Table Of ContentTo
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
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire S70 2AS
Copyright © Michael Foley, 2014
ISBN 978 1 78346 393 0
eISBN 9781473841345
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.
