Tanks are used in combat for the first time during the Battle of the Somme - September 15th, 1916

On this day in 1916, the first tanks were deployed at Flers-Courcelette during the Battle of the Somme in France. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that examines notable events that happened years ago.
Today I'm Gay Bluesier, and today we're talking about the
development of an experimental weapon that would forever change the

(00:20):
shape of modern warfare. You know, once all the bugs
were worked out. The day was September nineteen sixteen. The
first tanks were deployed at Fleur Corselette during the Battle

(00:42):
of the Psalmme in France. The model used the British
Mark one, had been designed a year earlier as a
way to end the stalemate of trench warfare that had
developed on the Western Front in World War One. These
early tanks weren't very reliable and had been sent into
combat without much training on how to use them effectively. Still,

(01:03):
the intimidating vehicles shook German combatants to their core and
ultimately gave rise to a new era of mechanized warfare.
The need for armor plated defensive vehicles arose naturally during
the early days of the First World War. By the
fall of nineteen fourteen, the fighting in the Psalm River
region of France had taken an unexpected turn. British generals

(01:28):
had expected to clear a path by shelling German positions,
but when the bombardments failed to destroy the enemy's heavy artillery,
the British soldiers found themselves with no way forward. In time,
both sides settled into a network of trenches all along
the four hundred plus mile stretch of land nicknamed the
Western Front. This arrangement made it nearly impossible for the

(01:52):
Allied forces to advance through the German occupied territory. Every
time the soldiers tried to make a move, thousands were
got down by machine gun and rifle fire from the
defending German trenches. In fact, the advances were so ineffectual
that it's estimated more than one thousand Allied soldiers were
killed for every one hundred yards gained against the Germans.

(02:16):
It was with this grim situation in mind that an
officer of the Royal Engineers made a suggestion to General Headquarters.
His name was Lieutenant Colonel Ernest Dunlop Swinton, and he
believed that with a new piece of equipment, the British
Army would be able to break the stalemate and finally
crossed to the other side. Of no man's land. His

(02:36):
proposal was to build a fleet of heavily armored vehicles
that could push their way forward even through harsh terrain
and unrelenting enemy fire. What Swinton described a self propelled
artillery vehicle had never been attempted before. In fact, a
vehicle like that was only possible thanks to recent innovations,

(02:57):
namely the internal combustion engine and continuous tracks or tread.
With a gas powered engine, the vehicle originally described as
a land ship would be able to propel itself forward
even with the added bulk of steel, armor plating and
mounted machine guns, and with continuous tracks instead of wheels,
it could travel over rough terrain and across barbed wire

(03:20):
with ease. Swinton's idea quickly earned the backing of Winston Churchill,
the first Lord of the Admiralty a k a. The
government's top advisor on all naval affairs. And if you're
wondering how the development of tanks qualified as a naval affair,
remember they weren't tanks yet they were ships of the land.

(03:41):
In early nineteen fifteen, Churchill established the land Ship's Committee,
which set to work building a prototype. The project was
conducted in great secrecy to ensure the element of surprise
on the battlefield. Even the workers were kept in the
dark about what they were really building. They were told
that the vehicles were a new way to transport water

(04:01):
for the troops, a kind of mobile water tank. Naturally,
the workers started calling the machines water tanks, or just
tanks for short. They eventually learned the truth, as did
the Germans and the rest of Europe, but the name
tank persisted anyway. An initial batch of fifty tanks was
delivered to France in August of nineteen sixteen, just ahead

(04:24):
of the next major attack along the River Psalm. Each
tank was assigned an eight person crew for men to
navigate and work the controls, and for to fire the
tank's artillery. Unlike modern tanks, which feature a single central
turret on top, all of the weapons on the British
Mark one were mounted on the sides. Unfortunately, some of

(04:45):
the first fifty tanks had been damaged in transit and
were no longer operational when they arrived. As a result,
only thirty six actually made it to the battlefield in
time for the attack on September and if that weren't
bad enough, when the order to advance was given. Only
twenty five tanks were actually able to move forward. The
rest broke down right there on the virtual starting line.

