THE TANKS ARE COMING

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4452, 30 January 1940, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE TANKS ARE COMING

The tank is a Frankenstein’s monster which threatens to turn on its creators.

low silhouettes —elusive targets. They are doing 15 miles an hour over rough ground, sweeping through the tank corridors formed by hill folds, taking advantage of cover much as infantry does. This is the first wave, perhaps 25 tanks in our sector, staying 50 yards apart, kicking up a dust storm which merges with the battle smoke.

The tank was designed to get the attack out of the trenches; it has caused more digging in. The Siegfried and Maginot lines are what they are largely because of tanks. The tank overpowered machine guns only to spawn antitank guns. It cleared paths through barbed wire only to beget anti-tank obstacles. Ob-stacle-building eats up time and materials, increases the problem of supply. It takes 5,000 to 12,000 man-hours to dig a mile of anti-tank ditches.

They are medium tanks, 15 to 20 tons each, with armour thick enough to stop machine-gun bullets. One or two tanks are picked off by the anti-tank guns. Another runs into a field of buried mines and is blown to bits. Another, turning too sharply, throws its track. Another is blasted skyward by a large shell. These losses were foreseen. The survivors keep coming, ignoring tank losses, ignoring opposing infantry and machine-gun nests, ignoring anti-tank guns. This first wave is breaking through for the French artillery area, two to three miles in the rear; in 10 minutes the tanks are there, cruising around and around, circling like hornets gone mad, their 20 tons crushing French material, their machineguns mowing down French artillerymen, their heavy guns potting the batteries themselves.

These things complicate the task of British, French and German commanders alike, until all of them may well wish the caterpillar-tread tractor back in the Illinois cornfields whence it crawled. But the Allies so proud of their great surprise in 1916 —have particular reason to wish they had never invented the tank.

The Germans, who last time had no tanks until too late, this time have incomparably the most —a huge fleet estimated at 6,000 machines—and growing. That is roughly twice the French tank strength at the outset of the war, and the British, like the Americans, still count their tanks merely by hundreds. Only the Germans have much recent tank experience—gained the Spanish war, in Austria, in Czechoslovakia. Above all, in Poland.

Meanwhile, the second wave sweeps forward. You see the same cruising you’ve just watched, but in a different area. The second wave is clearing out antitank guns. The third wave cleans out machine-gun nests. Light tanks this time —six, eight, ten tons. They have more speed, and you grow dizzy watching them turn their crazy circles. Now comes the infantry, close behind.

It was the spectacle of Poland which astounded the world with its revelations of the terrible power of mechanized armies. Their lightning manoeuvres, outflanking the Poles, striking hammer blows in the most unexpected places, demonstrated that the tanks of 1939 are as different from the last war’s lumbering monstrosities as are the new planes from the cloth-and-wire “ flying coffins ” of 1918.

You notice that the German tanks are forming in columns and speeding back toward their own lines. They are not_ being forced back. They are heading for pre-designated assembly points, where they can hide and lick their steely wounds. Their return routes were selected before the attack, to keep them from running down their own infantry. The parks were so carefully chosen you can’t spot them.

Speed is the major difference — and better armour. Twenty, twenty-five miles an hour across country instead of the creeping three or four of the World War tanks. The United States has tanks to-day which have hit 60 on the highways. The wide end runs and deep thrusts of the German tank divisions in Poland were virtually cavalry tactics. In a war of position, however, the major mission of tanks is still, as in 1916, to silence machine-gun nests so the infantry can move in. But, with its new speed, the tank now does it differently.

But look—here are fresh tank battalions coming up, three waves, like the three you’ve been watching. They are heading for the second French defensive position 10 miles to the rear, a second hammer blow before the first has lost its momentum. This time support comes from the air rather than the artillery. On the tank sector alone the Germans unloose 600 bombers and 500 attack planes. That means 90 planes on our half-mile front, so let’s get out of their way and down into one of the German tanks.

Let us watch a tank attack. Imagine the Germans are striking through Belgium, or have found a weak spot in the Maginot line —in any case, you are high in the air, looking on. You will not be able to see it all, for one of the new lessons is to use tanks in mass, not fritter them away in driblets on minor objectives. The Germans say never use less than a brigade—4oo to 450 ranks. The French say 100 to each mile of front. The United States Army agrees, and this autumn decided to take tanks from divisions and pool them as planes are pooled in the GHQ air force.

