The Theory and Practice of British Tank Warfare on the Western Front during the First World War

The image of a tank crawling across a shell-cratered battlefield remains one of the iconic representations of the Great War. Yet, despite the huge amount of attention tanks received - both at the time and from later historians - fierce debate continues to rage regarding their actual impact on the war. Neither contemporaries nor historians agree on whether the British army every really understood the potential of this new weapon and how best to integrate it into the wider army. Focusing on operations planned and executed during the war, this study challenges perceptions of senior commanders of the British Expeditionary Force as unimaginative and unresponsive to technological innovation. Instead, it demonstrates how they employed a continuous cycle of operational analysis and evaluation to create, revise and refine theories of tank co-operation with other arms. Indeed, field commanders were often enthusiastic supporters of the tank, and several attempted innovative offensive operations u