Curator's Tank Museum Tour: Tank Story Hall - WW1 | The Tank Museum

whereas many of you aware we've had to close the museum to the public because of coronavirus but now we're in a position where we've actually had to close the site to all our staff just please cut us some slack these are films we're going to make on the hoof so the camera shots we not going to have the time to do two three or four takes of different things not that we ever of course have to do two three or four takes of anything but we're going to try and do as many films as we can and just start with we're going to do a bit of a sectional tour will break into different pieces of our tank story hall the hall behind me where we've laid out some classic tanks just over 30 of them armoured vehicles there to tell the story of the tank and how it fits in with the story of warfare mainly in the 20th century so we'll start with that one and we'll see how far and how much we can do but please carry on watching carrying on supporting us so starting in the tank story hall what we try and do is set a scene in a way for the First World War and those of you who know your military history fine bear with me but otherwise if you don't know what happens is in August of 1914 Germany and the austro-hungarian Empire declare war on Belgium we declare war in essence or actually Germany goes through Belgium in response to that Britain has a treaty with Belgium which means we have to go to war and France is the actual target of the German army and this plan that has been put together by the Germans some years before the Schlieffen Plan a massive force is gathered together using new industrial technologies such as the railways and it goes through Belgium is to sweep around through France and go round the back of Paris that was the idea of the Schlieffen Plan and the Germans are trying to do that with a timetable because in the background one of the other problems that Germans have to face is they know that France and Russia have a treaty so that if they've defeated France in the West as quickly as they can they know they will then be turning East to try and take on Russia they have this problem of a to war on two fronts so they are keen to eliminate what will become the Western Allies very very quickly now as soon as they start crossing the Belgium border that triggers Britain's involvement in the war and you can read up on this if you want to on Wikipedia Google etc find those histories or I'll give you some recommendations as well about reading material that we might be able to send you from our bookshop now what happens is after an initial war of maneuver that German force marching forward and after some meeting battles in the field and to think of these types of battles the chaps might be in gray or they might be in brown or they if they're French they're in blue but perhaps think of them almost like a Napoleonic or a Waterloo era army meeting in the field of battle that day trying to get a decision made before the end of the day and at the same time those armies that are initially meeting who have got things such as horse-drawn artillery cavalry on horseback to active shock troops or defend the flanks or Turner flank you've got infantry marching on the ground to meet the enemy face-to-face that type of army think Waterloo what happens is after some early meeting engagements the British army sends a small force over we fight at Licata we help stem a German advance but very quickly most of the Western Allies armies the Belgians the French who's got the massive army and this small British force have to retreat and what happens the Germans are advancing behind them ultimately what comes to pass is the Battle of the Marne the Battle of the Marne turns the tables on the Germans and they ultimately retreat back to the best ground they have captured and then start to dig themselves in their initial plan has failed but they still have the problem of then having to face a Russians on the Eastern Front so they go to a defensive footing in the West and that means very quickly those classic situations all that that style of battlefield that were used to in the First World War of barbed wire to defend against infantry attacking and horses of course as well trenches if you dig themselves you stick yourself in you've got more protection from artillery fire and sweeping machine-gun fire and the other thing that starts occurring is very quickly we get a continuous line instead of those armies meeting for battle on the day actually it's now siege warfare but there's no flanks no edges to that frontline as the Germans dig a defensive system pretty much the whole way along the ground that they've captured so the Western Allies then have a problem because the traditional methods of attack that they've been using such as they the cavalry such as infantry advancing these are just not going to work in the same way as they did before on this new type of battlefield so there's a lot of head-scratching goes on very very quickly what are we going to do that's new now in Britain our small army that's gone out there that's dug itself in is rapidly reinforced by recruitment back at home and by territorial and other divisions and of course Commonwealth divisions coming across but we are seeing potential casualty rates that are just unsustainable so again even though the war starts in August 1914 by Christmas when these lines are dug in already were starting to get people thinking not only are we going to have to come up