ABSTRACT
The British Army during the closing years of World War I employed a new weapon,
the tank, to achieve dramatic breakthroughs across the barbed wire and trenches
that otherwise defined the attritional warfare. Though the British fielded their first
technologically-challenged tanks for infantry support, the Army’s pioneering use of
them en mass on the battlefields at Cambrai and Amiens illuminated the revolutionary
potential for large-scale, independent offensive armor operations. As described
by Harold Winton, the British Army’s innovative prowess was on full display by
war’s end with the new Tank Corps that “from a figment of the imagination, had
become a force of 20 battalions and 12 armored car companies,” and that due to its
dynamic performance at the tactical-level formed the crux of new visions for armor
operations.1 The enthusiasm spilled over into the initial interwar period, as the British
Army spearheaded significant technological, tactical, doctrinal, and organizational
advances. These early achievements were nourished by constructive debate over
mechanized versus armored warfare, and by decisions to create a permanent Tank
Brigade and expand the Royal Tank Corps. This was complemented by forward-
leaning experimentation in command, control, communications, and maneuverability
that by the early 1930s placed Britain at the vanguard of transformation to combined
arms warfare.
