Tank v Tank at Villers-Bretonneux

Leutnant Wilhelm Biltz saw the three British tanks lumbering towards him and instantly knew he was about to do make history. He was going to engage enemy tanks with his tank. His A7V tank stood astride the main railway line to Amiens. The other two tanks in his command flanked him on either side. His tank, named Nixe, sported a 57mm main gun and six Maxim machine guns. He had 17 men crammed inside the humongous “land battleship,” all of them perspiring in the heat. As the English Mk IV tanks slowly crawled into view, Biltz gave the order: “Fire!”

History’s first tank versus tank battle was the only one of its kind during the First World War. Germany didn’t have many tanks. They only made one variant during the war, the A7V. Germany produced 20 A7V tanks, which didn’t feature much in German battle plans. Despite hard lessons learned against British and French tanks, the German high command remained trapped in a pre-1914 mindset. They believed the foot soldier and the artillery bombardment would carry the war. Operation Michael, Germany’s last offensive of the Great War, proved how wrong they were.

The Birth of the Tank

We can trace the concept of the tank back to Leonardo da Vinci, who envisioned a steel turret that was impervious to bullets and swords, pushed from the inside by men. The design turned out to be too heavy and impractical in real life. H.G. Wells wrote about Land Ironclads in 1903, which went on to influence the actual development of the tank. Several inventors in Austria, Russia, and Australia tried to convince their governments to adopt their tank designs, but they were all refused.

Ironically it was the Royal Navy who invented the “landships.” By 1915 the navy had forward observers watching the events at the front from the safety of heavily armored cars. The experience allowed them to convince Winston Churchill, who was First Lord of the Admiralty, to establish a committee for the study of “landships.” A secret commission was formed and designers went to work. Their first design was named Little Willie and featured all the elements of a tank: tracks, armor, heavy guns. The gearbox was underpowered and the tank hung up on small trenches. The commission created a new vehicle, nicknamed Mother. This proved acceptable and was purchased by the Army in 1916, ready to use in the upcoming Somme offensive. Designated Mark I, they came in two variants: male and female. The “male” Mk I’s featured two large six-pound naval guns on side-mounted traversing turrets. Because there weren’t enough guns to arm all of the needed tanks, a second class was formed, the female tank. The “female” Mk I’s had machine guns in place of cannons. The two designs were meant to operate in tandem, clearing trenches and pillboxes.

Tanks On The Somme

The first tanks went into battle on September 15, 1916. 150 of the “Mother” prototypes, half male, half female, were shipped to France hidden inside large water tanks. To maintain secrecy from German intelligence, the shipments were recorded as “water tanks for public works projects.” British military planners referred to the vehicles simply as “tanks” and the name has stuck ever since.

The tanks came as a shock when they first rumbled into action on the Somme front. The first Germans to see them fled in panic. Those who stayed behind to fight soon learned that these enormous monsters were not as frightening as they at first appeared. They were lightly armored and bullets were able to penetrate them in some places. Their engines and gears were not powerful enough for the extreme mud and shell-cratered terrain of No Man’s Land. Most of them bogged down. At least 90 of them suffered engine malfunctions and had to be abandoned.

The eight men inside the tank were extremely vulnerable to injury. The space was cramped and visibility was nearly zero. As the tank rose and fell over the craters, the men were tossed about, smashing limbs and heads on steel. Bullets and shells that hit the tank caused flakes of metal, lead paint, and even bolts to spin around inside, wounding them.

Although the Mk I’s failed, their appearance on the battlefield changed the world forever. British and French planners immediately recognized their potential. It was the French who developed the idea of massed tank assaults. Several French inventors and design companies were busy creating their own tanks. Government in-fighting and industrial lobbies led to a few lame-duck designs. For example, the Saint-Chamond tank was too long and its tracks too narrow to traverse trenches and craters, yet it was approved by the government for deployment to the front. It didn’t fare any better than the British Mk I’s. The French automobile sector, on the other hand, saved the day.

French carmakers were experienced at mass production and already had assembly line infrastructure. Renault produced the FT tank. The design featured a swiveling top-mounted turret, armored front-facing glacis plate, large tracks powered by a versatile engine, and a minimal crew. The basic design of the Renault FT is standard in all tanks today. The FT proved a great success during the war. France produced 3700 of them.

