What association does most people have with the word tank? That's right, a formidable fighting vehicle with excellent armor and weapons. And how could it be otherwise if after
days 60-70 years, the design has not changed much? For 2-3 generations, people are so accustomed to the stereotype that when they mention the tank of the First World War, it destroys all ideas about that war and distorts reality. This article is intended to return facts to their places and to show the general public the difference between modern-day MBT and the combat vehicle of the beginning of the 20th century.
The first thing worth noting is that there could not be any talk about mass applications of armored vehicles, since the total number of combat-ready vehicles, even at the end of the war, barely reached hundreds throughout Europe. Positional warfare and constant artillery shelling are the everyday life of that wartime. But back to the technique. The role was assigned to her rather modest - support for the attacking infantry, in accordance with which they were designed.
The appearance of these steel monsters was able to scare only people who had never seen anything like it. For a modern person, the sight will be ridiculous: something resembling a box of riveted sheets of armor, with machine guns sticking out in all directions (less commonly, guns in side turrets) - these are typical tanks of the First World War. Photos of such vehicles are not even a bit like pictures of armored vehicles of the 40s.
Armor refers to bulletproof sheets 10-15 mm thick. This was quite enough to ignore the enemy machine guns. Such protection could not contain the gap of even a
high-explosive shell . This was the first experience of using
heavy equipment, which was in dire need of a testing ground, which turned out to be the
First World War. Tanks of that time, however modest their characteristics were, laid the foundation for a cardinal change in the very face of the war in the next half century.
The armament mainly consisted of several machine guns, later light guns also appeared. You need to understand that these were small-caliber guns with a short barrel. The tank of World War I was supposed to destroy the infantry, destroy light
defensive structures and suppress the machine-gun nests of the enemy. The army then needed a mobile gun platform, and not an independent
branch of the armed forces.The strategists of that time did not think of any “blitzkrieg”, and therefore the speed of the combat vehicle was depressingly low. The cavalry completely coped with its tasks and did not give up its positions until the early 40s. The tank of the First World War could not affect the outcome of the conflict, development began too late. Poor visibility, constant gas contamination of the fighting compartment, imperfect design and the absence of serious advantages over field artillery of the time - these are the reasons for the low combat effectiveness of equipment of the beginning of the last century.
Therefore, when you encounter a mention of a World War I tank in textbooks or fiction, imagine a shapeless mobile fire platform, then you can avoid any mistakes in evaluating military operations of the time when 3-5 tanks to the front meant absolutely nothing compared to widely used cavalry or howitzer artillery.