(05:10):
Despite these mechanical setbacks, the tank force still left a
strong impression on the Germans on the front line that day.
Many of them simply ran away in terror, with one
survivor later saying that he was prepared to retreat all
the way back to Berlin if necessary. The tanks were
also a shocking sight for British troops, with most having

(05:30):
never seen one until the machines arrived behind British lines.
One such soldier, Reginald Grant, recorded his initial reaction. He wrote, quote,
I looked in the direction of the sound, and presently
there heaved in sight a colossal something of behemoth proportions,
something the like of which I had never seen or

(05:50):
heard of in all my life. And I was stricken,
dumb with amazement. A monstrous monstrosity climbed its way without
let or hindrance, up over, along, and across every obstacle
in its path. Presently it reached the top of Posier Ridge.
Every man who could see at his eyes glued on it.

(06:13):
Soldiers on both sides may have been taken aback by
the hulking machines, but the men inside the tanks were
feeling overwhelmed in a different way. Most of them were
regular infantry soldiers with no background and engineering or mechanics.
They were expected to turn the tide of the whole war,
but the tools they'd been given for the job were
hastily designed, unintuitive, and prone to malfunctions. The vehicle interiors

(06:38):
didn't make the crew's task any easier. The cramped chambers
inside the tanks were intensely hot, and an ever present
cloud of exhaust fumes made it difficult to breathe. Yet,
even with all those disadvantages, the first group of tanks
still managed to advance several miles through two of the
three German lines. They inflicted heavy casualties along the way,

(07:00):
and in their wake trailed a steady stream of British infantry.
The tank force could have pressed on even further, but
since there were no radios on the field, there was
no way to coordinate an extended attack. In October, heavy
rains turned the battlefield to mud, and by mid November
the advancement had ground to a halt. The commander of

(07:21):
the Allied forces at the Psalm. General Douglas Haig had
no choice but to abort the Psalm offensive. Over the
course of four months, they had advanced just five miles
and had lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the process.
The tank's debut wasn't the turning point the war department
had hoped for, but General Douglas Haig still believed the

(07:43):
new weapons showed promise. He ordered the production of hundreds
more tanks, and as their reliability improved, he was able
to deploy them to much greater effect. By the summer
of nineteen eighteen, nearly three thousand British tanks had been produced.
They were no long or an oddity on the battlefield.
They'd become an accepted and highly potent weapon in the

(08:05):
British arsenal. By that point, the Germans had developed armor
piercing rounds to combat the tanks, and while that tactic
did prove effective, it wasn't enough to stop the onslaught.
Once the tanks had been deployed on mass After sustained
pressure from the Allies, including the British Tank Force, Germany
finally surrendered on November eleventh, nineteen eighteen. Although they had

(08:28):
started as a British invention. The utility of tanks wasn't
lost on England's allies or its enemies. France quickly rolled
out its own take on the machines, the Renault FT,
the first tank with the distinctive feature of a rotating
turret on top. As for the Germans, they never got
the hang of tank production during World War One, only

(08:50):
managing to build about twenty of their own clunky design. However,
they eventually made up for lost time during the interwar years,
and by the time of World War Two, German tanks
were a fearsome force on the battlefield. The genie of
mechanized warfare was well and truly out of the bottle
in the world, for better or worse, would never be

(09:12):
the same. I'm Gay Blusier and hopefully you now know
a little more about history today than you did yesterday.
If you enjoyed today's episode, consider following us on Twitter,
Facebook and Instagram at t d i HC Show and
if you have any comments or suggestions, you can always

(09:33):
send them my way at this day at I heart
media dot com. Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing the show,
and thank you for listening. I'll see you back here
again tomorrow for another day in history class,