At the same time Gen Anley was trying to rationalize the many-stranded lines of communication and decision on tank affairs. He set up a Heavy Section Central Office in Whitehall and installed Lt Col Brough as his Staff Officer of Tanks. Brough would provide the communications channel between Wool, Stern’s people, the War Office and Heavy Section (France). Stern, however, enjoyed a direct line to the Secretary of State at the War Office and used it unhesitatingly when thwarted by the military. Anley tried and failed to have it removed.
Kiggell’s call for information was accompanied by an Army Council initiative to search for ‘the best means of ensuring that the design of tanks is developed in conformity with the tactical employment of those engines’. A flurry of conferences followed in London in late November. The council proposed to set up a design committee comprising officers with recent battle experience as well as technical experts. Its membership was weighted 5:3 in favour of the military, the senior officer to preside. It was intended that all tank transportation to France would be handled by the army. Stern would carry out the decisions of the committee save only when or if these threatened output. He would also produce spares to the requirements of GHQ and the WO (the spares shortage was becoming serious). Demands for tanks and spares would be routed directly from the WO to Stern. The committee was to meet monthly.27 As Tulloch had so forcefully pointed out, any such body should have been in almost continuous session daily. Design by committee was dangerous; design of a rapidly evolving and complex weapon by a committee which would meet a dozen times a year was madness.
Stern headed off the proposal, at least for the time being, at an important meeting in his office on the 23rd with Gen Davidson from GHQ, Gen Anley and Col Elles. Stern persuaded them to accept that a joint army and MWSD conference should be held in London whenever important matters of design, output or delivery arose, to be chaired by himself. This kept design firmly under his control but did nothing to improve communication. Stern urged Davidson to secure the appointment of a military counterpart to himself – preferably a member of the Army Council who could coordinate the tangle of War Office directorates and speak with authority for the army.
Stern went on to report that production of Mks II and III was expected to complete by 7 February 1917, after which Mk IV would start at 20 per week – half the rate originally forecast. Mk IV was Wilson’s design, as were Mks II and III. New features included thicker armour overall; wider track shoes; removal of the petrol tank from the fighting compartment to a less hazardous external position at the rear with a pressurized feed; and sponsons which folded inboard for rail movement when unbolted, the heavier male version being nudged inside by another tank. Sponsons would also be reprofiled to lessen their tendency to become ploughs when the tank heeled over. The long barrels of the 6-pdr guns, which too often fouled obstructions or became jammed with compacted soil, were to be shortened from 40 to 23 calibres. (This had little effect on performance, but the short gun produced a dangerous backblast until rectified. It was necessary to keep the breech closed for half a minute after firing to avoid the risk of igniting the petrol.28)
Gen Davidson shook Stern with the news that the Hotchkiss and Vickers machine guns were to be replaced by the Lewis gun. It was certainly necessary to standardize on one MG, and the Vickers had to go anyway because it would not fit in the new female sponsons, but a change from Hotchkiss to Lewis guns entailed larger loopholes, redesigned mountings and a renewed search for several thousand replacement weapons. The change was instigated by Maj Baker-Carr who had established the Machine Gun School at St Omer in 1914 from which, to his great credit, had sprung the MGC. He had just transferred to the Heavy Branch as a battalion commander and would later lead the First Tank Brigade. His friend Swinton and others advised against the switch to the bulkier Lewis gun. Its rate of fire was superior to the Hotchkiss by reason of its 47- or 96-round magazine, but its barrel casing was unarmoured and highly vulnerable, while its high rate of fire could result in overheating, carbonization and stoppages after 300–400 rounds. The mechanically more reliable Hotchkiss normally used a 30-round metal strip feed, which for tanks was shortened to only 14 rounds to improve traverse in the cramped sponsons. Tank machine-gunners generally dispensed with sights and instead applied fire on to the target solely by observation of the strike. Consequently, by the time Hotchkiss fire was worked on to the target the 14-round strip was nearly exhausted and the process had to be repeated without further gain. Hotchkiss at Coventry had recently introduced a successful belt feed but this was impracticable in the confined space of a tank. Stern and the MoM guns department were also against change to Lewis MGs but were overruled. The new armament was introduced part way through the Mk III production run. When Hotchkiss produced a flexible 50-round strip the following May the War Office readopted the gun, ordering 13,000. By then it was too late to modify loopholes and mountings on current types, and Hotchkiss ammunition had to be stowed awkwardly in racks and boxes sized for Lewis gun magazines.
