hi , does anyone know how long individual tank crews kept their tanks for? was it tcommon practice for the tanks to be returned to a commom pool when not used then reissued for action? did tank crews ever get their previous tanks back or did they always get a different one ? what sort of problems did this cause? any advice will be very appreciated
I can only answer for British tanks. In general, the practice was that tanks were drawn from Central Stores, used by the battalion for whatever action and 'handed over to salvage' once they became unfit and incapable of recovery and/or repair by the crews. At this point they were struck off charge and taken over by a Tank Field Company, which (if possible) recovered them and sent them back to Central Workshops for repair, again if possible. Once repaired they were issued to Central Stores and would be reissued to a fighting battalion when required.
For a tank to be issued to a battalion, and then to be re-issued to the same battalion wasn't impossible but would have been purely a matter of chance. For it to be issued to the same crew would be incredibly unlikely, just as a matter of probability. Despite having extensive records culled from all manner of sources that allow me to trace the history of many individual tanks, I know of no case where an officer commanded a tank both before and after it was recovered, repaired and re-issued as described above. This may also be a reflection of the life expectancy of tank commanders at the time, however.
I don't think it mattered that much that crews got to use different tanks. It is the case that there were complaints from crews that on occasion tanks drawn from Central Stores weren't as good as they might be: from memory 4th Battalion took over a batch of Mark IVs from Central Stores in early 1918 and virtually all had serious problems especially with radiators, Autovacs and sprockets. However it should be remembered that some of these tanks would have fought at Messines, Ypres III and Cambrai and had probably been used for training in between times so they would have been pretty worn out by early 1918 despite Central Workshop's best efforts. This may well have been a factor in the large number of mechanical breakdowns recorded in Mark IVs during the German Spring Offensive of 1918.
There are far more recorded complaints from tank battalions that took over tanks from other fighting battalions. Frequently, it seems, such tanks needed a very great deal of work to bring them to battle readiness.
I have no idea how long, on average, a crew kept their tank for. It would depend on a range of factors such as how new the tank was, how well maintained it was, and just how lucky the crew were when they went into action.
