At the Somme, during the Battle of Flers-Courcelette, the British Army deployed 49 Mark I tanks in combat for the first time in history, hoping the armored, tracked vehicles could crush barbed wire and cross trenches that infantry alone could not breach. Mechanical failures and inexperienced crews limited their impact that day, but the tank's debut permanently changed the character of land warfare.
The Mark I was a strange, boxy machine, roughly 26 feet long, painted in camouflage patterns, and crewed by eight men who worked inside a metal box that grew unbearably hot from the engine, filled with fumes, and offered no suspension against the battlefield's ruts and shell craters. Many crews suffered carbon monoxide poisoning simply from operating their own vehicles.
Of the 49 tanks sent toward German lines near the villages of Flers and Courcelette, many broke down before even reaching the front, bogged in mud or disabled by mechanical failure, and only a fraction made any meaningful advance. One tank, nicknamed D17 and commanded by Captain Douglas Wilson-Hunt, famously trundled down Flers' main street with cheering British infantry following behind it, an image that made headlines back home even though the overall tactical results were modest.
German soldiers, encountering these lumbering steel monsters for the first time, were reportedly terrified, some fleeing their trenches entirely rather than face the machines. Though the tanks of 1916 were slow, unreliable, and vulnerable, their psychological and tactical potential was undeniable. Within two years, tank design and tactics had advanced enormously, and by World War II armored warfare would become the decisive form of combat on land.
Key people: Douglas Wilson-Hunt