The Devil's Chariots

by John Glanfield

  Lord Kitchener and Robertson also came, and members of the Admiralty Board… The official tests of trenches etc. were nothing to it… Wire entanglements it goes through like a rhinoceros through a field of corn… I strongly urge ordering immediately a good many to the pattern which we know all about. As you are aware, it has taken much time and trouble to get the thing perfect, and a practical machine simple to make; we tried various types and did much experimental work. I am sorry it has taken so long, but pioneer work always takes time and no avoidable delay has taken place, though I begged them to order ten for training purposes two months ago. I have also had some difficulty in steering the scheme past the rocks of opposition and the more insidious shoals of apathy which are frequented by red herrings, which cross the main line of progress at frequent intervals. The great thing now is to keep the whole matter secret and produce the machines altogether as a complete surprise.7

  The letter was reproduced in Col J.F.C. Fuller’s Tanks in the Great War. Tritton took great exception to it, writing in his own copy of the book ‘Surely the most despicable letter ever written!! EHTD merely asked Tritton and Wilson to “do something”. He did not give five hours consideration to the whole job.’8

  Mindful of Foster’s limited capacity, Stern had already arranged production at Metropolitan’s Oldbury plant, Birmingham. He and Wilson had satisfied Metro’s Chairman Dudley Docker and Technical Director Maj John Greg that tanks were a manufacturing proposition.

  Stern habitually ignored official procedures when negotiating government business. After Oxford he had cut his trading teeth in New York’s financial centres before returning home in 1901 on the death of his father to become a successful partner in Stern Brothers, the family bank. Now, he quickly established a rapport with the tank builders who respected his blunt approach and willingness to take decisions with minimal reference back. Stern agreed the impossibility of costing the work until a machine was completed. They fixed a provisional price per tank of £5,000, to be adjusted on delivery of the first machine. Stern claimed this saved the country £5.5m by the end of the war. All was now ready for construction to start. They awaited Haig’s response.

  Kitchener invited Stern to take the chair of the Tank Supply Committee, as agreed at the December conference. Lloyd George performed a smart U-turn and approached him with a similar invitation from the Ministry, saying it was no longer a matter for the War Office. Grasping this splendid bargaining opportunity, the lieutenant banker told the Minister that he was willing to undertake the volume production of tanks in six months’ time providing he was given special powers. Lloyd George assented and made his peace with Kitchener. Bertie Stern’s semi-autonomous committee would be joined by d’Eyncourt, Wilson, Symes and Bussell from the old Admiralty team, Swinton and Lt Col Wheeler RA for the War Office, and Tom Tulloch and Lt Col Byrne for the MoM. They were later joined by a senior Staff Officer from the WO, and Frederick Skeens, a senior draughtsman and gunnery specialist from the DNC’s department who had earlier worked with Crompton on turrets.

  Tommy Hetherington had been nominated for the committee at the December conference, but never joined. He had influenced the course of events twice in the tank’s long gestation. D’Eyncourt and Stern may have felt he had little more to offer following its birth, but Churchill ensured that he received official recognition when in 1918 Hetherington was appointed CBE ‘for services in connection with the origination of the tanks’. After handing over 20 Squadron to McGrath in April he joined the RNAS Board of Survey for airships, later becoming Chief of the RNAS Survey Department.

  Haig’s observers at the Hatfield trials reported back at GHQ, and on 9 February the C-in-C informed the WO that 30 or 40 tanks should be ordered at once, as he understood this number could be produced without interfering with other war material. He wanted to know what additional numbers could be delivered by mid-July. To aid security Haig asked that all concerned should receive official notification that the invention had been discarded, leaving only a small core ‘in the know’. When he approved the draft he added a final note in his own hand:

  Secrecy is of the highest importance in order to get full advantage from the use of these machines [Haig’s emphasis].9

  The trifling quantity requested by Haig contrasts starkly with the 400 demanded by the French two weeks later. Swinton argued for an increase to at least 100. He reminded the Director of Staff Duties of the importance of fielding a large number of machines on the first occasion that the weapon was deployed, the element of surprise being lost thereafter. ‘I would point out that it is eight days since members of the Army Council and representative officers from [GHQ] witnessed the trial of the machine, and that this period translated into output … corresponds to an out-turn of something like 20 machines, and every week which elapses before the order is placed will result in a similar delay.’10 The War Office ordered 100 machines on 12 February.

