“The hostile infantry follows Tanks only half-heartedly. Experience shows that hostile attacks are soon checked by aimed machine-gun and artillery fire. Co-operation between the Tanks and their infantry detachments must be hindered as much as possible. The arms should be separated and destroyed in detail. All projectiles which do not hit the armour-plating at right angles ricochet off instead of penetrating. Artillery, light trench mortar and anti-Tank rifle fire is effective against all portions of the Tank, especially against the broadside and the cab (framed in red in the illustrations). Machine-gun and rifle fire with A.P. bullets, on the other hand, should be aimed especially at the observation and machine-gun loopholes (framed in green and blue in the illustrations).”
But the enemy was not content with a merely dialectical defence. Among other practical measures the Germans, with curious inconsequence, decided to form a small Tank Corps of their own, partly armed with new Tanks of German manufacture and partly with captured British machines.
But here a little unexpected awkwardness arose. The infantry from whom they now wished to recruit their Tank crews, had unfortunately been completely convinced by the unanswerable arguments which they had just heard, and now thoroughly believed in the perfect uselessness, the extreme vulnerability, of Tanks.
Thus it came about that the German Tank Corps was made up of a quite astonishingly reluctant and half-hearted body of men. Altogether, only fifteen German Tanks were ever manufactured, and only twenty-five captured British Mark IV. Tanks were repaired, so that the whole affair amounted to but little.
The German Tanks were, as we have said, much heavier and larger than the British or French heavy Tanks, though, as we have noted, they rather resembled the French St. Chamond. They could not cross large trenches or heavily shelled ground, owing to their shape, and the lack of clearance between the ground and the body. On smooth ground, their speed was good—being about eight miles an hour.
Their armour was thick and tough, capable of withstanding armour-piercing bullets, and, at a long range, even direct hits from field guns not firing armour-piercing shells. Only the front of the Tank was, however, sufficiently strong for this, and the roof was scarcely armoured at all.
They were very vulnerable to the splash of ordinary small arms ammunition, owing to the numerous crevices and joints left in the armour-plate.
The most interesting feature of these otherwise exceedingly bad machines was the fact that they ran on a spring track. The use of springs for so heavy a Tank was the one progressive departure in the German design.
Their crew consisted of an officer and no less than fifteen other ranks. This huge crew, twice that of a heavy British Tank, actually went into action in a Tank 24 feet long by 10 feet wide. However, the close association of the crew was merely physical, for they were composed of no less than three distinct arms, and appear to have done little or no training together as a crew.
There were the drivers who were mechanics, there were the gunners who were artillerymen, and the machine-gunners who were infantrymen. Members of the British Tank Corps were at one time much puzzled by German Tank prisoners’ statements, that on such or such an occasion the infantry had spoiled their shooting, or that the artillery had not backed them up, in circumstances when there was no particular question of co-operation with other arms. They came afterwards to understand that the anathema’d representatives of rival arms were inside the machine, not out.