The Devil's Chariots

by John Glanfield

  Lloyd George’s Ministry of Munitions was in the process of taking over almost all armaments production from a shocked and truculent War Office. It was created in June to tackle the munitions shortages which had become a public scandal. The quietly able Christopher Addison MP joined as Under Secretary. He and Lloyd George were to build a formidable national machine for war production.

  Lloyd George moved quickly after the Killen Strait demonstration, securing Balfour’s formal agreement on 17 July to hand responsibility for the landships to his Ministry rather than the War Office. Scenting that it might be accused of duplicity, the Admiralty wrote an emollient letter to the WO and the MoM coolly confirming the transfer. The WO was slow to respond, but eventually von Donop accepted the situation with good grace on 17 August, secure in the belief that the army retained the right to approve final design for all munitions. The splitting of design control and production between the two ministries was unsustainable but the Army Council held out until 25 November, only capitulating after being ordered by the government to let go. Responsibility for all design, patterns, specifications, testing of arms and inspection then passed to Lloyd George’s ministry. The army remained responsible for specifying munitions performance requirements and for their storage and distribution to the troops.

  Balfour agreed to keep the Landships Committee going with d’Eyncourt in the chair until the first machine was produced to the DNC’s satisfaction. It would report to Sir Ernest Moir, Director of MoM Inventions Department, which would take over fully at that point. The War Office committee under Scott-Moncrieff was ongoing. No. 20 Squadron had been attached to d’Eyncourt’s team since 7 July. It would transfer from Wormwood Scrubs to the Ministry’s experimental ground at Wembley Park, where it would be shared with Louis Jackson’s Trench Warfare Department. D’Eyncourt ensured that Stern, the Wilson brothers and Kenneth Symes remained on board by transferring them to the squadron. Symes was working with Beardmore’s and Vickers, researching armour and designing turrets. Boothby placed Hetherington in command of the squadron, McGrath stepping down to become his deputy.

  Col Hankey had been unsuccessfully lobbying from London to get Swinton on to the new BEF Experimental Committee (the ‘Monkey Tricks Committee’) to inject more drive. He had the ear of the Prime Minister and was able to put to him an alternative proposal. Swinton was recalled on 18 July to become Hankey’s deputy as Senior Assistant Secretary to the CID. The two officers had, of course, served together there before the war. Swinton was unable to get away to visit d’Eyncourt until the 30th. The DNC briefed him guardedly before realizing his visitor was a genuine landships supporter. Swinton described his meeting with Stern next day as like lighting the fuse of a mine, and Stern recalled their first words:

  ‘Lieutenant Stern’, he said, ‘this is the most extraordinary thing I have ever seen. The Director of Naval Construction appears to be making land battleships for the Army who have never asked for them and are doing nothing to help. You have nothing but naval ratings doing all your work. What on earth are you? Are you a mechanic or a chauffeur?’ ‘A banker’, I replied. ‘This’, said he, ‘makes it still more mysterious.’18

  The dynamic banker and the visionary soldier struck sparks from each other – there was a Livingstone and Stanley quality to their meeting. More importantly, the struggling landships venture had secured a powerful new friend at court.

  7.

  LANDSHIPS

  ‘Balata died on test bench yesterday morning. New arrival by Tritton out of pressed plate. Light in weight but very strong. All doing well, thank you. Proud Parents.’1

  William Tritton, telegram, 22 September 1915

  6 August 1915 was a black day for Col Crompton. He learned that morning that his son Nigel had been wounded (he was killed in action three months later); and a curt letter from d’Eyncourt instructed him to produce all landships orders issued from Thriplands. The DNC wished to inspect and initial them before they were passed to Foster’s which was now the contractor ‘for the whole of the work’. Crompton was instructed not to give further orders without d’Eyncourt’s approval. He was informed that he and Legros could expect their contracts to be terminated at the end of the month. It was a dismissive communication which the old-school colonel never forgot: ‘I complain of the way I was treated by Sir T. d’Eyncourt. As one engineer to another he showed a total absence of engineering etiquette, carrying on with two people at once, which I resent very much indeed.’2

  In his restrained letter of acknowledgement Crompton gave an encouraging report on preliminary tests at Burton. He expressed his doubts about Tritton’s ability to spare time to take the job to completion, adding ‘we have had a hard and difficult part to play. Boothby and his men have always pulled against us, the designing engineers.’3 The colonel vainly sought backing from Churchill, who expressed surprise and annoyance and promised to make enquiries.