  Minutes after receiving the order that Saturday morning Stern and d’Eyncourt burst into Lloyd George’s room with a ready-prepared authority constituting the Tank Supply Committee. They caught him on the point of departure for the country. Lloyd George recalled: ‘They presented a pistol at my head in the shape of a “charter” … for immediate signature by me.’11 It would give Stern and his organization wide powers and freedom of action. The committee would be attached to the MoM as an executive body working directly under the Minister. It was free to communicate with any government department, manage its own finances and place orders direct with contractors. The committee’s decision would be final in all matters of manufacture and inspection, and the Ministry was to grant all facilities for supply of labour and materials. All payments were to be made on the sole authority of certificates issued by the committee, without further question. It was to arrange immediate construction of 100 tanks and £50,000 was to be allocated for experimental work.

  Lloyd George initialled the paper. He later discovered that Swinton was waiting outside on the road ready to puncture his tyres if he attempted to leave before signing the charter. That afternoon orders were phoned and telegraphed to Metro for 75 tanks, Foster’s for 25, and Daimler’s for 120 of its 105hp engines. Walter Wilson would supervise tank construction in Lincoln and Birmingham. Armour plate would be rolled by Beardmore’s in Glasgow and Cammell Laird and Vickers Ltd in Sheffield. Kenneth Symes was to supervise armour production and research, and set up an inspectorate for all parts and assemblies, leaving engine inspection to the Admiralty. It was an historic day – and the fulfilment of Churchill’s hopes at his bedside meeting almost exactly one year before.

  Two days later the War Office approved the formation of a Tank Detachment. Swinton was appointed to command the unit – one of the Army Council’s more inspired decisions. It was impressed on him, however, that this was a home appointment. Having trained his force, he would pass it on to local commanders on its arrival in France. The policy was flawed, and overlooked an inevitable lack of understanding by field commanders of the strengths and limitations of a complex new arm. Their incomprehension extended to operational planning. Swinton urged Scott-Moncrieff to arrange for a senior engineer officer to inspect the entire front and identify sectors where ground conditions were best suited to tank operations, but such vital staff work was neglected for a further 19 months with severe consequences. Without Swinton’s foresight and attention to detail the tank’s evolutionary progress would most certainly have faltered.

  The new arm was attached to the Motor Machine Gun Service (MMGS) of the Machine Gun Corps. It would train at their Bisley depot near London until it got its own ground. Personnel were to be drawn from the MMGS which had recently been equipped with motorcycle combinations mounting a machine gun. These batteries were intended to increase the firepower and mobility of the divisions in France, but the static conditions had forced a reduction in numbers and provided a pool of men of the right calibre for tanks. Although they could be told nothing of the new weapon they were to be given, their commanding offi
cer Lt Col R.W. Bradley and some 700 other ranks transferred en bloc. Members of 20 Squadron were invited by Swinton to transfer too, but the army was offering artillerymen’s pay scales which were inferior to their navy rates, and McGrath’s men stood fast. Stern and most of his officers did transfer to the army, which for the rest of the war refused to award them rank commensurate with their responsibilities. This compromised their dealings with the military elsewhere, especially in France where their lack of rank hampered communication. Stern and Wilson became temporary majors, and Kenneth Symes a temporary captain.

  Swinton began work at Siberia camp, Bisley, on 16 February. The new unit initially adopted a company structure and 15 were authorized, each comprising two sections of six tanks. On completion of basic training Swinton planned to form them into three battalions of five companies each, an organization not matched elsewhere in the army. GHQ objected in mid-May, saying they wanted a more elastic format, the company to be the tactical unit, each with 25 tanks. This meant altering the entire organization on which the detachment had been working at Bisley. Swinton reformed to six companies, A–F, each of four sections of six tanks, the 25th being a company spare and crew. A section would be divided into three subsections of two tanks each. A mobile workshop would travel with each company.

