The Devil's Chariots

by John Glanfield

  Four weeks later the military members of the committee were persuaded by Stern and d’Eyncourt to reverse their decision and accept the view that it would be unwise to proceed directly from Mk IV to the radically different Mk VI. They were offered instead an improved Mk IV with the Ricardo/Wilson power train. Stern proposed to install the one-man control system in the last 400 as a transitional Mk IVA series pending the earliest possible switch to Mk V. Capper was delighted to approve these upgrades.

  At this point the War Office cast doubt on the entire 1918 programme. In an extraordinary communication the Army High Command declared on 27 July that tank requirements would in future be governed by the availability of scarce manufacturing resources. In other words tank production would no longer be determined by operational objectives. The news implied an imminent production cutback. Tank procurement was becoming a revolving door of orders and countermands. At the same time Stern and d’Eyncourt refused to attend further meetings of the WO Tank Committee, damning it as a waste of time. Stern had appealed to Lloyd George:

  A crisis has arisen in the relations between the War Office and the Ministry of Munitions re the progress and development of Mechanical Warfare, namely design and production… I continually pressed the War Office that they should establish a special department of tanks … with whom my department could deal as a link between the fighting and production sides. The War Office has set its face against this most resolutely. I have had to visit nearly every department of the War Office on all sorts of vital questions and, naturally, with most unsatisfactory results… The committee is now interfering in design and production which, if allowed to continue, will result in chaos and disaster. I refuse to allow this.18

  Stern yet again urged the appointment of a director general of tanks at the War Office. He also asked for more technical officers and for the granting of proper rank to his military staff – Rendle, his Assistant Director, was a lieutenant; Walter Wilson still a major. These requests were repeatedly refused by the military. Before sending the letter Stern showed it to the DCIGS, Sir Robert Whigham, who surprised him with the welcome news that a tank department was about to be formed. The War Office Tank Directorate would formulate military requirements for tanks, control their use and supply, and train personnel. It was designated Department SD2 and began work in August under Capper.

  The axe fell on 24 August. The War Office informed the Ministry that it had reviewed its requirements following word from Sir Douglas Haig. The total of fighting machines for 1918 was cut by almost 25 per cent. The programme now comprised:

  Type (WO order, 5 June) Revised 24 August of which, required by 1 March 1918

  Heavy (1,836) 1,600 700

  Medium (1,836) 1,200 600

  Supply (203) 800 450

  Gun carriers (-) 100 48

  Total (3,875) 3,700 1,798

  GHQ was employing its tanks piecemeal and had allowed itself to become further disillusioned by their sometimes inconclusive performance. Haig had been persuaded to reduce future fighting strength and greatly increase infantry supply capability. Lines of communication were shelled into oblivion and only tracked and splinter-proof machines would serve. For the heavies a decision as to type was avoided, the War Office leaving it at ‘Mk V, Mk VI or any improved type’. The armament requirement of 13 June was changed again from all-male to equal numbers of male and female tanks. Production of the 1,200 medium machines would commence with Tritton’s Whippets and run on until a replacement materialized. Stern seriously doubted the ability of drivers to control the twin-engined machines in action, and was critical of the army for committing to so many medium tanks before any had been delivered and battle-tested. Elles shared his misgivings.

  In short, the army wanted over 42,000 tons of tanks of all types for the start of the 1918 fighting season. On Priority 5, Stern would be allocated only a proportion of the strategic materials he needed. Track link castings and ball bearings were his greatest supply problem, together with a serious shortage of draughtsmen whose trade was unprotected from recruitment. He was in no position to deliver. Nevertheless, that evening he gave Metropolitan a provisional order for 800 Mk V. The contract was awarded in September. The military knowingly ignored or failed to understand the consequences of these monthly changes of direction.