  George Field was recalled from America. On the voyage home he summarized his findings. He thought Strait’s angled track should be adopted to aid climbing. Alternatively a separate front-mounted pair of frames should swivel to follow ground contours. As for Crompton’s double ship,

  I should prefer double engined single ship with one engine on each side… From my interviews and discussions I have completely abandoned the idea of the double ship as impracticable, it being unwieldy and difficult to steer. The effect of the back half on the leading half when the leading half is at an angle is to push it further into an awkward position and throw undue strain on the couplings… I consider that a machine carrying a moderately heavy gun and travelling at about 8mph of far more utility than a man-carrying machine; it could also be armed with Maxims. The use of epicyclics is essential if changing gear is required; else machine must come to rest before change can be made. The double engine will do away with all the complications required for steering.4

  Field encountered general hostility on his return to 83 Pall Mall, particularly from Stern who was dismissive of his suggestions and work in America. By then any associate of Crompton’s was yesterday’s designer. Field had made provisional arrangements in the US with Bullock’s, Killen Strait, and the Federal Bridge Company and the Waukeshau Engine Company, both of Milwaukee, to build complete landships at the rate of 100 per week in all. This early opportunity to tap into America’s immense engineering resources was discarded by the Landships Committee which feared loss of control at such a distance, and was probably doubtful of securing adequate shipping capacity. The MoM was already placing huge munitions contracts with US suppliers to equip Kitchener’s 70 new divisions by the following spring. George Field joined 20 Squadron before transferring to the RFC in 1916.

  Crompton and Legros worked out their last weeks monitoring the trials and doggedly progressing the coupled ship design. The Mk III twin turret halfships were replaced by a Mk IIIA with a single forward turret, reducing overall height to 7ft 6in. Crompton was perennially concerned to cut height to reduce exposure to gunnery, shed weight and improve stability. His final design proposal was handed over on his last day of service. On Field’s recommendation Crompton’s Mk IV machine was to be mounted on Killen Strait tracks, reducing height to 6ft and weight to 12.5 tons per half-ship. The colonel intended to clad the hull with a protective sheath of light steel plates spaced off the underlying armour.

  It was all for nothing. Six months – much of a fighting season – had passed. If a fleet of some 150 landships was to materialize and crews and engineers were to complete training by the start of the 1916 campaign, then working drawings for a credible design should have been coming off the boards in July. The committee had proved numerous options to be impractical but had put nothing but agricultural machinery on the ground.

  Crucially, however, it was pursuing a tracked solution, for which credit must go to Macfie, Sueter and Crompton. A mass of research data had been accumulated by Crompton and Legros but it proved of little value. Their professional approach throughout had been meticulous, almost academi
c. They had produced a series of over-ambitious proposals to meet two opposing tactical requirements, Churchill’s and, latterly, the army’s. If instead of troop transports they had been instructed from the start to produce the gun platform which the army eventually requested, might a practical prototype have emerged by this time? Regardless of the consequences of Churchill’s questionable and technically demanding tactics, the outcome by late August 1915 is unlikely to have been markedly different.

  Churchill later denied that he had ever asked for troop transports. His replies under cross-examination by counsel for Crompton and Legros before the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors in 1919 were evasive:

  q. At that time [March 1915] the idea was to have a machine which would carry a number of men into the enemy’s trenches?

  a. That was not my original idea. I essentially dwelt upon it as an engine of war which was to fight, to roll down wire, and to sweep the trenches with machine-gun fire, and which the troops were to use as a point d’appui to manoeuvre with, rather than using it as a carrier to carry a definite body of troops into the enemy’s lines. As a matter of fact there is utility in both those ideas, and both were developed as the war went on.

  q. At any rate Sir Tennyson d’Eyncourt’s idea at that time was a machine which would carry a large number of men. The plans were for that?

  a. He knew what we wanted to have done. There was a great latitude as to the road which might be taken. He presented two definite methods of arriving at a practical solution.5

  It is hard to square these responses with contemporary records. Churchill unequivocally supported the big troop transporter throughout his stewardship of the Landships Committee. The assertion that having set up the committee he left the choice of battle tactics to a master shipbuilder strains credulity. Crompton told the Tanks Awards Committee in 1918: ‘My main instructor was Mr Churchill himself. He always said “I want something that will straddle a trench and enfilade it with machine guns and then you let men out rapidly and you take the trench”.’6 As to d’Eyncourt’s having presented ‘two definite methods of arriving at a practical solution’, the second method – a lighter heavily armed machine – was only produced at the request of the army after Churchill’s departure. There was no visible latitude for the committee to vary the brief, hence Crompton’s cautious letter to the DNC in May proposing the second version, and its rejection.

  The colonel asked if he and Legros could continue their involvement with the project in an advisory and honorary capacity. Their offer was accepted but they were never again consulted by the landships team. D’Eyncourt’s last word on Crompton was addressed to Swinton: ‘He never really produced complete plans which could be worked to.’7

  It is now appropriate to catch up with other events before returning to Tritton, Wilson and the committee.

