Subscribe now for full access and no adverts
World War I presented soldiers with the problem of traversing no-man’s land and crossing trenches while being pummelled by artillery and raked by machine-guns. In late 1915, a solution appeared in the form of an innovative weapon: the tank.
The Battle of Flers-Courcelette witnessed its first deployment. On 15 September 1916, 49 British tanks trundled toward the Germans, and though just nine of the unreliable machines made it into combat, the future of tanks was set. They have been an important element of army deployments ever since.
These were Tank Mark I models. Rhomboid in profile, with tracks that wound round the whole of the vehicle, they came in ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ versions. The Male bore a pair of 6-pounder cannons, with one such gun mounted in each side sponson, and four machine-guns. The cannons were deleted from the Female Mark Is, and two machine-guns were instead set in each sponson.
The derivation of the word ‘tank’, which entered English in the 17th century, stretches to India, whence it is loaned. For example, Gujarati tānkh (and Marathi tānken) meant ‘pond’ or ‘cistern’. The borrowed word came to mean ‘water storage container’ in English.
Major General Sir E D Swinton of the British Army is acknowledged as being responsible for the tank’s invention. In September 1917’s edition of The World’s Work, he told how it got its name. The tank’s steel plates, and their formation into boxes, he decided, could be assumed to be for containers of water or oil by those who didn’t look too closely. To maintain military secrecy, an alias would be applied until the war machine was fitted with weapons, and its true mission could no longer be disguised. ‘“Reservoir” and “Cistern” were long-winded and clumsy’, he said. ‘“Tank” was equally accurate and shorter. And “Tank” it became.’
