The Devil's Chariots

by John Glanfield

  Even at that early date Haig was preparing to waste his first and only opportunity for total surprise with the new weapon by throwing a mere handful into its battlefield launch. Swinton was appalled, reporting the conversation to Hankey who in turn appealed to Willie Robertson, the CIGS:

  My Dear General,

  I very rarely offer a suggestion on purely military questions, partly because I don’t consider it to be my job, partly because I know that professionals don’t want to waste their time with the views of amateurs… I only depart from my rule in this case because my suggestion concerns matters with which I have lately been very closely connected.

  Briefly, my suggestion is that Sir Douglas Haig should be asked to do all in his power to avoid being committed to anything in the nature of a decisive infantry attack until the ‘caterpillar’ machine gun destroyers are ready … and to put all possible pressure on [Marshall Joffre, French C-in-C] to do likewise. The reasons are as follows. If my information on the subject is correct, a very large proportion of the casualties in the great attacks are inflicted by machine guns. The ‘caterpillars’ have been designed for the express purpose of dealing with these. A very large sum of money has been spent on them and a great number have been ordered… If, only a few weeks before they were ready, we had lost a very large number of infantry (such a figure for example as Sir Douglas Haig mentioned last Saturday) in attacks unproductive of material results, it would be most unfortunate. It might even happen that in the few weeks immediately preceding the arrival of the ‘caterpillars’ our Army might have become so exhausted that no attack could be carried out for some weeks or months, by which time all prospect of their employment as a surprise would have been lost.

  In short, I am convinced that it is of overwhelming importance to the morale of the Army and the nation, to the higher command of the Army, and to the cause of the allies as a whole that our attack should be a success, and I suggest that this new weapon, containing we hope the element of surprise, may just turn the scale…

  I had somehow got into my head that something of this kind was intended, but Sir Douglas Haig’s estimate on Saturday of the losses he anticipated during June and July has (perhaps erroneously) led me to fear that his big effort will immediately precede the completion of the ‘caterpillars’… I do venture to ask that you will give this letter your consideration.14

  Robertson forwarded the letter to Haig. Hankey foresaw, and Haig had just confirmed the expectation of very severe losses of men in the coming offensive. Hankey noted in his diary two weeks later that ‘the Army want a regular orgy of slaughter this summer’.15

  Fears that the first tanks would be thrown piecemeal into the battle were not new. Swinton’s February paper had emphasized that ‘these machines should not be used in driblets’ but held back until all were available for a great combined operation with the infantry.

  After consulting Stern, Swinton had to report on 26 April that no tanks or crews would be ready by 1 June. They expected to have a few incomplete training machines by 1 July with full completion of all 150 by 1 August. ‘This,’ Swinton said, ‘is the cold truth.’ In mid-June the forecast was put back to 50 fully assembled tanks by 1 August and the remainder by early September. In fact, all 150 were only completed at the end of October.

  Lloyd George received confirmation of French tank production from M. Paul Painleve, his opposite number in Paris. Painleve wrote on 2 May that the machines were based on American ‘caterpillar’ tractors, capable of crossing trenches 2 metres wide. They were to be armed with machine guns or mortars throwing a heavy HE charge up to 800 metres. Col Estienne visited Elveden in June, eager to assess the British design and compare notes with Swinton and his officers. He was honoured with a tree-felling demonstration, one of Swinton’s precious machines being risked for the occasion to push it over. Estienne returned home to press for Anglo-French collaboration in the mass production of tanks for 1917, the French to specialize in fast light machines to complement the slower British heavies. His strongest plea was for the BEF to avoid premature disclosure of the weapon to the enemy before the French tanks were ready, when the two allies could simultaneously launch a powerful surprise attack and really damage the German Army.