with some new ideas but we've got to come up with new ideas of not putting men at risk in the same way as these traditional attacks have been going through gone and so already people are starting to think maybe a mechanical answer to some of the problems is the way to go now this is a period where on the Western Front they do not allow journalists certainly on the Western Allies to the front line we've actually got one or two serving soldiers who have either a literary been they can write people like a chap called Ernest Swinton who's been writing books before the First World War he is sent to the front lines to write up articles that can be published in the British press in other words we don't want to sort of have loose cannons of journalists just writing up you know we want censorship we don't even want them actually at this period anywhere near the front line so Swinton is given access and he can see what's going on and again very rapidly as a person who previous has thought through some of the issues he's been an observer in the Far East he's gone he's seen how modern warfare seems to be developing and he comes back and he's got a friend Maurice Hankey who is the secretary to the British War Cabinet and very quickly Swinton is having a word with Hankey and saying listen we are needing to come up with something new and we're also going to have to do something mechanical because British lines are being lost this exposed new type of battlefield it's just very very different so what can we do about it so Swinton is pressing for the idea of maybe mechanical means are there things like steam engines tractors other type of mechanical vehicles that we could convert to help on the battlefield because in the background one of the things that the Western Allies realize they just can't sit there and dig in in the same manner as the Germans because they've got territory that's been occupied the Belgium most of Belgium is occupied now by Germany and a lot of northern France some of the industrial zone as well so this idea they just sit and do what the Germans are doing sort of holed out it's not an option for them yes they can start gearing up their industries yes they can call on their empires yes the British Navy can blockade the German ports but really really importantly we need to find something that is going to help push that occupying German army out of that the ground is it's dug himself into and we need to start thinking about that relatively quickly and that is why in Britain they start getting engineers to start looking at this as a problem and they start the Navy under Winston Churchill also thinks of the idea of the land oh so Winston Churchill is First Lord of the Admiralty that means he's in charge of the British Navy at the time the British Navy was a largest naval force in the world superbly professional very very well developed as a force and Churchill with that naval force is looking at the fact look we have resources here that are being underused so in one area he actually gets naval raw Marines and he takes him out to France and at Dunkirk they are used to defend the town he actually goes there himself and gets engaged himself out there and reports back to the War Cabinet you know so I stay here shall I take come on to the situation and quite rightly they turn around and say no get yourself back to London another thing he does is he sends out the Royal Naval Air Service the aeroplanes that the Navy has at the time and don't forget we haven't got a Royal Flying Corps or royal airforce just yet we've got some planes in the big newsboy by the army so those naval planes are actually sent across the channel this is in that period working up to Christmas of 1914 when the front line hasn't completely been established yet and some of the people that accompany the planes our end up realizing hang on we need to defend the landing strips that we're going to be using so one or two of them decide to either go back to the family home and say can you send out the family car or one or two them fairly wealthy by the way and they send out Rolls Royces or they look at developing their own form of some sort of protective measure on on a vehicle that becomes an armoured vehicle so some of these if you look at some of the photographs of these Royal Naval Air Service officers you can see not only are they there to defend the air bases but you can also see they've got that edge to them about typical sort of navy / Edwardian adventurer figure and there's some photographs of them in Long Max with their beards and their cats on at rakish angles with some improvised what becomes improvised armoured cars they go off to look for such things as advancing German patrols Alan's ie German cavalry etc bump into them go back decide they're going to instead of just shooting with their revolvers or a few rifles let's fix a machine gun on the front of the carve they're driving around doing their patrols in then they end up going down to some of the dockyards and saying can you fit some plate on the front of the vehicle so we start protecting them and very quickly they come up with these improvised armored vehicles and now Churchill sees the effectiveness of these armored vehicles and it also puts a seed in his head now very quickly as we mentioned by Christmas the idea of driving around in an armored car chasing German cavalry patrols it's gone out the window because that frontline has developed to the point that there is no flank there's a continuous line there