Every day I feel more and more that the First Lord’s original idea of providing moving forts to carry short range guns or mortars is of increasing importance. Both our classes of landships [i.e. wheeled and tracked], therefore, have in addition to the duty of transporting men … the second and very important duty of serving as rapidly moving gun platforms carrying short range trench attacking guns or mortars.
This morning I have received a letter from my own patent agent, a skilled engineer, a sergeant in the London Scottish, who has been for some time in the trenches; he says that we want more than anything else a means of throwing grenades… In these days when it is evident that the latest idea is to fire away almost unlimited amounts of high explosive shells from a distance … I believe that the same work could be done by our landship at one tenth of the cost in ammunition and human life. My idea is to make them thoroughly efficient for both these duties, and I still harp on my original idea and wish to confer at Army Headquarters with Sir John French, Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien and others of my old friends including Colonel Fowke, the C.R.E. whose opinion will be of maximum value to me. I am perfectly certain that when they know what we are aiming at they will be at one with us to develop the use of these landships.27
Crompton’s assertion that Churchill had originally wanted gunships is not supported either by events or by Crompton himself in his statements to the Tanks Awards Committee in 1918.28 He may have felt it would strengthen his case to suggest otherwise in this instance. It made little difference; his letter probably never reached the First Lord. Churchill had been fighting another, and more personal, battle – he tendered his resignation to the Prime Minister next day.
6.
COMBINED OPERATIONS?
‘The caterpillar system is no bloody good for the job.’1
William Tritton, Managing Director, Wm Foster & Co. Lincoln, 3 March 1915. Tritton built the first tank later that year – on ‘caterpillars’.
While Crompton begged for an end to secrecy and confusion in his small sphere, Churchill was driven from the Admiralty, and Asquith’s government collapsed. The forcing of the Dardanelles by the navy, which Churchill had urged in January 1915, had progressed through a succession of failures into a joint Services catastrophe for which much of the later responsibility lay with Kitchener and the government. In mid-May the already grim situation turned from shock to anger with the revelation in the press of the acute shortage of shells and armaments generally. Adm Fisher’s emotional resignation over the handling of the Dardanelles campaign followed. The two events triggered a crisis at home. With Jackie Fisher gone, the Sea Lords refused to continue to serve Churchill. They detested his military adventures in France which they viewed as self-indulgent diversions from the war at sea. Conservative pressure forced Asquith’s hand and brought Churchill’s letter of resignation on 21 May. It did not save the Liberal government which was driven into a national coalition under Asquith. Churchill was replaced by the Conservative Arthur Balfour on the 27th.
Sueter’s shield was gone. His Air Service, Armoured Car Division, Anti-Aircraft Corps and the landships project came under sustained fire from three of the four Sea Lords. Only Adm Tudor remained firmly on side. Sueter recorded his superior, Cdre Lambert the Fourth Sea Lord, remarking that ‘Caterpillar landships are idiotic and useless. Nobody has asked for them and nobody wants them. These officers and men are wasting their time and are not pulling their proper weight in the War. If I had my way I would disband the whole lot of them. Anyhow I am going to do my best to see that this is done and stop all this armoured car and caterpillar nonsense.’2 Fisher’s successor, Adm Sir Henry Jackson, told Sueter in the presence of the other three Lords that all these activities were little wanted. He left Arthur Balfour in no doubt of the navy’s wish to get rid of Winston’s entire ‘circus’.
Lambert requested the transfer of the armoured cars and landships to the army. Balfour approved, wanting to distance himself from what he called ‘Winston’s fad’. D’Eyncourt alerted Churchill who appealed personally to Balfour to withdraw the landships order. He suggested instead the formation of a joint naval and military committee to carry the project forward and offered to preside. Sueter also stood his ground, finding an ally in Balfour’s Naval Secretary, Cdr Charles de Bartolomé. Between them they prevailed on the new First Lord to retain d’Eyncourt’s committee until it had constructed one machine. Balfour was glad to let Churchill continue to keep an eye on the project, and agreed the formation of a specialist squadron for experimental work in support. Lt Cdr Redmond McGrath commanding 14 Armoured Car Squadron was instructed to select 20 men for this duty. No. 20 Squadron was formed and led by him early in June as part of Boothby’s force. The squadron would expand to become an important tank test and transportation unit.