At a meeting that same afternoon, 23 November, Haig summarized his requirements and promised Stern supportive action:
1. Tanks were required in as large numbers as possible.
2. It was important to get as many as possible to France before May.
3. It was very important to improve tanks periodically.
4. ‘Almost any design now is likely to be better than no tank.’
Several new tanks and tracked vehicles were on the drawing board. The ink had barely dried on Stern’s charter when Swinton told Gen Bird at the War Office that the Tank Supply Committee planned to build a superior machine, proof against high-explosive shell. The army called for a top speed of 6mph, no change in armament and improved trench-crossing ability. Size, and especially height, was to be kept as low as possible. Tritton began design of the ‘HT’ (heavy tank), later renamed ‘Foster’s Battletank’ and finally the ‘Flying Elephant’. Foster’s preliminary drawing of 13 July 1916 detailed a box-like hull set on conventionally low-slung tracks, and trailing Tritton’s steering tail. At 32ft 6in without the tail, it was 7ft longer than Mk I. The fighting compartment was right up front in a bulbous nose faced with 2in armour. A huge swinging plate of armour hung down from the overhang of the nose as a full-width (13ft) shell burster. The compartment contained all the armament, two 6-pdrs and five machine guns, their combined arc of forward fire running back to just abaft the beam. A double skin of 0.5in flank armour was carried well down over the tracks, each powered by a Daimler 105hp engine through its own gearbox, the two engines sharing a common crankcase. A pair of short pivoting secondary tracks were set at the rear between the main tracks. These could be driven if extra traction was needed to get out of trouble on soft ground. Tritton called it a ‘Live Belly’ system and patented it later that year, though it was never fitted to tanks.29 The very ambitious Flying Elephant weighed around 100 tons, about twice the weight that chaintrack technology could handle at that time.
Revisions followed in August. Frontal armour was increased to 3in and flank to 2in. To offset weight, Tritton reduced its length to 27ft and the width to just under 10ft. The tail and frontal burster plate were scrapped and the two auxiliary tracks were lengthened. The fighting compartment was extended right back and heightened. Two machine guns were mounted on each flank and at the rear, and a single 3in gun in front replaced the twin 6-pdrs. In its revised form the tank looked much like Little Willie. Speed was 2mph. Weight remained at 100 tons. At this point the Elephant’s tactical purpose changed from a vague ‘attack’ role to tank killing. It was feared that the Germans were building their own armoured fighting vehicles. Tritton cut weight to 50–60 tons by reducing armour to 1.5in, and construction of the first machine began in November 1916. On 31 January 1917, Stern reported that it would be completed early in March. He planned to build 20, but the project was cancelled soon afterwards following unenthusiastic reactions from Kiggell and Butler, and the part-built machine was scrapped. The Elephant offered twice the weight, hal
f the speed and less main armament than the Mk IV. Thinking had moved on and mobility was now felt to be a surer defence than heavy armour. It was a questionable conclusion which would influence British tank design until the Second World War.
Tritton had begun design of his twin-engined 14-ton ‘Whippet’ in October 1916. As the Medium A, it was a faster, lighter tank which could range with the cavalry ahead of the 28-ton heavies to break up troop concentrations preparing to counter-attack when enemy lines were penetrated. The idea had crystallized during Tritton’s recent information-gathering visit to the ‘Loop’ near Albert. The Foster Daimler transmission was too bulky for the machine, hence its independently driven tracks, set low and steered on the throttles alone. The Tylor 40hp engines gave a top speed of over 8mph.
