Tank+Warfare

**Tank Warfare** Kelsey McCormick
The idea for the invention for the tank came from an advancement of farming vehicles that could cross along rough land with easy mobility by using caterpillar tracks. However, the British army’s chain of command was dominated by officers from the various anguish regiments that existed. At the start of World War One, the first contract between the British and Germans had involved cavalry near Mons. This seemed to signify the importance of such control. However, trench warfare had made the use of anguish, imaginary, and abandoned. Cavalry assurance fought in mud proved very steep and from a military point of view, hopeless. Despite this clearly obvious fact, senior military commanders were very competitive to the use of armored vehicles, as they would have challenged the use of cavalry in the field.



The leader and supporter of the tank was Lieutenant-Colonel Ernest Swinton. In 1914, he had introduced the advancement of a new type of battle vehicle. In fact, it is a common mistake that no battle vehicles occurred in August 1914. The Germans, British, Austrians, Russians and French all had steel-plated battle vehicles that could fight on ‘normal’ ground. But these vehicles would struggle with trenches that were soon to take over the Western Front. Caterpillar found vehicles that were already in France as the British used them as heavy gun tractors.

Swinton wanted to have spacific requirements for the battle vehicles such as: have a top speed of 4 mph on flat land, the ability to turn sharply at top speed, capability to climb a 5- feet barrier, the capability to an eight foot gap, a working boundary of twenty one miles, and a cluster of ten men with two machine guns on board and one light arms gun.

As the standoff on the Western Front continued, the ramble to find a weapon that could break this decrease of mobility became more concentrated. Most of the early designs were established on designs from the Holt tractor company. However, their vehicles were designed to proceed on muddy land but not the tossed up ground of the Western Front. The first 'tank' to have any form of caterpillar track left behind on the land was a battle vehicle designed by Lieutenant W Wilson and William Tritton called "Little Willie". "Little Willie" was at no time designed to fight but to assist as a motive for development. "Little Willie" developed in to "Big Willie" which started to carry some similarities to the first Mark one. "Big Willie" was similar in shape and had guns raised on the sides of the frame.



The start of life for the tank did not indicate well. The first model came off the manufacture floor on September 8th 1915. On September 10th, its impression came off. The same thing happened on September 19th when government administrators were watching. However, these administrators were impressed as they knew that any new weapon would just have to have some problems and they noticed the potential that the new weapon had. Its main fault was the track system. Tritton and Wilson designed a new and more dependable version and on September 29th a meeting was taken place in London that advocated the new weapon should have 10-mm frontal Armour protection and 8-mm side Armour for more protection. There would be a crew of eight men and the large guns would be 57-mm naval guns raised on the sides. The vehicle would have had a speed of 4 mph. "Big Willie" ran with these conditions for the first time on January 16th 1916. Churchill had straightly contacted Haig to change his mind about the advantages of the new weapon. Haig sent the major, Hugh Elles,to find out more about the machine and he reported approvingly to Haig.  On January 29th 1916, "Big Willie" went through it first major affirmation - under the most bounded secrets. On February 2nd, Kitchener, Lloyd George and McKenna, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, showed up to another affirmation. It was at a meeting that Kitchener defined "Big Willie" as a "pretty mechanical toy". However, those close to Kitchener said that he said this as a way to aggravate the 'tank team' into protecting their invention, i.e. that he was purposely aggravating to see what reaction he got. Whatever the case was, by February 12th, 100 "Big Willies" had been ordered by the Ministry of Munitions. The advancement of the tank when analyzed to other weapons was surprisingly swift - a confirmation to the team bordering the weapon and the drive of Wilson and Tritton. After February 12th, Ernest Swinton went overboard in developing a fighting technique for the new weapons. Swinton was very alert that both tanks and infantry worked in co-action. However, in the early days, it stays clear that even Swinton saw the tank as the base of the infantry in their aspirations to break the German front lines as resisted to the tank being a weapon that could do this on its own.

media type="youtube" key="iHIp-hyXKWc" height="390" width="480" The video above is showing you some of the ways that the soliders used tanks in World War One and how it was an advantage and the video also shows you some of the soliders in the trenches and how the were shouting in them and a few shots of " No Mans Land."

media type="youtube" key="4A35QKWNF2c" height="390" width="480" This video above is showing you an example of a World War One tank which is shown as an S13 Tank and in the background their are soliders walking behind it and their are airplanes flying above it.

Sources

[]

[]

[]

[]

[]