Mark Urban

And, you know, in the First World War, British tanks often went into action with a basket of carrier pigeons on the top.

And there were some experiments by the French with radio tanks.

But of course, by the 1930s, the technology has really come along.

And it's the Germans, of course.

Now, the German army decides, because of the expense of radios, that they will only give radios that can transmit to officers, and that the other tanks in the platoon commanded by

corporals and sergeants will have radios that can only receive.

It's like a sort of device for control freak management in which you can be spoken to, but you can't speak.

And indeed, the Soviet army went for something similar in the late 1930s.

Only some of their tanks were fitted with radios because they were so expensive.

But once you get the radios working well between tanks, and you can connect them, and of course, you might have some elements of your company who are just over a ridge, and they can see what's on the other side.

They can, of course, tell you over the radio and say, oh, the enemy's coming, whatever.

And then things become much more joined up.

And that helps to explain in May 1940,

how the Germans beat the French, who have a larger army.

They have more tanks.

A lot of these tanks, like the Char B, are more heavily armored and more powerfully armed than the German tanks.

And the Germans literally run rings around them.

When they can't get past one of these French tanks, they maneuver around it, onto its flanks, to its rear,

in order to hit the armor they can deal with.

And the French, who start off with giving the tank a Morse key for tapping out messages, which you can't imagine is very practical, come to the conclusion very late on that they need radios.