ABSTRACT
During the Great War the British pioneered military thought on armoured warfare and developed many of its basic tools. They produced not only armoured cars for reconnaissance, heavy tanks for breakthrough and medium tanks for pursuit and exploitation, but bridging tanks, gun-carrying tanks (crude self-propelled guns) and a variant of the Mark V (the Mark V*) tank which was intended partly as an armoured personnel carrier. By 1918 the term ‘mechanical warfare’ 1 was not infrequently seen in British staff papers and ‘armoured forces’ was entering circulation. 2 While armour was still a fairly minor factor, even in the run of victories which brought the war to an end, the evidence is strong that tanks saved British and Commonwealth lives, helped maintain the momentum of attacks and sometimes precipitated the surrender of German troops. Though their French allies were not far behind, using substantial numbers of tanks with considerable success in 1918, throughout the war the British were the leaders in the field. The Germans trailed badly, employing tanks for the first time in the spring of 1918 and never on a significant scale in this war.
