tanks.
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