Talk:Tanks in World War I

message: I rearranged a lot of the photos on this page because of poor formatting.  Should be better now.  Darthveda (talk) 04:41, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Photos 

message: I removed the  tag.  I feel the article no longer needs to be wikified, however could probably still use some cleanup.  If you disagree feel free to re-add the tag or drop me a message. Bvlax2005 (talk) 12:58, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikify Tag 

message: In the last section of the article, it is claimed:
:By 1918, the Germans had learned to deal with tanks. At the Battle of Amiens (1918)72% of the Allied Tank Corps was destroyed in the first 4 days. 41.4% of all British tanks had been destroyed by the 64th day. On November 5th, there were only 8 tanks left in the British tank corps.[3]
Reference 3 resolves to "Blitzkrieg, pages 109-10", but Blitzkrieg does not receive a proper book reference on the page.
I am highly dubious of this claim. According to Battle of Amiens (1918), only about 532 tanks took part in the battle. By this time, the British had about 150 Mk I, 200 Whippets, and were well on their way to finishing the main order of over 1,000 Mk IV. So 532 tanks means only about 1/3 of the Tank Corps participated in the battle, making 72% destruction impossible. Secondly, the main component of the fighting at this battle only lasted 3 days, with some subsequent smaller actions up to the 27th August (19 days), so talk of how many tanks were destroyed by the 64th day is rather mysterious.
Additionally, while many sources agree that only a handful of the original ~500 tanks were still fighting at the end of the battle, I don't find other sources claiming that this is because they were all destroyed. Tanks were still mechanically unreliable vehicles and usually a substantial fraction broke down during the advance -- and this battle was the longest unaided advance the tanks had made so far to date. Very probably many of the ~520 hors de combat tanks were easily repairable and would soon be back in action. Lt. Arnold's report of the epic action of Musical Box in this battle makes it clear that many tanks got ditched: the reason he attacked so aggressively was that his tank was the only one out of 4 sections of Whippets still running, but none of the rest were hit, they were just bogged.
Arnold's report also puts the lie to the claim that "Germans had learned to deal with tanks". Cut off behind German lines, his tank was totally surrounded by several battalions of infantry and at least two artillery batteries, who attacked with every weapon at hand. Yet he ran amok for 9 hours, destroying an artillery battery, an observation balloon and its support equipment, a battalion cantonment, several vehicles and horses, and killing scores of men before being knocked out. Even then, it was a bit of a lucky hit for the Germans. Musical Box carried spare petrol cans on the outside of the tank, and they drove around for quite a while with these punctured and burning, and some of the burning petrol running down the inside of the door, so they were forced to wear their gas-masks to overcome the fumes. Eventually they were directly hit by a shell. This failed to seriously damage Musical Box -- no-one inside was wounded by the shell -- but it blew more burning fuel inside the tank and forced them to abandon it. -- 203.20.101.203 (talk) 07:52, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Just been skimming through Band of Brigands for relevant info on this. It says the Tank Corps committed all its "available" strength. After four days this was down 75% to "all causes", by the 10th, "the numbers engaged had dropped by four-fifths" and that oeprations were 75% unsuccessful. It also refers to the offical history. contemporary research is ascribed to the statemtn that "Only 120 were knocked out by enemy action". Other tanks were available but not effective because of minor breakdowns or crew exhaustion. Also that from the 8th to the Armistice 800 tanks were salvaged and brought back into action. There is another bit in the text on crew performance - in easy conditions they could manage 8 hours, in hard ones much less, and that in some cases it took 36 hours recuperation for the crew to be back in action. GraemeLeggett (talk) 12:05, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dubious claim about tanks destroyed at Amiens 

message: I have amended the claim that the Peugeot Tank "lost out to the Renault FT". The prototype wasn't trialled until April 1918, a year after the Renault, by which time the Army had taken delivery of its first FTs.Hengistmate (talk) 23:57, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Peugeot Tank 

message: The Battle of Cambrai was planned by General Sir Julian Byng, incorporating proposals by Brigadier General Hugh Tudor (Royal Artillery) and an adapted version of an earlier plan by Fuller.
The Americans used Renaults, but did not produce any. They made only a few of the M1917, an almost identical copy of the Renault, and none reached the Front before the War ended.
Hengistmate (talk) 00:37, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cambrai Section 

message: Churchill set up the Landships Committee "against the objections of his bewildered subordinates." Tanks_in_World_War_I#The_Landships_Committee I don't understand this. Who were the bewildered subordinates? What were their objections? Is there any verification?
Hengistmate (talk) 01:32, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bewildered Subordinates? 

