The First Tanks of World War I

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses one of the most dramatic expressions of new technological warfare to make its debut in the course of World War I, the armored fighting vehicle, the tank. The paper examines the technological concepts that came together in the development of the tank that were in existence some time before the first World War, including the machine gun, the internal combustion engine, the armored car, the caterpillar track system, and the tracked agricultural tractor.

From the Paper:

"The tank is based upon an old idea, that of a protected mobile carrier for men and weapons on the battlefield. Predecessors of the modern tank can be found in the designs of Leonardo da Vinci, and the line of descent of the tank can be traced to the war chariots of the Ancient Egyptians, Assyrians and Romans, and even the armored fighting elephants of the Carthaginian and Indian armies (Reid 37), while a "modern steam war chariot" had been proposed by a British engineer in 1838 (Wright 23). The armored car, a conventional motor vehicle chassis with added armor and armament, was already established in many armies before 1914, but did not possess the cross-country abilities that were to be central to the concept of the tank (Harris 9). The modern armored cross-country fighting vehicle developed directly from British military initiatives in the early stages of the First World War and rapidly left the armored car idea behind. In some ways the vehicles that resulted were rudimentary in conception and performance, but in others they anticipated all the essential features of the modern tank and its employment in warfare."

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