The Development of the Tank
Through World War I

The Quest for Mobility,
Firepower, and Shock of Impact

Introduction

by Russ Lockwood
www.magweb.com

We call the armored behemoths of today "tanks," yet for a quirk of wartime secrecy in World War I, we would be calling them either "Trittons," "Centipedes," or "Willies." Conceived and promoted primarily as an antidote to machine gun fire, the need for a machine of sufficient flexibility to flatten barbed wire, cross trenches, and shoot up the enemy soon became apparant as early war manuevering settled into trench delineated stalemate.

Originally designated with nautical terms such as "Land Cruisers", "Land Destroyers," "Landships," "Land Battleships," and the HG Wells-inspired "Land Iron Clads," factory workers soon nicknamed the first two prototypes after their respective inventors: William Tritton, the managing director of Foster's (alternatively, Forster's) Agricultural Implement Manufacturers of Lincoln (UK), and Lt. Walter G. Wilson, an engineer of the Royal Naval Air Service who would later oversee tank development at both Fosters and the Metropolitan Carriage Wagon and Finance Company. As improvements followed, the name changed to "Centipedes" and then to "Little Willies" and "Big Willies."

As the protoypes developed into actual fighting vehicles, the Landships Committee of the Admiralty decided on a ruse to disguise the intent of this new weapon. It had to appear plausible if someone happened to spy the vehicles on their way from factory to front. In part because of its shape, the machine was soon being called a "water carrier for Mesopotamia" destined for the Royal Marines at Southsea. Simultaneously, one of the tank hulls was marked in Russian lettering, "with care to Petrograd," with the idea that it was a Russian-designed water carrier produced in British factories. Workers soon started calling it "that water tank thing," and when a name was needed, Col. Ernest Swindon and one other person -- either Lt. Albert Stern, Secretary of the Landships Committee, or Lt. Col. W. Dally Jones, Asst. Secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defense -- adopted "tank" as very short and very ambiguous name. The word "tank" came to the English language via Portugal from India, where it meant "pool of water." And thus the word seemed tailor-made for the machine.

As a final ruse, the tanks were stored and shipped in the open, without sentries or special off-limits areas, and only a tarp to cover them during rail transit. After all, they were only water carriers, and so would not rate secret treatment for such a mundane item.

The Germans would learn about these armored fighting vehicles all too soon, as these ungainly machines quickly established the three facets of armored warfare that would carry through to the modern era: Mobility, Firepower, and Shock of Impact.

More Tank Development

Back to War Lore: The List
Back to Master Magazine List
© Copyright 2002 by Russ Lockwood.
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com