The Devil's Chariots

by John Glanfield

  There are perplexing inconsistencies between Churchill’s postwar account of this episode, and the contemporary records and sworn testimony. Churchill claimed in his The World Crisis that the tractors were on caterpillars; that the idea of a bridging version originated with him when he was first shown pictures of the tractors in October 1914; and that it was early in November after seeing the design of the self-bridger that he ordered a machine and instructed Bacon to contact French and Kitchener.33 The records and Foster’s trials photos prove otherwise. Tritton’s tractors and the bridger were not tracklayers. It was not until the howitzer tractor’s acceptance trials in December that Bacon first raised with Tritton the possibility of a bridging version, and then only in the most general terms, as Tritton confirmed in evidence before the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors in 1919 and in his war history of Fosters.34 On Churchill’s timings Bacon would have sat on his hands for at least six weeks after meeting Churchill before putting the idea to Tritton, even then failing to mention that he already had the design and the First Lord’s order in his pocket. He must have delayed even longer before contacting French and Kitchener as instructed.

  Churchill concluded with a reference to the bridger’s failure at its trials, which he considered to be excessively severe and vexatious. One is left with an impression of the author as the mildly aggrieved originator of the machine. Yet Churchill himself pulled the trigger on the project when he cancelled the production order only days after placing it, long before the trials. He deserves the very highest praise for his foresight and drive – without it the tank would never have materialized when it did – but he was careless too in suggesting the machine was a tracklayer. Churchill’s account served only to thicken the fog of controversy enveloping those who laid claim to inventing the tank.

  3.

  WINSTON’S CIRCUS

  ‘Some more lorries and 3-pdr guns are urgently required. Armoured lorries cannot work very successfully except on main roads. The lorries cannot get along the roads very well now they are in such a bad condition. The armoured cars are useless at present.’1

  Wg Cdr Charles Samson’s reports on his fighting motor patrols in northern France and Belgium progressively chart the collapse of the roads – and of his mobility

  The German offensive at Ypres opened on 20 October 1914 against Gen Douglas Haig’s battered 1 Corps. The onslaught lasted nearly four weeks before it was beaten off, the BEF suffering over 58,000 casualties. The ensuing siege warfare effectively halted the almost daily firefights of a marauding armoured car force which Churchill at the Admiralty had formed ten weeks earlier. Its activities marked the beginning of a chain of events which led to the emergence of HM Landships – the first tanks. Swinton and Tulloch would discover and become part of the chain, but its first links were forged by Churchill and his airmen.

  The Military Wing of the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) had accompanied the BEF to France in August. Churchill’s Naval Air Wing (the Royal Naval Air Service – RNAS) would soon follow. Before the month was out Belgium’s great fortresses had been overrun and her field army of six divisions had fallen back on Antwerp. The continued German sweep pressed the Allied armies into the long retreat to the Marne. If the stand there collapsed, Paris might fall. Churchill won approval for a modest diversionary feint from the sea to threaten the rear of the German flank army. He rushed an ill-equipped brigade of marines to Ostend on 27 August in hopes of relieving pressure on the BEF and encouraging further Belgian sorties from Antwerp. The well-publicized operation misled the German Supreme Command at a critical moment into believing that a major troop landing had begun. German intelligence assessments turned Churchill’s 3,000 marines into 40,000 troops plus possibly twice that number of entirely phantom Russian reinforcements.

  The decoy force was supported by the Naval Wing’s Eastchurch Squadron, led in gung-ho style by Wg Cdr Charles Rumney Samson, a short, square-rigged and black-bearded buccaneer whose exploits in peace and war read like a ‘ripping yarn’. His nine aircraft comprised seven different and mostly veteran types. It was entirely in keeping that the airmen’s sole armament was a .45 automatic pistol apiece plus one shared rifle. Each pilot was encircled by two inflated bicycle inner tubes serving as lifebelts for the Channel crossing. Their otherwise unmarked machines flew small Union flags from the wing struts. Over-enthusiastic friendly fire later persuaded the squadron to lash 7ft x 5ft flags to the underwings.

