I am commanded by the Army Council to inform you that they concur in a further order for 1,000 additional ‘Tanks’ being placed in continuation of existing orders. I am to ask whether these additional ‘Tanks’ could be produced with the existing resources for manufacture by the 1st March 1917.11
Butler’s letter then arrived and was considered by the Army Council next day. It was decided that the order for 1,000 tanks should be cancelled. The original programme was required to continue unchanged pending investigation of the effectiveness of the machines and possibilities for their improvement. As a face-saver the record of the meeting downgraded the big order to a ‘proposal’.12 Whigham sent Butler a hurried note that night asking for Haig to clarify and formally state his tank requirements. The Ministry was informed that the ‘request’ of the 26th was cancelled. Of the 250 tanks ordered to date, 40 Mk I remained to be built and Stern was asked to make minor improvements to the balance awaited of 100 (50 each of Mks II and III). A continuation order was promised if no new design was ready on final completion.13
Stern was aghast. Weeks before, without reference to the army, he and Bussell had negotiated with Metro for an additional 1,000 tanks. His charter from the ‘Welsh Wizard’ gave him licence to place work direct with suppliers and the contract had been issued on 21 August.14 He had set in train an ambitious tank programme requiring 30,000 tons of high-grade steels, at least 1,000 6-pdr guns and 5,000 machine guns. Skilled labour and production capacity was being scheduled. Montagu, his minister, must have been aware of this commitment and was to give Stern much personal support, but Stern’s greatest strength lay in the confidence and even friendship which Lloyd George showed him. The Secretary of State for War and his confidential secretary and mistress Frances Stevenson had weekended as Stern’s house guests only four weeks earlier at Highdown, the Worthing home of his brother who was abroad on military service. They periodically joined Stern there when time allowed. (An entry in Frances Stevenson’s diary indicates that in 1919 she briefly contemplated marriage to the dashing and charismatic Bertie Stern, though no proposal was made.)15
With the cancellation notice of 30 September in hand, Stern shot across to the War Office. Lloyd George was ‘staggered’. Stern told him he could sack him if he pleased, but he would never persuade him to cancel the orders he had placed. Gen Robertson was summoned and was asked by the Secretary of State why, as President of the Army Council, he had not been informed. Stern tactfully withdrew but from then on he was a marked man. On 14 October the War Office cancelled the cancellation, finally acknowledging that the original 1,000 tank order was indeed an order. They went on blithely to enquire how many more skilled men would be needed if it were decided to build an additional 1,000 tanks for the Allies – who were now pressing for them. The pendulum had swung from zero to 2,000 machines in the space of a fortnight. The Ministry confirmed that 1,000 tanks had been ordered but gave notice that it needed 3,000 more workers to build them. Montagu warned the War Office that unless the adjutant-general released skilled men from the army and protected existing tank labour from recruitment he had no hope of meeting the programme. If labour was forthcoming he forecast completion of Mks II and III by year’s end, and the start of Mk IV production at 40 per week from 1 January. The first 600 would incorporate modest improvements pending the transfer to an entirely new design for the remaining 400. A further 1,000 could be built for the Allies with moderate additional labour if the two construction starts were staggered by two or three months. In the event, the needs of the British Army had to come first and no tanks could be spared for France and the other Allies until well into 1918.
The truth behind this episode has been further obscured for over 80 years by a brief and wholly inaccurate account in the official but unpublished history of the Ministry of Munitions. It records an Army Council ‘enquiry’ as to whether 1,000 tanks could be built by 1 March 1917, and its subsequent cancellation because ‘it was entirely beyond the capacity of the [Ministry] to produce the number required within the time named’.16 In fact, no such issue of time arose at any point in the exchanges.
