Earlier tanks

MrP

Banned
In order to get tanks there has to be the will to produce tanks (the technology was there). In order to get the will cavelry has to be proved to be redundant. In order to do that you need machine guns.

So... Earlier Tanks = Earlier Machine Guns (in widespread use)

Actually, cavalry could be demonstrated redundant in one area while remaining useful in another. While it was still used as a combat arm, it had a valuable reconnaissance function as well as increasing communications when the horse is the fastest way of transmitting a message - though bicycles were spreading. Even the Belgians had a bicycle battalion in their cavalry division in WWI. If you had a large die-off of horses (didn't Ward post a scenario based on this in ASB or pre-1900 once?), then you'd see them replaced with something else.
 
Actually, cavalry could be demonstrated redundant in one area while remaining useful in another. While it was still used as a combat arm, it had a valuable reconnaissance function as well as increasing communications when the horse is the fastest way of transmitting a message - though bicycles were spreading. Even the Belgians had a bicycle battalion in their cavalry division in WWI. If you had a large die-off of horses (didn't Ward post a scenario based on this in ASB or pre-1900 once?), then you'd see them replaced with something else.
Ah - the communications utility of the horse is something that is secondary to it's main cavalry role. Horses need food, water, stable hands etc... something not needed with bicycles. Recon by early balloon, biplane etc was also reducing the role of the horse. Not that horses are redundant... just their role is diminished. Horses were still used to haul guns and transport goods via wagon train.

Conceivably an earlier/more widely produce/better machine gun would have led to an interesting change of tactics. Make it light enough to put on a horse, carry the tripod and ammo on yet anoher horse... maybe a group of 6 horses for 2 machine guns. Put a mortar on a 7th horse, and the ammo on an 8th. Suddenly you have an 8-man 8-horse squad able to move rapidly, attack from a distance with a mortar and a pair of machine guns.

Standard cavalry wouldn't stand a chance, and their ability to move fast and bipass static defences make tranch warfare redundant. You now get a fast moving form of warfare where the ability to cover ground, set up your weapons and move on before the enemy can mount a counter-attack is far more important than having heavy guns to pound away at the enemy.

The role of static positions such as gun emplacements and trenches becomes redundant. You get tactics and units that rely upon speed and flexibility. Just as Hitler in WW2 completely bipassed the French defences, an enemy fighting these strike-teams would find themselves outflanked and cut off, then once lines of communication are down you send in the infantry to clear up the enemy using grenades and rifles. The cavalry would support this idea, as it keeps their position of prestige as an elite force.

Eventually in WW1, instead of the tank you'd see the development of lightly armoured rapid attack vehicles with mortars and machine guns, travelling in small squads. Something like a souped-up model T with larger wheels, or a Triumph trike?

"The Veloco... something?"

Hmm... "The Mechacav" ... Mechanical Cavelry

In this ATL we may see body-armour becoming heavier as these new mechanised knights need not carry their own weight. The members of a Mechacav squad would be able to rely upon cover less, but wouldn't have to carry their own weight (ie - less marching with packs), so we may see body-armour coming in a lot sooner. There was body-armour in WW1 & WW2 but the main point against it's use was that it was damn heavy and often saw the wearer taking a heavier wound from the shrapnel of the armour than the bullet would have caused itself. Conceivably you'd see 'heavy' squads with heavy body armour and 'light' Mechacav squads about... and some 'Heavy' squads would choose to ditch armour to gain speed/range/fuel_efficiency and some light 'squads' would add it. As the Mechacav evolve we'd see the armour moving from the individual to the vehicle (enclosed vehicles as opposed to open vehicles) and individual armour for the Infantry troops and the Mechacav members getting more similar as technologies develop.

You'd get a very different history of ground warfare. Tanks as we know them would (eventually) develop by WW2 but at first they'd be more like mobile emplacements, refueling their outrunning fast-attack-vehicles and mainly used offencively for long-distance shelling. They'd not be as heavily armoured as OTL tanks because they'd rely upon a squad fast-attack-vehicles for defence (and maybe squads stationed on them firing rifles), sort of like an aircraft carrier and escorting frigates.

