Tank History - Inter-War International Developments
At a time when most soldiers regarded the tank as a specialized infantry-support weapon for crossing trenches, a significant number of officers in the Royal Tank Corps had gone on to envision much broader roles for mechanized organizations. In May 1918, Col. J.F.C. Fuller the acknowledged father of tank doctrine, had used the example of German infiltration tactics to refine what he called "Plan 1919." This was an elaborate concept for a large-scale armored offensive in 1919.
The Royal Tank Corps had to make do with the same basic tanks from 1922 until 1938. British armored theorists did not always agree with each other. Basil Liddell Hart, a noted publicist of armor, wanted a true combined arms force with a major role for mechanized infantry. Fuller, Broad, and other officers were more interested in a pure-tank role.
Both advocates and opponents of mechanization often used the term "tank" loosely to mean not only an armored, tracked, turreted, gun-carrying fighting vehicle, but also any form of armored vehicle or mechanized unit. Such usage made it difficult for contemporaries or historians to determine whether a particular speaker was discussing pure tank forces, mechanized combined arms forces, or mechanization of infantry forces.
British armored vehicles tended to maximize either mobility or protection. Both the cavalry and the Royal Tank Corps wanted fast, lightly armored, mobile vehicles for reconnaissance and raiding -- the light and medium (or "cruiser") tanks. In practice the "light tanks" were often small armored personnel carriers [the parallel with more recent American armored cavalry should be obvious]. On the other hand, the "army tank battalions" performing the traditional infantry-support role required extremely heavy armored protection. As a consequence of these two doctrinal roles, firepower was neglected in tank design.
Among the German proponents of mechanization, Gen. Heinz Guderian was probably the most influential. Guderian's 1914 service with radiotelegraphs in support of cavalry units led him to insist on a radio in every armored vehicle. By 1929, when many British students of armor were tending towards a pure armor formation, Guderian had become convinced that it was useless to develop just tanks, or even to mechanize parts of the traditional arms. What was needed was an entirely new mechanized formation of all arms that would maximize the effects of the tank.
The German tanks were not up to the standards of Guderian's concept. The Mark I was really a machine gun-armed tankette, derived from the British Carden-Loyd personnel carrier. The Mark II did have a 20-mm cannon, but little armor protecLion. These two vehicles made up the bulk of panzer units until 1940.
French doctrine viewed combined arms as a process by which all other weapons systems assisted the infantry in its forward progress. Tanks were considered to be "a sort of armored infantry," subordinated to the infantry branch. This at least had the advantage that armor was not restricted purely to tanks.
Just as the French Army was cautiously moving forward in the area of mechanization, its development was almost aborted by the writings of Charles de Gaulle. In 1934, Lieutenant Colonel de Gaulle published Towards the Professional Army. It envisioned a pure armor brigade operating in Linear formation, followed by a motorized infantry force for mopping-up
In 1936, France belatedly decided to produce armor and other equipment in larger quantities, including B-1 bis tanks. The B-1 bis, developed by Estienne in the early 1920s, was still one or the best tank designs in the world fifteen years later.
During the course of the 1920s and early 1930s, a group of Soviet officers led by Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky developed a concept of "Deep Battle" to employ conventional infantry and cavalry divisions, mechanized formations, and aviation in concert. Using the expanded production facilities of the Soviet government's first Five Year Plan with design features taken in part from the American inventor Walter Christie, the Soviets produced 5,000 armored vehicles by 1934. This wealth of equipment enabled the Red Army to create tank organizations for both infantry support and combined arms, mechanized operations.
On 12 June 1937, the Soviet government executed Tukhachevsky and eight of his high-ranking assistants, as Stalin shifted his purge of Soviet society against the last power group that had the potential to threaten him, the Red Army. At the same time, the Soviet experience in the Spanish Civil War caused the Red Army to reassess mechanization. The Soviet tanks were too lightly armored, their Russian crews could not communicate with the Spanish troops, and in combat the tanks tended to run away from the supporting infantry and artillery.
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