The British went to work improving their Mk I design, and by 1917 they had the Mk IV. This tank was similar in design to the Mk I but featured better armor, better protection for its crew, and a more reliable engine. The Mk IV also had a short-barrel 6-pounder gun. England continued to produce both the male and female variants of these tanks.

Blitzkrieg at Cambrai

The Mk IVs and the Renault FTs went into battle as a massed attack force for the first time at Cambrai, in November 1917. More than 400 tanks rushed the German defenses, while infantry followed behind in a supporting role. Artillery strikes were brief and fierce. Meanwhile, aircraft strafed and bombed German lines of communication. The attack was a stunning success that breached the Hindenburg Line. Tanks penetrated deep into German lines. Despite the success, the Germans managed to knock out 40 tanks by leveling the barrels of their artillery guns and firing directly at the approaching tanks. A further 165 tanks broke down. The Germans counter-attacked the following day and recaptured some lost ground and the British called off the offensive. Cambrai was the first blitzkrieg-style assault that Germany would master 23 years later.

Cambrai was a shock to the Germans. Until then, they hadn’t seriously considered the tank as a useful weapon. The German strategy was defensive. They would hold ground until the French and British had enough and sued for peace. The massed battles of 1917 proved that the allies had no intention of giving up. Arras, Vimy, and Passchendaele had been long, bloody battles that cost the Germans more than a million men. America was in the war now. It was only a matter of time before the Entente swamped Germany. Cambrai was a rude wake-up call that they now had the technological means to do it. Germany set about designing a tank of its own.

The A7V

A small German team had actually been working on a tank design since 1916. General War Department 7, transportation (A7V) went to work with industrial designers at Daimler Motors. At first, they borrowed the track design from American farm tractors, but these proved too weak to support the weight of a tank. The designers went to work creating a similar design that was larger and heavier. In May 1917, Daimler Motors tested their first design. It was a wooden mock-up filled with 10 tons of sand to simulate weight. Its performance was satisfactory and the Army put in an order for six tanks, although a fully-armored prototype had yet to be field-tested. Daimler found that it was a little too heavy in actual use, so they reduced the number of guns it carried to one 57 mm main gun and several machine guns. The tank was named A7V after the design department who oversaw its creation.

The A7V was a strange design. The tank looked like an enormous steel box. It was 25 feet long and 11 feet high and weighed just over 33 tons. Its small tracks were hidden underneath the bottom of the tank, so it gave the appearance of gliding over the ground. A long 57 mm gun poked out of the snout of the tank, while a box at the top provided the commander with a view all around. The tank used two Daimler-Benz 4-cylinder engines with four gears each. The left and ride side tracks were powered by their own engines, and each engine had a crew of five men. To turn left, the right side would need to reverse their engine while the left side throttled theirs forward. Two men timed the engines to make sure the tracks were working in unison, while a driver sat with the commander and shouted directions down to the engineers. It was a bulky, awkward contraption.

German Tanks In Action

Five A7Vs went into action for the first time during Operation Michael at the St. Quentin Canal. Germany’s last-ditch offensive to break the stalemate and end the war on their terms was one of the largest operations of the entire war. They hit the British Third and Fifth armies head-on in the St. Quentin sector, hoping to trap the entire BEF in Flanders and roll up the French flanks. As part of Operation Michael, Germany created new “stormtrooper” units that could move rapidly across the battlefield. The five A7Vs were thrown into the fight as support.

Three of the tanks broke down before they even reached the fighting. The remaining two went into action and halted a small British counter-attack with concentrated fire. Otherwise, they didn’t see much action.

A month later, Germany was pushing against a newly formed allied line around Amiens. Operation Michael had failed but General Ludendorff was convinced he could still gain victory. German attacks continued all along the line. 15 German tanks were thrown into the attack. Two broke down, but the remaining 13 tanks smashed through the British lines and drove the defenders away. Germany lost three more A7Vs to artillery fire. One was destroyed by brave British troops who attacked it with satchel charges.

Despite resistance, the German tanks managed to rumble through the important railway junction of Villers-Bretonneux. The town had served as an important supply point for the British, and its rail line led directly to Amiens. Three A7Vs rumbled up the railway embankment and stopped at the top, waiting for the rest of their army to catch up with them.

It was those tanks, under the command of 2nd Leutnant Wilhelm Biltz, who would make history when the British launched a counter-attack to retake the railway.

