ww1 tanks

ww1 tanks are the first tanks ever produced and the name itself comes from britiains effort to disguise the true purpose of tanks. tanks were designed then to be able to break the otherwise eternal stalemate of trench warfare.

Britain:

Heavy tanks:

 in britiain, 1915, first lord of the admirality, Winston Churchill(you may recognise the name) created a "Landships" Commmitee to find a solution for trench warfare and to break the stalemate of it with a vehicle. the prototype tank "Little Willie" was then created some time after the Landship Commitee to show the british government how good the idea of tanks could be and was designed by William Tritton and Walter Wilson and built by William Foster & Co. of Lincon. when little willie had been built, Trition and Wilson had thought of a different tank design that could better cross trenches. the second tank prototype which had also been designed by tritton and wilson, "Mother" was then created in perhaps 1915 with tritton's and wilson's idea for a "Landship" that could cross trenches. it was armed with two sponsons carrying a 6-pounder gun and a hotchkiss machine gun. its design was rhomboid-shaped and lacked an armed turret as its center of gravity or weight would've been to high and would've made the tank too unstable. some subtypes were later created with just machine guns which were called "female" and tanks maintaining the 6-pounders were called "male". the tank was then produced as the mark I and was first used at the battle of flers-courcelette in 1916. although the tanks preformed badly, britain still decided to produce tanks partly due to the psycological effect. in 1917 a new tan design, the mark iv, entered service. it was an improved design over the mark I having shortened barrels for the 6-pounders as the original barrels would get stuck in mud and had lewis guns instead of hotchkiss machine guns, it also had thicker armor and its fuel tank was moved. it was also the most produced model in the mark series of heavy tanks in the uk the mark iv was first used at the battle of cambrai and also won the first tank vs tank engagement in april 1918 at the second battle of villers-bretonneux by taking out the german A7V "Nixe". The next actually serviced british heavy tank was the mark V, with 200 of both male and female variants produced. it was an improvement over the mark iv with better armor and a new steering system which only required the driver to drive the vehicle instead of a driver to drive and 2 gearsmen to steer. the mark v also had the "hermaphrodite" variant(also known as a composite tank) with a female sponson on the right and a male sponson on the left side. it was first used at the battle of hamel and the battle of amiens and was later used at the hindenburg line in the closing months of ww1.

Medium tanks:

britain had in ww1 created a few medium tanks which were designated "Medium Mark _" with _ being a letter. the first and most iconic one, the Medium Mark A Whippet, also just called "whippet" or "the whippet" was produced in 1917 and designed in 1916 by William tritton and the name "Whippet", after the fast-running british dog breed, was attributed to william. the project for the whippet was called at the time the "Tritton chaser" and actual construction of a prototype started on the 21st december, 1916.