Tanks
The mechanized armored weapons platform now known as a tank made its first appearance on a battlefield during the Battle of the Somme on September 15, 1916. Several British infantrymen who witnessed their attack reported the Germans were terrified by the huge machines. Probably some were, but the machines were likely equally frightening to the men crewing them. They could advance at a speed about equal to walking. Their interiors, in which eight men were required to operate the vehicle and the guns, were filled with the toxic fumes from the engines and the huge amount of fuel that they carried.
The crews wore metal masks with louvered goggles and chain mail to protect them from splinters. They also carried gas masks as did all troops on the front at the time. Of the 32 tanks which launched the attack only 9 made it to their assigned positions following the assault. It was an inauspicious beginning for a weapon which later became a feared part of ground warfare. The British ordered more of the weapons and suggested improvements based on the attack at the Somme. Meanwhile the French continued in the development of their own designs, while complaining that the British attack had been premature.
Although the tank is a thoroughly Army vehicle, its development in England was championed by the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill. Churchill called the vehicles “landships” and their development was funded by Admiralty money after the Army expressed little interest. The tank was an example of a weapon being developed to overcome a specific defense, the trench warfare supported by automatic weapons and barbed wired dictated the need to create a means of breaking through. The fact that the tank could only move at about a walking pace was not considered a fault since it was meant to advance with supporting infantry.
The first French tanks were poorly designed for crossing trenches, a short caterpillar track base combined with much of the vehicle protruding ahead of the tracks. This led to many of the French tanks becoming stuck in the trenches they had tried to cross. Another design, from the French automaker Renault, was the first to resemble the modern tank, with a turret above the body of the vehicle. The Renault FT was the most produced tank of the First World War, over 3,700 were built, and it was the tank assigned to the American units when they arrived in 1917. George Patton used one of the Renault tanks on the Western Front once the AEF was in the fight.
The Germans deployed few tanks in the war, Allied tanks were mostly used to clear barriers and support advancing infantry. One tank the Germans did deploy was the A7V, a monster that carried a crew of 18, eight machine guns, and a cannon. The Germans only managed to complete 20 of the machines before the war ended. There were few tank-to-tank battles during war, due to the paucity of enemy tanks to attack. After the war many British generals considered the tank to have been a temporary expedient based on the situation in the trenches, and that they would have little future in warfare. The French and the Germans though continued to develop tanks, and tank tactics, between the wars.