  Lucien Legros held strong views on the inability of the High Command to comprehend and organize for mechanical warfare. As President of the IAE he had told his members:

  This is an engineer’s war … yet the mechanical engineer is not a recognised factor in the Army! There is no Chief Mechanical Engineer corresponding to the Engineer-in-Chief of the Fleet, and it has been necessary to create a Ministry of Munitions to deal with vital questions of production. The same applies right down the scale with the result that men of high mechanical ability and qualifications are officered by men with only ordinary military knowledge or mere administrative capacity.19

  Having assured the Tank Committee on 25 July that the remaining Mk IV machines would be built with one-man control, Stern transfixed Capper four weeks later with the information that it could not be done, telling him unconvincingly that ‘circumstances alter frequently and such changes are inevitable and might occur at any moment’.20 In fact, Metropolitan had warned Stern earlier that week that if they were instructed to put the Ricardo/Wilson system into the remaining Mk IV machines the assembly process would have to close in preparation for the changeover. Skilled labour and stamping and machining capacity would be transferred to other munitions work. Stern and his team agreed the ‘absolute necessity’ of maintaining continuity of output and resolved to press on with Mk IV until its completion. Stern told them ‘if the Army does not take the last 3–400 they will get nothing else’ and in that case he would sell the surplus tanks to the French.21 The need to break continuity for the upgrade had been entirely predictable, at least to Metro, the only surprise being the delay before Stern became aware of it.

  The infuriated Capper refused to accept Stern’s word and alerted the Army Council. Stern’s retraction destroyed what remained of his credibility with the already hostile military. As early as January 1917 Elles had confided to Brig Gen Wigram at GHQ that he thought Stern’s department was badly organized and unreliable: ‘We want facts and dates, not hot air. D’Eyncourt is of course very reliable.’22 From the army’s point of view, Stern had consistently failed to meet his own delivery forecasts on which operational planning relied; he had inflated by 40 per cent the number of Mk IV machines ordered by them; and now he had withdrawn his assurances of the vehicles’ convertibility to one-man control. Perhaps understandably, the military were less concerned with the underlying reasons.

  Stern’s forecasts were proving undeliverable because he was denied materials and skilled labour despite his forceful pleading. The MoM was also experiencing a general tendency for munitions suppliers to give over-optimistic delivery forecasts. Tanks were no exception. Tritton, for example, had told the MGO, DCIGS and Elles on 30 April that he ‘hoped to have 50 to 100 Medium tanks in France by the end of July’.23 The first two or three reached Elles late that October. The 100th was not delivered until the end of February 1918.

  Stern and the DNC pursued volume at almost any price for the 1917 campaign, knowing they could do so only at the cost of delay in introducing real improvement. Stern repeatedly pointed out that, ‘Quality without quantity is of small value in this war.’24 The next generation of tanks was coming off the drawing boards, however. Construction of the much superior Mk V was planned to start in October, but the slower than expected rate of Mk IV production pushed this back to January 1918, too late for any spring offensive. There is a passing reference in September 1917 to an experimental Mk IV tank which had been fitted with the Ricardo/Wilson system.25 Harry Ricardo records in his memoirs that at that time his new 150hp engines were being used to replace the Daimler units in Mk IV tanks.26 It is unlikely that this amounted to a large-scale conversion.

  Stern had other problems closer
to home. He had reorganized the MWSD at the beginning of the year after calling in Percy Perry, Managing Director of Ford Motor Company (Europe), who had been sourcing American engines for the tank programme. Perry was asked to set up the department on the lines of a motor manufacturer. He separated its activities into 13 divisions, but Walter Wilson as Director of Engineering had a nebulous role lacking authority, without a department and with no official design function despite his own pivotal contribution. The Design Department was controlled by Lt F.B. Shaw.

  By June Wilson could take no more. Stern had set up a departmental Experiments Committee in late May to which Wilson, Tritton and d’Eyncourt were given honorary membership. Stern emphasized to Wilson that this was an advisory appointment and that he had no executive powers. Wilson addressed his letter of resignation to the Minister. He contrasted the speed with which Mk I was introduced with the continuing delay in starting Mk V production: ‘I have nothing but a title “Director of Engineering”. I have no authority, no responsibilities, am in a purely consultative capacity, and to give my opinion only when asked… I have twice been dismissed by Col Stern but have refused to go.’27 Christopher Addison patched things up and Wilson withdrew the letter, but his action exposed weakness at the top.