  The naval force was recalled on 30 August but Samson had no intention of returning home. He signalled a string of spurious reasons for delay ranging from sea fog (actually a slight haze) to the write-off of a Bleriot (‘Luckily, Lord Grosvenor smashed his machine on landing’). Samson turned out to be exactly where the First Lord wanted him. Churchill had just accepted Kitchener’s request that the Royal Navy should take responsibility for the aerial defence of Great Britain. Churchill feared that forward Zeppelin bases would be created behind the German advance from which to attack dockyards at Portsmouth, Chatham and even London. On 1 September he instructed his Director of Air Department (DAD), Commodore Murray Sueter to assemble the largest possible force of naval aeroplanes and base them in Calais or Dunkirk for daily sweeps to search out and destroy airships on the ground. He growled that it was better to kill the birds while they were still in the nest, rather than await their arrival overhead.

  Sueter was a brilliantly resourceful innovator and the father of Royal Navy flying. He would later claim that he also fathered the tank. He had pioneered the navy’s torpedo and submarine development with Adm Bacon before turning to the possibilities of aviation. Sueter supervised the construction of the first RN airships and was appointed Inspecting Captain of Airships in 1910. On the formation of the Admiralty Air Department in 1912 he became its director. It was largely at his urging that the Naval Wing unofficially separated from the RFC to become the Royal Naval Air Service in July 1914.

  Enemy cavalry probes and motor patrols were increasingly active, roving freely over the huge area behind the German advance. Samson formed an ad hoc road force to support his forward airfields, transport mechanics and equipment and recover pilots. He used his officers’ standard touring cars which had come across with them, ostensibly as squadron transport. They included the vehicles of his brothers Felix and Bill who had joined the squadron in August.

  The first road fight took place on 4 September near Cassel while the men were awaiting the return of a scouting aircraft. Samson and eight others crewed an unarmed Rolls-Royce and Felix Samson’s Mercedes, which he had fitted with an old Maxim. The Governor of Dunkirk alerted them to approaching enemy cars and the airmen duly shot up the lead vehicle before having to retire with a sheared firing pin in the machine gun. This encounter and Samson’s vigorous air activity persuaded the Germans that a significant force was massing ahead of them. They withdrew their 2,000 troops from Lille next morning. The skirmish was a foretaste of the many road fights to follow.

  Samson’s report of the action requested 50 Royal Marines to accompany the cars; Churchill sent 250. Sueter had proposed to send 50 motor cars armed with Maxims; Churchill told him to double the number. After the Cassel encounter Samson’s road strength was fixed at 60 armoured cars and 40 support vehicles. Sueter formed the expedition into four Aeroplane Armoured Motor Support Squadrons under Maj Charles Risk, Royal Marines. Subsequent events overtook the force and Samson’s strength never approached four squadrons, but the damage and distraction which they caused the enemy was out of all proportion to their number.

  The road force was soon in action almost daily. They cast about for local means of protection pending the arrival of the armoured cars. The only available material was 6mm boilerplate which was nominally bullet-proof at ranges over 500yd. It was fitted to Samson’s first cars and lorries by Dunkirk shipbuilders Forges et Chantiers de France. All cladding was in flat sheet, angled as far as possible for deflection. Felix Samson’s Mercedes was first to be plated, to his own design, and had its first fight on 13 Septemb
er. Dubbed the ‘Iron Duke’, the car’s protection was more imagined than real but it could manage 55mph on the flat, though well down on its springs. The next conversion was less successful – a 29–30hp Wolseley, the rear axle of which failed under the severe load. These and subsequent boilerplate conversions were little better than wheeled death traps for their occupants, but the cars and crews looked menacing.

  On 17 September Forges et Chantiers finished plating a Rolls-Royce and a London General Omnibus Company ‘B’ Type bus chassis. The ‘B’ Type was open-topped with slope-sided protection for 12 riflemen crouching at loopholes. Large frontal plates shielded cab and radiator. Another similarly plated ‘B’ Type followed on the 21st. They were unable to keep up with the armoured cars but proved useful as mobile guardposts.

  Churchill visited Dunkirk and was impressed by the growing firepower and effectiveness of the road force. Here was a means of combining with local troops to harass and tie down the enemy and help relieve pressure at the front. It was agreed that Samson should work in support of the Dunkirk garrison, attacking rail and other key installations in the region of Cambrai and Valenciennes. The RNAS armoured cars and lorries became a strike force, though at home, where most of the Sea Lords viewed Sueter’s activities with distaste, Churchill let them believe that it was no more than an airfield defence and aircrew recovery unit. This group was not the first to operate armoured cars in the theatre. The Belgian Army produced its first cars in the last week of August, basing them on heavy touring chassis plated in Antwerp. Its officers had earlier fought with considerable verve in their own unprotected Excelsiors and Minervas, but the death of Prince Baudouin de Ligne in one of these brushes underlined the need for crew protection.