Meanwhile, Haig had qualified his exhortations to Swinton and Stern to go home and build many tanks. On 2 October he sent the War Office a personal statement on the weapon which was almost worthless to the supply side. Time was pressing if a tank fleet was to be built for the 1917 fighting season, but the C-in-C went no further than a declaration of intent with a promise of later performance requirements and, crucially, no time frame:
This new engine [of war] has proved itself to possess qualities which warrant further provision on a large scale. I will submit in due course certain proposals, based on the experience already gained, regarding … improvements in design. Meanwhile, I have the honour to recommend that the principle of the expansion of the existing Heavy Section of the Machine Gun Corps be accepted with a view to the eventual provision of approximately 1,000 tanks, together with the necessary personnel.17
Promotions had followed at the end of September: Stern and Elles to colonel, Wilson and Norman Holden to major, Symes to captain. Elles took command of the Heavy Section in the field on the 25th. He was Haig’s choice and Swinton’s nominee, but the appointment of so junior an officer caused considerable annoyance in the upper echelons. His responsibilities included the unit’s tactical employment under the C-in-C and its advanced training, maintenance and repair in France. Its HQ establishment – and some inspired appointments made by Elles – comprised a Brigade Major (Capt G. Le Q. Martel); DAA and QMG (Capt T.J. Uzielli); Staff Captain (Capt J.H. Tapper); and Intelligence Officer (Capt F.E. ‘Boots’ Hotblack). Martel, an army boxing champion, commanded a field company of the RE in France and had undertaken the ‘landscaping’ at Elveden. ‘Theo’ Uzielli was to prove a fine organizer who could open otherwise locked doors and minds at GHQ. The tall and inscrutable Hotblack would become a legend, utterly fearless, much wounded and decorated. They were joined in December by Maj J.F.C. ‘Boney’ Fuller; his intellectual contribution to tactical planning, strategic issues and the long battles to overcome military hostility was immense. Haig proposed the renaming of the new arm as the Tank Corps with appropriate insignia and a distinctive uniform. The War Office raised administrative objections, announcing on 20 October an imperceptible elevation from Heavy Section to the Heavy Branch of the Machine Gun Corps.
Popular acclaim for the still mysterious tanks led to calls in the press for their inventors to be named. Lloyd George was questioned in the Commons on 12 October but his reply was hardly enlightening. He credited d’Eyncourt with contributing the greatest share in the tank’s design, naming also Hankey for first suggesting ‘that something of this kind should be tried’; Churchill for initiating the committee and backing it throughout; Swinton for ‘having a good deal to do with the experiment from the start’; and Stern for his zeal and business ability. He ended, ‘That is all I can usefully say on that question.’18 Wilson and Tritton were justifiably dismayed. Tritton sent the DNC a telegram the next day giving notice that in view of ‘the persistent refusal to give any credit to those who have designed and built the tanks, I shall now make all facts known in my own way’.19 D’Eyncourt replied with an assurance that, ‘I have always put your name forward as deserving full recognition for all you have done.’ This hardly squares with his six-page ‘Report on Design and Construction of First Land Ship’ which he had submitted to Balfour and the Sea Lords on 18 September. It makes a fleeting and ungenerous reference to Wilson and Tritton:
The design work still continued under my directions. A little later we obtained caterpillar tractors from America… In the meantime I had been going into a design with Mr Tritton of Messrs Fosters, and at this time Lt Wilson of the Armoured Car Division, an experienced motor and civil engineer, was also brought in and consulted, and a design was evolved generally on the lines of the tanks at present in use.20
In a short addendum d’Eyncourt added ‘some further remarks as to the officers who have rendered
me special assistance’, including Tritton ‘who very ably assisted me in preparing details of the design’, and Wilson who ‘also assisted in design and constructional details’. D’Eyncourt’s report caused Dr Macnamara, the Admiralty spokesman in the Commons, to tell the House on 18 October that ‘the principal credit for the design of the tanks … rests with Mr d’Eyncourt [who] has mentioned the following gentlemen as rendering him valuable assistance’. Macnamara listed six names with ranks and Service or civil occupations: Tritton, Wilson, Bussell, Stern, Symes and Mr Skeens from the DNC’s department.
