How successful was the German A7V?

[Stuart Galbraith]

The Whippets were for a different tactical role than the MkIV. The Rhomboids were for a break through, and really nothing else but. It was realised, presumably in the aftermath of the somme that there needed to be a replacement for the Cavalry in the exploitation role. I seem to recall the Cavalry were due to fulfill that role, but due to a communications fowl up, they never actually turned up to do it (they basically blew their first and only chance of the entire war). So they decided to build a tank that was faster and lighter to fulfill that role. Infact, if you look at Medium C and Medium D, they were all efforts to try and get more speed out the tank to try and do exactly that.

Id argue its not about not knowing what they wanted. It was a recognition that afterhaving broken out the trenches, a tank with a speed of more than 4mph would be very useful, and so it proved. Even the French heavies, which proved problematic in cross country mobility, became very useful when they got out of the disturbed earth of the western front.

In WW2 we had light, medium, heavy, even superheavy. This is the point where the split began.

Edited March 8, 2021 by Stuart Galbraith

[seahawk]

And the Germans were working on the LKII as a light companion to the A7V. Surely they were lacking behind, but I still fail to see the point were they did noticeably worse than the French or British with their designs.

Edited March 8, 2021 by seahawk

[Yama]

10 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

In 1915? Absolutely. In 1917? Not really. They could see with their own eyes what worked and what didnt from the tanks left behind in the Somme Offensive. They seem to have completely ignored the tanks they were captured (and were using for that matter) and went off and did their own thing. Its like 1904 and someone designing an aircraft and ending up building a Zeppelin. Wright Brothers,who are they?

I read from you that Germans should have copied Mark I/IV lineage instead of building their own design based on Holt tractor. However that would have taken considerably longer and there was no guarantee something better had not been invented meanwhile. British Heavy Tank layout was amazingly workable for a first mass-produced tank, and it was very suitable for breakthrough purposes, but it was also very slow even by WW1 standards and in the end, proved out to be technological dead-end. It's superior ability to cross trenches was partly negated by its poor power loading. Germans themselves did not consider A7V to be inferior to British tanks, they just could not build enough of them due to its expense and production limitations caused by blockade and need to maintain submarine building program.

As you mentioned Zeppelins, they were vastly superior in 1900's to heavier-than-air craft, with similar speed, 10 times the load capacity and 20 times the endurance.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Well not quite a dead end. We were still using its lineal descendant as late as 1950 in Korea. Yes,its was a flawed configuration I quite agree, it certainly was slow. But whats the pointof designing a 'modern' tank, when the problem at hand was to cross the crater strewn Western Front. Through Mud, Through Blood, to the Green fields beyond as the Tank Corp put it.The Germans already had an answer of what to do when they got a breakout, it worked very well, up to a point, in 1914. What they didnt have was the means to create a breakout. Granted the stormtruppen tactics worked very well,but they were still as vulnerable as any other man on the Western Front.

I can forgive the Germans for not being able to embrace mass production, to not send a man, send a bullet, which was the core of the Anglo American method of war, they didnt have the resources for that. But I cant forgive them ignoring ideas that clearly worked. After all, if they didnt like the MkIV, they could have always have copied the Whippet. It didnt have the cross country mobility of a MkIV, or the firepower of it, but it was twice as fast. They clearly had an analogue of that from what methos posted above, so why not build instead of the A7V and create something useful?

Yes, but a Zeppelin is not a heavier than air aircraft is it? The wright flyer was. One was a technological dead end, the other was not.

 

Edited March 9, 2021 by Stuart Galbraith

[Yama]

British heavy tanks, as useful as they were, were not a panacea. At the end, British gained no ground at Cambrai and lost more men than Germans. Whippets had their combat debut at when, March 1918? When were Germans supposed to copy them? More importantly, British themselves saw no need to copy it, it was 'quick & dirty' solution for role of exploitation tank with short production run.

I don't get your comment about mass production and 'Anglo-American method'. Germans ordered hundreds of LK II light tanks and had about two dozen ready when war ended. I am reasonably certain that timetable could not have been meaningfully accelerated.

