However, as he himself notes, tank crews could not last more than eight
hours in action, on average, and mechanical unreliability meant that
tanks could not be used for more than two days in a row. David Childs
has argued that there were not enough tanks available in 1918, and that
they could not be brought to the front quickly enough or supplied in
mobile warfare to make possible their use in mass attacks. Even Travers
concedes that Haig’s anxiety to keep the German army on the run by a
series of short offensives was understandable, since Haig was rightly
convinced that the German army was demoralised.
99
Churchill was an
enthusiastic advocate of tanks and, as minister of munitions, was
responsible for their production, but when he wrote in June 1918 of
employing over 7,000 tanks (compared with the Tank Corps’ existing
establishment of 1,080 tanks) he was looking forward twelve months.
100
The CIGS, Wilson, proposed to Haig in July 1918 that the British
army’s cavalry should be reduced by a third, and its mechanised force
expanded to 3,000 tanks plus 7,300 tractors and cross-country vehicles,
but again this was a plan for 1919.
101
On Travers’ own evidence, the
number of tanks available to the British army in August 1918 varied
widely from day to day, according to battle casualties, wear and tear,
and maintenance: 688 on the 11th, 200 on the 12th, 738 on the 17th.
102
The numbers available fell in the autumn, more often than not to figures
well below 100.
103
It is by no means certain that it would have been wise
to restrict British attacks according to the supply of tanks, or whether
such a strategy would have been acceptable to the French or the
Americans.
Victory in 1918 came more quickly than expected. On 25 July, one
week after the last German offensive had been halted, Wilson produced
a major paper on military policy in which he advocated a series of
operations with limited objectives designed to push the Germans back
from various strategic points, such as the Amiens railway junction.
However, he thought that preparations for a decisive effort by the Allies
should be planned for ‘not later than 1st July 1919’.
104
By 3 September
99
Travers, How the War Was Won, pp. 127–30, 137–40, 175–6, 179, 181; T. H. E.
Travers, ‘Could the tanks of 1918 have been war winners for the British Expeditionary
Force?’ Journal of Contemporary History, 27 (1992), 389–406, at 392 and 398; Childs,
Peripheral Weapon? pp. 171–89.
100
Churchill to General Harington (Deputy CIGS), 21 June 1918, printed in Churchill,
World Crisis: 1916–1918, part II, pp. 321 and 482–3.
101
Sir Henry Wilson, ‘British military policy 1918–1919’, 25 July 1918, CAB 27/8, TNA.
102
Travers, How the War Was Won, p. 127.
103
Griffiths, Battle Tactics, p. 167.
104
Wilson, ‘British military policy 1918–1919’.
Arms, economics and British strategy94