Its length allowed it to traverse trenches and held open the real possibility of deep and rapid (by the standards of the day) penetrations of the German front line. Although glacially slow, cumbersome and prone to breaking down, the tank was largely impervious to small arms and machine gun fire. The arrival of the tank on the battlefield, at Flers-Courcelette, in the autumn of 1916, caused shockwaves amongst the German army. But – spoiler alert – with a slightly different title, the anti-tank rifle is still very much alive. In fact, we were going to call this piece “The short life of the anti-tank rifle”. As a weapon specifically intended to counter tanks on the battlefield, it did not appear to have had a long life. We will take a look at one evolutionary strand of weapons system, the anti-tank rifle. Although slow they had the Germans running. British tanks hit the battlefields of WW1 with all guns blazing.
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