Yes, Zeppelins were a dead end. However this was not quickly apparent as performance of early Zeppelins was so much better than aircraft or other types of airship. British certainly tried to build them too, it didn't work out very well and they were horribly behind the Germans, sound familiar?

"Who are they" was exactly what people would have said about the Wright Brothers in 1904. They didn't publicly demonstrate their aircraft until 1908, before that they were widely believed to be charlatans.

[Stuart Galbraith]

1 hour ago, Yama said:

British heavy tanks, as useful as they were, were not a panacea. At the end, British gained no ground at Cambrai and lost more men than Germans. Whippets had their combat debut at when, March 1918? When were Germans supposed to copy them? More importantly, British themselves saw no need to copy it, it was 'quick & dirty' solution for role of exploitation tank with short production run.

I don't get your comment about mass production and 'Anglo-American method'. Germans ordered hundreds of LK II light tanks and had about two dozen ready when war ended. I am reasonably certain that timetable could not have been meaningfully accelerated.

Yes, Zeppelins were a dead end. However this was not quickly apparent as performance of early Zeppelins was so much better than aircraft or other types of airship. British certainly tried to build them too, it didn't work out very well and they were horribly behind the Germans, sound familiar?

"Who are they" was exactly what people would have said about the Wright Brothers in 1904. They didn't publicly demonstrate their aircraft until 1908, before that they were widely believed to be charlatans.

Misses the point, they took more ground than they had with the level of casualties they had up to that point. If they lost that land, that was not the fault of the Tank Corp, but a lack of all arms integration. That is precisely what Plan 1919 was supposed to overcome. They were learning the lessons and had nothing to fall back on but what they figured out themselves.

Most people in 1904 may not have known what the Wright Brothers did. OTOH the Germans had dozens of British tanks and were well aware of what they did, in 1916 and 1917. We can kick it around for evermore, but they didnt copy what worked, or improve upon it.  They used dozens of British tanks, tested them, used them in combat even. They knew what worked, but seemingly completely ignored it when it came to designing tanks. People can mock British tank development all they like, but they worked, and they worked without much reference to what anyone else was doing. So did Germany, and look at the contrast.

Im glad they finally got their finger out and ordered dozens of tanks suitable for production. Great. We had been doing that since 1916, against an initially hostile and then lukewarm British Government. So one might well ask, what took them so long to figure out that if they were going to assault hostile terrain, which was evident if they wanted to win the war, why it took them till the end of the war to get a tank production scheme sorted out?

Heaven knows the British scheme was not great shakes. It took great effort on Imperial Germany's  part to do even worse. Please, read this and you might see my point. They were trying to pull the legs off tank production in 1917, and we STILL out outproduced Germany in tanks.

https://archive.org/details/cu31924027835176

Edited March 9, 2021 by Stuart Galbraith

[nitflegal]

I think one has to look at the timetable and so forth for development.  Little Willy came about after several months of development and while impressive, was very much a concept tank.  It did however allow the British to learn some lessons, one of which was to shift to the classic Rhomboid design for Big WIllie.  There was still about a year and half before their first design went into action and despite the first tank panic most of the Mk 1's were lost and captured by the Germans and it wasn't especially impressive or useful.  Nonetheless, that same month they established their own design directorate with the first prototype A7V ready 7 months later which is comparable to Little Willy's development time.  They started production in September of 1917, so only a year after their first exposure to tanks and the creation of their own design committee.  

There are also indications that in the spring of 1917 a lot of the enthusiasm for tanks with the Germans diminished because the British tanks weren't having a great effect and the French tanks (everyone forgets them and their influence on the Germans) were a disaster.  From the German viewpoint, these were extremely expensive vehicles that required a ton of care and weren't doing a whole heck of a lot.  Even the Mk IV's when introduced in the late spring of 1917 didn't make much of a difference.  It wasn't until November that the British tank doctrine and maintenance got their act together and made a huge impact.  It was also demonstrated that the St Chamond had real difficulties as what we think of as a tank but made an extremely useful self propelled artillery piece.  Apparently the A7V development team used that as a way of increasing support for their project and made an awful lot of promises that they sure as hell didn't deliver on when the A7V's went into combat!  The captured Mk 1's and Iv's did better and so the design team seems to have said "screw the A7V" and designed the rhomboid version which prototyped in the summer of 1918.  Which by then was too late.  