  For security reasons Swinton dealt directly with Gen Wilkinson Bird, Director of Staff Duties at the War Office. The same considerations took the detachment through several name changes. It became the Armoured Car Section of the Motor Machine Gun Service (mid-March); Motor Machine Gun Corps ‘S’ Detachment (29 March); and Heavy Section, Machine Gun Corps (1 May). Haig was refused permission in October to change it to the Tank Corps, accepting instead Heavy Branch, Machine Gun Corps (16 November). He finally got his way on 27 July 1917. The Tank Corps was granted the prefix ‘Royal’ on 18 October 1923. To avoid confusion we will stay with ‘Heavy Section’ for the time being. This title was suggested on 20 April 1916 by Lt Col P.E. Lewis of the Adjutant-General’s office.

  Stern used bluff and his charter to acquire two fifth-floor rooms in ‘Armaments Building’ (the Hotel Metropole), headquarters of the Ministry. His small team had moved in on 15 February when he was appointed Director, Tank Supply Department MoM. Swinton needed a base for his almost daily contacts around Whitehall. He got no help from the army and so became a squatter with his orderly-room sergeant in one of Stern’s pair, sharing a TSD typist. This was by no means the only example of military indifference towards its new arm.

  Pending arrival of the first machines, an intensive training programme was started in gunnery and two types of machine gun. The Naval Gunnery School on Whale Island, Portsmouth, answered Swinton’s call for help by laying on a series of introductory firing courses over water. Land firing was more of a problem. When he was refused use of the ranges at Shoeburyness Swinton resorted to the Bisley small-arms facilities adjoining his camp. On the first day’s shoot his men had got off 97 rounds before the range officer ordered them off after recording six ricochets into the Chobham Hills. Swinton finally secured the RA ranges at Lark Hill on Salisbury Plain. His treatise Notes on the Employment of Tanks was completed in February and set out in masterly detail the characteristics and proposed tactics of the weapon. It was an essential reference for staffs and field commanders and formed the basis of all training, but some of its key points were ignored in France until the Cambrai battle in November 1917.

  It was agreed that a number of tanks should be permanently fitted with twin Vickers machine guns in each sponson in place of the 6-pdr Hotchkiss QF gun. Swinton designated these all-MG machines ‘female’, and the 6-pdr tanks ‘male’. Fifty more Mk I were ordered on 21 April at his urging, the overall total of 150 to comprise 75 male and 75 female types. Metro got most of the new batch, with Foster’s adding five to their 25, having apparently subcontracted seven to Robey & Co. of Canwick Road, Lincoln. Robey’s got off to a promising start, bolting together a set of hull side-armour plates to form a drilling jig. However, Wilson soon concluded the firm was frightened of the work, reporting in May that staff appeared uncertain how to proceed with assembly of the first hull. The work was transferred to Foster’s in June, though Robey’s continued to make track and other components.

  Maj Hugh Knothe of the Army Service Corps joined the Heavy Section in April as its mechanical transport and engineering specialist. He had commanded a fleet of Holt caterpillar tractors for an artillery brigade in France, and now went straight to Lincoln with orders to crawl all over ‘Mother’ until he knew every rivet. He then produced detailed equipment inventories for three mobile workshops. Mistrusting his expert assessment, the War Office referred it to GHQ. An approval came back with the suggestion that two 4.5in lathes might be substituted for one 9in lathe – as asinine as asking for two 8in shirt collars instead of one 16in. Fortunately the Heavy Section relied more on the Tank Supply Committee than the War Office for its equipment needs.

  Bertie Stern claimed that any telephoned request to his people was met before the caller rang off. Swinton thought he was hardly exaggerating. He asked for two full-size dummy tanks as training aids, specifying that one side was to be an exact replica in boilerplate. The interiors were to include shell racks, wooden guns with correct breech action, and all the painful protrusions. Swinton wanted the mock-ups to be given a slow pitching motion by a man turning a handle outside, which would also actuate a series of small hammers beating on the boilerplate to simulate striking bullets. By the time one dummy had been built the real thing had arrived. It later became routine for new types to be preceded by a few made up in boilerplate for training use. This was considered for Mk I by riveting up scrap hull templates, but delivery of the first production machines was imminent.

