The Mark I ushered in a technological revolution when it appeared in 1916. The following day, it would break down and thus fail to participate in the first ever tank attack. Below, the author lists five early tanks that changed history.īy Craig Moore Mark I Male tank No.705, “Clan Leslie” moving up Chimpanzee Valley on Sept. The following year at Cambrai, more than 400 machines would mount the first massed armour attack in history – the era of the tank had arrived.Īuthor and historian Craig Moore runs His new book Tank Hunter: World War One (published by The History Press) explores the development of armoured warfare between 19. Unable to slow the advance of these strange mechanical monsters, the enemy had no choice but to retreat.Īlthough the results of the action at Flers-Courcelette was far from pivotal to the outcome of the war, commanders were overwhelmed by the results of the tank’s combat debut. 15, 1916, tanks rumbled into action there for the first time.Īlthough ponderously slow, clumsy and mechanically unreliable, a handful of Britain’s top secret armoured “land ships” still succeeded in rolling over the German barbed wire and fortifications as bullets bounced harmlessly off their inch-thick steel plating. Yet it was on terrain between these two little-known villages along the Somme in Northern France that a revolution in warfare occurred more than a century ago. THE TOWNS OF Flers and Courcelette may not figure as prominently in the pages of military history as say Gettysburg, Waterloo or Hastings.
“Ponderously slow, clumsy and mechanically unreliable, a handful of these top secret armoured “land ships” still succeeded in rolling over the German barbed wire and fortifications.” The tank made its appearance on the battlefield in 1916 - warfare would never be the same.
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