Crompton was able to repeat his plea directly to Churchill at the 8 June landships meeting during a sombre review of progress. Churchill cancelled Foster’s research programme, and was sufficiently impressed by the colonel’s case and the marked lack of progress to call for background information to enable him to write to French. Sueter feared Balfour would yield to pressure and shut down the landships project if a machine could not be put on the ground quickly. All depended on Crompton’s tractors but trials were still weeks away, and d’Eyncourt was confessing himself too preoccupied with warship construction to spare more than an occasional meeting on trench taking. Early in June Sueter instructed Boothby to join the committee and force the pace. He also sent in Lt Walter Wilson and Hetherington’s assistant, Lt Albert Stern.
From that moment onward until the end of the war Wilson and Stern in their differing ways would hugely influence the direction and quality of tank development. If Murray Sueter had done nothing else for the coming weapon, he deserves the highest praise for those two appointments. Stern was installed as secretary on 16 June, freeing Crompton and Bussell of this work. He had been ordered to reorganize the committee on business lines and he began as he intended to continue. The 36-year-old RNVR lieutenant was a successful banker. His dynamic and assertive personality and steamroller style often flattened those who stood in his way, but he got results. The DNC took to him at once. Stern wrote a new procedure with d’Eyncourt’s approval which, inter alia, accused Crompton of routinely bypassing the committee in placing Admiralty orders and giving out decisions on new designs and inventions. The old colonel responded with a courteous objection; he certainly cut a few corners to avoid delays, not helped by the weekly intervals between meetings of the committee. Stern for his part soon became notorious for ignoring Admiralty procedures.
Stern and his staff (PO Percy Anderson plus a writer) needed an office. Two days after his appointment he rented a room at 83 Pall Mall from the Commercial Motor Users Association, at his own expense. The Admiralty Office of Works sent word that this was not permissible and allocated him a stuffy room under the roof at Winchester House in St James’s Square ‘for the next few weeks’. The lieutenant having instantly rejected it, the room went to a luckless rear admiral. Further procedural steps by the Admiralty were met with Stern’s reply that he had placed an armed guard on the door with orders to shoot intruders. He was left alone, still paying the rent six months later.
Crompton and Legros had their contracts extended to the end of August. Metropolitan was about to begin construction of the twin chassis for the Pedrail machine and another set for its Bullock equivalent, when on 11 June the company asked to be relieved of the work, saying it involved too much detailed supervision and scarce resources. Metro was persuaded to reconsider, but only on its own terms. Its formidable chairman, Dudley Docker, detested state interference in industrial enterprise. Throughout the war the company refused to accept a condition attaching to munitions contracts which obliged suppliers to open their books to inspection to prevent excess profits. Docker feared that businessmen seconded to the newly created Ministry of Munitions (MoM) would acquire sensitive commercial information from these inspections which could be exploited by h
is competitors after the war. Instead, Metro offered certification by its own auditors as sufficient evidence of compliance.
The landships contract allowed Metro a 10 per cent profit on approved costs, subject to inspection and verification by the Ministry. The Admiralty would supply two Rolls-Royce engines at its cost for each landship. Metro had insisted that the value of these free units, worth £1,260 per ship, should be treated as its costs to reflect the fitting entailed.3 When this was refused the company asked to be released from the work. Crompton advised Dale Bussell to allow the mark-up because Metro was the only firm with presses available for the Pedrail assembly and the company now had valuable knowledge of the machine. Bussell relented and Legros told Metro the point was conceded, but the company still refused any inspection of records. The contract was withdrawn by the Admiralty in July at the request of the War Office. As it happened, Diplock’s working drawings were so far from completion that Crompton was in no position to order a start.
