Nelson Evening Mail SATURDAY, JANUARY 8, 1944 THE TANK UNDER FIRE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 79, 8 January 1944, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail SATURDAY, JANUARY 8, 1944 THE TANK UNDER FIRE

THREE years ago the wiseacres who discourse on grand strategy from the depths of a fireside armchair were vehemently upholding the tank as the key to success in modern warfare. “Give us the tanks,” they said in effect, “and we will tell the soldiers how to finish the job.” To-day they speak with less assurance. The tank no longer dominates the battlefield as it did in Flanders and Northern France in 1940. It is not much in evidence in Italy, and in Russia we are told that the Germans are digging in their tanks and using them as pill boxes. In Canada tank production has been cut by more than half, and in Australia it has ceased altogether. This may be partly explained by the assumption that an adequate reserve has been established, but it also means that the time has come for a revaluation of the part played by the tank in modern warfare. Those with a love for the picturesque may see the origin of the tank in the war-chariots of the ancient Britons, but for most of us it will be sufficient to go back to the winter of 1915-16, when the first tank carried out its cumbrous manoeuvres before a select group of staff officers and politicians in Hertfordshire. The Army accepted the innovation with some reluctance, and the first batch of tanks was sent into action in the Somme in 1916. They were too few to achieve much, and the advantage of surprise was lost. Fortunately the German High Command was as slow to judge the signs of the times as our own leaders had been, and when the tanks were put into the field at Cambrai in 1917, in considerable numbers, they paved the way for a resounding victory. It was now clear that they had come to stay, and during the remaining year of the war both sides worked hard to produce them in quantity. The tank provided the long-awaited answer to the stalemate of trench warfare, for it could negotiate obstacles and give cover to advancing troops. During the years between the wars experimenting with tanks continued, and speed and fire power, which had seemed of secondary importance in the early stages, were considerably developed. The implicatipns of the new warfare, however, were best appreciated in Germany and Russia. Hitler entered the war with an overwhelming preponderance of tanks, and these were the most striking element in the lightning campaign of 1940, which, in six weeks, reduced France to impotence and brought England nearer to defeat than she

had ever been before. The lesson was quickly learned, the cry for more tanks was insistent, and throughout Britain a high priority was given to their construction. Looking back now, we can see that the new viewpoint was almost as extreme as the old, and the tank, though an essential element of modern warfare, is not the be-all and end-all of an army. The vision of thousands of tanks rushing into battle like the armoured knights of old was not destined to be fulfilled. Experience soon showed that the astonishing German successes of 1940 were due mainly to the weakness of the opposition, and that where the other side could dispose tanks and anti-tank guns of high quality, armoured vehicles were largely ineffective. The tactics adopted at El Alamein showed a significant reversal of those used by the Germans in France two and a half years earlier. No longer did the tanks breach the lines, paving the way for the infantry; on the contrary, the first phase of the battle was a heavy and prolonged artillery barrage, then infiltration at weak points by the infantry, and finally exploitation of the gaps by the tanks. This technique was almost identical with that used by Ludendorff in 1918. The place of the tank in warfare is now becoming more stabilised, though it is not necessary to go as far as one London critic, who asserts that the tank has had its day and is now retained only “as a totem or mascot to give confidence to frontline troops.” Its weaknesses are obvious enough. It is almost useless in hilly, forested, or marshy country, it has limited fire power and it is vulnerable to anti-tank guns. These, indeed, especially as developed by the United States, have been chiefly responsible for reducing the tank’s marked superiority. If it is armoured sufficiently to withstand light artillery it becomes slow and unwieldy. But these defects are more than countered by advantages which ensure its retention of a conspicuous place on the battlefield. The fast tank will still be used for seizing key positions, for flanking and enveloping movements, and for pursuit when the enemy’s forces have been broken. The heavy tank will probably fill the role of mobile artillery, keeping close to the infantry and at the same time being unaffected by machine-gun and mortar fire. This is a war of special weapons to meet special conditions, and the tank, used with due regard to its capabilities and its limitations, is still one of the most important instruments of mechanical war. Its decline from almost supreme estate is but another good example of the sequence of weapon and counter-wea-pon.