and of course once the ground stars could be dug up shell fire etc a wheeled vehicle it's not going to have much purchase but that seed in Churchill said gets him in February of 1915 to form officially a landships committee now we've mentioned about Swinton coming back with his ideas the army are starting to look into the idea of can we come up with perhaps whether it's a steam engine or a wheeled vehicle or convert something that's in out there already they're starting to look at the idea Churchill with this landships committee using the resources of the Navy in the end those two groups come together Churchill is sacked from office in May of 1915 he ends up therefore not as being sort of like that driving force as he was from the Navy side the Navy backs off a bit and this committee comes under the Ministry of munitions now they are looking at what can be done what mechanical means can be come up with - as their phrase bring maneuver back to the battlefield how do we do it so that these vehicles can help our troops break through that front line or get across the battlefield and then start maneuvering with the ultimate aim of course of pushing that occupying German army out of France and Belgium or defeating it in the field so they look at a number of different experiments sometimes they're looking from Churchill's instigation not only wheels but also tracks they go across to America they are say order up some bullet tracks from a company in Chicago tracks by the way I've been around a long time 1830s is tracked laying vehicles of different sorts of the used for plowing the whole point being with tracks of course is you're spreading the weight out of a heavy vehicle over the ground so the ground pressure is less that means you can cross terrain where a wheeled vehicle would just sink in so experiments go on the committee gets a company called Fosters of Lincoln their chief engineer William Tritton they also get a very clever naval engineer Walter Wilson who goes on to design cars at gearbox for London buses etc and they put them under the chairmanship of a banker called Albert Stern Stern gets a bit frustrated at the slowness of the committee gets going and basically gets a commission to come up with a track vehicle and he gives that that order to foster the Lincoln where William Tritton and Walter Wilson come together and put their minds together now that leads to the birth of what we here at the Tank Museum and most people recognize as the first proper tank that doesn't go to sea action the vehicle standing next to me that's little Willy now the very first iteration of this vehicle the first model of it is it were and they build it what we're looking at the shapes pretty much the same but the tracks they use are these imported bullet tracks and the problem they've got with these bullet tracks when they put them on the chassis of the vehicle as they go to drive around the vehicle slides off these tracks so Wilson comes up with a better idea now that first iteration of the vehicle is actually called they call it number one Lincoln machine and it goes off for a couple of test drives there's photographs of it and by the way they were going to put a turret on the top with a 2 pounder gun the turret was built they never really seem to have fitted the gun so they trial this these tracks that fail are replaced by a new version that Tritton and Wilson come up with and the success of this new simple design of track really leads to the success of those first British tanks they use that design on pretty much all the British tanks and that are used in the First World War and the simple way of thinking about is what you see from the outside there is the metal plate of the track it's got rivets on it and those rivets hold a little flange system on the inside of the track and that flange runs in a groove all the way around whether the track carriers so that if it goes over a particularly rough ground those tracks will not fall away from the carrying body of the main part of the tank and that very simple little idea means these track systems work some of the other early developments certainly in France where they were almost getting the standard whole tractor and building or converting one of those almost to be the basis those early vehicles had a lot of problems certainly for the French their first two model tanks have have many more mechanical problems and their shapes and other issues than because then the British ones because Wilson and Tritton have come up with this idea of the new type of track now they test little Willy now what little Willy one of the things that we often think about were quite conscious here depending on the generation you grew up in this idea the first world war they were slow about things they took time they weren't that imaginative you know when you look at this tank story you realize that's just a one of those classic myths that's built up for various different reasons after the first world war actually in Britain they were trying to use technology very very quickly and getting it out there into service as quickly as they could because to put it bluntly this was designed to save British soldiers lives and again if you read the accounts at the time better steel plate that soldiers breasts you know all these arguments are coming out about why we need to use our industrial might the resources of empire but also our industrial genes to come up with new ways of facing this new type of warfare so Little Willie is experimented