  Estienne’s vision was not realized. Haig and the General Staff viewed their untried tanks as infantry support weapons for strictly local engagements. Any breakthrough by their heavy tanks would be exploited by massed cavalry, not by speedy little French chars d’assault. Hugh Knothe at Elveden was reminded of this in his attempts to include a motorized supply column in the Heavy Section’s own war establishment. He pointed out to GHQ that ammunition and fuel supply for tanks coming out of action was critically dependent on motor transport and on drivers experienced in working with the section. They would have to navigate alone, reach dumps and rendezvous much closer to the fighting than normal, and so be specially trained in map reading, the use of unditching equipment and so on. Lt Gen Burnett-Stuart of the General Staff refused. ‘These engines [i.e. tanks] will be an adjunct to an offensive in trench warfare and are not likely in an action to get further away from their starting point than a distance of three miles, supposing them to start from a point one mile behind our front trenches.’16 He added that tank companies would have to rely for resupply on borrowed transport from the infantry formations to which they were attached. They would depend on the willingness of hard-pressed infantry officers to release wagons and drivers for their fuel, ammunition and rations.

  ‘Mother’ reached Lincoln on 4 June, driveable but minus guns and sponsons. Swinton wrote to Butler on the 20th that he now had two tanks at Elveden, ‘Mother’ and the first production machine. He added that another three would give him ‘five machines without sponsons’, so clearly even ‘Mother’ lacked them. Swinton would have to wait another six weeks for sponsons, seriously compromising his already tight training programme. ‘Mother’s’ may have served the two sponson makers as moulding templates.17 Trainees saw the awesome beast at last. The first production machine reached Elveden on the 18th; Swinton had 20 by 10 July, with the first sponsons arriving a week later. Armstrong, Whitworth built the male sponsons and gun mountings, and Metropolitan the female. David Fletcher of the Tank Museum at Bovington has noted that whereas on ‘Mother’ the rear doors in the sponsons were hinged on their inboard side to open flat against the hull, this was reversed on production machines where the hinges were positioned outboard to enable the opened door to part-screen crew members exiting under fire.

  To mislead the curious, the battleship-grey hull of every tank from Lincoln carried an inscription in Russian in 12in Cyrillic lettering – ‘With care to Petrograd’. On arrival Knothe’s men obliterated this and stencilled a WD number to either side at the rear in yellow 6in letters. If word of the machine’s purpose should reach the enemy, at least the numbering sequence would suggest a gathering armada – male serials began at 701 and females at 501.18

  Gen Kiggell at GHQ had written to the War Office nominating Royal Academician Solomon J. Solomon, now a lieutenant-colonel with the Royal Engineers, to undertake ‘the painting and disguising of tanks. It seems that if a loose mat or roof covering … will meet the purpose, the mats themselves can be constructed and painted differently on both sides so as to materially conceal them from the air.’19 This was not how Solomon saw his brief. He arrived at Elveden at the end of May. Armed with several tons of paint, he set up a studio in a barn and turned out machines in bilious pink, enhanced with generous splotches of green, brown and grey-blue. The combination was more suited to sunset in Sherwood Forest than the battlefields of France, and the scheme was dropped when winter mud did the job without further creative effort. For the rest of the war British tanks were normally painted a uniform mud brown, though this did not extend to roofs which remained untreated. Solomon, the genial society artist, became a camouflage expert in other fields.

  With the arrival of the machines Maj Knothe’s team moved camp nearer to the Culford Lodge siding.
It became a specialist unit, the 711 MT Company, ASC, quickly growing to ten officers and some 300 men. They operated from temporary workshops in the open and in all weathers, making good factory defects, repairing breakdowns, unloading tank trains and providing drivers and driver training in unremitting labour, often around the clock. Detraining was carried out at night because the siding was in view of the main line. It was dangerous work; the tanks drove off with 2in to spare on each track. The whole area became a quagmire. Most of the early drivers came from the ASC Tractor Depot at Avonmouth. The first batch were ex-long-distance lorry men who on seeing the tanks decided that they knew almost nothing of internal combustion engines and were returned by Knothe as incompetent. Those who followed settled in well, though leave was almost unobtainable and rations were short for many weeks.