Infantry would see body-armour a lot sooner, and with the faster Mechacav to cover ground the infantry wouldn't need to travel as fast and would be able to make use of the 'mobile emplacement' that is the centre of each formation to store armour on and take a rest on when the COs not looking.

Air warfare would develop in a similar way, but we may see ariel refueling a lot earlier to extend the range and mobility of fighters and bombers. I want to avoid saying 'zeplins' here because that is so cliche, but... zeplins.

If Hitler isn't butterflied away and we still get WW2 we'd end up with German rocket-trikes with huuuuuge inflated wheels (rubber+metal_mesh?) and rocket launchers thumping along, and improved British/American jeeps/landrovers with machine guns and mortars being the standard attack machine of the Allies. We'd still see tanks, but the emphasis will be on speed rather than armour.

By the late 20th century we'd see modern warfare being much the same, though with more 'humvee' type vehicles with mortars/grenade-launchers/machine guns/other and slightly less heavy armoured vehicles. The (fewer) tanks that we'd end up with would be bigger but less heavily armoured and with more emphasis on 'active' defences. We'd get heavily armoured foot soldier troops just as we do now, I don't forsee that we'd get power-armour by the end of the 21st century without some other changes so we'd see the Mechacav armour getting lighter and the Infantry armour getting heavier until you have a sort of standard armour system such as the ones employed by modern forces. Having said that the ripples caused by the earlier creation of the machine gun and the changes in history could see different military R&D priorities and I can certainly see that for urban warfare power-armour (that is to say very heavy power-assisted armour like a wearable super-light tank) supported by a squad of infantry would be mightily handy, as well as being something for dictators to spend their money on instead of large tanks.
 
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MrP

Banned
Aye, your idea of using horses to carry the equipment is sensible. WWI-era machine guns weighed about 20kg (Acc. to p.303, WWI Databook: Austrian Schwarzlose 19.9kg, French Hotchkiss 23.6kg, Chauchat 9.1kg, German Maxim MG08 26.4kg, Italian Fiat-Revelli 17kg, Russian Maxim M1910 23.8kg, British Vickers Mk I 18.1kg, Lewis 11.8kg unloaded, US Browning 14.97kg without coolant). HMG mounts "usually weighed more than the gun. The Vickers tripod, for example, weighed 21.8 kg. and the wheeled mount for the Russian Maxim 49.8 kg. The Chauchat and Lewis bipod mounts weighed only 1 kg. or so." It'd take a few minutes to get the gun off the horse and prepare for action, but you'd have a high-firepower mobile screening force with low manpower requirements.

I disagree that they'd make trenches redundant. If the entrenched position is properly defended on both flanks, contains integral machine guns and has support from divisional artillery, then flanking manoeuvres may be every bit as impossible as they were in WWI.

I agree about the utility of the bicycle. There was a lot invested in the horse, and it would take a sea-change in military thinking to remove it from all spheres of military operations. Provided the backbone of Germany's supply units in WWII, IIRC.

If Hitler isn't butterflied away and we still get WW2 we'd end up with German rocket-trikes with huuuuuge inflated wheels and rocket launchers thumping along,

Something like the Nebelerfer? ;)
 
Aye, your idea of using horses to carry the equipment is sensible. [...] It'd take a few minutes to get the gun off the horse and prepare for action, but you'd have a high-firepower mobile screening force with low manpower requirements.

I disagree that they'd make trenches redundant. If the entrenched position is properly defended on both flanks, contains integral machine guns and has support from divisional artillery, then flanking manoeuvres may be every bit as impossible as they were in WWI.

A trench is used to defend teritory. Say you have a series of trenches running North-South with your objective (lets call it Berlin for the sake of argument) behind them.

You take your FAC (fast attack cavalry) northwards staying out of range of the machine guns and moving too quickly for the artilery to get a firing solution on you (they can still shell you but it will be impresive luck rather than planning if they hit). You then stake out an area of land and use your mortars and MGs to prevent the enemy aproaching, moving every so often to prevent a firing solution.