Tank vs Tank

With the British attack were three Mk IV tanks, consisting of two “females” and one “male.” Leading them was Lieutenant Frank Mitchell in the male tank, designated “№1” by the army. Although they had received reports of German tanks in the area, they weren’t expecting to run into them. After all, tanks had yet to fight each other in this war. Mitchell and Biltz were about to make history.

It was Biltz in his tank “Nixe” who spotted the British first. The A7V’s large front-mounted gun was aimed directly at the three Mk IVs. Biltz let them get closer in order to ensure an accurate shot. His plan was to take out all three tanks quickly. His gun crew loaded and primed the gun. They lined up one of the female Mk IVs in their sights and awaited Biltz’s command. When he gave it, the long-barrelled 57 mm cracked out a sheet of flame, and a high-explosive shell exploded on the number two tank in Mitchell’s squadron. The shell smashed open armor plating and killed two of the men inside the tank. The rest were injured and deafened by the noise. The tank stopped and began to reverse, leaving the battlefield. Nixe fired on the next tank in line, the other “female” Mk IV. The shell hit but the tank continued on, its machine guns blazing. Bullets pinged off Nixe, so Biltz ordered his gunners to fire again. This time the shell burst squarely on the front of the tank. Smoke began to billow out of it and the tank reversed out of action. Only Mitchell’s №1 tank remained in the fight.

When the two female tanks got knocked out of the fight, Mitchell spotted the German tanks. He ordered his driver to begin a crazy zig-zag pattern at full speed, hoping to avoid the same fate as his companions. At the same time, he told his gunners, one on either side of the tank, to blast away at the German tanks. The first few 6-pounder shots fell wide of their mark, thanks to the erratic motion of the tank. Biltz tried to get a few shots off on №1 but his gunners missed. Biltz ordered his tank to move. Now both the A7V and the Mk IV were moving towards each other with guns blazing.

Mitchell got the first hit on Biltz. The shell smashed into the A7V and jammed the gearbox on its left side, sending the German tank into a spin on one track. №1 stopped, and his two gunners unloaded a hail of shots at the stricken German tank. Five more rounds hit Nixe broadside and the big, boxy German tank rolled over onto its side and crashed down off the railway embankment.

One of Biltz’s men was killed. Biltz and the survivors scrambled out of their rolled tank. They were right in the sights of Mitchell’s №1 tank, and machine gunners raked the fleeing German tank crew. Nine more of Biltz’s men were killed as they attempted to scramble to safety on the other side of the railway embankment. Biltz and eight of his comrades were the only survivors.

The other two German A7Vs panicked and retreated back into Villers-Bretonneux. Mitchell’s tank fired at them as they withdrew, and his machine gunners swept the supporting German infantry. The German force retreated in the face of this one angry British Mk IV tank. After a few minutes, German artillery started to rain down all around №1 and Mitchell ordered his crew to withdraw to safety. There would be no more tank vs tank battles until the Second World War.

Aftermath

The first tank battle in history resulted in a draw, with both sides retreating from the battlefield. Overall, the British won their fight simply by having the better machine. The bulk and height of the A7V was impractical. Its machinery made little sense in the age of motors, although it had the right armor.

Following Amiens and the failed German spring offensive, the Entente launched the 100 Days Offensive. This mass offensive was mechanized, using tanks and troop carriers. It smashed apart the German lines and the rapid advance of armored columns pushed the Germans out of France. Germany was forced to sue for peace. The days of trench warfare were over. The tank had proven it was supreme.

After the war, military theorists around the world would study the battles of Cambrai, the action at Villers-Bretonneux, and the 100 Days Offensive that led to the end of the war. They would form their conclusions, which would lead to modern theories of warfare and the tank as the primary weapon on the battlefield. The Germans would put their hard-learned lessons to good use in 1939. The Soviets adopted the tank as the backbone of their entire society, and by the end of 1945, they were the undisputed masters of tank design. The French, meanwhile, continued to innovate and produced some exceptional tank designs in the 1920s and 1930s. Unfortunately, they didn’t learn how to use them properly and as a result, they couldn’t stem the German tank invasion in 1940. Most surprisingly, the British failed to learn anything from their invention and innovation of the tank. They scrapped most of their tank program after the war and were left shocked and surprised by the German tanks when the Second World War broke out in 1939.

Originally published at https://battlegroundsplus.substack.com.