Brilliantlight
Banned
What would be the results? Better tank tatics? How much would tanks be improved? How would they have been improved, more armor or more speed?
British invent tank a year earlier
- Thread starter Brilliantlight
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Value of World War One Tanks are overrated. People like to think they were two steps removed from their World War Two versions and it's more like a dozen steps removed.
Col Swinton is usually given credit for the "invention" of the tank (though an Austrian officer had a similar idea earlier) in autumn of 1914. This is right after the beginning of the war. Churchill tanks an interest in the program in 1915 after which the development gets very serious. The problem with the POD is that in Jan 1914 there is no war. So there is no way a program with wartime resources available to it would get started in Jan 1914.
So its hard to see the British being able to have tanks ready for the Battle of Loos in autumn 1915. After that there is no real opportunity to use them until the Somme. It might be that they have more tanks and using them at the very beginning of that battle. They would have a bigger surprise panic inducing effect and so the BEF does better at the Somme. The question then becomes how much better? I don't see it being battle that wins the war better. The Germans will still realize all the historical limitations of Great War tanks and develop tactics and weapons to defeat them.
Col Swinton is usually given credit for the "invention" of the tank (though an Austrian officer had a similar idea earlier) in autumn of 1914. This is right after the beginning of the war. Churchill tanks an interest in the program in 1915 after which the development gets very serious. The problem with the POD is that in Jan 1914 there is no war. So there is no way a program with wartime resources available to it would get started in Jan 1914.
So its hard to see the British being able to have tanks ready for the Battle of Loos in autumn 1915. After that there is no real opportunity to use them until the Somme. It might be that they have more tanks and using them at the very beginning of that battle. They would have a bigger surprise panic inducing effect and so the BEF does better at the Somme. The question then becomes how much better? I don't see it being battle that wins the war better. The Germans will still realize all the historical limitations of Great War tanks and develop tactics and weapons to defeat them.
Brilliantlight
Banned
Tom_B said:
POD GB gets nervous about a resurgent Germany two years before the war breaks out and does some serious R&D and the someone comes up with the tank. GB is nervous but does not wish to enter a war at that time.
Brilliantlight said:
Prior to experience of trenches it was believed cavalry will exploit breakthroughs and there was no need for tanks.
Best you could have are cross-country tractors used to haul arty. They could be modified with armor plates. But then again, it will take some time to realsie cavalry is obsoelte and you can't breakthrough with infantry and by that tiem you can have tanks develoepd as in OTL:
What about armored cars
Weren't they available earlier in the war? What if the British first experimented with them, and then had a slightly more developed mobile warfare doctrine in place when tanks became available?
I still think they wouldn't have had that big an impact. There were too many problems with speed and mechanical unreliability. Essentially, WWI tanks could create the breakthrough but not the exploitation. However, a mass armored offensive at the Somme would sharply reduce the infantry casualties sustained in the initial assaults, and that might allow the offensives to go on longer.
Weren't they available earlier in the war? What if the British first experimented with them, and then had a slightly more developed mobile warfare doctrine in place when tanks became available?
I still think they wouldn't have had that big an impact. There were too many problems with speed and mechanical unreliability. Essentially, WWI tanks could create the breakthrough but not the exploitation. However, a mass armored offensive at the Somme would sharply reduce the infantry casualties sustained in the initial assaults, and that might allow the offensives to go on longer.
Brilliantlight
Banned
aktarian said:
A British general pays attention to the American Civil War history and realizes that cavalry was already near useless except as scouts.
Brilliantlight said:
The problem is that the various generals were studying the Franco-Prussian War, which seemed, on the surface, to somewhat invalidate the experience of the "armed American mobs" (as Europeans thought of them) who fought in the ACW. And even in the ACW, the use of cavalry as a means of exploitation was done very successfully by Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest in various campaigns and by the Union cavalry under General Sheridan (the battles of Five Forks and Sayler's Creek, for example) and James H. Wilson (whose 1865 campaign has been cited as the first example of "blitzkrieg" warfare) at the end of the war. So a British general studying the ACW is not really going to have a clear-cut example showing the "uselessness" of cavalry.
Grey Wolf said:
Agreed. So their impact would likely be to lower British infantry casualties. For example, there is a mass tank deployment at the Somme. The British have a breakthrough without anything like the casulaties they sustained OTL. However, as they advance, they their tanks breakdown and they lose communications with their artillery, so they have a harder time with the German backup defenses. So, no war-ending breakthrough but the British, with fewer casualities, are able to sustain the offensive longer and gain more ground before things peter out. The Germans probably have to pull troops from Verdun sooner.