Dear Mark excellent article. Especially like “In 1915, at the very outset, the British Admiralty’s Landship Committee looked at ideas that could have come out of H.G. Wells sci-fi or some steampunk fantasy for vast ironclad machines that would have weighed hundreds or even thousands of tons.”.
J.R.R. Tolkien of later The Lord of the Rings fought at The Battle of the Somme and would mythically describe his views of the first tanks in one of the earliest stories of his mythology The Fall of Gondolin written in c 1916-17 as he was recovering from trench fever.
“Then on a time Melko assembled all his most cunning smiths and sorcerers, and of iron and flame they wrought a host of monsters such as have only at that time been seen and shall not again be till the Great End. Some were all of iron so cunningly linked that they might flow like slow rivers of metal or coil themselves around and above all obstacles before them, and these were filled in their innermost depths with the grimmest of the Orcs with scimitars and spears; others of bronze and copper were given hearts and spirits of blazing fire, and they blasted all that stood before them with the terror of their snorting or trampled whatso escaped the ardour of their breath; yet others were creatures of pure flame that writhed like ropes of molten metal, and they brought to ruin whatever fabric they came nigh, and iron and stone melted before them and became as water, and upon them rode the Balrogs in hundreds; and these were the most dire of all those monsters which Melko devised against Gondolin.”
Excellent article Mark, recently watched an intriguing video by the Tank Museum about the Matilda II. Was it the best tank in WW2? It was a very compelling argument from Arras to save the army at Dunkirk, East Africa, and North Africa, Queen of the Desert, defeating the Italians, defending Moscow against the Panzer Divisions, and finally with the Australians in the Jungle against the Japanese.
Dear Mark excellent article. Especially like “In 1915, at the very outset, the British Admiralty’s Landship Committee looked at ideas that could have come out of H.G. Wells sci-fi or some steampunk fantasy for vast ironclad machines that would have weighed hundreds or even thousands of tons.”.
J.R.R. Tolkien of later The Lord of the Rings fought at The Battle of the Somme and would mythically describe his views of the first tanks in one of the earliest stories of his mythology The Fall of Gondolin written in c 1916-17 as he was recovering from trench fever.
“Then on a time Melko assembled all his most cunning smiths and sorcerers, and of iron and flame they wrought a host of monsters such as have only at that time been seen and shall not again be till the Great End. Some were all of iron so cunningly linked that they might flow like slow rivers of metal or coil themselves around and above all obstacles before them, and these were filled in their innermost depths with the grimmest of the Orcs with scimitars and spears; others of bronze and copper were given hearts and spirits of blazing fire, and they blasted all that stood before them with the terror of their snorting or trampled whatso escaped the ardour of their breath; yet others were creatures of pure flame that writhed like ropes of molten metal, and they brought to ruin whatever fabric they came nigh, and iron and stone melted before them and became as water, and upon them rode the Balrogs in hundreds; and these were the most dire of all those monsters which Melko devised against Gondolin.”
Good article indeed. I expect the book will elaborate more on topics like tank-on-tank and the honing of tactics around the use of terrain .
Re: your last para
Watching Faisal on Newsnight the other night about AI, there's a real question emerging about goal/priority setting for AI
In all out war, kill or be killed, survival is a priority, when to sacrifice oneself becomes a critical dilemma
How do we make a military AI loyal to "our" side and not to itself, or to its fellow AIs?
Some serious work to do for the AI developers, and critically for AI testers, of which there are probably nothing like enough
What will be the equivalent of the Voight-Kampff test from Blade Runner, to tell us whether an AI has gone rogue?
A vulnerable tool
Excellent article Mark, recently watched an intriguing video by the Tank Museum about the Matilda II. Was it the best tank in WW2? It was a very compelling argument from Arras to save the army at Dunkirk, East Africa, and North Africa, Queen of the Desert, defeating the Italians, defending Moscow against the Panzer Divisions, and finally with the Australians in the Jungle against the Japanese.
No.
Underarmed
Too slow.
And no development potential due to its size.
17pdr should have gone into a tank with the Matilda’s armour and the Crusader’s speed.
Never mind.
British culture’s effect on tank design … cavalry and bloody plebs… took two world wars to dispel.