THE BATTLE OF CAMBRAI

University Degree Historical and Philosophical studies

THE BATTLE OF CAMBRAI (1917)

INTRODUCTION

1. The year 1917 had seen Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig; a military commander on the Western Front - launch four offensives at Arras, Messines, Ypres and Cambrai and the French one great operation on the Aisne (the Nivelle offensive). Not all had been a satisfactory result.

2. The battle of Cambrai, on November 20, 1917; for the first time in the war, a break through was to be effected by massive use of tank. The object was to break through the horrible Hindenburg Line opposite Cambrai, where the country was open and rolling and not pitted with shell-holes. Special tactics were worked out and the infantry trained and practised beforehand with the tanks. Another new feature was the decision not to open the assault with a long artillery bombardment. The artillery was to open fire when the attack began on targets worked out on maps instead of by observation from the air or ground. This would make the attack a complete surprise, for a bombardment to break the wire and destroy the Germans defences.

3. The Cambrai plan had been produced by Britain’s chief tank expert, Colonel Fuller and Byng had gone along with him on idea that it could bring dramatic mobility to the static front, with its grim positional warfare. Both agreed that the country chosen was ideal for tanks.

4. The Battle of Cambrai provides a useful illustration of the application of the principles of war and the basic fundamentals both at tactical and operational levels within the Army and at the strategic levels between the tri services. It also showed that a major factor in the victory of First and Second World War was the influence by this battle. Apart from that, the deception operations were numerous and considered being an important aspect in the conduct of the battle. This battle also provides the pertinent points, which had been given priority by both the Allied commanders and their counterpart prior to their conduct of the battles. At the end of the battle, we will clearly see that there are numerous critical reasons, which contributed to the success of the Allied and the failure of the axis in this battle.

BACK GROUND - WESTERN FRONT IN EARLY 1917

7. The British Army on the Western Front in early 1917 was 1,200,000 strong. The French Army had 2,600,000 men, and with the addition of the Belgian Army and the small Portuguese contingent, the Allies mustered a total of 3,900,000 fighting men. Against this the German Army had only 2,500,000. Because the German were so outnumbered they were on the defensive since its occupation of France throughout the year.

8. To strengthen her defences in France, Germany shortened her line of defence, hence making it easier to defend with limited troops. The German line of the defence stretches from Arras in the north, through St. Quentin to the Rheims (See Map at Annex A). The Germans called it the Siegfried Line but to the Allies it was known as the Hindenburg Line . The line was greatly strong, constructed to the highest standard of German military engineering. Strong points were built to cover every approach and there were two double lines of trenches, strategically planned with a forward defensive zone and prepared battle areas.

9. Leading to the Battle of Cambrai, both forces were engaged with several battles. The Battle of Arras began on 9 April 1917, in effort by the allied forces to break through the Hindenburg Line at its northern end through a rugged feature known as Vimy Ridge. In the battle, twelve British divisions were involved supported by 480 aeroplanes and forty-eight tanks. The battle lasted for three weeks of hard fighting which ended with a victory for the British forces. The result was 18,000 Germans captured and 75,000 casualties while to the British its cause of 84,000 casualties.

10. The Battle of Messiness began on 7 June 1917 and it was part of a larger plan to attack the northern end of the German line from Ypres and so win the Belgian coast and its ports, Ostend and Zeebrugge. The preparations for the battle were long where the Royal Engineers tunnelled deep and far to positions below the German Line and cut large chambers which they filled with high explosive. There were nine of these mines using altogether more than 500 tons of explosive. The nine mines were fired and a large part of the Germans front line was blown sky-high. Messiness Ridge was captured but hard fighting went on for a week as the Germans counter attacked.