  While Samson’s cars shot up the enemy on the ground, his aircraft were destroying Zeppelins and their sheds in Germany. A price was put on his head. He mobilized country gendarmes, going into action with packs of up to 60 of them at a time when he was not operating with French troops. An intelligence network of boy scouts on bicycles paid one franc per day was formed to report all enemy sightings within 20 miles of Samson’s base. By the time his small force returned home the following February the ground and air combats of the unit had won it one Victoria Cross, four DSOs, including Samson’s, and a DFC. (Among his earlier exploits he had been the first man to take off from a moving ship – the battleship Hibernia – flying a Short pusher amphibian at the 1912 Naval Review off Portland.)

  The activities of the RNAS fired the public imagination and offered a short cut into the war for young men fearful that it would all be over by Christmas. Sidney Ninnim’s experience was typical of the resultant stampede. He queued for three days before reaching the recruiting officer’s trestle table, only to be turned down as an air rating. On his way out he heard a call for anyone who knew anything about motor transport. As the only man within earshot who did, Ninnim found himself in Dunkirk as a driver/mechanic after 12 days’ training.

  Some of the wealthier volunteers arrived in France with their own cars. Sub Lt The Earl of Annesley brought an Austro Daimler and was accompanied by Ryan his chauffeur. The car shed so much of its insecurely fitted armour that it had to be stripped and relegated to despatch work. Contrary to Samson’s postwar comment that this was a comic affair of soft iron hung about the car by a local garage, it was in fact 9cwt of bullet-proof steel produced to special Admiralty order by Firths of Sheffield and was fitted – poorly – in six days at RN Dockyard, Sheerness.2 Six weeks later Annesley hitched a lift as observer in a Bristol aircraft on its delivery flight. He was killed when it became lost and disappeared over German lines.

  Lt Cdr Josiah Wedgwood MP went out in October 1914. After shooting up a patrol of Uhlans near Tournai on his third day, he told Sueter. ‘This seems to me a most admirable arm, better far than cavalry for this work.’3 Lt Cdr Baron de Forest MP – a friend of Churchill’s – joined Wedgwood’s section before getting command of his own. Hugh Richard Arthur Grosvenor, second Duke of Westminster and reputedly the richest man in the country, joined in November and raised 2 Squadron which he himself equipped with armoured Rolls-Royce cars at a cost of over £30,000, a fortune then. Oliver Locker Lampson MP put in his bid even earlier, writing Churchill on 30 October that he had Sueter’s provisional approval to fund and lead a squadron, and requesting permission to man it with Ulstermen. His 15 Squadron drove armoured Lanchesters. Others arriving at the depot that autumn included Lords Torrington, Loughborough, Tollemache and Hardwicke.

  The Aeroplane Armoured Motor Support Force was based on the east coast at the Sheerness depot of the RNAS Central Air Office. Responsibility for overseeing the preparation and despatch of the road fleet and its stores fell to the Inspecting Captain of Aircraft, Superintendent Frank Scarlett. All Samson’s equipment was shipped from Sheerness, its dockyard additionally providing engineering services. Few men could drive in those days, and Sueter was competing with the Army Service Corps for drivers and trained mechanics. His recruiting relied heavily on the motor industry’s workforce, chauffeurs and the comparatively few well-off young owner/driver automobilists. Felix Samson signed up the first batch of drivers, many being skilled testers and mechanics from Sueter’s chassis suppliers. The navy gave qualified men the minimum rank of Petty Officer Mechanic at 10 shillings (50p) per day while serving in France. Army drivers suffered as privates on 6 shillings (30p), bringing resentments which led to exchanges between Kitchener and Churchill.

  Rather surprisingly, Murray Sueter ignored Samson’s design proposals for armouring the cars. He turned instead to his Admiralty steering committee and adopted the ideas of Lord Wimborne and Mr Macnamara, neither of whom had seen recent action. Their economical open-top approach was certainly dictated by weight considerations, and the design was finalized on 11 September; 60 chassis were scheduled for plating – 18 Rolls-Royce 40/50hp, 21 Wolseley 30hp and 21 Clement-Talbot 25/50hp, all standard assemblies save for dual-rim wheels on the rear axles. The War Office could provide no data on the resistance of armour to penetration by bullets at ranges below 100yd so Sueter set up experiments with steelmakers Wm Beardmore & Co. of Glasgow which continued into 1915. He settled at first for 4mm plate. It was all in flat sheet because no firm in the country at that time could shape thin armour without cracking it. Armour of variable quality was also obtained from other sources.

