TANKS COME OF AGE

Evening Star, Issue 22817, 27 November 1937, Page 12

TANKS COME OF AGE

FIRST USE IN GREAT WAR The tank as an engine of war “ came of ago ” on September 15, for it was on. that date in 1916 that it smashed the Mers line on the Somme and helped to take High Wood. To the British armies at the front, as well as to the Germans, the tank came as a surprise,' though the degree was entirely different. As the queer, unlovely shapes waddled their way across, pausing awhile to sit on top of barbed wire and trenches, opening fire on astonished and panicstricken Germans, the infantry laughed more than they cheered. For here was a real page out of Wells or Jules Verne. Who invented the tank? It is a question that has not yet been answered. What is certain is that the idea of a “ land-ship ” was in the mfnds of a number of men in the autumn of 1914. It was not until January, 1916, that the first “ active service ” tank was completed. Production began at Lincoln in great secrecy. Trials followed, witnessed by Army chiefs from the front. Organisation was undertaken, and the forerunner of the Boyal Tank Corps was known as the heavy section of the Machine Gun Corps. Six companies went to France with 50 tanks and camped secretly near Abbeville. They jyere smuggled to

near the front line on the eve of. the “big push on September 15, and though the initial success was qualified, the optimism and faith of their champions were justified. Tanks of other shapes and sizes came into existence. Whippets, or light tanks, did much to save the terrible situation at Villers Bretonneau on April 24, 1918, and by the time of the armistice there were 18 battalions of tanks on the western front. The personnel of the tanks formed

the original Tank Corps, which came into existence on July 28, 1917, under the command of Lieutenant-general Sir Hugh J. Elies, now the Mastergeneral of Ordnance. To-day the tank is an almost universal weapon of war. British tanks are stationed in companies in many parts of the Empire. Thev have, of course, improved out of all knowledge, and, quite apart from the Royal Tank Corps, great use is to be made of them in the Mobile Division,