You send a second lot of FAC southwards to prevent them moving the artilery forwards and keep them away from you (the 2nd force of FAC are split into multi-squad forces who go south, shell the hell out of things and then withdraw away back North while the next lot are moving into position). In order to get to your 1st Force they have to move infantry up through land which has your 2nd Force randomly sallying into and blasting the hell out of. Your 2nd Force dosn't have to worry about digging in or being shelled by their own side because you are not using artilery at all here.

Your 3rd Force (possibly FAC wearing heavier body armour) moves around to the far North behind the 1st Force. They destroy any troops with MG fire and shell any MG bunkers with mortars. Then they push onwards to the rear of the enemy and harry the supply lines, preventing artilery shells and food reaching the enemy troops in the trenches.

You then move your infantry around up behind your 1st Force following the path trod by the 3rd FAC Force.

You have now got the enemy pinned down to the South, they need to re-dig trenches and move their artilery and by the time they have done that you have already gone from where you were.


There may be some obvious flaws in these tactics that I can't see, however you are basically using hit-and-run tactics to deny ground to an enemy who can't move quickly and then using that captured ground to move troops towards the actual objective. These tactics won't be suitable for every occasion, but should work here.

Doing this renders the trench philosophy invalid. Trench warfare only works if both parties are willing to meet on a battlefield and fight it out over a couple of square miles of mud (and why would you want to?). You bypass the defenders entirely, turning their defences into a hinderence for them. Basically it's what Hitler did when invading France but on a smaller scale and many years earlier.
 
Do remember this is 1905-14. Command control isn't done by radio sets. We are talking runners, riders perhaps field phones or lending a phone by some farmer living nearby your area of operations.
Command control at the time hardly permits troops going about unsupported and in total autonomy. Higher echelons need to know what is going on and where its troops are. A change of orders in optimum conditions would take 24 hours. Don't expect the level of initiative at low level, Sgt. Grunt, of the German army of 1940.
 
Conceivably an earlier/more widely produce/better machine gun would have led to an interesting change of tactics. Make it light enough to put on a horse, carry the tripod and ammo on yet anoher horse... maybe a group of 6 horses for 2 machine guns. Put a mortar on a 7th horse, and the ammo on an 8th. Suddenly you have an 8-man 8-horse squad able to move rapidly, attack from a distance with a mortar and a pair of machine guns.
Conceptually, it's really interesting, but I don't think it's credible for the period doctrine. It seems too 20hC, to me: it makes me think of Sam Peckinpah making "Rat Patrol: The Movie". OTL, we have no problem imagining this, or doing it, but I doubt anybody in the era OTL/TTL would. MG/Gatling gun were treated like artillery from 1860s into around WW1 (& judging by the mounts & weight of the guns, with reason). Seems to me, you need somebody with real vision to conceive this between the invention of the Gatling gun & OTL WW1, then a small war to test the theory, before it gets widely accepted/adopted...

Actually, I see another option, workable around WW1: armored trucks. Presume no exposure to trench warfare, but a recognition MG makes inf vulnerable. Need to move them under armor, so add armor to trucks (in the fashion of BTR-40s). Combine them with armored cars. Add 4x4/6x6/8x8 as needed...& only go to tracks after these've proven inadequate...
 
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One possibility for early tanks is the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5. The POD might be that the IJN demands that the IJA must take Port Arthur before the Russian Baltic Fleet arrives. Meanwhile the IJA believes that Port Arthur was going to be hard to capture quickly because of its large and well supplied garrison. Such discussions might even have happened OTL. However, OTL presumably optimistic IJA commanders such as Nogi assured the Navy that Port Arthur would fall quickly. ITTL perhaps someone from R. Hornsby & Son was in Japan trying to sell their tractors to the IJA and mentioned their new tracted version (Hornsby had won a contract for a wheeled tractor for the British Army in 1903 and built a tracted version in 1904. More data can be found at http://www.oldengine.org/members/ruston/History2.htm). If the defences were believed to include trenches, an armoured tractor might have seemed a good idea and then someone might realize that carrying a small gun might be better than trying to tow one.

