History of tanks, from prototype to

worldwide-used war machine

Student: Bușilă Robert
Vasile Alecsandri Highschool
Grade: 12th A
 Table of content:

1. Introduction…………………………………………………..1
 Explanation of the term “tank”.
 How useful is a tank?
2. A brief history……………………………………………………
 First tank prototype ever created.
 The accelerated spread of tanks.
3. Technical features of a tank……………………..
 Efficiency
 Feasability
 Vulnerability
4. History of British tanks
5. History of American tanks
6. Utility in the future
 Introduction

A tank is an armored fighting vehicle intended as a primary offensive weapon in front-

line ground combat. Tank designs are a balance of heavy firepower, strong armor, and
good battlefield mobility provided by tracks and a powerful engine; usually their main armament is
mounted in a turret. They are a mainstay of modern 20th and 21st century ground forces and a
key part of combined arms combat.
Modern tanks are versatile mobile
land weapons platforms whose main armament is
a large-caliber tank gun mounted in a rotating gun
turret, supplemented by machine guns or
other ranged weapons such as anti-tank guided
missiles or rocket launchers. They have
heavy vehicle armor which provides protection for
the crew, the vehicle's munition storage, fuel
tank and propulsion systems. The use of tracks
rather than wheels provides improved operational
mobility which allows the tank to overcome rugged terrain and adverse conditions such as mud
and ice/snow better than wheeled vehicles, and thus be more flexibly positioned at advantageous
locations on the battlefield. These features enable the tan k to perform well in a variety of intense
combat situations, simultaneously both offensively (with direct fire from their powerful main gun)
and defensively (as fire support and defilade for friendly troops due to the near invulnerability to
common infantry small arms and good resistance against most heavier weapons), all while
maintaining the mobility needed to exploit changing tactical situations. Fully integrating tanks into
modern military forces spawned a new era of combat: armored warfare.
Until the arrival of the main battle tank,
tanks were typically categorized either by weight
class (light, medium, heavy or superheavy tanks)
or doctrinal purpose
(breakthrough-, cavalry-, infantry-, cruiser-,
or reconnaissance tanks). Some being larger and
very heavily armored and with large guns, while
others are smaller, lightly armored, and equipped
with a smaller caliber and lighter gun. These
smaller tanks move over terrain with spee d and
agility and can perform a reconnaissance role in
addition to engaging enemy targets. The smaller, faster tank would not normally engage in battle
with a larger, heavily armored tank, except during a surprise flanking manoeuvre.

Since their debut in September 1915, tanks have become one of the defining images of
modern warfare. Very few military tools provide ground forces with the necessary combination
of firepower, survivability, mobility and breakthrough power required in today’s battlefields.
Although previously conceived as a tactical tool to be used alongside the infantry to break
enemy lines, from World War II onwards the tank became primarily strategic, to be
concentrated and used to penetrate, outflank and encircle the enemy. Tank warfare is
commonly characterized by aggressiveness, offensiveness, speed and panache. The campaigns
fought in France, Russia and North Africa during World War II, as well the more recent Arab-
Israeli Wars and Operation Desert Storm during the Gulf War, have been seared into popular
memory as the epitome of armored warfare. As posited by military historian Martin van
Creveld, the character of modern war has shifted from the conventional to what he refers to as
“low-intensity conflicts.” More commonly dubbed insurgency or guerrilla warfare, this
supposedly “new” style of warfare has created dilemmas for the modern tanker in regards to
counterinsurgency operations, also known as COIN.

In the context of a population-centric war strategy—which puts a premium on avoiding

collateral damage, patrolling on foot and interacting with the natives—where does a seventy-
ton tank fit into the equation? In an environment where strategists stress winning hearts and
minds, how does the presence of heavy armor portray a less confrontational image? Also, keep
in mind that insurgencies often thrive in populated urban areas, which have historically not
been a good environment for tankers (recall the fate of German panzers at Stalingrad).
A brief history on the development of
tanks

Many sources imply

that Leonardo da Vinci and H.G.
Wells in some way foresaw or
"invented" the tank. Leonardo's
late 15th century drawings of what
some describe as a "tank" show a
man-powered, wheeled vehicle
with cannons all around it.
However, the human crew would not have enough power to move it over larger
distance, and usage of animals was problematic in a space so confined. In the 15th
century, Jan Žižka built armored wagons containing cannons and used them effectively
in several battles. The continuous "caterpillar" track arose from attempts to improve
the mobility of wheeled vehicles by spreading their weight, reducing ground pressure,
and increasing their traction. Experiments can be traced back as far as the 17th
century, and by the late nineteenth they existed in various recognizable and practical
forms in several countries.