  Throughout the war almost every fighting tank was built to Walter Wilson’s design. The transmission system which he introduced from the Mk V onwards transformed the weapon’s performance. Yet he was sidelined by Stern, to work on his own initiative up at Metro’s Birmingham offices. In a report later that year, Sir Arthur Duckham, a member of the Munitions Council, praised the quality of the department’s personnel but added, ‘the designers must be brought under one strong head who thoroughly understands his subject. They must not be allowed, as now, each to work out his own ideas and submit them separately to the Head of the Department [Stern] who, not being an engineer, suffers the disability of not being able to give full weight to technical consideration in making decisions.’28 Years later Bertie Stern gave his opinion on the proper place for engineers: ‘I have always believed that a brilliant engineer should be kept, metaphorically speaking, in a cage, or rather in the drawing office but never near production or in an executive post.’29

  When Stern’s contracting and finance operations came under Ministry control in May 1917, his contracts section under the imperturbable Dale Bussell found itself in the inflexible grip of the Munitions Contracts Department (MCD). Hitherto, the MCD had been forced to stand off, leaving Stern free to negotiate and award contracts direct under his original charter. Stern managed to break free for the gun-carrier work when, having obtained Lloyd George’s approval in June to build the machine, he was careful to end his formal acknowledgement with the words: ‘This work will be carried out under the original charter of the Tank Committee.’

  Bussell’s files were now combed. The MCD concluded that Metropolitan’s profits on the 1,000 Mk IV tanks were excessive, notwithstanding that Stern had negotiated prices down the previous August to £4,300 per male tank and £4,250 per female, against the £5,000 paid for Mk I. Later design changes further reduced these to £3,820 and £3,770.

  MCD officials dug in for a protracted battle with Metropolitan. Negotiations were reopened on 1 June, the Ministry securing an offer from Managing Director Lincoln Chandler to cut prices by £500 per machine in return for a further but unquantified order at the same price. The MCD held out for a reduction of £2,500 and no side order. Chandler withdrew the offer ‘very much upset’ in July, proposing instead a new contract at £3,000 per tank for twelve months’ output. Ever more complex negotiations continued, with tough bargaining from both sides. At a July meeting between MCD officials and Metropolitan, Stern made no secret of his view that the company’s original offer should have been accepted. This wrecked the Ministry’s negotiating position. Metropolitan then refused to deal further with anyone save Stern and his deputy, Norman Holden.

  The Director General of Munitions Contracts, Philip Hanson, was wheeled in and was compelled to negotiate through Stern. Having conceded the original terms for the 1,000 Mk IV, his objective shifted to a unit price for the 1,600 Mk V. After consulting Stern on terms acceptable to the Ministry, Hanson asked him to communicate them to Metropolitan with a face-saving request that Metro should appear to have originated them by formally submitting them back to the Ministry. Stern phoned the details to Metropolitan, only to be asked by Hanson next day to withdraw the proposal due to a miscalculation. Stern exploded, telling Hanson on 16 August:

  I wish to point out that this is a matter of vital urgency; it is holding up the production for 1918. The War Office order was dated June; these negotiations were started in June and nothing has yet been settled. I therefore hold you, and the Contracts Department, entirely responsible for at least one month’s delay and any further delay that occurs from this date. I wish also to point out that my Department were able to design, manufacture and deliver the first 100 tanks within 7 months … and that this was due very largely to the powers given me by the Ministry of Munitions to make my Contracts through my Contract Department with the advice of your Department… Owing to the endless delay … I must warn you that unless the matter is settled within the next 48 hours I shall close the contract on my own responsibility and inform the Minister accordingly.30

  A base price of £2,850 for 1,600 tanks was agreed on 5 September. It would be increased by the costs of retooling from Mk IV to Mk V, to be mutually agreed. The formula was a compromise for both sides, Metropolitan having been promised special confidentiality over book inspection. A contract was signed on the 22nd, three and a half months after the War Office order. Metropolitan confirmed that because of the uncertainties it had not given preparatory work its undivided attention over that period. Five days later, Philip Hanson was replaced by John Mann.

