First World War
The tank, when it appeared on the Western Front in September 1916, was a total surprise to the German troops, though not to the German General Staff. The French Army Staff was highly critical of the British Army's early fielding of the Mark I vehicles in small numbers because the French trials showed the armored vehicles to be highly unreliable. They judged that large numbers had to be employed to sustain an offensive despite losses to mechanical failure or vehicles being foundered in intractable no man's land terrain. These losses, coupled with those from enemy artillery fire, later amounted to as high as 70% of the starters during some operations. Deploying small numbers of tanks would therefore cause the Allies to lose the element of surprise, allowing Germans to develop countermeasures.
Read more about this topic: Anti-tank Warfare
Famous quotes containing the words world and/or war:
“Love was before the light began,
When light if over,love shall be”
—Unknown. The Thousand and One Nights.
AWP. Anthology of World Poetry, An. Mark Van Doren, ed. (Rev. and enl. Ed., 1936)
“The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)