11. At the first and second Battles of Ypres in 1914 and 1915, the Germans launched an attack to break through the channel ports. In the Third Battle of Ypres, which began on 31 July 1917, it was the British who attacked using eighteen divisions. But all was spoiled by heavy rain. No Man’s Land, blasted and torn by the shellfire of the preliminary bombardment. Shell holes became deep pits of water. Guns could not be moved for the sticky mud, which covered their angles. Tanks were bogged down. Rifles were clogged with mud and could not fired. The Germans for the first time using a new and even more terrible poison gas – mustard gas, which soaked, into the mud and water and poisoned men long after it, had been sent over. The third Battle of Ypres ended on 6 November 1917. The German line had not been broken and ports were still in German hands. However, the British manage to capture the Passchendaele Ridge. The battle causes the British 360,000 men killed and only 245,000 casualties for the German.

12. The battle of Cambrai was something quite different; it set the bells of Britain ringing in victory. In the earlier battles tanks had only been used in small numbers on unsuitable ground and as mere adjunct to the infantry. The Battle of Cambrai was planned to use tanks as the main superhead of the attack, on suitable ground and in ideal conditions. The Cambrai plan was sanctioned in mid October 1917 and fixed in November 20, 1917.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF TANK TECHNOLOGY

13. Like all major wars, World War I accelerated the development of new technology. In ...

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF TANK TECHNOLOGY

13. Like all major wars, World War I accelerated the development of new technology. In addition to changes in artillery and communications, a number of new weapons appeared as the result of efforts to solve the penetration problem. None of these efforts was entirely successful, but they all represented additional weapons or tools to be combined with the traditional arms.

14. The tank was originally designed as a special weapon to solve an unusual tactical situation, the stalemate of the trenches. Basically, the tank was intended to bring the firepower of artillery and machine guns across the swamp of No Man’s Land while providing more protection. The sole purpose of this weapon was to assist the infantry in creating a penetration so that the cavalry, who had been waiting for the opportunity since 1914, could exploit into the German rear.

15. This purpose must be remembered in order to understand the shortcomings of early tanks. British and especially French heavy tanks had slow speeds, poor mechanical reliability, and great vulnerability to direct-fire artillery once the initial surprise wore off. After all, these new weapons had to advance only a few miles and then turn the battle over to the cavalry. Moreover, the great secrecy surrounding tank development, is that infantry had little training to co-operate with tanks. As a result, the infantry would become separated from the tanks, allowing the German infantry to defeat the two arms separately.

16. The initial surprise of the tank started on 15 Sept 1916 where small and local attacks occurred at Flers on the Somme. On 20 Nov 1917, the British Tank Corps used new survey techniques. The British guns moved into positions without firing ranging shots prior to the attack. The tanks then began to move forward at the start of a very short artillery bombardment, with the infantry following in the back of the tanks. The elimination of a long artillery preparation not only achieved surprise, but also left the ground more trafficable. Four hundred seventy-four heavy tanks in three brigades had practised extensively with five of the six-infantry divisions they accompanied. Tanks operated in sections of three: one tank used machine gun fire and its treads to suppress the defending infantry, while the other two tanks, accompanied by British infantry, crossed the trenches. This convinced many people that armour could not survive when separated from infantry even when tank speed and manoeuvrability improved. In any event, the available tanks were distributed evenly across the Cambrai front, leaving no reserve to exploit the greatest success. Moreover, because of the attrition battles of 1916 – 17, the British had few infantry reserves to commit at Cambrai – they had regarded it as a raid rather than another attempt to penetrate. The usual problems of Allied generals commanding from the rear meant that the Germans rebuilt their defences before the British cavalry moved forward to exploit. Ten days after the British offensive at Cambrai, the Germans counter attacked and restored the original front. In its own way, this counterattack also reflected the latest developments of the war: surprise, coloured flares to shift artillery at phase lines, and multiple attacking waves to clear out British strong points bypassed by the first wave.