  Swinton was headquartered and the officers billeted in Elveden village. The companies were under canvas in the outer cordon together with the Training Centre for work without tanks. The machines were confined to ‘The Area’, the heavily guarded inner cordon, for hands-on training. The mock battlefield at its eastern end enabled live firing. We can now join a group of trainee drivers there.

  A tank is jacked up on baulks of timber to allow the tracks to run free before the men are introduced to its mysteries in crew-size groups of eight. As the sponsons are missing they can see, through the big cutaways on either side of the hull, the mass of the Daimler engine centred amidships. Ammunition racks almost fill the rest of the white painted interior, official capacity being 160 rounds of 6-pdr shell plus 1,500 of small-arms ammunition in special tin boxes for male tanks, and 7,800 of SAA for females. (Crews unofficially stockpiled more on the narrow aisles.) Other stowage is provided for such battle luggage as a spare machine gun, MG barrels, tools in underfloor lockers, towing cable, water, grease guns, drums of track and engine oil and grease, four Pyrene fire extinguishers, signals flags and rockets, protective crew kit, first-aid kit, two days’ rations and much else.

  It is explained that four men are needed to drive the beast, plus a gunner and loader on each 6-pdr in the sponsons, or machine-gunners as applicable. An automatic rifle with pistol grip is mounted between the driver up front on the right, and the commander beside him whose slightly higher seat gives him better control of the weapon. The driver takes care of ignition, throttle, footbrake and clutch controls and a primary gearbox providing two forward speeds and reverse. He cannot steer (‘swing’ in the jargon) the tank unaided. The commander operates two steering brake levers controlling the respective tracks. Either man can reach the differential lock behind him. Immediately behind the engine a small platform covers the gearbox. Most of the space further aft is filled with a huge differential and its cross shafts, from each of which a secondary two-speed gearbox delivers the final drive to the trackdriving sprocket on that side. To avoid two sets of complicated gearchange linkage back to the driver, the left- and right-hand secondary boxes are each manned by a gearsman who awaits the driver’s signal. These auxiliary gears are essential because the primary box alone cannot withstand the loads. The combination of primary and secondary gears gives four forward speeds. Unfortunately, reverse is a higher ratio than the lowest forward gear – the crew can drive into trouble and find they cannot back off. A radiator fills the rear bulkhead. The engine is flanked by foot-wide gangways, the roof only some 5ft clear above. Two gunners will have to crouch and fight in each shallow sponson while avoiding a lurch on to the hot engine behind.

  The instructor mysteriously ‘trips his mag’ and tickles the carburettor before putting four trainees aboard to turn a large cranked starting handle behind the engine. They heave at the handle to an accompanying sucking and blowing from the pistons and valve gear and the click click click of the magneto impulse starter before, with luck, the first muffled thud precedes a roar as the six cylinders fire up. With instructors at crew positions a shouted demonstration follows in a thickening haze of exhaust fumes, accompanied by some exaggerated coughing among the novices. Having gone through his gears the driver signals to the two gearsmen behind – even shouting is now useless – by hitting the hull with a heavy spanner and then holding up one or two fingers to indicate the required secondary gear. While he carefully manipulates the clutch the gearsmen ease the large pinions into mesh. A lesson on manoeuvring techniques follows.

  There were four steering options, all with drawbacks. The first employed the steering tail alone, with the tank’s differential unlocked. The simple frame of the 1.5-ton tail was mounted between the tracks at the rear, trailing two 4ft 6in iron wheels. They were steered by the driver via cables to a hand wheel in his cab. The pivoting tail could be raised hydraulically if the tank was to steer on its tracks alone. When lowered, eight powerful coil springs from the tank exerted lift to the fore end of the pivoting frame, imposing an opposite downward force on the flanged wheels at its rear to maintain grip over rough terrain. In the event the tail was almost useless on soft ground and was largely ignored as a steering aid. Its secondary function was as a counterbalance when crossing trenches, keeping the nose up for another foot or so of travel to the far side. Similarly, on breasting a sharp ridge the tank’s extended tail allowed the machine to rock forward rather than crash-dive.