  The Contracts Department’s obstruction across all munitions procurement led to a move in 1918 for decentralization. Heads of production insisted on the need for their departments to award contracts immediately on completion of negotiations. Sir John Mann, as he had become, was summoned by the Ministry Warfare Group that July and given a roasting, but he preserved his department’s procedures unchanged.31

  Bertie Stern’s correspondence and later memoirs reveal almost nothing of his personal convictions, but in August 1917 he wrote frankly to Hanson (a senior civil servant, late of the Dublin Office of Works) after accusing him and his department of intolerable delay:

  My Dear Hanson,

  I believe it is from ignorance of each other’s point of view that our contentions flow. When a cold penury blasts the abilities of a nation and stunts the growth of its active energies, the ill is beyond all calculation. Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy. Economy is a distributive virtue and consists, not in saving, but in selection. Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison, no judgement. Mere instinct, and that not an instinct of the noblest kind, may produce this false economy in perfection.

  The other economy has larger views. It demands a discriminating judgement and a firm sagacious mind. It shuts one door to impudent importunity only to open another, and a wider, to unpresuming merit.32

  Haig’s first opportunity to use his Mk IV tanks came in June 1917. Gen Nivelle’s Spring Offensive had failed and mutinies were sapping the will of the French Armies. Following Nivelle’s replacement by Gen Pétain, the French needed time to restore morale. It fell to Haig and his 64 well-equipped divisions to take the lead. He decided to carry out an earlier plan to strike the German right flank, forcing it back sufficiently to open a coastal corridor to the Dutch frontier and neutralize enemy submarine bases in the Belgian ports. From there a drive on Lille could clear the road to Antwerp and Brussels. The first phase was an assault on 7 June on the Messines ridge to straighten out the Ypres salient. It was a model attack, preceded by the simultaneous explosion of 19 huge mines beneath a 10-mile stretch of the Ger
man front line. The 62 Mk IV tanks met little resistance, silencing numerous Maxims and outrunning the infantry later that day to hold gains while they caught up. The ground was badly broken but dry.

  The second phase, which became the third battle of Ypres, was preceded by a record 15 days of artillery bombardment from over 3,000 guns along 11 miles of front. It obliterated all watercourses and land drainage, leaving a quagmire which ensured the ultimate failure of the offensive. The assault opened on 31 July in heavy rain which continued intermittently for weeks. The attack was kept going against all logic until finally it submerged 4 miles further on in the swamp wilderness of Passchendaele in November at a cost of 250,000 casualties. The 28-ton Mk IV was no amphibian. Heroic efforts were made to bring the machines into action and new unditching gear came into its own, but many at GHQ expected the impossible of the new weapon and lost interest in it when miracles were not achieved. Haig remained confident but was recklessly wasting a prime asset. Maj Philip Hamond commanding 18 Company of F Battalion described the conditions in which tanks struggled simply to reach their start lines. He led eight tanks up on the night of 21 August:

  All my people worked like [hell] to get the tanks ready as we were desperately short of time and a perfectly devilish road to go down. The road from Weiltje Dugout went east to the old front line and thence straight away down to the Steenbeek. All rations etc. had to go down this narrow causeway, as the mud could and did drown anyone who got off the few duckboard tracks. The remains of the pavé was just about the same width as the tank tracks and in many places to pass a tank you had to climb along the side of it. There was an abyss of mud and water each side. The position was such that if any tank broke down and was knocked out during the approach march, every one behind it must needs wait on the road until daylight and then be shot like a garden thrush; too easy. There was no such thing as turning round or going back without getting ditched. As this was the one main highway you can guess that the Bosch shot it up the whole night long, and it had such long straight stretches on it that it was under fixed MG fire too. The holes in the pavé were filled with broken rifles, kit and corpses, the whole overlaid with stinking slime. It was really a bad place and the further you got on down the slight slope the worse it became