It is all rather a tight timetable and probably Port Arthur will fall before the five (guessing how many Japan would order) armoured tractors arrive but now the design will exist.
 
Political conflicts...

One possibility as for reasons:
The cavalry was prestigious and powerful--but what if some ruler or government had a political need to reduce the influence of the cavalry. Now you have a peacetime reason to make tanks.

(Perhaps a prince or general got drummed out of the cavalry, or the cav looked down their noses at a king that served in the navy or some other brance of the service, or quashed an artillery procurement because he wanted more hirses, or whatever...)
 
Not so much earlier tanks but earlier types of tanks.

Could the Vickers A1E1 Independent be fitted with a 6pdr rather than the 3pdr it was actually fitted with?

Could you have a turreted tank like the A1E1 in appearance (those with just the main gun in a turret) sooner?
 
Badump-a-dump-ba-bump
Clearly such a significant contribution demands a response.

My first idea assumed a superluminal application of the first Hornsby tracked tractor. My problem was that there were few wars with conditions demanding tanks between 1905 and 1914. However, first Schlieffen and then Moltke did have a serious problem with Liege and its forts. Schlieffen had originally planned to bypass Liege via the Netherlands. Moltke believed the forts could be taken using artillery which succeeded in 1914 with some delay. The forts were mostly underground and would have probably resisted even WW2 tanks. However, the designer of the forts, Brialmont, had called for smaller fortifications and trench lines to be built linking and protecting the main forts. This was not actual done.

Thus the POD is that in about 1908-9 Moltke receives an intelligence report (not necessarily accurate) that trench lines are being planned to protect the forts and discusses the problem with Wilhelm Groener who was the expert on railway timetables and would be very concerned by any delays. Groener and his fairly intelligent subordinate Kurt von Schleicher discuss the trenches. Schleicher remembers the Hornsby tractors and suggests an armoured tractor to cross trenches and engage small forts by direct fire. Thus the German Army produces and tests some tanks in secret between 1910 and 1914.
 

MrP

Banned
Clearly such a significant contribution demands a response.

My first idea assumed a superluminal application of the first Hornsby tracked tractor. My problem was that there were few wars with conditions demanding tanks between 1905 and 1914. However, first Schlieffen and then Moltke did have a serious problem with Liege and its forts. Schlieffen had originally planned to bypass Liege via the Netherlands. Moltke believed the forts could be taken using artillery which succeeded in 1914 with some delay. The forts were mostly underground and would have probably resisted even WW2 tanks. However, the designer of the forts, Brialmont, had called for smaller fortifications and trench lines to be built linking and protecting the main forts. This was not actual done.

Thus the POD is that in about 1908-9 Moltke receives an intelligence report (not necessarily accurate) that trench lines are being planned to protect the forts and discusses the problem with Wilhelm Groener who was the expert on railway timetables and would be very concerned by any delays. Groener and his fairly intelligent subordinate Kurt von Schleicher discuss the trenches. Schleicher remembers the Hornsby tractors and suggests an armoured tractor to cross trenches and engage small forts by direct fire. Thus the German Army produces and tests some tanks in secret between 1910 and 1914.

That's a rather nifty idea. Even the discovery of the true state of the fortifications won't necessarily stop the research once it has bureaucratic inertia.
 
I'd go with the Boer War PoD as being the best here - perhaps a couple of successful engagements between armoured road trains and Boer raiders are witnessed by journalists who make a big deal out of the fruits of the workshop of the world overcoming the uncivilized Boer. This leads to their potential being explored a bit, and the proposal to add guns to them accepted. This leads to the Royal Artillery becoming interested in them, and so they are developed as a form of armoured direct fire self propelled artillery.

This is obviously not competing with the role of the cavalry to begin with. Over the next decade, the armoured road train concept is refined, and some variants developed, including machine gun armed ones. When the BEF is formed, a few experimental squadrons are included. Assuming no butterflies, these are deployed to Ffrance when war begins, and have sufficent public success that they are retained and developed further, so that when treench warfare sets in someone comes up with the concept of using them as the mailed fist of an attack, supported by industry, in order to open the reach the cavalry can exploit.

