In late 1914 after observing a small American-made caterpillar tractor in France, Lt. Col. Ernest D. Swinton, an English officer, recommended to the British Committee of Imperial Defense that caterpillar tractors be armored and armed for use in combat. Although his proposal was not immediately accepted by the committee, it gained strong support of one of its members, Winston S. Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty.
The Royal Navy, largely at Churchill's urging, sponsored experiments and tests of the vehicle as a type of "land ship" during 1915, and the tank at last became a reality. In an effort to keep secret the real purpose of the early models when they were being shipped to France, the English labeled them tanks- for use as water tanks by Russia. Thus originated the name of tank for the new weapon. The naval background of the tank's development also explains such nautical tank terms as hatch, hull, bow, and ports. The great secrecy surrounding tank development, coupled with the skepticism of infantry commanders, often meant that infantry had little training to cooperate with tanks. As a result, the infantry would become separated from the tanks, allowing the German infantry to defeat the two arms separately.
Small, local attacks, beginning at Flers on the Somme on 15 September 1916, dissipated the initial surprise of the tank. Not until 20 November 1917, at Cambrai, did the British Tank Corps get the conditions it needed for success. Around 400 tanks penetrated almost six miles on a 7-mile front in an attack at Cambrai. This was the first large-scale employment of tanks in combat. Unfortunately, success was not complete because the infantry failed to exploit and secure the tanks' gains. The British scored another victory the following year, on 8 August 1918, with 600 tanks in the Amiens salient. General Eric von Ludendorff referred to that date as the "Black Day" of the German Army. The German response to the Cambrai assault was to develop its own armored program. Soon the massive A7V appeared. The A7V was a monster, weighing 30 tons with a crew of eighteen. By the end of the war, only fifteen had been built. Although other tanks were on the drawing board, material shortages limited the German tank corps to these A7V’s and some captured Mark IV’s. The A7V would be involved in the first tank versus tank battle of the war on April 24, 1918 at Villers-Bretonneux -- a battle in which there was no clear winner.
