Major General Sir Ernest Dunlop Swinton, (21 October 1868 – 15 January 1951) was a British Army officer who played a part in the development and adoption of the tank during the First World War. He was also a war correspondent and author of several short stories on military themes. He is credited, along with fellow officer Lieutenant-Colonel Walter Dally Jones, with having initiated the use of the word "tank" as a code-name for the first British, tracked, armoured fighting vehicles.
Early life and career
Swinton was born in
Bangalore,
British India, in 1868. His father was a judge with the
Madras Civil Service. The family returned to England in 1874, and Swinton was educated at University College School,
Rugby School, Cheltenham College, Blackheath Proprietary School, and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Corps of Royal Engineers on 17 February 1888.
Serving in
British Raj, he was promoted to lieutenant on 17 February 1891, and to captain on 17 February 1899.
[Hart′s Army list, 1903]
He served as a captain during the Second Boer War (1899–1902), and returned home in September 1902, two months after the end of the war.
First World War
The
War Minister, Lord Kitchener, appointed Swinton as the official British war correspondent on the Western Front in 1914.
Journalists were not allowed at the front, and Swinton's reports were censored and vetted before being passed to the press leading to an effectively uncontroversial although even-handed reporting.
He was promoted to the temporary rank of lieutenant colonel in August 1914.
Development of tanks
Swinton recounts in his book
Eyewitness how he first got the sudden idea to build a tank on 19 October 1914, while driving a car in
France. It is known that in July 1914 he received a letter from a friend, a mining engineer named Hugh F. Marriott whom he had met while in South Africa. Marriott occasionally sent Swinton news of technical developments that might have a military application, and his letter described a machine he had seen in Antwerp, an American-made
Holt tractor.
He suggested that the machine might be useful for transport, and Swinton passed the information on to several military and political figures who he thought might be interested. At the time, with no apparent prospect of war, the idea seemed to be a matter only of transport efficiency, and Swinton forgot about the matter. The idea of a caterpillar track as the basis for a fighting vehicle occurred to him only as he drove from
Saint-Omer to Calais on the morning of October 1, 1914.
In Britain, David Roberts of Richard Hornsby & Sons had attempted starting in 1911 to interest British military officials in a tracked vehicle, but failed. Benjamin Holt of the Holt Manufacturing Company bought the patents related to the "chain track" track-type tractor from Richard Hornsby & Sons in 1914
In July 1915, Swinton was given a prominent post in the War Office[Smithers 1987, p. 38] and it was Swinton who drew up the specifications of the performance which the army would require.[Smithers 1987, p. 44]
In 1916 Swinton was promoted to lieutenant colonel and given responsibility for training the first tank units. He created the first tactical instructions for armoured warfare. The Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors decided after the war that the inventors of the tank were Sir William Tritton, managing director of Fosters and Major Walter Gordon Wilson; however, Swinton was awarded £1,000 for his contribution.[Smithers 1987, p. 253] By 1918, the War Office had received 2,100 Holt tractors.
In April 1918, while on a tour of the US, Swinton visited Stockton, California, to publicly honour Benjamin Holt and the company for their contribution to the war effort and to relay Britain's gratitude to the inventor. Benjamin Holt was recognised by the general at a public meeting held in Stockton.
Post-war
In 1919 Swinton retired as a
major general. He subsequently served in the Civil Aviation department at the
Air Ministry. He thereafter joined Citroën in 1922 as a director. He was Chichele Professor of Military History at the University of Oxford and a
Oxbridge Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, from 1925 to 1939; he was also a Colonel Commandant of the Royal Tank Corps from 1934 to 1938. In 1938, he edited
Twenty Years After: the Battlefields of 1914–18: then and Now, a publication of George Newnes Limited. This was planned for issue in 20 parts but ultimately amounted to 42. The magazine-style publication contained wartime and present-day (ca. 1938) images of France.
[ Twenty Years After PartWorks – recycling classic collections]
Family life
Swinton married Grace Louise Clayton in 1897, and they had two sons and a daughter. Their daughter, Margaret Elizabeth, died in a road accident in 1944, aged 40, after being struck by an American Army vehicle while out cycling.
[Western Gazette, 18th February, 1944] A verdict of accidental death was returned at the inquest.
["Maj.-Gen. Sir Ernest Swinton." Times London, 17 January 1951: 6. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 5 August 2012.]
Swinton died in Oxford on 15 January 1951, aged 82.
Honours and awards
-
DSO : Companion of the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) – 29 November 1900 – in recognition of services during operations in South Africa.
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CB : Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) – 12 February 1917 – in recognition of services during the war.
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KBE : Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire – 2 June 1923 – in the King's Birthday Honours.
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Croix de Chevalier of the Legion of Honour – 1916 – in recognition of distinguished service during the campaign
Works
See also
Bibliography
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Swinton, Ernest (under the pseudonym "Lieutenant Backsight Forethought"), The Defence of Duffer's Drift, Oxford: United Service Magazine, 1905; Originally published in April 1905 in "The British Infantry Journal", .
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Swinton, Ernest (as editor), The Truth About Port Arthur, London: Murray, 1908
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Swinton, Ernest (as editor), The Russian Army and the Japanese War, Vol. I, New York: Dutton, 1909
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Swinton, Ernest (as editor), The Russian Army and the Japanese War, Vol. II, New York: Dutton, 1909
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McClure's Magazine (two articles under the pseudonym "Ole Luk-Oie"), Link, 1910
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Swinton, Ernest (under the pseudonym "Ole Luk-Oie"), The Green Curve, New York: Doubleday, 1914, and as an added bonus, his obituary.
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Swinton, Ernest (under the pseudonym "Ole Luk-Oie"), The Great Tab Dope, Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1916
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Swinton, Ernest, Tanks, 1918, reprinted from "The Strand Magazine".
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The Study of War (1926)
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Swinton, Major-General Sir Ernest D., [12], London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1932 (includes the genesis of the tank)
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Over My Shoulder (1951, posthumously)
also:
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(translation) An Eastern Odyssey: The Third Expedition of Haardt and Audion-Dubreuil (1935)
External links
