tanks at the battle of the somme - essential somme

7/29/2019 Tanks at the Battle of the Somme - Essential Somme

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Baptism of Fire

A Company, which had

been in France since 14

September, had its

baptism of fire on 13 and

14 November. On each

occasion it was the actionof an individual tank that

won the day. Female tank

544, commanded by

Lieutenant H.W.

Hitchcock, was the only

one of three tanks to get

into action on the 13th and

it was soon bogged in a

shell hole while Hitchcock

was wounded. The original

plan was to abandon the

tank, which was already

surrounded by Germaninfantry, but when

Hitchcock was hit again,

and two other men

wounded, second-in-

command Corporal Taffs

took over. Assisted by

Lance-Corporal Bevan,

Taffs now got the tank re-

started, reversed out of the

hole and set a new course

for his objective. Arriving at

the German second line,

the tank broke through the

roof of a dugout and ended

up, partly on its side and

incapable of moving further.

Unable to use his machine

guns effectively with the

tank at such an angle and

attacked by the Germans

with machine guns and

grenades from all sides,

Taffs managed to send off a

pigeon, as a result of

which, about an hour later,

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Tanks at the Battle of the Somme

David Fletcher

In all there were some 60 tanks in France atthe start of 1916. Twenty-five had been issuedto each of the two companies (C and D) of theHeavy Section, Machine Gun Corps; a furtherten were retained in reserve, although someimmediately replaced a few that had brokendown during training and could not be

repaired for want of spare parts.

The battle plan reflected an understandablelack of experience or even comprehension ofwhat these new weapons were supposed todo. Prevailing logic suggested that they shouldbe employed against identified strongpoints inthe German line to which end special laneswere left open through the British barrage,along which they would advance. The schemewas nearly wrecked on over-confidence.Demonstrations laid on before the battleseemed to suggest that there was little the

tanks could not do. In practice, as theystruggled up to the start line in the dark, somelost their way and most became entangled withother traffic so that, by the time they arr ived,the crews were exhausted and fuel reserveslow. Since many of these men had no previousexperience of war, and most notably of thehorrific conditions of the Western Front,everything must have been bewildering.

The first tank battle, known as Flers-Courcelette after two villages that wereobjectives for the attack, was part of the 1916

Somme campaign and it was scheduled tostart at 6.20am on 15 September 1916. In factit began about one hour earlier when Maletank Number 765, crew D1, under CaptainH.W. Mortimore started to move. In theory thisshould have been one of three tanks but theother two were delayed. This situation was

repeated all along the front since just 32tanks, out of 49 originally available, wereready to start on the day. Of these, five weresoon ditched in trenches or shell holes, ninebroke down, nine more were too slow to keep
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rescued by the infantry; all

surviving members of the

crew were awarded the

Military Medal.

Mark I (Female) tank A11

Click to enlarge

, ,the final nine led the way, got well into theenemy lines and caused considerabledamage.

In the thick of it more problems wereencountered. Both Basil Henriques and Lieutenant Vic Huffam, who was inaction the following day with D9, reported that enemy machine-gun bulletscame through the armour and killed or wounded members of the crew it maybe relevant that both tanks were Females. They also agreed that bullets

striking glass prisms in the vision blocks shattered them, sending splinters intothe driver's eyes. One tank (C5 Crme-de-Menthe) lost one of its tail wheelsbut it is a measure of contemporary inexperience that, when another tank hadits entire tail assembly blown off, the commander believed his tank to beincapacitated.

The lack of a silencer for the exhaust system proved to be another problem.Great clouds of fumes belched out as the tank tipped in and out of shell holesand, after dark, sparks could often be seen spiralling up around the baffles,but worst of all was the noise. Crews improvised, making rudimentary silencersfrom old oil drums or packing mud around the baffles, or even wet sacks.

Three tanks were in action on the following day

(16 September). They managed to stem aGerman counterattack near Flers but they wereall hit and put out of action. Indeed Huffam, inD9, recalled seeing Court's tank literallysmothered in shellfire, and it appears to haveexploded with the loss of the entire crew. Onthe whole, however, casualties among the tankcrews were light and many of the tanksabandoned on the 15th were subsequently recovered. Those that were notappear to have remained on the battlefield until the very end of the war whensome were photographed lying derelict or being broken up for scrap byGerman prisoners-of-war.

Thus this first attempt at tank warfare can only be regarded as a limitedsuccess at best, yet it had a remarkable effect and in a most improbablequarter. Four days after that first battle the British Commander-in-Chief inFrance, Sir Douglas Haig, sent a representative to London with an order for1,000 more tanks.

A dozen tanks were available for action on 25 September, eight of which werenot actually used because the infantry proved capable of undertaking the taskwithout them. Of the other four, two did some minor work and the last pair didnot get called into action until it was too late. However, the infantry they werescheduled to help came up against a grim German position known as the GirdTrench near Gueudecourt. One of these tanks was damaged by artillery fireso, on the following day a single tank, commanded by 2nd Lieutenant Storey,took on the Gird Trench by itself. The result was so impressive that some 300German prisoners were captured and Storey was awarded the Distinguished

Service Order for gallantry and initiative'. Haig himself noted on the citation Iconsider this to be the best tank performance up to date'.

At the end of September command of the tanks in France was given toLieutenant-Colonel Hugh Elles, Royal Engineers, who retained this post rightthrough to the end of the war. Tanks were used in small numbers throughoutOctober but weather conditions deteriorated and there were few successes.Even so the tanks were here to stay, a fact signified by a War Officeannouncement on 20 October that the force was to be enlarged andcompanies expanded to form battalions.
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2006 Osprey Publishing Ltd, British Mark I Tank 1916 (New Vanguard 100)

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