Tanks

Yes. But the first tank ever made was Little Willie. Never made for actual battle but more to see if the idea would work.

Little-Willie.jpg

Courtesy of the Lincolnshire Council website.

But yeah it was first used in the Battle of Somme but it was an entire disaster. Most tank experts say the real use of it was in 1917.....battle of Cumbria I think? Anyway, the tanks stormed through the lines and drove 5 miles in to German territory I think before they broke down. The infantry could never keep up so all the land was taken back again but it just showed the tanks almighty power. But did you know the concept of tank was actually German? However they never put it into practice for they felt it to be 'unfair'.
 
It doesn't look goofy to me it looks more......solid. A more solid in a bad way if you know what I mean.
 
Well in the First World War there were two tanks. Mother and Father tanks. Father tanks were very much like the ones we remember. Something like 4 pounder guns on the side with one machine gun. While Mother tanks were just tanks with machines guns, I think 2 on average? hey really were just armoured car's in a sense except with caterpillar tracks. Really Little Willie was classified under the Mother class. However remember it was only designed to see if it could work. Here's a few more images on Little Willie:

GB-LittleWillie-3.jpg

Courtesy of www.mailer.fsu.edu

LittleWillie.jpg

Courtesy of another Lincoln site....have a feeling that was built in Lincolshire.

Here's some background info on the early tanks as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_I_tank

This gives a better description of the different tanks and the Male and Female thing. If your interested in seeing originally ones then follow this link or scroll down a bit on the first one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_I_tank#Surviving_vehicles

Hope this helps
Yin
 
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The male tanks were the rhomboid tanks that had twin sponsons (sp) each with a 6pdr gun. The female rhomboid tanks had machineguns mounted in their sponsons (sp). There were a couple of hermaphrodites in which a 6 pdr was on one side and machineguns on the other. The terms, male & female & hermaphrodite were applied by the British to their rhomboid type tanks only. The later MK VIII, of which over 100 were made in America for our armored corps, had both cannons and machineguns. Male & female was never applied to it.

Other tanks, like the German A7V had a 57 mm gun and numerous machineguns. Ditto for the French tank (not thinking of the tiny Renault FT which had either a machinegun or a 37mm gun) which had a cannon and numerous machineguns.

The British also developed light pursuit tanks like the Whippet which had a fixed turret.
 
Yin717 said:
But did you know the concept of tank was actually German? However they never put it into practice for they felt it to be 'unfair'.
Click to expand...
Seeing the German army was the first to use poison gas and flame-throwers in WW1, I'd take that claim with a pinch of salt ;)
 
An armored rail car with a huge gun was proposed by Robert E. Lee. The Confederate Navy supervised its construction since they had iron workers who were familiar with building ironclad ships. It fought at Savage Station (Seven Days Battle) and there is a painting of it in battle in one of those books of Robert Sneden.
 
well leanardo da vinci came up with a design for one too...
so i think who ever made one first is much more important...
 
I remember that.....but technically it was an armoured car. They were created first. The modern concept for the armoured car came from the Crimea War I believe when they created one to haul the cannons however the government said it would never work. lol. And then the RNAS (Royal Naval Air Service) used them alot during the war to pick up stranded flyers. lol.
 
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