The cavalry proves useful, but the breaching force does prove useful.
 
Wouldn't this also result in earlier anti-tank weapons? if military doctrine wouldn't change an earlier introduction of tanks might not have any effect.

Regards,
Rhysz
 
I'd go with the Boer War PoD as being the best here - perhaps a couple of successful engagements between armoured road trains and Boer raiders are witnessed by journalists who make a big deal out of the fruits of the workshop of the world overcoming the uncivilized Boer. This leads to their potential being explored a bit, and the proposal to add guns to them accepted. This leads to the Royal Artillery becoming interested in them, and so they are developed as a form of armoured direct fire self propelled artillery.

This is obviously not competing with the role of the cavalry to begin with. Over the next decade, the armoured road train concept is refined, and some variants developed, including machine gun armed ones. When the BEF is formed, a few experimental squadrons are included. Assuming no butterflies, these are deployed to Ffrance when war begins, and have sufficent public success that they are retained and developed further, so that when treench warfare sets in someone comes up with the concept of using them as the mailed fist of an attack, supported by industry, in order to open the reach the cavalry can exploit.

The cavalry proves useful, but the breaching force does prove useful.

With this exposure of effects of tanks or rather self-propelled guns my gues is that KUK engineer first-lieutenant Günther Burstyn is going to recieve far more attention from A-H and Imperial Germany regarding his tank design.

So we have BEF using sp guns moving on Hornsby tracks to breach the defences for the cavalry and this to be defeated and BEF rolled up by IG tank force!

Of course the development of tanks/sp guns would necessiate the development of AT.

One thought though - the Holt got gasoline engines in 1908. With less commercial use of cars in the era in question the IG isn't going to do a 1940 roadside refuelling from French petrol stations! Logistics anyone???
Tankers, mobile workshops for maintenance and repair as well as later on salvage of broken down vehicles.
Tactical doctrine??? Being filthy right! :D

Now let the experts enter!
 
With this exposure of effects of tanks or rather self-propelled guns my gues is that KUK engineer first-lieutenant Günther Burstyn is going to recieve far more attention from A-H and Imperial Germany regarding his tank design.

Not neccassarily. I'm not sure if the Austrian military had an intelligence operation within the British army. The British should retain the advantage of first development and first tactical experience. Even when the continental powers get involved the British will probably have a five year head start.

So we have BEF using sp guns moving on Hornsby tracks to breach the defences for the cavalry and this to be defeated and BEF rolled up by IG tank force!
Can't happen. The early tanks are so heavy and slow they can only be used in the context of static war or close to your railheads. The advancing Germans will have to leave any tanks they have developed behind, and will run into the British ones. Paradoxically, the early invention of tanks may actually serve to enhance the defenders exiting advantage even more than IOTL, as it means that startegic as well as tactical defense is strengthened.
 
Not neccassarily. I'm not sure if the Austrian military had an intelligence operation within the British army. The British should retain the advantage of first development and first tactical experience. Even when the continental powers get involved the British will probably have a five year head start.

Why would they need an intelligence operation? YOU wrote of jounalists in the Boer war - don't you think the Austrians would have an interest in said subject? I think they would come to know - even in that day before TV and Internet peoples did run intelligence operations and did read each others newspapers. Or do you think that is also a modern, say post 1990 trait!

Can't happen. The early tanks are so heavy and slow they can only be used in the context of static war or close to your railheads. The advancing Germans will have to leave any tanks they have developed behind, and will run into the British ones. Paradoxically, the early invention of tanks may actually serve to enhance the defenders exiting advantage even more than IOTL, as it means that startegic as well as tactical defense is strengthened.

Indeed, indeed. Hence my remarks on logistics!

Of course the advent of tanks didn't break the stalemate but with both sides having those at the outbreak of war things just might proceed somewhat different then OTL.
 
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Aamco is one of the few surviving Franchises from that time.

One of the problems with Earlier tanks is that the Metallurgy isn't up to the Task.
 
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