Mark Urban

But I think what they found in that battle when they first used them was that by just using a small number, some would inevitably get stuck.

still in the mud, notwithstanding their tracks and everything else.

Some might even get knocked out, and then you'd be left with ones and twos, and they couldn't really have much of an effect.

Whereas in Combré, if you had, for example, a dozen tanks,

in the space of a couple of hundred metres or yards, and they're all advancing together.

It doesn't really matter if one or two of them get stuck or break down.

They've still got interlocking arcs of fire between their guns.

The guns were mounted on the sides of these early British tanks.

And they're able to sweep...

the trenches ahead of them with fire.

And the tactic they particularly liked was once they were over the trench, because the guns were mounted in sponsors on the side, firing down the trench lines.

And if there was another tank 50 or 100 yards up, all the better, you know, you'd have interlocking fields of fire.

And that's the reason.

So to use a lot of them allowed them to keep going, to pour down a much heavier weight of fire, even if some of them got stuck or knocked out.

And that caused these celebrated incidents of tank fright, where the German infantry firing machine guns and other things at them, and, you know, the bullets bouncing off the armour, broke and ran because they were so afraid of these unstoppable beasts.

Yeah, absolutely.

And those early ones, the British ones, if you wanted to turn left, four men had to coordinate their actions.

You had the commander, then you had a guy at the front who controlled the brakes.

Then you had two what were called brake men further back down the tank who would pull a lever to physically stop one of the tracks.

And inside the engine throbbing away at times with a red hot exhaust manifold on it.