Tanks on the Somme - July 1st 1916

[Peter Cowan]

What if the first operational deployment of tanks had been on the Somme in July rather than September.
As I understand it, it was an option but production delays meant that this could not happen. Haig did not want to deploy small numbers feeling that they would be wasted - ironic in view of his decision to employ just 49 in September

Where and how could they have been deployed and to what effect?

My guess, is that, assuming 70-80 tanks could be used (allowing for breakdowns, etc), something closer to Cambrai could have been achieved on July 1st and with far fewer casualties. Long-term, I suspect the battle would still have developed into a slogging match with broadly similar results to OTL.

 

[Max Sinister]

But the Allies could've made more valuable experiences with tanks, so they could've made said breakthrough earlier than OTL. OTOH, the Germans might've had the idea that those tank things could be very useful for themselves too...

 

[Roadwarrior]

The Somme was originally scheduled for August 1916 and was to utilise 150 tanks (also 40 french divisions BTW). Thanks to Verdun the date was brought forward to July (with French participation reduced to 5 divisions). As previously stated tanks did not put in an appearance until September and only 49 of them were available at this time.

So, they missed the original start date of the battle by a month and were only able to supply 1/3 of the requested numbers at that time. How you are going to get 70-80 tanks available at the start of July is the key point. If they had been available Haig would have used them and that unfortunate business with the German barbed wire still being intact would not have proved as great a problem.

It wouldn't have been as great a success as Cambrai as many lessons in the use of tanks still needed to be learned and the mechanical reliability of the machines was not high. Having said that, if 70-80 had been available on the first day they would have made a sizeable difference given the psychological effect that 49 of them had in September.

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

Well, at Flers the tanks surprised the Germans and in three days the British captured 2km of German held territory. However, a large number of the tanks broke-down and Rawlinson's army was unable to hold on to its gains, and the attack had to be cancelled, eventually. And the German High Command's initial reaction was that the tank could be defeated rather than imitated.

This may happen on the 1st july, too.

 

[jose1357]

i'd assume they could have had a small scale triumph especially along the edges of the assault (see french advances) otherwise unless they could continue supplying them it'd turn into a quagmire