Here's a photo of the Mark I
Worth reading the specs on this at wiki.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_heavy_tanks_of_World_War_I
Posted on 09/15/2014 11:44:28 AM PDT by Covenantor
This Day in History 15.9.1916: First Tank in Action
In September 1916 the German reserve infantry regiment no. 28 was in the Flers front section at the Somme. One of the most gruesome battles in the First World War had been fought out here, in June of that year. More than a million soldiers lost their lives. German and allied troops faced each other on a front that was 40 kilometres wide. After the first British assault had failed their opponents dug themselves in. Long rows of trenches were laid out, barbed wire and machine gun nests secured the positions against attackers.
The opposing sides fought for a few hundred metres of land for weeks, individual assaults were interspersed with heavy barrages, yet neither side was able to achieve a breakthrough.
On the morning of 15th September, the Germans anticipated an assault by the British infantry. But instead objects appeared, which a lot of soldiers initially thought were combine harvesters from the distance.
A war reporter described his first impressions: "Two mysterious monsters slowly approached us, over the cratered landscape. The monsters approached slowly limping, swaying, swinging but they kept moving towards us. No obstacles could stop them, a supernatural force seemed to drive them forwards. Our machine gun fire and our head weapons ricocheted off them. So they had no trouble wiping out the crews of the advanced shell holes."
What the bewildered Germans were witnessing then was the first deployment of tanks, a new weapon that the English and French had designed under the strictest secrecy. The machines also had a cover name tank being the English word for a water or fuel container....
More at link
Tank you.
98 years later they appear on your streets and school properties.
Winston Churchill was instrumental in their development...the idea was pitched to him and he pushed and pushed to develop the weapon. It was called a tank to disguise production and the shipping of parts.
And before that, battling was a tankless job, but someone had to do it.
Hans Guderian fixed that the next time around.
Here's a photo of the Mark I
Worth reading the specs on this at wiki.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_heavy_tanks_of_World_War_I
One of my long lost kin did early design work on tank suspensions. Had one that exceeded 100 MPH!
No Uncle Sam did not want them, a few years later most had them.
You can tell he was a pioneer in his field!
Many arrows in his back.
No money!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Walter_Christie
Hiram Maxim tried to sell his machine gun to the US Army and they turned him down. Then someone gave him good advice: Those Europeans are always looking for better ways to kill each other so he over to Europe; we all know how that turned out.
There are photos of captured Mark I tanks on which the Germans had painted iron crosses & sent them back against the British.
A WWI German officer named Erwin Rommel saw the value of the tank in attack & became Germany’s panzer pioneer.
Mark I’s were either `male’ & carried 75mm guns, or `female’ & carried machine guns. IMO the rolling machine gun nest would be the more deadly to opposing infantry.
No Uncle Sam did not want them, a few years later most had them.
I saw a show some years ago about that. The Russians bought the design and it was used on the T-34 tank.The German Panther 4 and 5 used the same suspension.
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