  Lt Robert Macfie attended no further meetings of the Landships Committee after the first in February 1915, but it was there that he spoke so persuasively for tracked traction. Crompton, to his credit, scrapped the big-wheeler at once and took up the idea, but Macfie was shocked that Crompton had selected the Pedrail system to validate tracklayers. Macfie devised his own crawler loosely based on the Holt. The big difference was the machine’s purpose – this was to be a gun platform. In a 13 April memo to Boothby, Macfie had visualized two columns of landships penetrating beyond the trench lines, allowing a horde of cavalry and horse artillery to dash through to seize command and communications centres:

  I am aware that machines are proposed which will be armoured against rifle and Maxim fire which are to carry parties of soldiers to the trenches, whereupon doors are to be opened and the men pour out. I would submit that this plan fails to deal effectively with the enemy’s artillery, and that further, only the front line of enemy’s trenches can be dealt with in this way.8

  Macfie persuaded Murray Sueter to let him convert an old 5-ton Allday lorry chassis to chaintracks for evaluation. Messrs Nesfield & Mackenzie, a small engineering company in Uxbridge Road, West London, were already making anti-aircraft gun mountings for Sueter, who instructed them on 22 April to work to Macfie’s orders. Six weeks later Albert Nesfield told the DAD that he could no longer tolerate the lieutenant’s violent abusiveness to him and his employees despite their best efforts. He asked for Macfie to be replaced, but received no reply. Nesfield described Macfie’s Allday design as comprising two pairs of tracks, the front pair being steered. A certain amount of work had been done on the conversion and a miniature electrically driven model had been made. Nesfield had also been designing his own landship on a single pair of tracks, each independently powered for steering. The arguments between the two centred on their respective designs, specifically the means of steering. Macfie maintained that Nesfield’s turning mechanism with only one track in drive would tear off the braked track.

  As Nesfield demonstrated a small model on 1 July to Hetherington, Crompton and other officers at Wormwood Scrubs, Macfie entered the room and pounced on it, claiming it was his. Soon afterwards the armoured car squadrons began to disband and Macfie’s bits and pieces were removed to the Barlby Road depot. His presumably revised drawing dated 19 August has recently been found among Stern’s papers.9 He planned to fit one pair of tracks, the Allday’s power train being retained with short drive chains taken from the rear axle to shafts on the track sprockets to either side. The very heavily armoured hull was a rectangular and turretless steel box with an arrowhead front. The interesting thing about Macfie’s track frames is their angled and upturned nose, much as George Field had sketched six days earlier while sailing home from the USA. Directional control relied on a towed two-wheeled frame with Ackermann steering, exactly as Crompton had proposed for his Mk III on the lengthened Bullock tracks only a week or so before Macfie made his drawing.

  Stern and the committee were no longer interested in Macfie’s theories. His standing in the RNAS never recovered from the dispute over the model. Stern considered him ‘a very troublesome fellow’ and ‘a most impossible man to work with’.10 Macfie resigned from the Service that November, later accusing Hetherington, Stern and others of conspiring to rob him of his design, from which he wrongly claimed the tank was built. To anticipate events for a moment, soon after the tanks became public knowledge in September 1916 Macfie found backers to finance the commercial production of his machine. He visited Stern that December, seeking his help to secure the necessary priority for purchase of 15 tons of steel for a prototype. Stern told Macfie that he would first need to see his drawings which he said would be fairly treated. When Macfie replied that Stern had not treated him fairly over his earlier drawings, which he claimed Stern had commandeered, the meeting ended abruptly.11 Macfie mounted a campaign of vilification of Nesfield and past colleagues which only ended in 1919.

  Swinton’s ally Tom Tulloch joined the Supply Branch of the Ministry of Munitions. He told his Holt trials colleague Louis Jackson that he deplored the general lack of military imagination which invariably left the initiative to the Germans. He believed the War Office could still improvise 20 or 30 of the trench destroyers which he and Swinton had urged in January – nothing less would do the job. Jackson agreed but had a different machine and weapon in mind. His section of the War Office Department of Fortification and Works had just been taken over by the Ministry of Munitions and renamed the Trench Warfare Department. He and captains W.H. Livens and F.H. Vincent went too, taking assorted kit with them including a heavy flame-thrower with an 80ft reach. Jackson wanted to mount the projector in a machine on Crompton’s abandoned and part-completed Pedrail tracks. It was the second of several attempts to harness Diplock’s systems for war.

  Jackson salvaged Crompton’s dies, templates, drive chains and other material for a test machine. The colonel provided drawings and data for the main erectors, bridge-builders Stothert & Pitt of Bath. Twelve self-propelled flame-throwers each carrying 5,000 gallons of petrol were to be built, subject to trials, and 50 smaller Pedrail machines of 500-gallon ca
pacity. The bigger machine’s twin 100hp engines from Aster Engineering of Wembley each powered a Pedrail in-line bogie. It took a strong man to hand steer them. When the well-engineered but desperately low-slung No. 1 chassis was driven out of the shed by Maj Walter Wilson on 7 June 1916, it just managed to climb a 4in thick railway sleeper before lurching a few degrees until the 33ft x 9ft frame grounded. Official trials were delayed until August. En route to the experimental ground at Porton the free-running roller beds developed weaknesses and the Pedrail feet proved unsuited to rough roads. The machine was then fitted with an unarmoured tram-like body before failing further tests on Salisbury Plain. This interesting vehicle lay at Bovington Camp, Dorset until, sadly, it was scrapped in 1923.

  Diplock died in August 1918 just three months after his brother passed away, probably from the influenza pandemic which killed thousands that year. Reginald Brackenbury kept the business going until its liquidation in 1921.