Cambrai The First Great Tank Battle 1917

The story of the first great tank battle, and the genesis of one of the most formidable weapons of the twentieth century. Cambrai was the last - and most influential - battle fought by the British on the Western Front in 1917. With many of the Allies on the brink of collapse, only Britain was still capable of holding the Germans at bay. Over time, many myths have grown up around what happened at Cambrai. The events of this iconic attack are now buried beneath accumulated legends and misrepresentations built up over almost a century. It is remembered as the world's first great tank battle, but it was the brilliant British innovations in artillery techniques that most shocked the enemy. Equally important were the new 'stormtroop' tactics the Germans pioneered. Drawing on previously unpublished letters, diaries, first-hand accounts and official reports, Bryn Hammond's definitive account examines this military milestone, how the myths were created, and how they changed the face of warfare for ever.

It is probably true to say that no land battle of this century passes Cambrai in importance. Up to the winter of 1917 warfare had changed only in degree since the coming of gunpowder. The scenario, with parts for horse, foot and guns, remained essentially the same. All this was part of a world about to disappear for good with the introduction of the tank. The British Army, hammered by years of war and facing almost alone the vastly increasing strength of its enemy, was expected by most observers to be near to going down in defeat. Instead of that, using British designed and built fighting machines of a novel kind, it attacked and drove the Germans from the strongest fortifications ever built. Nobody, save for a dedicated few, had believed such a feat possible. After profiting from its lessons the same Army, 12 months later, achieved its greatest victories of all time and saved Europe, for a time, from German dictatorship. The methods used made obsolete everything that had gone before and laid out the ground for each serious operation of war from Amiens to the Gulf.

The Battle of Cambrai has become synonymous with one of the Allies’ first large-scale use of tanks on the Western Front. Cambrai certainly saw over 450 Mark IV tanks lumber across No Man’s Land and penetrate the Hindenburg Line. For the Germans on the other side of these defences the sheer scale of these ‘iron monsters’ was terrifying, however they quickly rallied and the battle was about much more than the tanks deployed.Chris McNab explores how new techniques of sound-ranging and artillery strategy played a greater part on the battlefield than the tanks which have dominated the history of the battle.At dawn on 20 November 1917 over 1,000 guns fired on German positions and 400 tanks and thousands of men stepped out into the barren land between the trenches. At first, it seemed that success was inevitable, with over 5 miles of ground gained – a significant amount for such an operation, however on the first day of battle 180 tanks were out of action and the attack began to flounder. After days of attack and counterattack, both sides had gained ground, but no definitive success and with over 70,000 casualties. Yet, Cambrai was an important training ground for both sides, proving the effectiveness of new tactics that would lead to greater victories later in the war.

This crucial new study of one of the seminal events in military history dispells many of the myths surrounding Cambrai 1917 of World War I (1914-1918). Common perception classifies it as the "world's first tank battle" but Alexander Turner shows us that the real importance of Cambrai was that it saw the first use of armor as an operational shock tactic. With the pre-eminence of armor, the conduct of war was irrevocably changed. The battle also heralded the combined use of aircraft, armor, and artillery, marking the birth of modern combined-arms techniques. Written by a military historian and serving soldier, this is a fascinating analysis of a battle which was a stalemate, yet spawned a host of war-winning tactics.

When tanks, the newly invented British weapon, were used for the first time in a mass attack on November 20 1917, they not only achieved one of the most remarkable successes of the First World War but set the pattern for the future of mechanized warfare. For the first time in three years of bloody trench warfare, epitomized by the slaughter at Passchendaele which was then reaching its climax, tanks brought about a breakthrough of the massive German defense system of the Hindenburg Line, followed up by British infantry and cavalry divisions. They were supported for the first time by low flying fighter aircraft of the Royal Flying Corps. The initial victory at Cambrai brought cheering crowds into the streets of London and the ringing of church bells in celebration. In seemed possible that the success might bring about the final defeat of Germany. But the British High Command failed to exploit the success. Generals who still dreamt of massive cavalry charges had not had much faith in this strange new weapon that had been brought to them funded initially by the Royal Navy at the behest of Winston Churchill who was then First Lord of the Admiralty and did see its value. The High Command did not really believe the breakthrough was possible and tragically miscalculated the necessary steps to follow it up. Within days the Germans counterattacked and regained much of the ground that the British had won. What could have been the final victory was delayed for another year.

Featuring the careers of forty-three men, this volume tells the story of the Battle of Cambrai, famous for being the first occasion when tanks were used en masse in battle. Its first day was so successful that church bells in Britain were rung in anticipation of a great victory. A tank crewman numbers among the recipients of the VC.Containing biographies of a broad cross-section of men from Britain and the Dominions including Canada, Australia, New Zealand and even the Ukraine. It includes a sapper, a former miner, who chose to stay with his seriously wounded colleague underground and die with him, rather than obey an order to leave him and save his own life; a maverick lieutenant-colonel who was relieved of his command and a padre who worked tirelessly over a period of three nights bringing at least twenty-five men to safety from No Man’s Land, who otherwise would have been left to die.

In this volume, Gliddon covers the men who won the Victoria Cross on the Western Front in 1916 prior to the beginning of the Battle of the Somme on 1st July, together with those who won the medal after the Battle of Paschendaele petered out at the end of October 1917.

After the great victory in the famous tank battle at Cambrai in 1917 the church bells, having been silent for three years, rang out joyously all over Britain But within ten days triumph turned to disaster. How did this hapPen & why?William Moore, a distinguished First World War historian, attempts to explain what went wrong. All the advantages gained were thrown away; thousands of British troops were captured and hundreds of guns were lost. Seventy years after these events Mr Moore has studied the evidence (much of it previously unpublished) contained in the inevitable enquiry that followed the disaster and he seeks to answer a number of questions. Was Field-Marshal Haig really as dour as he has been portrayed or was he a reckless gambler and was General Byng, whose troops and guns were captured, really a brilliant planner or a haughty aristocrat dedicated to proving that cavalry still had a place on the battlefield? And why were they both obsessed with capturing Bourlon Ridge on which stood the sinister Bourlon Wood? A Highland Division, a Welsh Brigade, a Yorkshire Division (twice), the Guards, Ulstermen, Lancashire-men, Londoners and Midlanders- all were drawn into the maelstrom in an attempt to consolidate the Cambrai victory They failed. It was left to the Canadians to carry the Bourlon position in one of the finest feats of arms of the Great War. The British are always reputed to take a perverce interest in their own military blunders. This strange episode is one that most people have been happy to forget. All those involved in hight places sought to make excuses; some indulged in a profound exercise of duplicity implying that the soldiers themselves were to blame. Mr Moor's book throws new light on a dark episode in British Military History.