17. Even before Cambrai, the Germans had begun to develop an anti-tank doctrine. In marked contrast to the beliefs of British armour commanders, the German commanders were more concerned by the psychological effect of tank attacks than by the limited firepower and armour of the tanks themselves. Psychological effect rather than infantry support was the point emphasised by post-war German theorists. In 1917 – 18, however, the Germans lacked the resources to compete in tank production. Instead, they relied upon obstacle plans combined with existing light artillery pieces (the 77mm guns) and some armour-piercing rounds for infantry weapons. These rounds were effective against early British tanks, and by 1918 the Germans had developed oversized anti-tank rifles against later British models. To combat the terror of tanks, German troops received training on how to defeat them. Where possible, German infantry would wait until the attacking tank had passed, engage the accompanying British infantry, and throw bundles of grenades to disable a tank tread.

18. The French, British, and (with French equipment) Americans organised light tank units in 1918. The British “Whippet” tank was faster (7.5 miles per hour versus four miles per hour) than most heavy’s tanks, but was still hardly a vehicle for rapid exploitation. Light tanks were much easier to redeploy in secret from one sector to another, because they could be loaded onto trucks instead of moved by rail.

19. Although the Royal Tank Corps experimented with special armoured vehicles in which to transport radios, supplies, and even machine guns, all tank units in World War I were just that-pure tank formations of up to brigade size, intended for attachment to infantry units rather that for independent combined arms mechanised operations of their own.

LEVELS OF CONFLICT

20. Cambrai’s Strategic Plan. General Sir Julian Byng, the commander of the British Third Army, was directed in mid-September of 1917 to organize an offensive to siphon German power from the Ypres sector. Byng and General Sir Hugh Elles, a commander of the Royal Tank Corps, turned to a proposal made in August by Colonel J.F.C. Fuller, chief general staff officer, later a well-known military writer. Since tanks had proved worthless before, Fuller had searched for and found dry ground where mobile armour could be deployed in large numbers and with immense impact. Byng’s plan was however:

a. To break the German defensive system, the famous Hindenburg Line, in the neck between the Canal de L’Escaut and the Canal du Nord.

b. To seize Cambrai, Bourlon Wood and the passage over the Sensee.

c. To cut off the Germans in the area south of the Sensee and west of the Canal du Nord, and

d. To exploit the success towards Valenciennes.

21. Cambrai’s Tactical Plan. Byng’s objective was the Hindenburg Line. Therefore the main tactical purpose of the assault was to make a frontal smash along a six-mile front, to bag all the Germans found between the canals, and to capture the town of Cambrai. There were no secondary objectives. The British were not intent upon a decisive breakthrough; the tactical strike was in fact a feint to divert German strength from their lines elsewhere.

THE TANK WARFARE

23. At 0620 on 20 November 1917, a British gun in the Cambrai sector fired a single shell into the German lines. It was the signal for a 1000 gun barrage, which fell on the German front line, causing most of the defenders to retreat to their bunkers to await the infantry assault. They did not have long to wait.

24. Immediately the guns began their shelling, 378 tanks roared and rolled forward over the firm ground with infantry advancing behind. The German wire was new and glinted ominously in the dawn light, but the tanks crushed their way through, opening lanes for the infantry to follow. Reaching the deep and twelve feet wide trenches of the German front line, the tanks dropped fanciness (large bundles of brushwood) to fill the gap, then lurched their way across. Some turned and raked the inside of the German trenches with their machine-guns before rumbling on to the Germany second line.

25. Working with six infantry divisions, they punched a hole through which the Cavalry Corps could break out to seize the route centre of Cambrai and established a block across the enemy lines of communication with the Arras front. In support stood batteries of machine-guns to pour a barrage of sustained fire upon key enemy positions and trenches in the forward zone. Overhead the Royal Flying Corps would, if the weather permitted, bomb enemy gun positions, supply dumps and route centres besides performing their most important task of passing back information of progress on the ground.

