The inspiration for what was to become the Experimental Mechanised Force (EMF) can be traced back to May 1918, when Lieutenant Colonel John Frederick Charles ‘Boney’ Fuller, a staff officer at the Tank Corps HQ, drafted a paper on future armoured operations. Ostensibly, this was a study of the capabilities of a new tank design (the Medium D), but its scope went far beyond the dull official title ‘The Tactics of the Attack as Affected by the Speed and Circuit of the Medium D Tank’. The paper became far better known as ‘Plan 1919’ and outlined the essentials of what would become Blitzkrieg.
Fuller’s paper proposed a truly massive offensive by 2,600 heavy tanks and 400 medium tanks with close air-support on a 90-mile (145km) front. As soon as the German front was broken, a further 800 medium tanks would attack German divisional, corps, and army HQs to disrupt the enemy’s command structure and cripple the deployment of his reserves. The final blow would be struck by a combined force including motorised infantry and artillery, spearheaded by 1,200 medium tanks that would exploit the breakthrough by advancing at a daily rate of 20 miles (30km) for up to a week to force a German surrender.
Plan 1919 demanded staggering resources – the number of tanks required far exceeded the 2,500 Panzers committed to the attack on France in 1940 – and probably pushed contemporary technology beyond its limits. (The tanks of 1918 broke down with depressing regularity: the 420 that achieved a stunning victory at Amiens in August 1918 were reduced to 67 operational machines in three days’ combat, with only 190 of the losses due to enemy action.) However, Fuller’s plan caught the imagination of the Allied C-in-C, France’s Marshal Foch, who adopted it as the basis for future operations. Although production of a total of 10,000 assorted tanks was planned, only a small number had been completed when the war ended with the unexpectedly rapid collapse of the Central Powers in the autumn of 1918.