with this running around it's actually built as a physical entity in six weeks and when you think about that compared to some of the lead times armored vehicles these days admittedly not just a build process but you know the whole process can be something like 11 years these guys were going lightning speed in World War 1 to get this new type of weapon system something that's going to be functional ready for the troops now Little Willie it's trialed in December of 1915 it's running around at Burton Park they're showing this off they liked the idea when Swinton gets to see it a number of people have already recognized very early on that the principle seems to be there we've got an armored box we've got a petrol engine in there at Dane 105 horsepower petrol engine and that's being used for tractors and being built in the UK before the war it's got those tracks to help it cross rougher ground it's going to have that turret with the 2 pounder gun on but they look at it and Swinton realizes having seen the frontline not everyone back at home realize what that frontline was the early stage of the war Swinton then says this just isn't gonna work but luckily Tritton and Wilson are very quickly able to say to him don't worry guv we've already come up with a better idea so Little Willie does its job as a testbed as a way of testing out this new type of technology such as putting the tracks there and again one of the other fundamentals we'll see around the rest of the collection what you've got there is those three things that make up armored vehicle through its next hundred years you've got firepower it's got a turret it's going to carry that gun it was going to carry some machine guns probably as well it's got that 2 pounder gun so you've got a weapon system the firepower of the vehicle you've got protection it's got armor plate or each was going to have armor plate initially mild steel riveted together in a box type configuration to protect the crew inside and it's got mobility it's got that engine to be able to power the tracks around to be able to get across the nature of the terrain that it's going to be facing so those three things again we're gonna see time and time again and it's a point that we'd make now as well which is when you think about it those three things as well in a sense I'm nothing new every soldier through history has wanted to be mobile so he can get around the battlefield as quickly as he can he wants some form of protection whether it was wearing leather or metal armor he wants something in the terms of a weapon system or firepower as time goes on vana idea he's got those three things together what they're doing for the first time he's trying to do it in a manner that really protects the soldier and faces up to this new situation on the first world war battlefield so little Willy the testbed vehicle doesn't see action but we can now look at a vehicle that does the design that Walter Wilson and William Tritton had come up with that was better than Little Willie was a design that basically was at school rubber shape the rhomboid shape they realized that by lengthening the vehicles it could cross the German trench the army at the time estimated the average German trench about six foot maybe a bit more so by lengthening the vehicle if you look at the front of this this looks like the front of Little Willie in the middle there but it's got these what they called horns added on the side at the front and lengthened at the rear to carry the track around same engine inside and they come up with that design and they build it and again they're showing that off very quickly to display the fact that actually this design will probably work so they show it in Lincoln they take it down to Hatfield house where the tank nicknamed mother by the way Little Willie we think that was a nickname to have a go at the kaisers son the newspapers were calling the Kaiser son the Crown Prince Wilhelm Little Willie in the press so maybe Little Willie was a bit of a play on that mother inverted commas was called mother because she ends up being the first one of what is going to be the production design she's going to be the one that actually leads to all those others that go into service now at Hatfield house north of London they demonstrate for all the great and the good are invited long to have a look at this new weapon system and they mock up a bit of an assault course for the tank to go through and it goes through its praises and people realize this has got something special about it it does look like a way that we can carry it forward and so in this is being demonstrated at the end of 1915 they are looking at sorry the spring of 1915 they are looking at how can we come up with a way of manufacturing these quickly enough and that's another one of these things that we so often overlook when we talk about the history of vehicles if magically here we are we've come up with a new idea off you go actually they've got to come up with a way of actually building these new vehicles finding the skilled labor force finding the skill sets available because again these are large complex machines and they've also then got of course find crews to actually man those vehicles train them to get the best out of them so they're looking around already the war's been got going we've already had production issues we've had the shell scandal we've got lots of other things that going on already in Britain so finding the usual type of manufacturer you might go to is not that