  The three chassis-builders made up templates from which the steel mills produced kits for each firm to fit. Sueter scrounged some Admiralty armour and diverted eight chassis to the Sheerness yard for cladding there (probably all, and certainly three, were Wolseleys).4 The cars were only plated to door height, the driver alone having the additional protection of a kind of armoured rabbit hutch with a pair of side-hinged doors for forward vision. The rest of the crew remained lethally exposed to fire from trees and windows even if they were lying on the floor. Scarlett recommended replacement of the driver’s vision doors by a single top-hinged flap with slit, its upper edge scrolled to deflect bullets from glancing up into the gunner standing behind; the idea was later adopted. Newly built cars were subjected to firing trials where a number failed, .303 rounds penetrating the armour at 150yd. Scarlett’s fitters found they could drill it with ease.

  Machine guns were scarce and Sueter had to beg round the Fleet for his 60 Maxims; some of Samson’s ammunition was date-stamped 1888. Chatham Dockyard made socket mountings for the machine guns and demountable crossheads to enable some cars to be fitted for anti-aircraft work. Sheerness knocked up useful metal carriers for the ammunition belts. These were bolted to the guns to avoid the floor clutter of direct feeding from ammunition boxes, and the risk of jamming from loose rounds which tended to misalign or fall out of long waving belts.

  Only two weeks after design approval, the first five Admiralty (Wimborne/Macnamara) armoured cars were landed at Dunkirk with Maj Risk on 26 September – two Rolls-Royces and three Clement-Talbots.5 Five Wolseleys followed on the 30th with Lt Cdr Wedgwood. Capt Hetherington took over a thi
rd section of five Wolseleys on 2 October to complete the 15-car fighting strength of Felix Samson’s 1 Squadron.6 On 1 September 28-year-old Flight Commander Tommy Hetherington was appointed RNAS Transport Officer. An officer of the 18th Royal Hussars, he had been on attachment to the RNAS as an airships instructor since July. Hetherington was the epitome of the dashing cavalryman, as well as being an early aviator and a promising motor engineer. He had ridden for the United Kingdom and the army with great success until an injury caused him to switch to flying. On gaining pilot’s certificate No. 105 at Brooklands in July 1911 he had joined the Airship Section of the Air Battalion RE, then in formation – afterwards the RFC. He was happiest at the controls of anything which flew, floated or rolled, and would duly make his mark in the progression towards the first tanks.

  On his return to Sheerness, Hetherington sent Scarlett a searingly critical report of Samson’s road organization, communications and operational effectiveness. It is interesting to contrast Samson’s swashbuckling approach with Hetherington’s regimental orthodoxy. The latter was surprised to find no instructions awaiting him on arrival at Dunkirk with the cars. He phoned Felix Samson at the Morbecque base to be told that Risk and the others had piled into nine armoured cars and disappeared in two separate parties heading for Lille. It transpired that no communication existed between the patrols and base. Samson normally relied on the public telephone system when on the road, sometimes leaving a marine with a motorbike at the nearest exchange to receive and relay messages. He had installed ground/air radio communications in a car at the aerodrome, but the bulky and delicate equipment was impracticable for road operations. The British Consulate at Dunkirk provided his onward link with Sueter in London. Hetherington continued:

  The next morning [3 October] I found a wonderful collection of all sorts and classes of cars and what appeared to me complete chaos. I reported to Comm. Samson and was told that the section was to leave immediately for Antwerp and that they were to pick up the gun crews in the town. The only armoured cars belonging to Major Risk’s unit which had arrived consisted of half of No. 1 section, with No. 1 Squadron Commander [Lt Felix Samson] in charge, who could not tell me anything about the rest of his squadron. Lt. Samson had to wait until the rest of his squadron turned up, so Lt. Field who was in command of No. 3 section was taken away from his section and sent off with half of No. 1 section, having no time to acquaint himself with anything or to obtain any food. I could get no information of any description to help in seeing how some form of organisation could be arranged – no form of organisation apparently being wanted.