A 34 inch by 30 inch framed in stained wood German map of the Cambrai area used by the German artillery. The map shows the positions of the Allied troops in the Cambrai area.
The Battle of Cambrai was a British offensive (November–December 1917) on the Western Front during World War I that marked the first large-scale, effective use of tanks in warfare.
Appreciating the futility of using tanks in the Flanders swamps, the officers of the British Tank Corps looked for an area where they could achieve some measure of success. Their chief General Staff officer, Col. J.F.C. Fuller, drew up a project for a large-scale raid to scour a canal-enclosed “pocket” on the front southwest of Cambrai in northern France, where the rolling downland lent itself to tank movement. The basic idea was to release a swarm of tanks without any preparatory bombardment to avoid warning the enemy of the impending attack. With the sanguinary horror of Passchendaele demonstrating the need for fresh tactics on the Western Front, the British Command adopted the scheme. While retaining Fuller’s basic idea, they transformed the raid into a full-fledged offensive with far-reaching aims (including the capture of Cambrai itself and a thrust toward Valenciennes), for which they did not have the resources because of the drain of Passchendaele.
The operation would be carried out by the Third Army under Gen. Sir Julian Byng in order to relieve pressure on the French front. The offensive consisted of an assault against the Germans’ Hindenburg Line along a 10-mile (16-km) front some 8 miles (13 km) west of Cambrai. Nineteen British divisions were assembled for the offensive, supported by tanks (476 in all, of which about 378 were fighting tanks; the rest were supply and service vehicles) and five horsed cavalry divisions. The British armoured force was moved into position at night, so as to avoid detection by German aerial reconnaissance craft. Moreover, cloudy weather limited air operations during the day. For the initial attack, eight British divisions were launched against three German divisions.
Attacking by complete surprise on November 20, the British tanks ripped through German defenses in depth and took some 7,500 prisoners at low cost in casualties. Bad weather intervened, however, so that the cavalry could not exploit the breakthrough, and adequate infantry reinforcements were not made available in time to exploit the initial success. By November 29 the offensive had been halted after an advance of about 6 miles (10 km). On November 30 the German Second Army, under Gen. Georg von der Marwitz, launched a counterstroke with 20 divisions against the flanks of the salient created by the British advance. In the north the attack was parried, but in the south it broke through, and a disaster for the British was averted only by the superb counterattack, first by the Guards Division and later by a tank brigade. By December 5 the British had been driven back almost to their original positions.
Casualties on both sides were about equal—45,000 each. Despite the British failure to exploit the initial success of their tanks, the battle demonstrated that armour was the key to a decision on the Western Front.
