An Opportunity Missed
By early 1915, the fighting on the Western Front had stalemated into static trench warfare. The death toll had reached such epic proportions that neither the British, French nor Germans could keep up the tactics of mass charges by their troops across no-man’s land only to be slaughtered in vast numbers by machine-gun fire or die entangled in barbed-wire. As Ken Wright describes, an answer had to be found.
An accomplished writer for the British Army, Lieutenant Colonel Ernest Swinton, observed first hand the early battles and reported to his superiors that in his opinion, a petrol tractor on the caterpillar principle, with hardened steel plates, would be able to counter the effects of the machine-gunner.
His proposal for the British Army to build such a vehicle was rejected by General French and his scientific advisers. Fortunately Swinton’s report had been read by Winston Churchill, the First Sea Lord, who had a little more imagination than his colleagues. He liked the idea and set up in February 1915, a Landship Committee to look into the possibility of developing the new war machine Swinton had proposed.
The committee commissioned Lieutenant W.E.Wilson of the Naval Air Service and William Tritton of William Foster and Company of Lincoln to construct a small landship. The work was carried out in great secrecy and the new war machine was code-named ‘water tank’ based on the size and shape of the fresh water tanks on the battle field. The name was to be eventually shortened to ‘tank’ by the troops.
The first prototype was demonstrated to the Landship Committee on 11 September 1915, but its performance was disappointing as it couldn’t cross broad trenches. Wilson and Tritton immediately went back to work to design a better model. It was Wilson who came up with the idea of taking the tracks right round a body of rhomboid shape, pointed at the top and sloping down at the back.
After much trial and error, the first crude British tanks were shipped to the Western Front and spearheaded the attack on the Somme on 15 September 1916. Historical records vary but of the approximately forty-seven tanks that were brought up for the attack, only eleven actually went into battle. The long hoped for decisive victory was not achieved despite the surprise and terror the new weapon caused the Germans. The tanks were underpowered, unreliable and too few in number. It is only conjecture, but the outcome of that particular battle and many more in the future may have been different if the ideas of an Australian inventor had been used when offered.
Lancelot Eldin DeMole was born in Kent-town South Australia on the 13 March 1880, and by 1908 was a draughtsman and inventor working on surveying and mining projects in several Australian states. DeMole, while working in the very rugged countryside of Western Australia had the idea for a chain rail system of traction for use in heavy haulage. This idea led him to work on a design for a chain rail armoured vehicle. He sent his sketches to the British War Office in 1912.
The principal operation of his vehicle was that his machine could be steered to the right or left when proceeding forwards by altering the direction that the chain rail could be laid. This is achieved by screwing the front portions to one side or the other. This causes the body of the vehicle to be thrown to the right or left as required so that as the machine proceeds, the links of the chain rail will be laid to the right or left of the line that the vehicle has been proceeding on. Perhaps it was all too complicated for the British War Office as they returned some of his sketches in 1913 with a letter rejecting his idea.
DeMole's friends urged him to try and sell his idea to the German consul in Western Australia but he declined with the comment that they may one day be an enemy. The outbreak of the First World War August 1914 proved him right!
As the war progressed, the Landship Committee and the development of the tank were of course unknown to DeMole. The new secret weapon only became common knowledge after the Somme battle, following which DeMole re-submitted his plans based on the original ones from 1912 to the British Munitions Inventions Office around July or August 1915 or possibly in early 1916. In any case, the British authorities failed to pass on his design to the Landship committee.
DeMole did receive a letter from the Munitions Inventions Office suggesting that a working model must be provided to have any chance of consideration. In 1917 DeMole joined the 25th Re-enforcements, 10th Battalion, Australian Imperial Forces and with financial backing from a friend, Lieutenant Harold Boyce, DeMole had a metal model of one-eighth scale constructed by the engineering firm of Williams and Benwell in Melbourne. They described the model as being remarkable from an engineering point of view. Lieutenant Boyce managed to get Private DeMole assigned to him and they departed from Melbourne on the troopship A60. Locked in the ships orderly room under constant guard was the model tank. As soon as they arrived at Plymouth, DeMole managed to get leave to take his model to the Munitions Inventions Office. By now it was January 1918.
His model passed the first test and he was asked to demonstrate it to a second committee. Just when it seemed he was actually getting somewhere, DeMole became sick and was unable to follow up with the second demonstration. He returned in March to the Munitions Inventions Office only to find his model had been left in a basement and the letter from the first committee recommending his model to the Tank Board had not been passed on to the second committee. Before he could arrange a second demonstration the Germans launched their spring offensive on 21 March and. DeMole was called back to active duty.
DeMole remained in France until the armistice then returned to London to be demobilised. It was here that he heard about a Royal Commission being established to reward inventors for their contribution to the war effort. With regards to the area of tank development, DeMole lodged his claim.
In November 1919, the Royal commission handed down their findings. The credit for designing the tank actually used went to Wilson and Tritton and they were jointly awarded £15,000. As to Lancelot Eldin DeMole’s claim, the commissioners considered he was entitled to the greatest credit for having “made and reduced to practical shape as far back as 1912, a brilliant invention which anticipated, and in some respects, surpassed that which was actually put into use in the year 1916". They regretted they were not able to recommend any award to him. DeMole was however, awarded £965 for out-of-pocket expenses by the British Government.
DeMole’s tank was more manoeuvrable than early British variety. It incorporated a piece of mechanism that simplified the handling of the tank and enabled it to be steered in a comparatively sharp turn. It also had climbing face at both the front and back which enabled the tank to back out of trouble, which the early British tanks could not do. DeMole’s invention looked good on paper and mapped out what Wilson and Tritton had to work out the hard way. Unfortunately for him and history, his plans were never built and tested with a full scale vehicle so it is only speculation how much if any, his contribution would have had on the design and development of the early tanks. As a result his name and what he tried to achieve has been all but forgotten even in his own country.
After the war, the newly-established Australian War Memorial in the Australian capital of Canberra sent DeMole a letter asking him if he would be prepared to donate his model to the museum, where it now resides.
Lancelot Eldin DeMole died in 1950. He received at least some recognition when, on 21 July 1921, a grateful Australian Government had placed him on the New Year’s Honour list and awarded him the C.B.E.
Notes:
Personal Papers; Stephanie Hart—Anthea Fleming. Melbourne, Australia.
DeMole Papers; Australian War Memorial Canberra.
Archives; Australian War Memorial Canberra.