The drawings were not coming through because Diplock was experiencing great difficulty in scaling up the tracks from the little wagon. In mid-June he had to scrap newly completed drawings of the foot assembly and start again, and his roller-chain specification had not yet been agreed with the Coventry Chain Company. Crompton’s concerns now were the delayed drawings, the special lengthening of the Creeping Grip track, the hunt for a replacement for Metro, and preparations for the Bullock tractor trials. Each of the first three was a potential showstopper. He and Legros were working night and day to progress the work, the old colonel making sure, however, to get in a regular evening game of squash with Stern and others in the basement courts at the RAC Club.
In the United States Lt Field had arrived in Chicago to find that the designer of the Bullock tracks was no longer with the company. No one else there was competent to prepare drawings for track lengthening. He was also disconcerted to see Bullock’s assembly techniques – men were sledgehammering track shoes into mesh with the sprocket teeth; he was assured this was routine as the pitch of the links had always been incorrect. Field asked for a standard ‘Giant’ to be towed behind a tractor to observe track steerability. It skidded most of the way round an 80ft circle, the tracks trying to go straight on. After calling to see Killen Strait’s designers in Milwaukee, Field cabled Crompton that he thought the standard Bullock’s 5ft track length was about as long as was feasible, and Strait’s company could produce better work. Crompton’s reply called for two sample pairs of lengthened tracks and frames from Killen Strait to the same specification as the Bullock order. It ended: ‘Your expenses [$100 weekly] considered extravagant please economize.’ Crompton and Strait were designing an experimental plough attachment for the tractor to throw up protective parapets and night-dig shallow jumping-off trenches. For security purposes their Western Union telegram exchanges were disguised as farm machinery messages, Crompton’s cover organization being the Australian Ploughing Co.
McEwan, Pratt & Co. at Burton on Trent were well ahead with the new transmissions for the Bullocks. They were additionally charged with the construction of the steering and coupling gear, and preparation and staging of the trials. The two Creeping Grip machines reached Burton on 16 June, red with rust as deck cargo. McGrath’s 20 Squadron took up residence near McEwan’s works to dig trenches and remain in support. Wilson, who had been liaising with Tritton on the big-wheelers, joined them from Lincoln as trials officer. Work began on preparing the course.
In France Col Swinton had continued to put about his scheme for armoured trench fighting machines, though with caution lest he be ordered to drop it. He let a number of opportunities pass until late May when he met Capt Ralph Glyn, a well-connected Liaison Intelligence Officer between the War Office and GHQ in France. As Swinton explained his ideas, Glyn said he had heard rumours that the navy was doing something or other with armoured shields. He promised to find out what was happening, and back in London he visited the Admiralty. His timing was good. Churchill had just departed and the Sea Lords were preparing to jettison unwanted cargo in the army’s direction. Following Glyn’s call, Adm Tudor contacted Maj Gen Scott-Moncrieff, Director of Fortifications and Works, informing him in confidence on 30 May that the navy had ordered 18 landships. With a hint of rebuke he went on:
They are being built on the principle that this is essentially a war of machines, and machines and armour protection hardly appear to have been utilised to any great extent on shore as yet. Personally I have had a fad for the last 30 years that steel screens on two wheels pushed by men would be better than sending flesh and blood unprotected against trenches and entanglements. A Capt Glyn has been over here from the D.M.C. [Director of Military Cooperation] about this business and we have shown him models and drawings. If you will send over a representative I will let him see them also.4
Tudor detailed the ideal ‘Mobile Armoured Shield’, his text well salted with nautical terms. It profiled the familiar troop-carrier format for 70 men and two or three machine guns. He thought the machines could advance at night between the beams of blinding searchlights while infantry on the flanks pushed small wheeled shields until they reached the enemy trench. The boatlike hulls incorporated independently steam-driven port and starboard ‘drive belts’, while the main weight was carried on steel runners along the keel. Steering was by slowing the port or starboard track. A high bow was fitted with wire-cutting shears.
