Landship Committee

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Little Willie at the Tank Museum, Bovington (2006)

The Landship Committee was a small British committee formed during the First World War to develop armoured fighting vehicles for use on the Western Front. The eventual outcome was the creation of what is now called the tank. Established in February 1915 by First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, the Committee was composed mainly of naval officers, politicians and engineers.Template:Sfn It was chaired by Eustace Tennyson-d'Eyncourt, Director of Naval Construction at the Admiralty. For secrecy, by December 1915 the name was changed to "the D.N.C.'s Committee" to disguise its purpose.<ref>Swinton, 1933. p. 304.</ref>

FormationEdit

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WW1 Mark V tank, in The Tank Museum in Dorset

The committee was formed at Churchill's instruction in February 1915,<ref name="tankstory">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> in part from ideas by Colonel Ernest Swinton, who was then employed as a war correspondent for HM government, and by Maurice Hankey, Secretary of the Committee for Imperial Defence, who wrote Churchill a missive on 26 December 1914. Churchill on 5 January 1915 disclosed the Committee notion to Prime Minister H. H. Asquith by letter in which he wrote:<ref name=tankstory/> Template:Cquote

The committee started with only three members: d'Eyncourt, as chairman; Flight Commander Thomas Hetherington of the Royal Naval Air Service Armoured Car Squadron; and Colonel Wilfred Dumble of the Naval Brigade. Hetherington had proposed a large wheeled landship, estimated to weigh some 300 tons. A former Royal Engineer, Dumble had managed the London Omnibus Co. and been brought back to service in response to the urgent need for transport by the Royal Naval Division in Antwerp; he had been an adjutant to Colonel R. E. B. Crompton, who was trying to develop cross-country vehicles for the Army.Template:Sfn Dumble recommended Crompton to the committee as an expert on heavy traction.

The committee's activities were concealed from Kitchener at the War Office, the Board of the Admiralty, and the Treasury, all of whom were expected to block the project.Template:Sfn Experiments were performed on the grounds of Hatfield House, the home of the Marquess of Salisbury.<ref>Hochschild, Adam, "To End All Wars", pg. 186 </ref>

Tank developmentEdit

The Committee conducted a number of trials with various wheeled and tracked vehicles, and work was in progress on a prototype vehicle (later to become Little Willie) when in July 1915 the Committee's existence came to the attention of the War Office. This led to its operations being taken over by the Army and a number of its members transferring from the Navy. From December, 1915 the word "tank" was adopted as a codename for the vehicles in development, and the Landship Committee became known officially as the Tank Supply Committee.

Tank deploymentEdit

The tank was first deployed to the battle of the Somme in September 1916.<ref name=tankstory/>

Immediate aftermathEdit

In 1919 the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors held a session to determine the inventor of the tank.

FootnotesEdit

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BibliographyEdit

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Hankey, Maurice, The Supreme Command, Volume I (1914-1918), London: Allen 1961
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Encyclopædia Britannica. Admiralty Landships Committee. Retrieved 8 July 2012.
Fletcher, David; Harley, Dick. Tankette, Volume 15, Issue 6.
Glanfield, John. The Devil's Chariots, 2001.
Stern, Albert. Albert Stern Papers, Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King's College London.
Sueter, Murray. The Evolution of the Tank, 1937.
Swinton, Major-General Sir Ernest D. Eyewitness Doubleday, Doran & Co, (1933)
Hochschild, Adam, To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion: 1914-1918, Boston: Houghton, 2011

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