easy now foster the Lincoln they're a smallish company they start building some of these mark-1 tanks as they become known as we also look at railway companies looking around the place who's got reasonably heavy equipment that can maneuver on the plate around or maneuver a fairly large vehicle around so they look at railway manufacturers as well to come in and of course we've got the other classic problem which is early in the war many young skilled engineers have volunteered for the military some of them of course ending up in jobs that have got no use for their military or engineering skills rather so they end up being sort of wasted in a way and we end up having that situation where actually manufacturers then becomes we have to go to the government and end up getting the situation where special skills become reserved occupation in other words you can be just as contributing to the war effort with some of your mechanical skills rather than just going off to fight as a soldier on the front line now the building of these tanks is therefore not easy and is not a simple process in the background Swinton van engine that journalist as he was playing on the western front he's actually invited to be the commander of this new force and this force that's going to be put together to use the tanks it goes through a series of name changes first of all they go to Bisley which is one of the areas where they're looking at training the guys for this and they go to the heavy branch or they go to the machine gun core and take a section of that they take some drivers who are actually in the transport side of things they take those and actually put them as part and parcel of this new outfit that they call the heavy section Shingen Corps and that unit starts training on things like 6-pounder guns that they think they've got enough of these ex-naval long barreled 6-pounder guns the way to shot they fire that they're going to use and there has been demonstrated on mother now actually they don't have quite enough of the guns to go for that first order of about a hundred vehicles they end up making about sixty in the first order so they look at the idea that's one of the reasons why they look at the idea of having a male and a female tank the male tank is going to carry the two 6-pounder guns in sponsons bolted on the side the females are going to carry machine guns and that is quite simply because there's probably not going to be enough six pounders figure around so machine guns are going to Gary Vickers machine guns in the sides two of them on each side in armored jackets so already we're starting to get this idea of the two types male and female that we see in other types of tanks in the First World War even the French when you think of the first French Renault tank that comes along about a year later and that's actually in a male and female format so you have a turret on it with a machine gun or a turret on it with a 37 millimeter Pato cannon on it so that idea is not unique to the British so they start manufacturing those mark-1 vehicles and we'll look at the mark one a little bit more when we actually look at our First World War gallery providing we've got the time to carry on doing these films we're going to walk through our First World War Garin look at some of those there we're very fortunate we've got the last remaining mark one tank as it went into action in September of 1916 at the back end of the song battles so I'll talk more about that one then but the idea being is the tanks to summarize are built quickly they have a number of problems about them the crews do not have much time to actually integrate with the tanks and their new training to ground this they're taken up to L Verdun up in Norfolk that's where they start training for the first time the L Verdun explosives area is set up high security they want these new tanks to still be secret that was the idea behind it and Hague that now the British commander in chief over in France is desperately keen to have anything to help him with this new attack that's going to be happening in the summer of 1916 what we know of first of July first a the psalm it was initially being planned earlier in the year that attack with all some of the newly trained armies that Britain has put together after the famous kitchen a campaign for volunteers that attack going in in the summer it goes on we know about the first day that's the one that goes in said in British memory with a number of casualties then but it also goes on across the rest of the summer into September of 17 now the tanks aren't ready for that first attack but they are ready by September or at least 50 of them are and they're sent out to France and as I mentioned I'll talk about that attack a little bit more when we talk about the mark one tank the attack out in France is not hugely successful but as Haig summarizes after the attacks gone in when the analysis is done he says where the tanks advanced we advanced where they failed we've so already Hague is perceptive enough to realize there is a potential here with this new weapon the tank and he's the one that then goes off orders a thousand there's debates afterwards that then go on same wall hang on a second there's no way we can do that are you sure etc but he sees the utility and again another one of those myths that we've been trying to break here at the Tank Museum historians have been trying to do it for the last twenty or so years with a perception that Hague as the British commander in