It weighs 20 tons, has five machine-guns, a 37-mm. gun and a crew of six in coveralls like garage mechanics. They wear helmets like football players _ to keep their skulls from being cracked in the lurching, pitching inferno. The going is rough, like broncho-busting. The men are cramped, hot, uncomfortable. They can’t see much—paint the whole windshield of your car black save for a slit one by three inches, and you’ll have an idea of what a tank driver is up against. They fear gas, because when they have to done masks they can see even less, and they are even more uncomfortable. The driver is manipulating two sets of gears plus other instruments. Above the roar of the tank he hears only the guns. The tank commander, sitting in a turret a little above and behind him, has to signal directions by a tap of the hand on the right or left shoulder. When the commander begins firing the 37 at a pillbox, he nudges signals to the driver with his feet. The commander has one eye glued to a telescopic sight, both ears covered with radiophones. He talks with planes, artillery posts, other tanks. Before the attack, reconnaissance had spotted the enemy’s passive defences: steel rails placed vertically in concrete bases; concrete and steel pyramids four to six feet high; telephone poles driven deep into the ground; felled trees. Now at the last minute the commander is warned of a mine field, irregular rows three or four deep, 2,000 to a mile of front. The tank doesn’t worry about machine-guns, except as molten lead from bullets may splash through slits into eyes ; In our own experiments, machine-

A tank attack implies a major offensive directed at an objective worth a tremendous price. So here the Germans are hammering on a 50-mile front. The tank attack is to be rammed through a 12-rnile sector of that front. That calls for ten Panzer divisions, 4,000 tanks. But 4,000 tanks arc too many to watch, even from high aloft. We’ll watch one halfmile slice. It is dawn, misty. All night tanks have been massing in the German rear, the roar of their motors purposely drowned by planes. Tank commanders have been studying maps ; yesterday some of them were visiting the front lines afoot, spotting tank traps, impossible terrain —steep banks, say, or a thicket of trees too big to bowl over. They take their posts in the tanks, with shutters closed. Now they are moving into assault positions behind low knolls. And now the German artillery has opened upon French artillery and anti-tank gun positions; smoke shells are being thrown at likely French observation points; German attack planes are in the air, and the tanks are coming. 'You -see them, down there, little swift-moving beetles with

What Might Happen If Germany’s 6,000 Tanks Went Into Action

guns can hit a tank 2,000 times without damage.

But what the tank man does fear is the anti-tank gun, a highly mobile, easily aimed piece firing probably 15 shots a minute under battle conditions. Its H-inch projectile, emerging from the muzzle at a speed of 1,800 miles an hour, can knock this tank off at ranges up to 1,000 yards—if it hits at the right angle. But what is the French infantryman doing? The Polish, Spanish and Ethiopian campaigns bred tall stories of infantrymen destroying tanks by crawling up behind them with hand grenades tied to bottles of gasoline. Theoretically, the grenades explode, setting fire to the gasoline. Actually, all these tricks are overemphasised. Tanks were incorrectly employed in Spain; the crews were inexperienced—you need as much experience in tanks as you do in planes —and the brass-hats ignored the principle of use en masse. Finally, many tanks were early German models, most of them slow, with little or no rear-end observation. The French infantryman you’re watching is up against vastly improved machines, expertly handled. His rifle isn’t worth a hoot against them, and he can’t stalk them from the rear with hand grenades. But experiments have shown that tanks can roar across infantry foxholes without cracking the crouching soldier’s head. So your poilu lies low in his foxhole, lets the tanks go by without drawing their fire, and then cuts loose on the oncoming infantry. He is attempting to

break up the team-work between tanks and troops, much as a halfback tries to dodge interference and hit the man with the ball. But he doesn’t succeed. As you observed from the air, the German infantry came in with the third wave, occupied the ground, prepared to help keep the attack rolling. More infantry followed the second set of tank waves, and night falls with a great gap in the French lines —a gap 12 miles wide —an entering wedge. Of course, it may never go so smoothly—if, indeed, it happens at all. But if the war turns into a war, if it is finally fought on land, this is the role military experts think the tanks might play. Naturally, any attack implies possible counter-attack, and here the tank is a potent weapon after the enemy has lost momentum or over reached himself. The French send tanks across in waves, but they do not try to take one big, deep bite. They work step by step. Aviation’s role in tank defence is mainly reconnaissance, forestalling surprise. It is possible for planes to disrupt a tank attack by bombing the tanks in their assault positions. Planes can also try to catch tanks in their parks. But tanks are easy to hide ! In pre-war manoeuvres, Royal Air Force planes spent an entire day trying to discover a brigade of "tanks concealed in the woods. And when tanks are deployed or moving they are poor air targets. At Fort Benning, Ga., ten old tanks were lined up in the brush alongside a road, as if scurrying from planes. Nine attack ships were brought over from Maxwell Field, shown the tanks, and then allowed to come back for a lowflying attack. The planes dropped 180 thirty-pound bombs and scratched only one of the tanks.

Perhaps the present war will evolve new defensive methods against tanks. But if Allied inventiveness fails in this, then the tank’s birth was a tragic error. Already it has given aid and comfort to the enemy.