WWI with tanks

In My Humble Opinion
1

suppose some minor skirmish would have taken place before WWI that showed the values of an armoured mobile cannon. Then WWI would have not digressed into a trench war. Would that have been better or worse? I assume that it would not have lasted as long and not as many would have lost their life and US would not have gotten into it at all.

This assumes that there were not technological breakthroughs that made the tank feasible. If that is so then why was Germany so slow to develop their own version. seems pretty simple to me.

2

There might have been serious probles with a pre WW1 tank. Specifically, the engine.

Aviation in WW1 caused the very rapid developement of the I.C. engine.Fast/better fighters, etc. A tank with earlier I.C. engines wouldn’t have been able to haul much armor, or a very big cannon.

3

It might have worked with steam engines, though. By 1914, the automotive steam engine was a common and well developed technology, as were steam tractors. It’d have played hell on endurance, and God help you if a boiler was holed, but it would’ve been practical, if not terribly efficient.

4

Actually, come to think on it… Tanks were built to break the stalemate of trench warfare. If the trenching never got started, Tanks would then only be used in sieges, while armored cars would be the arm of decision. In early 20th century Europe, calvary was still the prestige arm of the army. If some visonary had gotten the calvary to adopt aromored cars to enhance and support the horse calvary, you might very well have seen charges of lighly armored cars, equipped with machine guns, light cannon, and possibly manned by one or two gunners, a driver, and a mechanic.

Interesting…

5

Actually, I think you’d see a lot of armored cars mired in the mud. You’re talking about tires as thin as bicycle wheels and engines that didn’t have much power.

And paved roads? What are paved roads?

6

True, but also true of tanks, and again, we’re not talking about shell-torn battlegrounds situated between fortified trenches, we’re talking about roads (yes, mostly unmetaled), fields, and farmland. Not ideal ground for vehicular trafic even today, and pretty crappy back then, but let me introduce you to the Rolls-Royce armored car, the Triota-Lancia armored car, the Carden-Loyd Mark V Two Man Tankette, and the worlds first production armored car, from 1904, the French Charron armored car.
Other countries heard from:
Japan: A Vickers Model 25
United States: A Ford Model T with an experimental canvas-and-cleat track system for defeating mud. Road speed was as high as 30 mph.
Austria: This is actually an anti-aircraf vehicle, with a 50mm gun, from 1906. Big bang for the era.

So, yeah, lots of bogged-down armored cars, but I bet if someone had got the calvary interested in them, we would have seen some interesting developments…

7

Tranquilis … are you a student of history? You seem to know what you’re talking about.
I’ve heard of this kind of scenario before. The big thang that many either don’t know about or (I think in your case) gloss over to avoid being bogged down in details, was the main reason for the war to be waged so stupidly to begin with; the machinegun.
“Trench Warfare” was already in development by default before the 20th century due to massive advances in the automatic fairearm … look at Britain’s Maxim!
For this reason, I think the tank (barrel, whatever you want to call it) is such an overlooked and unimportant part of that war as to not have been a factor to begin with.

8

You are forgetting one key technological advancement that makes mobile warfare possible:

RADIOS.

It’s a misconception that trench warfare was entirely due to the lack of tanks and supremacy of machine guns. That helped, but the truth is that the lack of portable radios had as much to do with it as anything else.

The problem that faced the armies along the Western Front was that their modes of communication were simply not fast or efficient enough to keep up with sustained offensive warfare. The armies doing the fighting were the largest armies in human history, many, many times arger than anything that had ever been used before. For the first time a war was being fought on a scale so large that the commanders could not physically see what was going on; they relied on a staff structure and timely intelligence to relay the necessary information to them. They had to; a human being can’t be at every point along 200 miles of front at once. But without radios, and with telephone wires subject to destruction by bombardment, it was not uncommon for messages between army/corps headquarters and the front to take six to eight hours to be passed along.

The typical mode of attack was a massive preparatory bombardment followed by an infantry assault. Contrary to popular belief, this often worked. However, once the initial force had taken enemy trenches, they were beyond easy communication. Subjected to coutnerattacks, they had no efficient way to call for artillery support or reinforcement, or to receive additional orders. Many, many, many successful attacks simply bogged down and ended up going nowhere. The two sides tried to compesnate for this by planning attacks in exacting detail, but in the end the plans would always break down at some point, and the attacking forces would find themselves without arty support and orders. They had to use runners for communication, which is deathly slow and deadly for the runners. There was no radio a man could carry with him at the time, so the problem could not be solved.

Tanks aren’t of any use in real mobile warfare without radios. The tanks used in WWI were effective (sometimes) at making the initial breakthrough easier. But without radio, the attacks would have continued to bog down.