chief as X Cavalry Minh is somehow blind to the tank or new technology is just absolute rubbish Hague is looking for anything that will think he will give his forces an edge and he's very perceptive in seeing the ability of the tank so much though that those tanks back in Britain that are going to be built for this next phase that when they go into action a big belt you know we need hundreds of these things as Hague is saying they start by building some tanks just to train with and they know because the tank is expensive it's about six thousand Guineas at the time it's complex it takes a while to build so to get the troops because we want to expand this force to be able to get the troops able to train they make another model tank called the mark two which is really a training tank it is almost identical in many of its functions and its looks as a model but what they do do though is they get rid of those wheels at the back that were pretty useless in the first attacks and but the mark 2 they're going to make it easier and quicker to make by making it out of mild steel in other words not armor plate armor plate has more processes done to it so it has a hardened surface or later role to modulus armor it's a much denser metal with different properties than just standard steel but it's harder to work it takes longer it costs more etc so let's make some mild steel or normal steel training vehicles and they become the mark tools for use back at home what happens is the main production is being delayed Hague is desperate to get more out to France and especially for his tackies of planning around Arras in April of 1917 so some of those training tanks about 27 of them are actually shipped over to France along with some of them are one tanks that they've recovered from those earlier attacks that they've helped do them up and they are used in the Battle of Arras in April of 1917 and this tank here behind me is one of those mark two training tanks that were shipped out to France now I'm not sure that the crews who were manning these vehicles actually knew that they were going into action in a tank that hadn't got proper armor plate on it the tanks do have an effect in those Arras attacks as well and in a second we're going to reposition the camera and just have a look at this mark two because the amazing thing with this vehicle that saw service there it's got battle damage on earth on it and it helps us give an idea of some of the things that crews inside the vehicles were going through when they went into those early tank battles so on the rear of this mark 2 we can actually see some of the damages sustained in Arras what we think happened is here you can see the Petaling of a round here as well and here they've come in from the other side probably German field gun 77 millimeter rounds they've come all the way through and we can actually trace where they've impacted after coming through on the other side now remarkably that damage when you actually trace where the rounds have gone through it didn't actually spot the vehicle as far as we can tell because what's happened is the engine that's inside drives chains two sprockets on the back and that then mesh with the track and drive the tank along when you actually follow the damage it hasn't interrupted any of the drive mechanism and the same on this side you can see damage you can see dents etc and also on the other side the vehicle there's cracks in the metal work but it does not look like it actually stopped the vehicle now why this is an interesting vehicle not only is it a case we're here in the museum sometimes we know a fair bit about the history of a vehicle where it was involved isn't it great that we have a vehicle I actually saw action we know the history there some of the other vehicles we have in the museum sadly we just don't know the history of so in other words we're not too sure if it was just a training tank or anything else but over time more information is coming to light about some of them of course the concept of trying to come up with some form of armored mobile vehicle is not unique to the British in France there's ideas originally put forward by sdn one of their generals who is looking at the idea can we almost have mobile artillery the way he first thinks of it and the French put together an armored force as well that idea about how the armored force is going to be used as if there's great theories behind it one of the things it's worth emphasizing we have the benefit of hindsight we know where some of these developments are going to lead to and we can't help a backtrack and thing this person or that idea is so clever because it's what ends up being used throughout or how the items how the vehicles are going to be used through history we've got that benefit at the time lots of different strands about how technology might pan out lots of technologies that we tend to forget about that were being used in the First World War didn't necessarily advance much further so when we're looking at this idea because initially one of the French classic designers of the French 19-teens a car designer Louis Renault when approached with the idea could you come up with some form of armored vehicle he's initially reluctant he says no were too busy in our factory were making motor vehicles trucks etc all very important for the war effort were moving as way in the Western Allied nations were still going to be using horses a lot but mechanization of civilian society has been happening just before