 

There are also some indications that the design team for the A7V was led down a bad path by developing doctrine where the concept of the tank was that it would wade into enemy territory and act as a mobile strongpoint.  Which wouldn't work with the thin armor they could carry but they struggled to make a heavily armored enough version for this to work, which they couldn't do because of weight.  

[seahawk]

2 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Misses the point, they took more ground than they had with the level of casualties they had up to that point. If they lost that land, that was not the fault of the Tank Corp, but a lack of all arms integration. That is precisely what Plan 1919 was supposed to overcome. They were learning the lessons and had nothing to fall back on but what they figured out themselves.

Most people in 1904 may not have known what the Wright Brothers did. OTOH the Germans had dozens of British tanks and were well aware of what they did, in 1916 and 1917. We can kick it around for evermore, but they didnt copy what worked, or improve upon it.  They used dozens of British tanks, tested them, used them in combat even. They knew what worked, but seemingly completely ignored it when it came to designing tanks. People can mock British tank development all they like, but they worked, and they worked without much reference to what anyone else was doing. So did Germany, and look at the contrast.

Im glad they finally got their finger out and ordered dozens of tanks suitable for production. Great. We had been doing that since 1916, against an initially hostile and then lukewarm British Government. So one might well ask, what took them so long to figure out that if they were going to assault hostile terrain, which was evident if they wanted to win the war, why it took them till the end of the war to get a tank production scheme sorted out?

Heaven knows the British scheme was not great shakes. It took great effort on Imperial Germany's  part to do even worse. Please, read this and you might see my point. They were trying to pull the legs off tank production in 1917, and we STILL out outproduced Germany in tanks.

https://archive.org/details/cu31924027835176

Could you please get your arguments sorted. You can not blame the Germans for not identifying the operational value of the tank and also criticise them for not producing more tanks than the UK, at the time the UK considered doing away with tank production.

[nitflegal]

26 minutes ago, seahawk said:

Could you please get your arguments sorted. You can not blame the Germans for not identifying the operational value of the tank and also criticise them for not producing more tanks than the UK, at the time the UK considered doing away with tank production.

I think it is a topic that can get really confused by hindsight.  The tanks really weren't effective until doctrine, maintenance, the Mk IV, transport, etc. were thought out in late 1917.  Because tanks proved effective in the last year of the war we tend to see the British trying to kill the nascent tank corps as foolish and applaud the plucky defenders.  Without hindsight I suspect if any of us were in that decision process we'd be much more likely to cite the British and French 1916/1917 failures as reason to kill the project until mid 1917.  

Put simply, in mid 1917 we'd be balancing the promises of potential against the actual experience that indicated the tanks were present-day failures.  The French had the same discussion in the same timeframe and also came close to killing them and actually dropped the whole heavier tank concept.  One could argue that their response was the better one where they clean sheeted the design and came up with a much more effective tank design in the FT-17 that carried a lighter canon and/or MG's and could get to where they wanted it without a huge maintenance requirement resulting from overstrained engines and chassis.

Edited March 9, 2021 by nitflegal

[seahawk]

Fully agree. In addition I think the Germans were not doing so badly. Once the tank became an effective weapon, the A7V was okay for a first design and the LKII was okay for a second try.

[Stuart Galbraith]

15 hours ago, seahawk said:

Could you please get your arguments sorted. You can not blame the Germans for not identifying the operational value of the tank and also criticise them for not producing more tanks than the UK, at the time the UK considered doing away with tank production.

Two different groups of people, the Army and the War Department. The ones in the front line were always supportive and enthusiastic. Field Marshall Haig was supportive. Even the Royal Family was supportive. But there was a lot of Remfs in supply and production whom kept meddling with production. Hugh Elles, commander of the nascent Tank Corp could not understand why Albert Stern kept the IV in production, when they really wanted the V which dispensed with gearsmen. Sterns opponents used the dispute, which was Sterns effort to build as many tanks as possible for an offensive, against him, and he was removed.

