The British Army was the first to use tanks, employing a handful of early models during the closing stages of the Battle of the Somme, September 1916. But it was over a year later that the first mass tank attack demonstrated just what a revolutionary weapon this was. On 20 November 1917, just as the bloody slaughter at Passchendaele reached stalemate, the British flung 378 tanks at the German trenches at Cambrai. T hey overran the whole position in a morning. The victory was so incredible that church bells were sounded throughout the British Isles. However, the subsequent German counter-attack was successful. The British ran out of reserves and the frontline was retaken. Yet Cambrai anticipated the events of 1918: the Germans had no answer to the British Army’s new weapon and new artillery tactics. No subsequent British offensive failed to take its objectives.