the First World War and that's reflected in the army lots of military vehicles are taken into service and the British Army has a scheme is paying money to a lot of truck owners just before the war saying should war come we are going to take your military vehicles into military service because they've done exercises such as using buses to maneuver a British force quickly down to the coast they did that well before the first world wars began so the idea of mechanical vehicles is nothing new Renault quite rightly is saying I'm very good at producing these trucks etc but at the back of his mind he likes also the idea of having a go at an armoured vehicle and when asked again he's already been working out some plans so up comes his idea of what potentially an armoured vehicle could be and that's a Renault tank or the FT tank as it becomes known as now the FT tank the idea behind this is or as Renault argues it and it's to do a lighter vehicle already there's two other French vehicles the same command and the Schneider tanks are being built they are lumbering vehicles they are not very good at mobility they carry the French 75 gun on one of them or a lighter cannon on the other as well as machine guns what Renault is arguing is if we could make a lighter tank smaller in large quantities his argument is these could be used as a phrase mosquito attacks a lot lots of them flooding across the battlefield they're probably good enough to take down those barbed wire with the machine gun as a male as a female version or male version with a Pato cannon 37 millimeter cannon these vehicles can help the infantry advance take a position and therefore hopefully do go for them what they tend to call the break-in stage the tanks help then the parade cow stage is when the traditional arm of exploitation the cavalry can go through the gap and continue as well as infantry and then horse-drawn artillery advancing so Renault looks at this it starts going into service in 1917 orders are put in for thousands to be made they are confident this is going to be a successful design and when you look at it it's got a lot of features and with the benefit of hindsight we can look back and say it's very modern-looking because it's got the first in-service turreted tank we've already mentioned Little Willie was going to have Atari the idea of carrying weapons systems the turret is not a new idea but actually the first British tanks end up carrying the weapon systems on the sides in what they call sponsors again ideas taken from the Navy here on this version we've got a cast turret carrying a machine gun engine in the back a two-man crew and this vehicle for the crew inside the luxury of this vehicle over some of the other ones is it's got suspension there are actually Springs on this suspension the British early vehicles do not have any form of suspension at all it's just on rollers as they're going forward so everyone's going to feel everything inside that vehicle now the Renault tank is is a success it is much more mobile it's much more more effective on the battlefield on those earlier French tanks but again it's another one of the vehicles that is coming into service later in the campaign and what we'll also look at when we look at our First World War Hall is a lot of the design work and some of the the developments in the tank don't actually get to see action in scale because the war ends in November of 1918 most of us in the Western Allies at the time are thinking that war is going to continue well into 1919 before there's a some form of conclusion to it or victory for the Western Allies that November 1918 end of that war is actually something that is a bit of a surprise now we can look now one of those vehicles that helped that victory in November of 1918 it's a tank that was used at the Battle of out of a me on in August of 1918 when for the first time the British are using a developed form of combined arms tactics that they've put together very very well they've been experimenting in the year but now with Conway was in November of 1917 was starting that use of artillery barrages without massive bombardments day before we've got a very clever way where the artillery could be pre-registered for calm Brae we're using aircraft as as they call it flying artillery at time so you can machine-gun positions they can drop bombs it can help with communications we've got infantry and armor being used in a combined and well-thought-through manner certainly compared to the earlier attacks and that development goes on so that by the Battle of Annie on in August of 1918 these combined arms tactics are getting very very sophisticated and I mentioned earlier on where if you thought of those initial campaigns think of like the armies of Wellington meeting in the field by this stage of the war by the Battle of Annie on certainly the British Army the French army to a degree they are getting now to the point of combined arms tactics that a modern army would recognize in those four years of the First World War there is a huge sea change in the way armies are going to fight and this hat to beam because we've got this mass industrial warfare going on in a way in a manner in a scope and a scale that just has not happened before so as part of that 1919 attack we are using armored cars to if they have the opportunity of getting on hard surfaces roads to rapidly advance to start going for communication centers and for command posts so that the bullet to the brain is full of C's describing so