The point is this. Despite the uncertainty, despite the argument s, despite the removal of stern, Britain produced 2000 IV'sand Vs, even 200 whippets. And Germany, which had the apparent advantage of a single leader, massive political sway of the Army, the ownership of dozens of tanks so they could pick them apart and see what worked,only manage to construct 20 A7Vs.

Politically the UK was a mess, but could do that. That Germany chose not to is to me at least, confusing. This is not a contradiction in my arguement. The contradiction is that imperial Germany, that pioneered fighter aircraft, the combat submarine, advanced infantry tactics, even the use of poison gas, did not Pioneer the one thing that might have made a difference for them in 1918. That is the contradiction.

Edited March 10, 2021 by Stuart Galbraith

[Ssnake]

Stuart, the British had a frontline of what, 300km?

When the German Empire had more than 2,000km of frontage to cover, east and west. Plus, shipping blockade. It was much easier for Britain to find the excess industrial capacity, just like the artillery guns could be replaced faster, etc. etc.

It was quite the achievement for Germany to hold the line for as long is its army did.

[Yama]

An AFV is relatively obvious idea and many had proposed them both in preceding centuries and immediately before the war. Reaction in real armies had always been the same: meh. Anyone could see that they were going to be expensive to build and support, hard to deploy and with shortcomings of then-current propulsion, difficult to employ. Still, when Germans did encounter real tanks on the battlefield they immediately seemed to worry that they might be missing out in due course if they don't start their own program - which indeed turned out to be the case. Even though these first encounters were hardly very threatening and were considered to be disappointing in both Britain and France.

If Germans missed something, it was a 'messiah' figure of tank warfare who would pester the higher-ups to get the projects started based on prospects rather than field experience. French had such figure, Estienne, who kept the tank moving (figuratively and literally) despite skepticism and disappointments. These figures were very scarce even on Entente side, it came down to literally like 3 people that the tank programs were allowed to proceed after early failures.

Edited March 9, 2021 by Yama

[seahawk]

They also had a much longer frontline and a weaker industrial base. Truck production was something that you did not easily divert to something untested and potentially useless.

[Yama]

Only remaining Saint-Chamond is a runner:

At least on good ground it seems to run surprisingly smoothly. Might have something to do with that the electric transmission is new, original engines were decayed beyond salvage. I don't know if the petrol engine is original or replaced too.

Had they managed to somehow make it more compact, like 1 metre shorter which would have eliminated most of the huge frontal overhang, it might have been decent combat vehicle. I am surprised nobody in WW1 followed it up and made a proper assault gun.

Saint-Chamond Beutepanzer:

[Mikel2]

47 minutes ago, Yama said:

Had they managed to somehow make it more compact, like 1 metre shorter which would have eliminated most of the huge frontal overhang, it might have been decent combat vehicle. I am surprised nobody in WW1 followed it up and made a proper assault gun.

 

I believe the overhang was part of the trench crossing strategy, more than an internal space requirement.

[Stuart Galbraith]

13 hours ago, Ssnake said:

Stuart, the British had a frontline of what, 300km?

When the German Empire had more than 2,000km of frontage to cover, east and west. Plus, shipping blockade. It was much easier for Britain to find the excess industrial capacity, just like the artillery guns could be replaced faster, etc. etc.

It was quite the achievement for Germany to hold the line for as long is its army did.

No argument. But lets look at how the war started,it was an offensive strategy. The German Army won its famous victory at Tannenberg by going on the offensive. I can entirely understand why they didnt want tanks for the Eastern Front, its too far away. But considering the proximity of the Western Front to the Ruhr, considering how German industry was clearly up to producing armour and naval guns for the Kaisers navy, doesnt the massive undershoot in the production of tanks seem odd? It was clear if they were going to win in France, they had at some point to go on the offensive. But at no point does anyone seem to have piped up and said 'We need a lot of tanks to keep casualties down'.

I just find that distinctly out of character. Particularly as we were the ones that went into France to fight a defensive war, and ended up developing a weapon only really useful in the offensive.

[Ssnake]

Up to and well into the 1918 spring offensive, spirits in the German army were quite high, at least better than with all adversaries in immediate contact. In the East, at no point did the campaign end in entrenched gridlock. It was and remained a string of fluid maneuver operations, something the German leaders were usually rather good at.

