The tank did not exist before the war began. Assuming a more or less even balance in other factors such as air power, an army without tanks would have little chance of success.īut that was precisely the situation which occurred in World War I. They are vital to the armies of even the smallest nations, the spearhead force of any land attack, in many ways the epitome of modern warfare. It would be very difficult to imagine a war today being fought without the use of tanks. The book is well illustrated with many original photographs which give the present day reader a glimpse of the infancy of a dominant weapon of modern war. Scalded, scorched and poisoned with exhaust fumes, constantly threatened with being burned to death, these crews eventually laid the foundation for the Allied Victory in World War I. He tells of the courage and endurance of the crews not just in battle but in the appalling conditions in which they had to drive and fight their primitive vehicles. Bryan Cooper describes the early tank actions in vivid detail, with many eye-witness accounts. The slaughter of the Somme, Passchendaele and Ypres salient had to be endured before accepted 'conventional' methods were abandoned and the tank given a chance. Few failures, however, can have been so costly in human life as that of our military commanders early in 1916 to appreciate that the tank was a war winning weapon. Failure to exploit the potential of an original idea is a recurring phenomenon in our national history.
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