The Heavy Branch was outgrowing the Elveden site and Swinton had been scouting for a new headquarters and training area. The complicating factor was the need for good rail links with the tank factories and Southampton docks. The options narrowed to Corhampton between Winchester and Portsmouth, and a hutted camp at Bovington near Wool in Dorset, 6 miles from the coast. GHQ favoured the latter, Butler observing that its proximity to the sea offered possibilities for shipping tanks direct from Wool. Haig agreed.21 Elveden was closed down and the training centre moved to Bovington (invariably but inaccurately identified as Wool) on 27 October. It was to be Swinton’s last service to the tanks for two years.
Having disposed of two senior commanders of Heavy Branch, GHQ now directed its guns on Swinton. A movement to replace him was led by Butler and Burnett-Stuart. Swinton’s familiarity with the Army Council cannot have helped him. He was viewed as an engineer officer with unwarranted pretensions to higher command and a weak disciplinarian. The intensive training at Elveden was certainly more concerned with operational competence than orthodox military discipline. Capt H.P.G. Steedman who took command of 711 MT Company on Knothe’s departure considered that ‘the MGC [machine gun corps] as a unit was over-officered and under-disciplined’.22 Butler suggested Swinton’s replacement by Brig Gen W. Thwaites, a Royal Horse Artillery Brigade Commander and therefore ‘one of us’. However, Thwaites knew nothing of tanks. Whigham had cautioned Butler at the end of September, ‘The disposal of Swinton is rather a thorny problem and must be handled carefully. Personally I think Thwaites would be an excellent man.’23 Others disagreed and the appointment went to an infantry brigade commander, Brig Gen F. Gore Anley, who took over on 10 November. He declared to nobody’s great surprise that his priority lay less in the tanks than in restoring discipline.
Swinton returned to Hankey’s secretariat. His removal was greatly resented by all ranks, who respected him for his professionalism and disarming lack of aloofness. He had successfully established and put in the field a revolutionary new arm – inevitably drawing envy and suspicion in high places.
Stern began to receive requests from France for design improvements arising from battle experience. Within a week of taking up his command, Elles was calling for more powerful engines, stronger armour, anti-splash measures, non-shattering prisms, better bomb protection of roofs, modified guns and mountings, means of avoiding ‘bellying’, provision for track adjustment from inside the tank under fire and a redesign of the sponsons which tended to wedge into the ground when tanks heeled over, leaving them ditched and highly vulnerable to artillery. Knothe’s requests centred on track troubles – a tendency to mount the teeth of idler sprockets after becoming jammed with compacted mud, excessive stretching of the track links, track breakages and better lubrication. He also advocated a third, centre track as a means of overcoming bellying. Other concerns included better security against attacking infantry – one tank gunner was bayoneted in the leg through the door flap used for ejecting spent shell cases by hand – and internal locking for escape doors, shutters and loopholes; a lack of spare periscopes which quickly shattered under fire; inadequate depression of MG and 6-pdr guns; and the susceptibility of tail wheel assemblies to fail in use or from gunfire.
Wilson was primarily concerned with these requests, billeting himself and Maj Harry Buddicum, his co-designer, near the Metro factory at Oldbury. Metro’s Technical Director John Greg provided draughting services and by March 1917 the entire drawing office at the company’s Saltley factory was working for Wilson. Buddicum, 55 years of age and 6ft 2in tall, was a striking character whose talents had earlier led him to a successful civilian engineering career after another as a cavalryman.
The Tank Supply Department acquired fields at Mill Farm, Broadwell Road, behind the Oldbury works, for the first tank testing station. It opened on 28 September for pre-acceptance inspection of all Metro’s output from Oldbury and Saltley, manned by a detachment of 26 men from 20 Squadron. The main tank stores opened there under their control in November. Squadron strength at Oldbury peaked at 425 all ranks in April–June 1918. Their loading speed record was 22 tanks washed, oiled and entrained off a single ramp in 4 hours.