9

The British had radios in some aircraft for reconnaissance. (Gilbert, Martin. The First World War)

He also mentions that the Germans had radio communication difficulties in a battle that I’m to lazy to look up.

If the tanks of the time had been a few years earlier, perhaps the trenches whould have been ddper and wider?

10

Hmmm, excellent points, both, Ruick Jay and Carni. Many of the battles I look at are ancient, and I tent to look over the issue of communication.
Not to disagree with you, just bringing something else up, a major factor in warfare was not that they had less people … armies in battle of the Greek and Roman day often totald (sp, I know … drunk) many , many thousands … over 100,000 for a well-equiped army against a lesser.
However, it was a matter of ever-importance in warfare: terrain.
Get 100,000 troops in a valley and you are lookin’ at a bad time no matter if you have accurate communications or not.
Again, not to argue; I know you are correct, but recall this as well.

11

Can’t help myself…

WWI with tanks.
You’re welcome.

12

This only reinforces the point. The armies on the Western Front was MUCH bigger than that - millions of men were facing one another.

Furthermore, a gunpowder-armed army assumes more space per man than a muscle-powered army. A Roman army of 50,000 men would probably not occupy a frontage of more than a kilometre, at the most, when deployed for battle. Simply put, when you’re using swords and spears, you need to stick together to protect your buddies. Density helps.

That’s NOT true when you’re armed with rifles; fire support can be provided to you from hundreds of yards away, and you can kill a man a few hundred yards away with ease. Below a certain level, density is now a BAD thing, because packing together improves the effectiveness of enemy arms. A platoon of soldiers, about 30 men, can cover 50-100 yards of front with ease and can covers acres of land with effective fire. 50,000 men (about four divisions) can cover fifty MILES of front, with substantial artillery coverage, reserve forces, and flanking forces. The Space an army occupied in 1914 was bigger than ever before.

13

What I think the OP is forgetting is that before the stalemate of trench warfare, there was no need for tanks. Tanks were invented by the British specifically to crush the barbed wire and clear sections of enemy trenches-providing a breakthrough for the following infantry to exploit. It worked to an extent, but WWI tanks were just too slow to be much good. Tanks were an specific solution to a particular problem-The doctrine of tanks as an armored “fist” to make a powerful, rapid strike against the enemy were not developed until the 30s by Germany. U.S. tanks were seen as scouts, and even the tank we entered WWII with-the M3- was a deathtrap against enemy armor.

14

Gorgon Heap, sure enough I skipped over th details of the machinegun, and only went after the OP. I study history for pleasure, and at some points in my life, it was actually applicable to my career (navy).
Actually, Trench warfare existed very far back, with the beginings of it likely predating the Roman Empire. Trench warfare is siege warfare. The means of killing change, and the size of the armies and the reach of the weapons likewise, but anytime you had two forces that really wanted a piece of ground, if one could get there first to fortify and garrison it, you’d have to go to a siege to ry them out, and that involved essentially building a fort around the fort, partly facing in to hold the defenders in place, and partly facing out, to prevent relief efforts.

On reasonably open ground, or when there was nothing worth sacrificing you mobility for, armies would face off and try to beat the hell out of each other in a slugging match. When that happens, communication and mobilty are key. The calvary supplied both, as well as being elite shock troops. The last really war where horse calvary could be decisive was probably the American Civil War, and even then, the calvary had turned into mounted riflemen, rather than saber-charging gallants. By the time of WWI, many European armies had failed to learn this, mostly discounting the ACW as an unseemly brawl between half-trained militia. While that was to some degree true, they missed the important lessons, like the folly of charging bayonets into prepared infantry. Come 1914, the French and English tried just exactly that, and not only were the German riflemen more than sufficient to break the charge, the Germans had stocked-up on the “toys” that England and France had disdained: Machineguns. Modern bolt-action rifles combined with machinegun fire pretty much put paid to mobility based upon the tactics of a half a century gone. It wasn’t lack of communication that created the siege across Europe, it was outdated tactics come face-to-face with modern modern technology, combined with a really arrogant and narrow-minded military leadership (especially on the parts of the English and French).

The Germans had somewhat better high command, but not by much, and the Americans were so arrogant that they had to relearn in 1917 all the lessons of 1914.

Now, had someone tried a war of mobility early on, with mechanical mounts, armed with machine guns, and armored against machinegun fire, the calvary could’ve reigned supreme once more…

15

I really shouldn’t post so early in the AM, especially not after mass qauntities of beer.

16

Yeah, that’s what I said. lol