In last night's chapter, we discussed why Charles opted not to equip the Mark I tank with a cannon, which led to questions from some readers. Here's a more detailed explanation.
Before diving into the issue with tank cannons, let's first compare with machine guns.
When a machine gun is mounted on a bipod on level ground, the gunner can easily align it with the target and adjust aim left, right, up, and down. But what if one leg of the bipod is higher than the other? Suddenly, aiming becomes difficult. The gun is either pointing upward or downward and can't maintain a steady aim at a target directly ahead—even if that target is very close.
Now consider the Mark I tank, an early tank with a rigid suspension, meaning it didn't actually have a suspension system. The road wheels were fixed directly to the frame. This created a significant issue: even a small bump or rock in the terrain could tilt the entire tank to one side.
Under these conditions, a cannon would be almost impossible to aim accurately. Even with the target right in front of the tank, it would still be difficult to hit because both the tank and the cannon within it are not level. The gunner has only a tiny view through a narrow aperture and wouldn't even know if the cannon was correctly aligned with the target.
As a result, a cannon on a tank would be essentially decorative—incapable of hitting a target and introducing a host of issues, such as filling the tank with toxic gases after every shot with no way to ventilate.
Some of these issues were addressed later in the Renault tank, which used a form of horizontal suspension. This suspension worked like a triangular frame that could shift the force applied up or down into horizontal pressure. When the track encountered a rock, the Renault tank's horizontal suspension would allow the road wheels to adjust and keep the tank's body level.
Summary: Even when stationary, a rigid-suspension tank like the Mark I cannot reliably aim its cannon unless it's on completely flat terrain. A small bump on the track, such as a rock, would still misalign the shot. Googlᴇ search Novᴇ(l)Fɪre .ɴᴇt
In contrast, a Renault tank with horizontal suspension could aim more accurately while stationary. Its soft suspension allowed the road wheels to press inward when they encountered bumps and adjust outward in depressions, keeping the tracks in contact with the ground and the tank relatively level, provided the terrain wasn't overly rugged. However, it couldn't aim accurately while moving.
During World War II, most tanks couldn't fire accurately while in motion either, with two notable exceptions: the British Matilda and the American Sherman. The Matilda had a greater number of road wheels and moved more slowly, so it remained more stable and could aim with some accuracy while moving. The Sherman had a vertical stabilization system, which kept the cannon steady in a vertical plane, allowing for some accuracy on the move.
Modern tanks have full stabilizing systems that keep the cannon steady in both the vertical and horizontal planes, known as a dual stabilization system. This allows the cannon to remain in the same position regardless of the tank's movement or changes in direction, making it possible to fire accurately while on the move.
Returning to the Mark I tank, people at that time simply didn't know about such innovations. They thought they could simply mount a cannon on a tank and fire it as needed, resulting in the rigid-suspension tanks with cannons that we see in historical designs.
There are indeed some cases where rigid-suspension tanks with cannons managed to hit targets in real combat, but these were usually at very close range and relied heavily on luck. Such rare occurrences don't prove much about the effectiveness of rigid-suspension cannons in general.
Charles, knowing that rigid suspension wasn't suited to cannon fire, wisely chose machine guns as the Mark I's primary weapons due to their ability to cover a broader area.
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