Tanks in the Great War, 1914-1918

by J. F. C. Fuller

Accepting that the main factor in future warfare will be the replacing of man-power by machine-power, the logical deduction is that the ideal army to aim at is one man, not a conscripted nation, not even a super-scientist, but one man who can press a button or pull a plug and so put into operation war-machines evolved by the best brains of the nation during peacetime. Such an army need not even occupy the theatre of operations in which the war is to be fought; he may be ensconced thousands of miles away, perhaps in Kamtchatka, fighting a battle on the Western Front. Is this impossible? Not at all; even in the late war we can picture to ourselves a one-armed cripple sitting in Muravieff-Amourski and electrically discharging gas against the Hindenburg Line directly his indicator announces a favourable wind.

So far the chemist, but is man going to be controlled by gas, are human destinies to be limited by a “whiff of phosgene”?

“Certainly not,” answers the soldier mechanic. “It is true that the future may produce many unknown gases which, as long as they remain unknown to the opposing side, are unlikely to be rendered innocuous by means of a respirator; I, however, will scrap the respirator and place my men in gas-proof tanks, and whenever my indicator denotes impure air, the crews will batten down their hatches, their engines will be run off accumulators, and they themselves will live on oxygen or compressed air. I will apply to land-warfare naval methods undreamt of before, I will produce a land machine which will, so to speak, submerge itself when the gas cloud approaches, just as a submarine submerges in the sea when a destroyer draws near.”

There is an answer to every weapon, and that side which has most thoroughly thought these answers out during days of peace is the one which is most likely to produce a steel-shod Achilles for days of war.

Without journeying so far as Amourski let us imagine that war was to break out again three years hence and that we were equipped with a tank 200 per cent. superior to our at present best type—a machine travelling at fifteen miles an hour in place of five, and that the Germans sitting behind their Hindenburg Line were still backing personnel against matériel, numbers of men against perfection of weapons.

An army is an organisation, comparable, like all other organisations, very closely with the human body. It possesses a body and a brain; its fighting troops are the former, its headquarters staffs the latter. In the past the usual process of tactics has been to wage a body warfare: one body is moved up against the other body and like two boxers they pummel each other until one is knocked out. But suppose that boxer “A” could by some simple operation paralyse the brain of boxer “B,” what use would all boxer “B’s” muscular strength be to him, even if it rivalled that of Samson and Goliath combined? No use at all, as David proved!

Now apply this process to the battle of 1923. The tank fleets, under cover of dense clouds of smoke, or at night-time, move forward, not against the body of the enemy’s army but against his brains; their objectives are not the enemy’s infantry or the enemy’s guns, not positions or tactical localities, but the billets of the German headquarters staffs—the Army, Corps, and Divisional headquarters. These they capture, destroy or disperse; what then is the body going to do, for its brain is paralysed? Who is going to control it, feed it with reserves, ammunition, and supplies? Who is going to manœuvre it to give it foot play? Either it will stand still and be knocked out, or, much more likely, it will be seized by panic and become paralysed to action.

What is the answer to this type of brain warfare? The answer is the tank; the brains will get into metal skulls or boxes, the bodies will get into the same, and land fleet will manœuvre against land fleet.

The growth of these tactics may be slow, but eventually they will become imperative. It may be urged that the field gun is master of the tank in the open, just as a land battery is master of a ship at sea. This is only true as long as the gunner can see his target, and no known means at present exist whereby sight can penetrate a dense cloud of smoke. It may also be urged that a heavy machine gun will enable the infantry to protect themselves against tanks. But to be mobile the weight of the machine gun is limited to the carrying power of two men—about 80 lb., and there is no known reason why a tank should not be armoured to withstand the bullets of such a weapon. If a heavier machine gun is made it will be forced to take to a mounting, and for choice to a mechanical one; it will in fact become a tank or a tank destroyer.

The necessity of armour in war has always been recognised, and its general disuse only dates from the sixteenth century onwards. When armour could not be used other means of protection, all makeshifts, were sought after—earth-works, entrenchments, use of ground, manœuvre, and covering fire, and as regards the last-named substitute it is interesting to go back a little into history, for, even from a cursory study, we may better understand the present and foresee the future.