that we take out command and control we are using faster vehicles initially they were going to be combined with the cavalry doesn't quite work that way but they have a success such as the medium a or the Whippet tank that's here behind me so the Whippet it's a different shape to the rhomboid ones again Tritton wilson they're coming up with ideas about putting this into from fairly early on into service and the idea being that you've got a vehicle now that is going about double the speed about 8 miles an hour so it's capable of almost independent action it's they know it's going to probably lose contact with the infantry but can exploit gaps in the line and with its machine guns in the bar bet not a turret but a bar bet there it's that structure at the rear - Tyler engines in the front here driving it a bit of a nightmare because basically you're speeding up one engine to turn the track on one side faster if you want to turn in a corner complex in many ways but again you can see that technology is being advanced this particular whippet Caesar - behind me this is what they would call a trophy tank it was actually taken back after the Battle of a me on because a young officer left Tennant's Yul wins the Victoria Cross he's part of a section of whippets going forward one of them is here turns over into a shell hole fuel as a commander a young lieutenant in this vehicle sees that the other tank has turned over the crew can't get out it's Catching Fire he leaves this tank goes across the exposed ground under fire to the second with it levers open the rear door of the with it to rescue the crew that sees him safely back by this time his own driver has exited this vehicle and being wounded whip it goes back to try and help him recover his driver both of them sadly are killed and they found the following day sewer with his arm around his driver both of them sadly dead for his gallantry Sewell is one of the earliest recipients of a Victoria Cross an interesting in the First World War all the winners of Victoria Crosses in the tank corps win their Victoria Cross in actions outside the vehicle the point being that you have to be seen to be doing something very dry brave by another officer or really somebody there's going to be able to recommend that award of course however brave you are inside a tank you're only being seen by your own crew so it's very very hard to win a Victoria Cross as a tank crewman so the four winners are actually doing things like seal outside the vehicle and we're very very fortunate we that Victoria Cross in our collection here at the Tank Museum so this is one of those vehicle that's being used for those new combined arms tactics later in 1918 and as I mentioned before we'll also look at some of the other vehicles that have been designed in 1918 ready for what is going to be a massive tank attack in 1919 but let's finish that first world war story here at the moment so this in this particular area of our tank story hall we've given a selection of classic First World War vehicles to tell briefly that story I've waited on a fair or bit about it but for us it's such an important part because so many issues that are still prevalent in tanks tank design how people operate vehicles how they might be used in warfare all of those issues so many of them you can trace back to issues that start in the First World War and so often if you look at some of the quotes we've got on the walls around the galleries here rub out the dates it would be so easy to take a First World War tank crewmen squad put it up in a modernist section and people would well believe it because the issue that the young tank crews encountered in World War one are very similar to issues that are going on today the thing that I think we have to look at that first world war tank crews with a slightly different attitude though is they were the pioneers they really don't have a blueprint to follow they are making it up as they go along just as these tanks are being developed so quickly they were continuous working progress in World War one every time they're getting messages back from the frontline they are being fed information all the time how can we improve on these vehicles and other models coming out it seems like almost every six months or improvements on the vehicles that have been going through manufacture and that idea is that's something I think we've got to understand now as I mentioned earlier we have that benefit of hindsight these guys are actually you know these are virgin footprints in the snow no one's been here before no one's had to do this in this manner these are the people we've got to show that was for because they are making it up to go along at the time to hopefully get a victory and save their fellow soldiers lives which is another really important thing to remember these are weapons of liberation in the First World War we are a charity here at the Tank Museum so if you can support us please do consider joining our patreon scheme or becoming a member of the Friends any donations will go directly towards the Tank Museum and its activities

Channel: The Tank Museum

Views: 267,649

Rating: 4.9558268 out of 5

Keywords: ww1 tank story hall, curator museum tour, curator tank tour, david willey museum tour, #MuseumFromHome, david willey, ww1 tour, david fletcher, the tank museum, bovington tank museum, tank story hall, military tank, tank museum

Id: x7UV8aMCeXk

Length: 47min 6sec (2826 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 31 2020