26. It was a real dramatic scene performed by these monsters, and in many places the Germans simply abandoned their positions and scattered. In one day, more ground was gained than in the three-month holocaust of 3rd Ypres. Brigadier General Elles, commanding the Tank Corps, assisted by Brigadier General Tudor, a divisional artillery commander who first suggested the omission of the preliminary bombardment planned the Cambrai attack. The idea was to show what tanks could achieve on favourable ground, but it grew in scale from a large raid to a full-scale assault with 19 infantry and 5 cavalry divisions.

27. The Cambrai attack was originally planned for September, but Field Marshall Sir Douglas Haig’s unmerciful offensive at Ypres drew in all available reserves and by the time the attack took place, Passchendaele and the rout in Italy had left General Byng’s 3rd Army with no troops spare to exploit the incredible success of the first day.

28. The tanks which broke the “Hindenburg Line’ were hot, cramped, mechanically unreliable and only thinly armoured. Some 179 tanks were out of action after the first 24 hours of fighting, 65 of them knocked out by enemy fire and the rest bogged or broken down. They were a revolutionary weapon, but essentially a war-engine for siege warfare rather than a mobile fighting platform. They fought in sections of three, one up and two back about 90m apart: four sections made a tank company which had several infantry companies fighting in support. The infantry were divided into three groups: trench cleaners to work directly with the tanks; trench stops to block the enemy trenches at certain points’ and trench supports to garrison captured enemy positions.

29. British attacks continued for a week, each supported by smaller numbers of tanks and each meeting tougher resistance. The Germans rushed up reinforcements (including troops released from the Russian front) and launched a full-scale counter-offensive on 30 November using infiltration tactics to find and then dislocate it with deep penetrations and encirclements. They also used heavy barrage of gas and high explosive. Their assault troops received close support from armoured ground-attack aircraft and the southern shoulder of miles, parts of the original British front line falling into enemy hands. In the north the Germans had to attack over much more open ground and were pinned down by artillery fire before they could break into the British defences.

30. By 5th December, the whole battlefield vanished in a blinding snowstorm, which effectively terminated the battle. The great tank attack had been a splendid success, and could have led to a large-scale breakthrough had the reserves been available. Continuing the offensive in the absence of reserves proved a costly mistakes as the tanks broke down and the Germans were able to stage their counter-attack. In fact both sides had developed the weapons and tactics to crack the Western Front wide open.

AFTER EFFECTS OF THE BATTLE OF CAMBRAI

31. The Battle of Cambrai had showed that the British possessed an enormous advantage over the enemy, won by a technical lead which was unlikely to be overtaken in 1918. The fight before Cambrai on 20 November had included nearly all the main innovative components of major land battles of the future – armoured vehicles, unregistered artillery fire, the use of smoke and of machine-gun barrages, comprehensive air support, and the use of infantry as moppers-up instead of as the sole spearhead of attack. The after effects of this battle amounted to the following:

a. For the Allies. A revitalisation of plans to expand their tank forces and to introduce new types of machine.

b. The American Army, which had written off tanks as a failure at the end of 1916, changed its mind and formed its own Tank Corps on 26th January 1918. It however, needed several months before it could go into action since the men had yet to be trained and the tanks could come only from British and French sources.

c. The German Army also formed its first section of tanks in January using five A7V tanks and, later, five British tanks to form a second section.

d. The Russian Army, which had tardily awoken to the possibilities of tanks in early 1917, asked the British and French to supply some since their projects had broken down amidst the general chaos of the own industry. Some tanks were shipped and were in time to take part in the struggle of the Revolution.

32. The Results. The famous Hindenburg Line was crossed and captured. A penetration four miles deep was made on six-mile front, through the most scientifically defended part of the whole German line. More ground was won in a few hours than Third Battle of Ypres in three and a half months. The British sustained 44,000 casualties and 6,000 prisoners, the Germans slightly more: 50,000 killed or wounded 11,000 prisoners and more than hundred guns. It is no wonder that when the news reached Britain the church bells rang out with joy.

