This is the first ever official photograph taken of a tank going into action. It shows
a British Mark I tank at the Battle of Flers-Courcelette on the 15th of September 1916.
In another photo taken on the same day we see another tank. Both of these were hot,
noisy, slow and very unreliable. But they were both revolutionary for their time, the
start of a long line of development that would change the face of warfare forever. But there
is one difference between them, this tank is male and this tank is female. Why?
Yeah it’s a bit strange! That’s Bryn Hammond, head of one the curatorial
teams at Imperial War Museums. You’ll notice these tanks didn’t have
a turret on top like tanks from the present day. Instead the armament sat on each side
of the tank in these things called ‘sponsons’. Each tank had a six-pounder naval gun and
a machine-gun in in each one of them. But before they even went into action, concerns
were raised about these vehicles that they might not be able to defend themselves against
infantry attacks. So, it was decided that half of the 150 tanks
ordered would be equipped only with machine-guns, two in each sponson, and the others would
keep their big guns. The two types of vehicles were to work in pairs, one destroyer tank
and one man-killing tank. The half armed with the 6-pounder guns, which seemed more phallic,
became known as male tanks and their machine-gun toting partners became female tanks.
Whether ‘male’ or ‘female’, this newest weapon of warfare presented a whole new challenge
for both sides. Terrifying to those opposing them, they were also a complex problem for
the side using them. The question of how best to use tanks would preoccupy their chief users,
the British and the French, for the remaining two and a half years of war. How do you get
infantry and tanks to work together? And that question brings us to Anthropomorphism.
Right so, anthropomorphism when you ascribe human characteristics to a non-human thing.
There are plenty of examples in history and mythology of warriors naming their weapons,
indeed IWM has plenty of these in our collection. But why would would you name a weapon? Why
do we anthropomorphise things? Oh loads of reasons, we might anthropomorphize
an object because it seems to have a human face or shape or because it evidences illogical
behavior. Or it may demonstrate human idiosyncrasies. It may be we want to establish a bond with
it that is personal and possessive “it’s mine, I named it”. Or maybe we just want
to befriend it. We still see this practice still today. We
name our cars and our trucks, we ask our computers 'why wont you work?!' and lets not even get
started on Boaty McBoatface! If we go back to the First World War for example,
British tanks crew did this too. The names were very varied - from characters in classic
mythology to execrable puns. But there were some rules, Tank names were usually expected
to align with the initial letter by which their battalion was identified. 2nd Battalion
was ‘B’, 8th Battalion was ‘H’ and so on. These name were actually very useful
for accompanying infantry to report the tanks’ progress in action. Because tank soldiers
chose the tank names themselves, they didn’t always choose names that aligned with the
tank’s ‘gender’. But these names were more than a bit of fun,
they also helped de-mystify these brand new machines. Anthropomorphising tanks helped
soldiers understand something wholly new in the history of warfare.
A great example of this is the battle of Amiens in August 1918. It was the most significant
Allied combined arms offensive of the war and the Tank Corps was deploying more tanks
than ever before. The problem was the infantry, chiefly the Australians, despised tanks.
Ever since a disaster at Bullecourt in April 1917 when the attacking Australian infantry
got slaughtered, they were deeply suspicious of these mechanically unreliable beasts. Tanks
drew German shell fire and that got you killed. The Tank Corps who, since that disaster, had
become far better trained and equipped, knew they needed to win over these Australian doubters
if they were to work together effectively. So they embarked on a charm offensive.
Well, alongside the formal training to show what the tanks could do, other more ‘social’
activities were organised. Tank rides and large quantities of alcohol featured but one
battalion, the 15th ‘O’, decided they’d also let ‘their’ Australians name a few
of the tanks. Two of those name were ‘Otazell’ and ‘Oodnadatta’.
One of them is a bad pun - Hot as hell, and the other is the name a of a small settlement
on the edge of the Simpson Desert in South Australia where daytime temperatures in January
can easily go above 40°Celsius. What you have here are examples of tough men
recognising the tank crew’s lot. Inside a FWW tank, with the crew sharing the same
compartment as the engine, it could indeed be ‘As Hot As Hell’. Effective co-operation
requires mutual understanding and here the tank crews and their Australian infantry partners
were finding just that. When they finally went into battle together
on the 8th August 1918, the success they achieved, along with Canadian, British and French forces,
was so significant it was referred to by an opposing commander as ‘the Black Day of
the German Army’. Going forward, the success at Amiens would make possible the subsequent
series of war-winning attacks that led to Germany’s final defeat in November 1918.
Anthropomorphism helps us identity with and understand non-human objects. By naming these
tanks, some of these Australian troops were able accept, even welcome tanks and work with
them to end the war with Germany. On this occasion a name was far more than a name,
it was a mark of respect and understanding.