Attempts were made to clip the wings of Stern’s semi-autonomous and sometimes anarchic department. The Army Council accepted in October that all tanks, equipment and spares should continue to be manufactured and tested by the Tank Supply Department, but they quite reasonably insisted on setting the test procedures. They repeatedly demanded that responsibility for despatch to France should lie with the army rather than 20 Squadron. They also required to be consulted on the specification of new tanks before designs were begun, and on any later changes. The Ministry of Munitions accepted the tests request but opposed changes to design and transport procedures. It cited the Tank Supply Department’s independent status under its charter and, so far as design control was concerned, an earlier undertaking by the War Office to accept the transfer of responsibility for munitions design to the Ministry. The War Office was left with responsibility for deciding the general nature and amount of its weapons and equipment needs, and for distribution of munitions to the troops. These inter-departmental trials of strength flared at intervals for the rest of the war but the Ministry refused to give up design and transport control.
D’Eyncourt, whose standing and calm authority were respected in the War Office, told Lloyd George and Gen Robertson that analysis of the Flers action suggested that each tank and eight-man crew equated in fighting potential to a battalion of infantry, while their morale-boosting effect on British troops was incalculable. He warned that the Germans would respond with more powerful tanks of their own, and ‘if we do not keep ahead in numbers and power they will beat us at what is at present our game… From every point of view it is of the utmost importance to develop this arm to the utmost of our capabilities.’24 Stern for his part was chasing the War Office for confirmation of its proposals for a second batch of 1,000 tanks. Montagu told Lloyd George, ‘Stern wants an order for a second thousand tanks. He convinces me he ought to have them. They are far better than infantry. He wants to assure manufacturers of orders. They will, of course, be of new and improved design.’25
Kiggell and Butler at GHQ were taking a noticeably more negative view of the tank weapon than the Chief, concluding that, ‘the tank in its present form is of no value as a fighting unit’. Kiggell considered that ‘in the present stage of their development they must be regarded as entirely accessory to the ordinary methods of attack, i.e. to the advance of infantry in close cooperation with artillery’.26 Assurances of better tanks to come failed to persuade the military to increase their order.
The army would have to await Mk IV for modest improvements. Stern and d’Eyncourt were determined to avoid interrupting production and losing output for the sake of piecemeal modifications. Most of those planned for Mks II and III were held over to Mk IV, though a few were slipped through including a narrowed conning tower over the driver to allow for wider tracks; the flat roof hatch further aft was replaced with a wedge-shaped manhole giving protected vision; angle-iron surrounds were fitted to loopholes to deflect bullet splash, and inner fastenings were added to secure loophole covers; provision was made for extra track adjustment; better brake linings were fitted; more depression was provided for the guns. Symes’ secondary plating for the Mk II hulls was withdrawn in November. Mk III was to have thicker (12mm) plate on vulne
rable areas. The trailed steering was abandoned as inefficient and unnecessary.
Stern’s rapidly growing Tank Supply Department was renamed the Mechanical Warfare Supply Department (MWSD) in October when it became a separate branch of the Ministry of Munitions and moved to offices at 17 Cockspur Street. Stern’s deputy directors-general were to be Dale Bussell and Norman Holden, with d’Eyncourt as chief technical adviser, Sir Charles Parsons, technical adviser, Tritton, director of construction and Wilson, director of engineering. The wide powers of the department and its hard-nosed drive under Stern remained painfully evident to the contracts, labour, materials and other branches of the Ministry. He provoked uproar over his insistent demands for labour and materials priorities; refused to submit progress reports until finally ordered to do so by the Minister; and bypassed him in corresponding directly with the War Office – for which Montagu reprimanded him with exquisite finesse (‘My Dear Stern, You have been kind enough to send me a copy of your letter of November 4th to the War Office…’). The internal organization of the MWSD remained mildly chaotic. It still lacked a dedicated supply section, but it met all its problems head-on and usually won through.
Communication between Stern’s organization, the War Office and France deteriorated. The general uncertainty at GHQ on the state of tank supply was visible in a very civil letter from Kiggell to Stern on 7 November. From his list of production queries it was clear that the CGS still awaited a forecast of delivery start and completion dates covering Mks II, III, IV and V (the last Mk I was delivered at the end of October). Kiggell wanted more information on a possible second batch of 1,000 tanks for the British Army before placing an order with the War Office. He asked Stern to come over and explain the situation personally, with special reference to future improvements and deliveries ‘on which so much of our programme for next year depends’.
The Devil's Chariots Page 22