THE WEAKNESSES.

38. The failure of British to take an advantages. On Nov 20, the first day of the battle of Cambrai, an advance of three to four miles was made on a front of six miles. The strongly defended trench systems; the Hindenburg Line had been taken in not much more than four hours; 100 guns and over 4200 prisoners had been capture and heavy losses cause to the enemy at a cost of little more than 4000 British casualties. However, the opportunity was lost and the successful advance was not exploited rapidly. The Germans counter attack on December 30, succeeded to such an extent by December 3, that the British had lost most of their gains and were driven out of their own trenches on the southern flank of the battle. The British failed to utilise the afternoon and evening; they might at least have surrounded the German forces still holding out in Flesquieres.

39. Inexperienced Troops and The Lack of Co-ordination. Byng blamed his own troops or rather attributed the German success in counter attack to the lack of training of his junior officers, NCOs and men. Haig took full responsibility on himself; he accepts Byang view, but soon afterworth superseded two of his corps commanders. One important factor was the slowness and excessive caution of the Calvary commanders in exploiting the first success. Almost for the first time since the autumn of 1914, the Calvary fought as Cavalry, but the senior commanders had been inactive too long to show initiative or to take justifiable risks. In the first day, three divisions of Cavalry were standing-to to pass the infantry position, cross the St Quentin Canal and swept and swept northwards behind Cambrai. But they were not brought into action because the few crossings over the canal were covered by German machines-guns and denied to mount troops. So there was no pursuit, either by tanks or Cavalry.

40. Weaknesses of Command. Byang himself was over confidence. He made too little effort to meet counter attack. He did not ask for reinforcements or even for the relief of his tired troops. He did not warn his subordinate commanders or bring his own reserves close enough to put them into action at once. He had too few men, asked too much of them and did not handle them well. If the divisions already sent to Italy had been available at Cambrai, the result might have been very different.

41. The Failure to Take an Advantages. 179 of the 378 fighting tanks, which took part in the attack, were put out of action. Sixty-five by German shellfire, the remainder through breakdown or mishap. The crews of the remaining tanks were exhausted and many tanks were short of patrol and ammunition. So further pursuit was not possible. If fresh tanks had been available to take up the pursuit at the end of the first day, the result might be different.

CONCLUSION

42. The Battle of Cambrai ended the fighting on the Western Front in 1917. It was the darkness year of the war for the Allies. The losses in France had been tragically heavy and the gains small. Russia, the mighty ally had suffered revolution and had made her peace with Germany, who could use all her military might on the Western Front. The French Army was in bad shape, with mutiny general and the commanders were struggling to reawaken the French Army’s great fighting spirit. The Battle of Cambrai was the type of the battle in the future and its influence on the Second World War was as great as that on remainder of the First.

David Scott – Daniel, World War 1, Ernest Benn Ltd, London, p. 95.

Simon Ransford, War Machines Land, Berkeley Publisher Ltd, Hong Kong, p. 118.

David Scott – Daniell, World War 1, Ernest Benn Ltd, London, p. 98.

Singer. A history of technology, Clarendon, Oxford. p. 27.

Ibid. p. 29.

Ibid. p. 31.

Ibid.

Sir Llewettyn Woodward, Great Britain and The War of 1914-1918, Methuen & Co Ltd, London, 1967, P 300.

The lack of mobility was increased by the heavy weight – 72 pounds – of equipment carried by the infantry. The lessons of the Somme might indeed have led to earlier experiments in armoured carrier to bring up equipment and possibly the men themselves. The weight carried at Cambrai was in fact four pounds heavier per infantryman than at the Somme.

In Aug 1917, an increased establishment of officers and men for the Tank Corps, though approved by Haig, was postponed owning to the heavy demands of the infantry to replace their losses. At the same time, GHQ ordered Haig to sent division strength to Italy for reinforcement.