Glyn returned to the Admiralty with Scott-Moncrieff. There Tudor and d’Eyncourt showed them Crompton’s model and drawings of the articulated Mk IIA on Creeping Grip tracks. They next called on Crompton who begged for immediate military advice and support. The brief discussion was to be Crompton’s only dialogue on landship design with any army representative. Scott-Moncrieff reported his findings to Maj Gen von Donop, the Master General of Ordnance, on 10 June: ‘This design seems to get over the difficulties which had proved so insoluble to us in our WO investigation.’5 He urged the immediate formation of a joint naval and military landships committee to include a general staff officer with the necessary tactical experience. Von Donop agreed and the Admiralty was invited on 21 June to concur and appoint representatives. The military members would be Scott-Moncrieff, Col W.D. Bird (Director of Staff Duties), Col Holden of the Holt trials and Maj E.L. Wheeler RA. The Admiralty approved, offering the services of d’Eyncourt’s committee but insisting that as the landships project was clearly a military matter it should now be taken over by the War Office. To the relief of the Lords Commissioners the WO promptly agreed the transfer.
Scott-Moncrieff gave d’Eyncourt the army’s first reaction to the landship’s design, writing on 16 June:
We think there should be at the bows of the landship on either side, one 2 pounder Pom-Pom to deal with machine guns in emplacements. That armament should be supplemented by two machine guns placed further back somewhat on the lines of the broadside fire of ships. Loopholes for musketry fire would be required everywhere of course. The above represents the view of the G. Staff here but it may be modified in detail.6
The War Office was simply calling for increased firepower and passed no comment on the machine’s structure and size. It implicitly accepted the tactical purpose of the design – to convey an assault party and give covering fire.
Unaware of these exchanges, Swinton took the opposite view. He realized that parking a machine packed with troops alongside a trench while attempting to neutralize it was to invite obliteration. He wanted a fighting vehicle with a ten-man crew. Unknown to Scott-Moncrieff he had submitted to FM Sir John French on 1 June an impressive summary of the machine which he had in mind. His memorandum, ‘The Necessity for Machine Gun Destroyers’, covered tactical deployment, performance and armament.7 It began with a review of the situation in France, pointing to the great numbers of machine guns employed by the enemy, the resultant economy in German defensive manpower, and the losses for minimal gain suffered by the Allies. Some of his ideas were prophetic. He proposed a caterpillar-type petrol tractor pr
oof against steel core armour-piercing and reversed bullets, armed with two Maxim machine guns and a 2-pdr quick-firing gun. It should be able to cross 4ft trenches, climb 5ft parapets in forward and reverse, and have a speed of 4mph. Swinton visualized the machine as resembling a Hornsby caterpillar, possibly with a third track out front as a forecarriage.
Swinton stressed the need for secrecy in manufacture and for absolute surprise in a first mass attack. The machines were to be brought up to railheads and dispersed by night to final positions spaced 100yd apart in pits just behind the front line. A preparatory bombardment of the entanglements fronting the enemy trenches early in the night would, he thought, cut their wire, later bursts of rifle fire keeping wiring repair parties in their trenches. The dawn attack would see the destroyers climb ramps over the British parapets before driving straight for the enemy positions. Any pre-marked machine-gun emplacements were to be run down; opportunity targets would include enfilade fire on reaching the trenches. By then the destroyers were expected to have attracted much of the remaining hostile fire, allowing the infantry to advance ‘practically unscathed’. And so the advance would continue, while supporting artillery directed fire at enemy batteries.
Swinton’s paper was passed to Maj Gen Fowke, Engineer-in-Chief to the BEF. Fowke had shown no interest in his submission the previous October and was not going to change his mind now. He challenged Swinton’s belief that such a machine could be built. He considered present caterpillars were too slow and too heavy. The crew would be at least 10ft above the ground (Swinton’s description implied no such thing) and nearly every bridge in the country would need strengthening: ‘I therefore think that before considering this proposal we should descend from the realms of imagination to solid facts.’8
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