The prevailing (German) thinking was that since the French Army was on the brink of mutiny by late 1917, it required only a little push to break it. The idea was to break out of the trenches, and once that would be accomplished, it would be maneuver warfare again; all that appeared to be necessary was the manpower from the East, which were freed up once that peace was signed in Brest-Litowsk.

And in all fairness, up to June 1918 the German offensive and its concept worked. But the French didn't break, and by summer 1918 the Monash led force with the ANZAC formations at their core conducted what I would consider the first true application of combined arms in the counteroffensive that broke the German Army's back. They coordinated tanks, artillery, infantry, and planes dropping supplies, and signals. The secret to that success weren't the tanks; they were a necessary ingredient. They definitely supported the success, once that the doctrine of their employment had been worked out to a reasonable standard (given the technological limitations at the time).

The secret was that Monash had enough clout to resist Haig's attempt to feed his units piecemeal into the grinder. Rather they were held in reserve and trained rigorously. They were trained for more than a year, an almost forgotten art by 1916/1917 when everybody was throwing their cohorts of 17 year-old boys at each other once that the machine guns had dealt with the more experienced (but not experienced enough) soldiers.

From 1916 to 1918 the German war in the West was largely defensive with only very limited offensive actions. The basic lessons the Germans took from those three years was that they needed to improve tactics. 80% of today's infantry training manual was developed and written at the time (by no other than Captain Ernst Jünger, of later literary notoriety).

The British responded not so much with innovative infantry tactics but rather with novelty war machines. Which, in all fairness, also played to the industrial strength of the British Empire. Both sides responded to the "trench crisis", but with different emphasis. I mean, probably the British did try to rewrite the infantry manual but I don't think a lot came from it. Call it "the A7V of British Infantry Tactics" if you will.

Monash's counteroffensive culminated in September, after that others managed to take over, and soon enough Germany realized that any chance of winning the war was lost.

[Ssnake]

53 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

I just find that distinctly out of character. Particularly as we were the ones that went into France to fight a defensive war, and ended up developing a weapon only really useful in the offensive.

Uh, no.

From 1916 Britain largely conducted an offensive operation, just without success. German offensive operations largely ceased with the transition to trench warfare. The German Army economized the war effort in the West by digging in, so it could send more units to the East with its vast frontages.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Nils, I know that. Any Briton who has watched memorial day in the UK knows about the Somme.

The army that went into France was pitiful, something like 5 divisions. Thats why they were called the old Contemptables, because the Kaiser thought it was a contemptable little army. They werent big enough to launch an offensive. Compare and contrast with the Army Germany put in to make the von Schliefen plan work, a purely offensive strategy, it was dwarfed. It was only Kitcheners foresight that it would be a long war, not something everyone foresaw, kept one division back in the UK which proved the nuclears for Kitcheners Army that took to the fields in 1916.

The point is this. We entered the war with a largely defensive mindset. We never, as far as I can remember from Tuchmans book, conceived of invading Germany at the end of a heroic defense of France. Yet by 1918 we were doing that, with an army that was not as yet a combined arms force, but headed in that direction. And Germany, with the exceptions of 1914, Verdun and the 1918 offensive, rarely took offensive action at all.  I understand why. Manpower was tight. What I dont understand, particularly as it had been demonstrated in 1916 that the concept worked, why nobody in the German general had a light bulb moment and though 'Yes! We could make dozens of these. We have the steel, we have the industry. We can break the back of the allies!' And clearly someone DID conceive of building tanks. But in wholly underwhelming numbers, to the point where I wonder why they really bothered.

Yes, I know steel was apparently tight. But you had the Kaisers Navy sat there, including near obsolete types. Did nobody think this might be a better use for those resources?

 

Edited March 10, 2021 by Stuart Galbraith

[Rick]

35 minutes ago, Ssnake said:

Up to and well into the 1918 spring offensive, spirits in the German army were quite high, at least better than with all adversaries in immediate contact. In the East, at no point did the campaign end in entrenched gridlock. It was and remained a string of fluid maneuver operations, something the German leaders were usually rather good at.

