2/22/2024 0 Comments First tank battle in history![]() ![]() Production workers noted that the oddly-shaped shells of the vehicles resembled water tanks, and they were secretly shipped to the front lines in crates labeled “tanks.” The name stuck.Īn abandoned Mark I during the Battle of the Somme.ĭesperate to end the stalemate of the Battle of the Somme, the British rushed the new weapon into battle. Swinton formed the Heavy Section of the Machine Gun Corps in March 1916 to train 500 recruits to operate the vehicles. A second prototype, “Big Willie,” achieved much greater success and was deemed ready for battle. The first prototype, “Little Willie,” was tested in September 1915 to poor results. ![]() Much of the design work was done by two men working secretly inside a Lincoln, England, hotel room near a threshing machine manufacturer commissioned to build the prototypes. Early in the war, British Army Colonel Ernest Swinton proposed the development of an armored vehicle that could traverse difficult terrain, and First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill approved the development of the so-called “landships” in early 1915. ![]() Thus, ‘Little Willie’ was redundant almost as soon as it was built.The British military hoped that its new weapon-the tank-could finally break the deadly impasse of the Battle of the Somme. This would become the classic British tank design of the Great War. Its designers, William Tritton and Walter Wilson came up with a set of workable tracks which were fitted to the ‘Landship’ now known as ‘Little Willie,’ said to be an irreverent nickname for the German Crown Prince, Kaiser Wilhelm.īy the time ‘Little Willie’ was built, Wilson and Tritton had already come up with an improved idea of a machine with tracks running all the way around the vehicle, which would be able to cross trenches. of Lincoln, was contracted to build a prototype machine. After many experiments and false starts an agricultural firm, William Foster & Co. In 1915 the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, created a Landships Committee to tackle the problems of trench warfare. It proved that a vehicle encompassing armoured protection, an internal combustion engine, and tracks was a possibility for the battlefield. Little Willie was the first working tank in the world. ![]()
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