The British and Armored Forces

The British Army during the closing years of World War I employed a new weapon, the tank, to achieve dramatic breakthroughs across the barbed wire and trenches that otherwise defined the attritional warfare. Though the British fielded their first technologically-challenged tanks for infantry support, the Army’s pioneering use of them en mass on the battlefields at Cambrai and Amiens illuminated the revolutionary potential for large-scale, independent offensive armor operations. As described by Harold Winton, the British Army’s innovative prowess was on full display by war’s end with the new Tank Corps that “from a figment of the imagination, had become a force of 20 battalions and 12 armored car companies,” and that due to its dynamic performance at the tactical-level formed the crux of new visions for armor operations. ¹ The enthusiasm spilled over into the initial interwar period, as the British Army spearheaded significant technological, tactical, doctrinal, and organizational advances. These early achievements were nourished by constructive debate over mechanized versus armored warfare, and by decisions to create a permanent Tank Brigade and expand the Royal Tank Corps. This was complemented by forward-leaning experimentation in command, control, communications, and maneuverability that by the early 1930s placed Britain at the vanguard of transformation to combined arms warfare.