The prevailing (German) thinking was that since the French Army was on the brink of mutiny by late 1917, it required only a little push to break it. The idea was to break out of the trenches, and once that would be accomplished, it would be maneuver warfare again; all that appeared to be necessary was the manpower from the East, which were freed up once that peace was signed in Brest-Litowsk.

And in all fairness, up to June 1918 the German offensive and its concept worked. But the French didn't break, and by summer 1918 the Monash led force with the ANZAC formations at their core conducted what I would consider the first true application of combined arms in the counteroffensive that broke the German Army's back. They coordinated tanks, artillery, infantry, and planes dropping supplies, and signals. The secret to that success weren't the tanks; they were a necessary ingredient. They definitely supported the success, once that the doctrine of their employment had been worked out to a reasonable standard (given the technological limitations at the time).

The secret was that Monash had enough clout to resist Haig's attempt to feed his units peacemeal into the grinder. Rather they were held in reserve and trained rigorously. They were trained for more than a year, an almost forgotten art by 1916/1917 when everybody was throwing their cohorts of 17 year-old boys at each other once that the machine guns had dealt with the more experienced (but not experienced enough) soldiers.

From 1916 to 1918 the German war in the West was largely defensive with only very limited offensive actions. The basic lessons the Germans took from those three years was that they needed to improve tactics. 80% of today's infantry training manual was developed and written at the time (by no other than Captain Ernst Jünger, of later literary notoriety).

The British responded not so much with innovative infantry tactics but rather with novelty war machines. Which, in all fairness, also played to the industrial strength of the British Empire. Both sides responded to the "trench crisis", but with different emphasis. I mean, probably the British did try to rewrite the infantry manual but I don't think a lot came from it. Call it "the A7V of British Infantry Tactics" if you will.

Monash's counteroffensive culminated in September, after that others managed to take over, and soon enough Germany realized that any chance of winning the war was lost.

So was the U.S. Army actually needed in W.W.1? My very limited knowledge leads me to believe it could not have been known at the time, but was not really needed in actuality? I'm wrong again?

[Ssnake]

It is quite the leap that you demand here to throw a beloved battleship back into the smelter in favor of an entirely untested land ship concept. The fleet in being tied down considerable resources of the Royal Navy in the North Sea sector. That nobodies from the army convince top brass to start an interservice war to get the steel of (possibly several) bettleships is, while creative thinking, asking for a bit much IMO.

[Ssnake]

1 minute ago, Rick said:

So was the U.S. Army actually needed in W.W.1? My very limited knowledge leads me to believe it could not have been known at the time, but was not really needed in actuality? I'm wrong again?

I don't think it was decisive, but it definitely helped to sustain the momentum after the ANZAC led counteroffensive after September 1918. Mind you, I really am no expert of WW1 military history (or WW2 for that matter). I received my lessons in military history at Officers' School, but that was about it.

Surely others are more qualified to answer that question with authority. 

[Yama]

1 hour ago, Rick said:

So was the U.S. Army actually needed in W.W.1? My very limited knowledge leads me to believe it could not have been known at the time, but was not really needed in actuality? I'm wrong again?

Absolutely. Petain's rallying cry was "We must wait for the tanks and the Americans." After Nivelle offensive failed, French came to realize that they could not defeat Germany by their own effort. Roughly at the same time it was realized that all the sideshow schemes were illusionary and in the end, war would be won or lost at the Western Front. French knew they couldn't do it, and it's not like the British were doing so hot either. American military contributions, though by no means insignificant, pale in the comparison with the massive political and strategic effect her entry in the war had.

[Yama]

Landships site had info about German AFV project I had not heard before, Marienwagen gepanzert (armoured Marienwagon). Basically, Marienwagen was a tracked lorry meant for cross-country supply and utility applications. After first reports of tanks in Somme, Germans began a crash program to turn it into armoured combat vehicle. Mock-up/prototype was ready for trials in March 1917, and Hindenburg and Ludendorff themselves came to see them. Trials were a complete failure, as Marienwagen was completely unsuitable for that sort of conversion, as the designers had warned, and it apparently killed much of the interest Ludendorff and Hindenburg had for AFV development.