  The remaining steering options required the tail to be lifted clear of the ground. The hydraulics proved unreliable and could take from 5 to 20 minutes to achieve this, so it was just as well that crews customarily ‘kept our tails up’. The commander’s track brakes served for slight directional changes, the differential remaining unlocked as the tank swung in the direction of the braked track. Steering on the brakes avoided the hazards of stops for complex gear changes, but the smell of overheating Ferodo linings gave warning that they soon burned out.

  For bigger ‘swings’ the tank had first to be halted, adding to the dangers under fire. The commander would lock the differential and instruct the secondary gearsman on the inside of the required turn to engage neutral (signal – loud spanner blow on the hull and clenched fist). The driver then selected first in his primary box and signalled the appropriate gearsman to do likewise (one finger). As the driven track made the turn, the commander handbraked the other. A final option involved stopping and turning 28 tons of tank through the secondary gearboxes alone, after selecting differing ratios in each. The manoeuvre might succeed on a concrete hardstanding but otherwise risked wrecking the drive shafts. Halts for steering changes were frequent when weaving around shell holes and took up to 10 minutes a time, wearing the nerves under fire. ‘Overswings’ were common, necessitating a repeat operation to correct the error and bring the tank back to the required degree of turn.

  Instruction was one thing, but custom and practice came only with experience in the field. If the ground was wet, crews exposed to shellfire were careful not to sleep under their machines for protection; men had been crushed overnight as tanks settled down in the soft earth. Most engines ran better once they had boiled, but were difficult to restart when hot. Fuel quality was atrocious – drivers avoided throttling down too much as the engine tended to fire in the exhaust at low revs, sending sheets of flame from every joint which periodically started roof fires of reserve petrol kept in tins, tarpaulin covers, camouflage nets and crew kit stowed aloft. Roofs were cleared before going into action. Later, the tanks were fuelled with aviation spirit for fighting, while the often dirty and very low 45 octane MT spirit was retained for normal use. A ledge part-way up the Daimler engine’s casing was ideal for frying bacon, bully beef and bread. Its loss when Ricardo power plants were introduced for the Mk V was keenly felt. Cold starts could be nightmarish. Some drivers resorted to injecting hot petrol direct into the cylinders. An old Lewis gun magazine and an empty Fray Bentos bully beef tin or other suitable receptacle were both filled with petrol and ignited. As the flames died in the magazine, the driver placed his boot over the tin to extinguish its contents and with a pair of pliers as handle it was hurried across for injection with a syringe. The practice
never reached the instruction manual.

  Manhandling and marrying newly delivered sponsons to battered tanks was an unexpected problem. The machines at Elveden had been pressed into immediate service for driver training, but lacking sponsons many of the hulls had flexed and distorted around the large apertures. When the sponsons arrived in July it was found that a number of the 26 securing bolt holes had gone out of alignment on many tanks. The preferred solution was to sledgehammer a drift into whatever aperture remained, the alternative of drilling 8mm of nickel steel armour having even less appeal. Knothe’s fitters never forgot the experience.

  The width of the tanks had to be reduced for rail movement to avoid exceeding the railway loading gauge. This meant removal and separate stowage of the 35cwt sponsons and their armament, a wretched and dangerous task. Metropolitan supplied a heavy trolley for each pair. The procedure for removal was first to run the tank up on to three rail sleepers beneath each track. The trolley was then manhandled into position with its floor beneath the sponson. A pair of girders were bolted between two vertical ‘A’ frames which in turn were secured back to the roof of the tank. When unsecured, the sponson was suspended from the girders and lowered to the trolley. When both sponsons were aboard, 20 men on drag ropes hauled the trolley up the train’s loading ramp and along the line of wagons. On detraining, the two teams of ten had to race down the usually greasy ramp to avoid being run down by the laden trolley careering after them.