Invention of the Tank
willie" British prototype of the first tank
War I was a defensive war. Troops who went "over the top" of
the trenches soon found that an infantry advance against entrenched
machine guns was not very successful. Casualties in offensives
were outrageously high and usually the result was very little
gain. A stalemate soon settled in along the western front
which lasted most of the war.
they needed of course was a tank. A Colonel in the British
army developed the idea when he noticed that the only vehicles
that could navigate the rough terrain were caterpillar tractors
with moving treads. He realized that if such a vehicle were
covered with armor, it might be just the very thing to get
into and over the other side's trenches.
passed the idea along to the government and Winston Churchill,
then First Lord of the Admiralty, got it. He was intrigued
by the idea and started a project to develop the idea.
was so top secret that the workers were told that they were
working on water carriers - naturally, they began to call them "tanks," short
for water tanks, and the name stuck.
tanks weren't used in battle until the end of 1916, but then
the first batch was tried. Unfortunately most of them broke
down before they got very far, but a few did get past the enemy
trenches. The army saw the potential and got production
underway. A year later, in November of 1917, they were for
the first time used effectively to break through the enemy
World War I