On the 6 th of September, 1915, a prototype

tank nicknamed “Little Willie” rolls off the
assembly line in England. “Little Willie” was
far from an overnight success. It weighed 14
tons, got stuck in trenches and crawled over
rough terrain at only two miles per hour.
However, improvements were made to the
original prototype and tanks eventually transformed military battlefields.
 The British developed the tank in response to the trench warfare of World
War I. In 1914, a British army colonel named Ernest Swinton and William
Hankey, secretary of the Committee for Imperial Defence, championed the idea
of an armored vehicle with conveyor-belt-like tracks over its wheels that could
break through enemy lines and traverse diffi cult territory. The men appealed
to British navy minister Winston Churchill, who believed in the concept of a
“land boat” and organized a Landships Committee to begin developing a
prototype. To keep the project secret from enemies, production workers were
reportedly told the vehicles they were building would be used to carry water
on the battlefield (alternate theories suggest the shells of the new vehicles
resembled water tanks). Either way, the new vehicles were shipped in crates
labeled “tank” and the name stuck.

The first tank prototype, “Little

Willie”, was unveiled in September 1915.
Following its underwhelming performance–
it was slow, became overheated and
couldn’t cross trenches–a second
prototype, known as “Big Willie,” was
produced. By 1916, this armored veh icle
was deemed ready for battle and made its
debut at the First Battle of the Somme near
Courcelette, France, on the 15 th of
September of that year. Known as the Mark
I, this first batch of tanks was hot, noisy and
unwieldy and suffered mechanical
malfunctions on the battlefield;
nevertheless, people realized the tank’s
potential. Further design improvements
were made and at the Battle of Cambrai in November 1917, 400 Mark IV’s
proved much more successful than the Mark I, capturing 8,000 enemy troops
and 100 guns.

Tanks rapidly became an important military weapon. During World War II,

they played a prominent role across numerous battlefields.

The modern tank is the result of a century of development from the first
primitive armored vehicles, due to improvements in technology such as the internal
combustion engine, which allowed the rapid movement of heavy armored vehicles. As
a result of these advances, tanks underwent tremendous shifts in capability in the
years since their first appearance. Tanks in World War I were developed separately
and simultaneously by Great Britain and France as a means to break the deadlock
of trench warfare on the Western Front. The first British prototype, nicknamed Little
Willie, was constructed at William Foster & Co. in Lincoln, England in 1915, with
leading roles played by Major Walter Gordon Wilson who designed the gearbox and
hull, and by William Tritton of William Foster and Co., who designed the track
plates. This was a prototype of a new design that would become the British
Army's Mark I tank, the first tank used in combat in September 1916 during the Battle
of the Somme. The name "tank" was adopted by the British during the early stages of
their development, as a security measure to conceal their purpose (see etymology).
While the British and French built thousands of tanks in World War I, Germany was
unconvinced of the tank's potential, and did not have enough resources, thus it built
only twenty.
Tanks of the interwar period evolved into the much larger and more
powerful designs of World War II. Important new concepts of armored warfare were
developed; the Soviet Union launched the first mass tank/air attack at Khalkhin
Gol (Nomonhan) in August 1939, and later developed the T-34, one of the
predecessors of the main battle tank. Less than two weeks later, Germany began their
large-scale armored campaigns that would become known as blitzkrieg ("lightning
war") – massed concentrations of tanks combined with motorized and mechanized
infantry, artillery and air power designed to break through the enemy front and
collapse enemy resistance.
The widespread introduction of high-explosive anti-tank warheads during the
second half of World War II led to lightweight infantry-carried anti-tank weapons such
as the Panzerfaust, which could destroy some types of tanks. Tanks in the Cold
War were designed with these weapons in mind, and led to greatly improved armor
types during the 1960s, especially composite armor. Improved engines, transmissions
and suspensions allowed tanks of this period to grow larger. Aspects of gun
technology changed significantly as well, with advances in shell design and aiming
technology.
During the Cold War, the main battle tank concept arose and became a key
component of modern armies. In the 21st century, with the increasing role
of asymmetrical warfare and the end of the Cold War, that also contributed to the
increase of cost-effective anti-tank rocket propelled grenades (RPGs) worldwide and
its successors, the ability of tanks to operate independently has declined. Modern
tanks are more frequently organized into combined arms units which involve the
support of infantry, who may accompany the tanks in infantry fighting vehicles, and
supported by reconnaissance or ground-attack aircraft.

