The Race to Develop the First Tank During World War 1

There were some surprisingly decent-looking tank designs before the First World War broke out. Yet because there wasn't any direct necessity for these expensive machines, real development didn't start until the war had already progressed. Both the British and French developed several models of tanks during the last years of the First World War, in the hopes of breaking the stagnant trench warfare on the Western front.

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Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
1:59 Background
6:46 Landships
8:58 First Order of Tanks

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There were massive costs attached to the development of actually usable tanks and the need for them wasn’t that obvious until the bloodshed and carnage of the First World War.
Yet because there was no precedent on what type of armoured vehicle was the most efficient to develop, the initial stages of tank development were very experimental. With the support of Churchill, an opted idea was to saw open a submarine and to construct caterpillar-tracks under it. An entire platoon of officers could, in one go, breakthrough enemy lines. Another idea could be compared to a motorised medieval siege-tower. Fifteen metres in height, thirty metres in length and three massive wheels, with over 300 tonnes of weight. These ideas do show something different, besides their absurdity in hindsight: the first tank relied on transporting manpower, and not so much being the dominant firepower force we have come to know it as. There were multiple ideas and as absurd as these ideas seem, all of them contributed to the creation of something that eventually did work. That’s the way it often goes in life; one has to fail a couple of times in order to discover what does work.

Okay, so basically two dominant trains of thought existed about the development of tanks. One was concerned with the movement of soldiers, devising a machine that could safely transport entire platoons. And the other was concerned with designing something that had firepower and was mobile, in order to support and cover soldiers. Eventually, the French tested the idea of placing turrets onto armoured vehicles backed by undercarriages with caterpillar tracks. Meanwhile, the Russians developed the so-called Tsar Tank… a… well a tricycle monstrosity that never saw combat simply because of the abundance of design flaws.

On the western front, an actual working landship was coming closer, though the British designs didn’t have a rotatable turret yet. The first tank to have one was the French Renault FT tank. The French were designing their own type of tanks at the same time as the British, though the countries didn’t share their intelligence. Under the supervision of general Jean Baptiste Eugène Estienne, Renault developed one of the first prototype tanks as they would become known to man. This tank was finished in 1917, and was preceded by two other tanks: the Schneider CA1 and Saint-Chamond.

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Sources:

John A. Glanfield. The Devil’s Chariots: The Birth and Secret Battles of the First Tanks.

Photos, paintings and imagery: Public Domain, Wikicommons

#HouseofHistory #History #WW1

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