Too Much Ingenuity
“Sure, the American tanks were good tanks. We never used them in action that I know of. Those I saw got to France, or got where they might have been used, after the Armistice. But they were sure American all over—too much American, if you know what I mean. It’s a national failing, I guess, this business of being ingenious. There was so much ingenuity about those tanks there wasn’t always room for the crew. For instance, machine gun belts. When you use them, they are rolled up and in a carrier. Some wise tank builder decided all the ammunition in a machine gun tank ought to be in carriers, rolled up ready for use. When he got through, there wasn’t any room inside for the crew! No sense to it, of course; the same amount of ammunition stores flat, and leaves plenty of room, and it only takes a few seconds to roll up a belt and put it in a carrier.
“Then there was the compass. Some one must have read that British tanks carried compasses. So they did, until the tank crew could throw it away. So our American tanks came over with the handsomest compasses inside you ever saw; regular ship affairs, gimbals and all! Now, of course, that’s all foolishness. In the first place there wasn’t room for the compass and the crew. In the second place, when you start the engine, the compass does a fox trot, and keeps on whirling; it’s no good as a compass. And if it was, there wouldn’t be any sense in it; there’s a map stuck up right under your nose and that’s all you need, not to mention a few officers with flags telling you where to go, if they are not sitting on top going with you.
“Then there was the speedometer. Why any one should imagine a tank crew needed a speedometer I don’t know. But there it was, ready to tell us just how fast we were going. Maybe they thought, down in Washington, we were going to establish a tank speed record or something.
“And the hook—I mustn’t forget the hook. It’s so typically American—a device born of our national tendency to economise time. To put a hook in at the top of the tank meant at least two hours’ work. In 100 tanks that was 200 hours or 24 working days, slowing up production. The idea of the hook was that it would be so convenient when a crane had to lift the tank. Now the average tank gets lifted by a crane just four or six times; on a car at the factory, off the car, on the ship, off the ship, and maybe on and off a car again. So to save the six or twelve minutes it would take a crew to slip a chain around the tanks, they put a hook at the top, because it was efficient!
“Oh, well, I oughtn’t to grouch. We never used the tanks. And no one that I know minds much. Those Renault tanks were little dandies. You have no idea how easily they run. You can crawl over a telegraph pole and hardly feel it, so well worked out has been the spring suspension, the relation of rollers, chariots and treads. And they didn’t go in for any fancy touches, the Renaults. No armor for the guns nor fancy locks on the door to keep some one from crawling up and throwing a grenade inside, nor deflection armor at odd angles which never did anything but stop bullets and make splinters that otherwise would never have endangered any one’s eyes.