  The Heavy Section needed an isolated secure tank training ground. Swinton sent a major with mapping experience to scour the country. He finally homed in on Elveden, Suffolk, cutting a 4.8-mile long swathe across the shooting estates of Lord Iveagh, Lord Cadogan and the Duke of Grafton. Fortunately the WO Lands Branch supervisor was a professional – and still civilian – surveyor with a bracing approach to the requisitioning process. He shook Swinton with the promise that he could occupy the 15 sq. mile tract within a week, its few inhabitants gone and farms emptied. Lord Iveagh overcame his initial shock and became a firm supporter of the detachment.

  The 14-mile perimeter and an inner cordon were guarded by a force of 450 from the Home Defence Corps armed with ball cartridge. Those on the outer cordon had no idea what was happening in the inner. Roads and tracks across the area were sealed. The perimeter bounding the main Thetford–Newmarket road was screened-off. Large signs – ‘Elveden Explosives Area’ – warned the unwary. Pioneers arrived at the end of April to dig, wire and blast a replica Flanders battlefield in the inner cordon. It was designed by Capt Giffard Le Quesne ‘Slosher’ Martel RE, later becoming a notable Tank Corps brigade major and strategist. The opposing trench systems were defensively wired and strongly revetted, using 1m sandbags to create a fully entrenched combat area 1,500-yds wide and 1.3 miles deep overall. Large craters were blown, reinforcing the cautionary public signage and fuelling local suspicion that a tunnel was being driven under the Channel to surface in Germany. To ensure total secrecy for tank arrivals and despatches, the Great Eastern Railway Company built an 850ft twin-track spur from the single-track line between Thetford and Bury St Edmunds. It led-off near Culford Lodge (now Lodge Farm), to enter the outer cordon and straddle a ramped tank loading dock. The spur was completed in less than ten days, and operational early in July.12

  Swinton gave much thought to communications. The RE Experimental Wireless Establishment produced a compact set of about 200-metre wavelength and a range of 3 miles for tank use. Metro had been ordered to build 75 pitched-roof covers of heavy wire netting for fitting on top of the tanks to deflect bombs and it was hoped these could double as a wireless aerial, though the signal proved to be inaudible inside a moving tank. Nevertheless, by the end of July 1916 six WT
sets and operators had arrived. GHQ decreed at the last minute that no wireless was to be installed for fear of radio interference, and the sets were withdrawn.

  A telephone link was fitted in each Section Commander’s tank with 1,000yd of cable on a rear-mounted drum. Tritton produced an ineffectual attachment to plough the cable in, but following repeated line breakages the system was abandoned. A signals procedure from tanks to infantry and aircraft was instead devised using flags displayed from the roof hatch, or lamps at night. Some tanks carried pigeons for transmitting messages back to command posts. The fitting of an armoured ‘mailbox’ on the tail of each machine was considered for communication with accompanying infantry. Another infantry aid was to be a bullet-proof ammunition locker bolted to the rear of the tank to carry 2,000 rounds of small-arms ammunition in magazines in canvas buckets.

  Swinton commissioned 10ft captive balloons to be flown at 1,000ft behind the lines to help tank commanders find their bearings when withdrawing from action. Coloured balloons could be hoisted up the mooring cable for signalling purposes. A scaled-down basket with dummy artillery spotter was slung beneath each balloon to further provoke the enemy but the equipment was withdrawn on instructions from GHQ which feared it would draw fire. Murray Sueter’s balloon unit had given technical advice and his Anti-Aircraft Mobile Brigade later used the balloons for gunnery practice.

  As an alternative to wire roof covers, Kenneth Symes produced cladding in 4mm and 6mm soft plate as a second skin. Twenty-five sets were ordered and all but two were shipped to France, but never fitted.

  Swinton met Sir Douglas Haig in London on 14 April. The C-in-C was preoccupied with the coming Somme offensive. He noted in his diary that Swinton had told him 150 tanks would be provided by 31 July, to which he replied that that was too late, 50 were urgently required for 1 June. Swinton’s postwar account of the meeting differs. He says he had to tell the C-in-C that there was ‘just a possibility that some might be shipped by the 1st August, and that if sufficient were delivered during July, the crews for seventy-five might be trained by August’.13 Swinton’s response was dangerously optimistic. GHQ had ordered the first machines just eight weeks before. (The first production tank reached Elveden on 18 June. The fiftieth arrived a month later, but almost all lacked sponsons.)