Fowler’s of Leeds were also commissioned to design a chaser tank. They were instructed in November 1916, perhaps as a fall back, and were to incorporate one of the Rolls-Royce engines originally purchased for Crompton’s Pedrails. Their proposals were not taken up. In May 1917 Butler and Elles called for a ‘Supply Vehicle (Medium)’ on tracks or wheels, with shrapnel protection for driver and engine. Fowler’s then got to work on an experimental supply tank based on their chaser. They also collaborated with the Associated Equipment Company to build a machine in mild steel based on an AEC 5-ton lorry. That September Stern reported that an attempt had been made to graft a lorry body on to a ‘Medium A tank’ but the result was top-heavy.30
Maj Knothe was appointed in November as Technical Liaison Officer between Anley at Wool, Stern in London and Elles in France. It was a sound decision; Knothe and Wilson worked well together. Knothe had just designed a central ‘third track’ scheme not unlike Tritton’s ‘Live Belly’ system. Metro was ordered to make an experimental set in November but the work was later cancelled. Knothe was also designing a Mk VII heavy tank based on Mk I but lengthened a few feet in the tail. Williams Janney hydraulic transmission was proposed. It went through many revisions before an experimental machine emerged in October 1917; fitted with a Ricardo 250hp engine it performed well in trials. Seventy-four machines were ordered the following January, but only one was delivered before the war ended.
John Greg at Oldbury and Walter Wilson had been working since March 1916 on a tracked gun carrier for a 6in howitzer or a 5in 60-pdr which could be brought up quickly to advanced positions in support of attacking infantry. It was said to have been Greg’s idea.31 The gun could quickly be mounted or dismounted, or fired from the vehicle. Alternatively it could carry 10 tons of supplies or 160 rounds of 6in ammunition.
In May the War Office formally requested ‘a motor gun carriage which could keep closer to infantry than a horse-drawn field gun… The object of such a weapon would be the destruction of buildings and emplacements.’32 Gen Louis Jackson at Trench Warfare also threw his hat into the ring, proposing rather unconvincingly to put a gun on the Pedrail tracks which he had inherited from Crompton’s experiments. The commissioning authority, the Ordnance Board, refused to give Stern design approval for the Greg/Wilson unit. He went over their heads the next day, 16 June, and appealed to Lloyd George who immediately authorized production of 50 machines. An experimental carrier was built by Metropolitan and successfully test fired its 60-pdr the following January.33 Construction of the remainder went to loco builders Kitson’s of Leeds.
The fall of Asquith’s government in December 1916 and the formation of an all-party coalition under Lloyd George left Edwin Montagu, a staunch Asquith supporter, with no alternative but to resign as Minister of Munitions. Since his appointment in July he had freely given Stern and the tanks programme the support they needed to maintain production. He was succeeded on 11 December by Christopher Addison, who as Parliamentary Secretary had been Lloyd George’s right-hand man in setting up the Ministry. The new government was committed to a more vigorous prosecution of the war. Lloyd George quickly reorganized the system of supreme control. A small War Cabinet was formed under his chairmanship, which never exceeded seven members. He avoided the weakness of previous War Councils and Committees which were overlarge and inflexible, their members too burdened with departmental responsibilities to devote time to strategic direction. For Bertie Stern the change brought the welcome assurance of Prime Ministerial backing.
Elles had established his headquarters at the end of November in a château at Bermicourt, west of St Pol. Unhappy with the bureaucratic maze of military and civil agencies on which the Heavy Branch depended, he had the last word for 1916. With heavy irony Hugh Elles informed GHQ on 31 December:
The general organisation of the Heavy Branch in England and France is faulty. In France, the fighting organisation is under a junior officer who, faute de mieux, has become responsible for initiating all important questions of policy, organisation, design and personnel through GHQ France, and thence through five different branches at the War Office. In England, the administrative and training organisations are under a senior officer, located 130 miles from the War Office, with a junior officer (Staff Captain) in London to deal with the five branches above mentioned. The system is working now because headquarters in France have been free from the questions of operations for most of the last six weeks, and have therefore been in a position to deal imperfectly and at a distance with the larger aspects of the whole matter. In effect the tail in France is trying to wag a very distant and headless dog in England.34
10.