message: The photograph now described as "A German photograph showing a British tank destroying a tree" is a still from a film of a captured British tank being trialled by German troops. Whether it can be described as propaganda is an interesting question. The word is defined on Wikipedia as "a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position", and other definitions are along the same lines. The word now tends to have pejorative connotations, but that was not necessarily always the case. It simply meant "propagation of the faith". The German attitude towards tanks was complicated - they were sometimes derided as virtually useless, sometimes prized when captured or used against the Allies, in each case to boost morale. It could be argued that this film was propaganda in that it sought to maintain or propagate belief in the prowess and superiority of the German Army, amongst the population at large and/or the Army itself. Without knowing the intentions of the people involved we cannot be absolutely sure of the film's purpose, but logic would suggest that it was intended to boost morale, and was therefore, arguably, "propaganda". Hengistmate (talk) 23:12, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Propaganda? 

message: The reference, More Military Blunders by Geoffrey Regan, says that the machine-gun fire (from Tank C22, commanded by Lt. Basil Henriques) killed "dozens of helpless men." The Official History says that C22 fired briefly on the Norfolks, but there is no record of any such losses in the War Diary of the 9th Norfolks, of the 71st Brigade, or of the 6th Division. Authoritative sources believe that the firing was brief and accidental, and that no losses were sustained. Hengistmate (talk) 11:12, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: As a single instance in the fog of war, it sounds like inclusion would be disproportionate. If it had been illustrative of a common problem often repeated that would be different. GraemeLeggett (talk) 12:28, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Friendly Fire and 9 Bn., Norfolk Regiment. 

message: That clip comprises mostly footage of British tanks shot for a 1927 feature film called "The Somme". The opening title is from the same film. The brief footage of a Renault FT has been cut in. It might have been shot at Langres, where the American light tank training school was, but there's nothing to confirm that. The rest of the footage was shot on Salisbury Plain. I have tried to make the new caption as uncontentious as possible. Hengistmate (talk) 09:50, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Footage of WWI tanks correction.  

message: Da Vinci's design was not a tank and was not the first attempt at a workable concept. There were workable concepts before it, and they worked. It was never built, and modern trials have shown that it didn't work. It didn't influence anyone any more than any other wheeled shelter did. I don't know why this machine is constantly given a significance it doesn't merit. The Boydell Wheel was not the forerunner of the caterpillar track. Diplock abandoned the Pedrail Wheel and designed the Chaintrack in 1911. http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/images/f/f8/Er19170921.pdf Also tidied up misplaced participle re Palmerston.Hengistmate (talk) 00:08, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edit August 3rd, 2013. 

message: *At the time of his visit to Stockton, Swinton was a Brevet-Colonel. He didn't become Major-General until 1919.
*He could not have thanked Holt for helping to win the War, since the Allies were in headlong retreat and in danger of losing it.
*Hugh F. Marriott (not Merriot) was a Londoner.
*Scott-Moncrieff's committee was not called the Inventions Committee; Lloyd George formed the M.I.D. (Munitions Inventions Department) in 1917. 
Hengistmate (talk) 02:49, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edits April 21st, 2014. 

message: In Canada's national news magazine
https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/the-first-world-war-brought-the-end-of-cavalry-and-the-advent-of-the-tank/
REMEMBRANCE
The First World War brought the end of cavalry and the advent of the tank
The British invented the tank: an armoured vehicle that could roll over both wire and trenches. The problems, however, were many.
by J.L. Granatstein Nov 6, 2018''
Peter K Burian (talk) 21:56, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: With respect, Mr. Burian, I'm not sure what insights the article offers. The French, of course, also invented the tank at the same time as the Britsh, and attempts to carry a section of troops ended in failure. I can't see anything here that a reasonably well-informed person wouldn't know. Sorry. Hengistmate (talk) 12:47, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  An interesting new article on this topic adds some insights