Technical features of a tank

Tanks have been classified by weight, role, or other criteria, that has changed over
time and place. Classification is determined by the prevailing theories of armored
warfare, which have been altered in turn by rapid advances in
technology. No one classification system works across all
periods or all nations; in particular, weight-based classification
is inconsistent between countries and eras.
In World War I, the first tank designs focused on crossing wide
trenches, requiring very long and large vehicles, such as the
British Mark I; these became classified as heavy tanks. Tanks
that fulfilled other combat roles were smaller, like the French Renault FT; these were
classified as light tanks or tankettes. Many late-war and inter-war tank designs
diverged from these according to new, though mostly untried, concepts for future
tank roles and tactics. Tank classifications varied considerably according to each
nation's own tank development, such as "cavalry tanks", "fast tanks", and
"breakthrough tanks".
During World War II, many tank concepts were found unsatisfactory and discarded,
mostly leaving the more multi-role tanks; these became easier to classify. Tank classes
based on weight (and the corresponding transport and logistical needs) led to new
definitions of heavy and light tank classes, with medium tanks covering the balance of
those between. The British maintained cruiser tanks, focused on speed, and infantry
tanks that traded speed for more armor. Tank destroyers are tanks or other armored
fighting vehicles specifically designed to defeat enemy tanks. Assault guns are
armored fighting vehicles that could combine the roles of infantry tanks and tank
destroyers. Some tanks were converted to flame tanks, specializing on close-in attacks
on enemy strongholds with flamethrowers. As the war went on, tanks tended to
become larger and more powerful, shifting some tank classifications and leading
to super-heavy tanks.
Experience and technology advances during the Cold War continued to consolidate
tank roles. With the worldwide adoption of the modern main battle tank designs,
which favour a modular universal design, most other classifications are dropped from
modern terminology. All main battle tanks tend to have a good balance of speed,
armor, and firepower, even while technology continues to improve all three. Being
fairly large, main battle tanks can be complemented with light tanks, armored
personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles or similar relatively lighter armored
fighting vehicles, typically in the roles of armored reconnaissance, amphibious or air
assault operations, or against enemies lacking main battle tanks.

 Efficiency
The three traditional factors determining a tank's capability effectiveness are
its firepower, protection, and mobility. Firepower is the ability of a tank's crew to
identify, engage, and destroy enemy tanks and other targets using its large-caliber
cannon. Protection is the degree to which the tank's armor, profile and camouflage
enables the tank crew to evade det ection, protect themselves from enemy fire, and
retain vehicle functionality during and after combat. Mobility includes how well the
tank can be transported by rail, sea, or air to the operational staging area, from the
staging area by road or over terrain towards the enemy, and tactical movement by the
tank over the battlefield during combat, including traversing of obstacles and rough
terrain. The variations of tank designs have been determined by the way these three
fundamental features are blended. For instance, in 1937, the French doctrine focused
on firepower and protection more than mobility because tanks worked in intimate
liaison with the infantry.
Firepower
The main weapon of modern tanks is
typically a single, large-
caliber cannon mounted in a fully
traversing (rotating) gun turret. The
typical modern tank gun is a smoothbore weapon capable of firing a variety of
ammunition, including armor-piercing kinetic energy penetrators (KEP), also known
as armor-piercing discarding sabot (APDS), and/or armor piercing fin stabilized
discarding sabot (APFSDS) and high explosive anti-tank (HEAT) shells, and/or high
explosive squash head (HESH) and/or anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM) to destroy
armored targets, as well as high explosive (HE) shells for shooting at "soft" targets
(unarmored vehicles or troops) or fortifications. Canister shot may be used in close or
urban combat situations where the risk of hitting friendly forces with shrapnel from
HE rounds is unacceptably high.[52]
A gyroscope is used to stabilise the main gun, allowing it to be effectively aimed and
fired at the "short halt" or on the move. Modern tank guns are also commonly fitted
with insulating thermal jackets to reduce gun-barrel warping caused by
uneven thermal expansion, bore evacuators to minimise gun firing fumes entering the
crew compartment and sometimes muzzle brakes to minimise the effect of recoil on
accuracy and rate of fire.
Traditionally, target detection relied on visual identification. This was
accomplished from within the tank through telescopic periscopes; often, however,
tank commanders would open up the hatch to view the outside surroundings, which
improved situational awareness but incurred the penalty of vulnerability to sniper fire.
Though several developments in target detection have taken place, these methods
are still common practice. In the 2010s, more electronic target detection methods are
available.
In some cases spotting rifles were used to confirm proper trajectory and range to
a target. These spotting rifles were mounted co-axially to the main gun, and
fired tracer ammunition ballistically matched to the gun itself. The gunner would track
the movement of the tracer round in flight, and upon impact with a hard surface, it
would give off a flash and a puff of smoke, after which the main gun was immediately
fired. However this slow method has been mostly superseded by laser
rangefinding equipment.
Modern tanks also use sophisticated light intensification and thermal
imaging equipment to improve fighting capability at night, in poor weather and in
smoke. The accuracy of modern tank guns is pushed to the mechanical limit by
computerized fire-control systems. A fire-control system uses a laser rangefinder to
determine the range to the target, a thermocouple, anemometer and wind vane to
correct for weather effects and a muzzle referencing system to correct for gun-barrel
temperature, warping and wear. Two sightings of a target with the range-finder
enable calculation of the target movement vector. This information is combined with
the known movement of the tank and the principles of ballistics to calculate
the elevation and aim point that maximises the probability of hitting the target.
Usually, tanks carry smaller caliber armament for short-range defense where fire
from the main weapon would be ineffective or wasteful, for example when
engaging infantry, light vehicles or close air support aircraft. A typical complement of
secondary weapons is a general-purpose machine gun mounted coaxially with the
main gun, and a heavier anti-aircraft-capable machine gun on the turret roof. Some
tanks also have a hull-mounted machine gun. These weapons are often modified
variants of those used by infantry, and so use the same kinds of ammunition.