DIVISIONS
‘So far as tanks are concerned, this summer’s offensive is going to see one of the worst failures and scandals of the war unless certain spares in sufficient quantities are forthcoming and/or certain modifications in design are put in hand immediately.’1
Col Frank Searle, Heavy Branch technical adviser, to Brig Gen Hugh Elles, 24 March 1917
After breaking with the Landships Committee, Crompton returned to his private battle to persuade the army to adopt a self-propelled heavy gun. He was joined by the admirable Legros. The colonel pressed his ideas on the cautiously receptive Munitions Inventions Department. Stern was happy to let Moir’s people handle all such submissions. Crompton proposed a technically ambitious 15-ton gunship mounting not one but two 4.5in howitzers. They would fire from the vehicle, their arcs restricted to avoid overturning the machine from the formidable recoil. A number of innovations reflected Strait’s and Field’s views on pivoting and profiled tracks. To overcome the sagging of long tracks which bedevilled the Bullock machines, Crompton cut his in half and fitted the two assemblies in line on either side of the 16ft hull. A single smaller track was set centrally in front, Killen Strait style, with a matching one aft. These were also driven and were pivoted to aid climbing and add stability when firing. Powered by twin 50hp engines, and at only 6ft 3in high, the outfit had a claimed gap-crossing ability identical to Foster’s Little Willie.
Maj Gen Scott-Moncrieff inspected the drawings and a model at Thriplands in March 1916. Crompton had suspended a three-sixteenths-inch steel plate in front of the machine as a shell ‘burster screen’.
An alternative version was made up like a Venetian blind. The idea had originated with Tom Tulloch the previous summer. Extended arms held the screen 7ft ahead of the hull’s frontal armour, putting the viewer in mind of an iron matador with cape at the ready. Scott-Moncrieff stalled; the first tank production orders had just been placed. Crompton was surprised to be told that it would be necessary to refer to the Army Council for a decision concerning motorized artillery following up an infantry advance. In the interval he and Legros refined the design to produce ‘Emplacement Destroyer No. 1’ (E.D. 1). The second howitzer was omitted, as were the fore and aft tracks and the burster screen. They were no further forward in June when Moir’s successor, Col H.E. Goold-Adams, proposed a redesign to a simple gun carrier or haulage tractor. Legros left in disgust to join the MoM. Crompton dug in, replying to Goold-Adams:
I have interviewed many engineer officers of standing who have been in charge of sections at the Front, and they all tell me
that there is an urgent demand for the vehicle as originally designed by me which can follow up the first waves of infantry advance and take up a new position to open fire without delay… This is the French system which has been so successful… All the evidence agrees on one point, and that is that guns moved by motive power can be advanced over rough ground at a greater rate, present a smaller target and be brought into any position in a manner impossible with guns drawn by [unprotected] animal teams and drivers… I appeal to you as a soldier who wishes to save men’s lives that this matter is far too urgent to be put off day after day.2
Crompton had one good shot left in his locker – Maj Daw RE, newly arrived from the front. The two met Goold-Adams two days later. Daw told them that in almost every case the ground gained at great cost was lost through delay in bringing artillery up into new positions. He contrasted this with the French whose 75s were hauled from one position to another ‘every few minutes’. Goold-Adams immediately commissioned the colonel to design and build an E.D. 2 machine with further detailed improvements. A general drawing was submitted and reached Tritton for comment in September. It was characteristically strong on sizes of angle iron and details of rivet pitch but lacked much basic information. Tritton’s report sank it; he thought the design ‘entirely unpracticable’. The assignment was cancelled on the 19th. Crompton sought Churchill’s backing for £2,000 to build and test the machine, with no success. He soldiered on alone, producing an E.D. 3 on a single pair of tracks, but the Ministry closed his file in February 1917 before the design was completed. Crompton never recovered £400 of out-of-pocket expenses, a substantial sum. His battle tactics were sound, and he refused to give up until the doors in Whitehall were finally closed against him. The German Army put a flatbed on powered tracks in 1918 as a transporter (Uberlandwagen). Several were converted to carry twin field guns as self-propelled artillery.
The Devil's Chariots Page 23
