Editing Tank (section)

===World War I===
[[File:Tanks of WWI.ogg|thumb|right|Film clip of World War I-era tanks]]
{{Main|Tanks in World War I}}

====United Kingdom====
{{Blockquote|The direct military impact of the tank can be debated but its effect on the Germans was immense, it caused bewilderment, terror and concern in equal measure. It was also a huge boost to the civilians at home. After facing the Zeppelins, at last Britain had a wonder weapon. Tanks were taken on tours and treated almost like film stars.|David Willey, curator at [[The Tank Museum]], Bovington.<ref name="Tank origins"/>}}
From late 1914 a small number of middle-ranking [[British Army]] officers tried to persuade the War Office and the Government to consider the creation of armoured vehicles. Amongst their suggestions was the use of caterpillar tractors, but although the Army used many such vehicles for towing heavy guns, it could not be persuaded that they could be adapted as armoured vehicles. The consequence was that early tank development in the United Kingdom was carried out by the [[Royal Navy]].
[[File:British Mark V-star Tank.jpg|thumb|left|upright=1.15|British World War I Mark V* tank]]
As the result of an approach by Royal Naval Air Service officers who had been operating armoured cars on the Western Front, the [[First Lord of the Admiralty]], [[Winston Churchill]], formed the [[Landship Committee]], on 20 February 1915.<ref name="Churchill">{{Citation | last = Churchill | first = Winston | title = The World Crisis (Abridged) | publisher = Macmillan Publishing Company | location = Canada & New York | year = 1992 | isbn = 0-684-19453-8 | pages = 316–317 |url=https://archive.org/details/worldcrisisabr00chur}}</ref> The [[Director of Naval Construction]] for the Royal Navy, [[Eustace Tennyson d'Eyncourt]], was appointed to head the Committee in view of his experience with the engineering methods it was felt might be required; the two other members were naval officers, and a number of industrialists were engaged as consultants. So many played a part in its long and complicated development that it is not possible to name any individual as the sole inventor of the tank.<ref name="Churchill"/>

However leading roles were played by Lt [[Walter Gordon Wilson]] R.N. who designed the gearbox and developed practical tracks and by [[William Tritton]] whose agricultural machinery company, [[William Foster & Co.]] in [[Lincoln, Lincolnshire]], England built the [[prototype]]s.<ref name="Tank origins"/><ref>{{cite book|author=Michael Foley|title=Rise of the Tank: Armoured Vehicles and their use in the First World War|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=f2ZtBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA32|year=2014|publisher=Pen and Sword|isbn=978-1-78346-393-0|page=32|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180327160324/https://books.google.com/books?id=f2ZtBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA32|archive-date=27 March 2018}}</ref> On 22 July 1915, a commission was placed to design a machine that could cross a trench 4&nbsp;ft wide.<ref name="Tank origins"/> Secrecy surrounded the project with the designers locking themselves in a room at the White Hart Hotel in Lincoln.<ref name="Tank origins"/> The committee's first design, [[Little Willie]], ran for the first time in September 1915 and served to develop the form of the track but an improved design, better able to cross trenches, swiftly followed and in January 1916 the prototype, nicknamed "Mother", was adopted as the design for future tanks. The first order for tanks was placed on 12 February 1916, and a second on 21 April. Fosters built 37 (all "male"), and [[Metro-Cammell|Metropolitan Railway Carriage and Wagon Company]], of Birmingham, 113 (38 "male" and 75 "female"), a total of 150.<ref>Glanfield, Appendix 2.</ref> Production models of [[Male tank|"Male"]] tanks (armed with naval cannon and machine guns) and [[Female tank|"Females"]] (carrying only machine-guns) would go on to fight in history's first tank action at the Somme in September 1916.<ref name="Churchill"/><ref>McMillan, N: Locomotive Apprentice at the North British Locomotive Company Ltd Glasgow Plateway Press 1992{{Page needed|date=May 2012}}</ref> Great Britain produced about 2,600 tanks of various types during the war.<ref>Glanfield, Devil's Chariots{{Page needed|date=May 2012}}</ref> The first tank to engage in battle was designated ''D1'', a British [[Mark I tank|Mark I]] Male, during the [[Battle of Flers-Courcelette]] (part of the wider [[battle of the Somme|Somme offensive]]) on 15 September 1916.<ref>{{Citation | last = Regan | first = Geoffrey | title = The Guinness Book of More Military Blunders | location = London | publisher = Guinness Publishing | year = 1993 | page = 12 | isbn = 0-85112-961-7 |url=https://archive.org/details/guinnessbookofmi00rega}}</ref> Bert Chaney, a nineteen-year-old signaller with the 7th London Territorial Battalion, reported that "three huge mechanical monsters such as [he] had never seen before" rumbled their way onto the battlefield, "frightening the [[List of terms used for Germans#Jerry|Jerries]] out of their wits and making them scuttle like frightened rabbits."<ref>''The Mammoth Book of How it Happened'', Robinson Publishing, 2000, {{ISBN|978-1-84119-149-2}}, pp. 337–38</ref> When the news of the first use of the tanks emerged, Prime Minister [[David Lloyd George]] commented,

{{blockquote|text=It is really to Mr Winston Churchill that the credit is due more than to anyone else. He took up with enthusiasm the idea of making them a long time ago, and he met with many difficulties. He converted me, and at the [[Ministry of Munitions]] he went ahead and made them. The admiralty experts were invaluable, and gave the greatest possible assistance. They are, of course, experts in the matter of armour plating. [[Albert Gerald Stern|Major Stern]], (formerly an officer in the Royal Naval Air Service) a business man at the Ministry of Munitions had charge of the work of getting them built, and he did the task very well. [[Ernest Swinton|Col Swinton]] and others also did valuable work.|author=David Lloyd George, 19 September 1916.<ref>"The New Armoured Cars", ''The Motor Cycle'', 21 September 1916, p. 254</ref>}}

====France====
[[File:American troops going forward to the battle line in the Forest of Argonne. France, September 26, 1918. - NARA - 530748.jpg|thumb|left|French [[Renault FT]] tanks, here operated by the US army, pioneered the use of a fully traversable turret and served as pattern for most modern tanks.]]

Whilst several experimental machines were investigated in France, it was a colonel of artillery, [[Jean Baptiste Eugène Estienne|J.B.E. Estienne]], who directly approached the Commander-in-Chief with detailed plans for a tank on caterpillar tracks, in late 1915. The result was two largely unsatisfactory types of tank, 400 each of the [[Schneider CA1|Schneider]] and [[Saint-Chamond (tank)|Saint-Chamond]], both based on the [[Holt tractor]].

The following year, the French pioneered the use of a full 360° rotation [[gun turret|turret]] in a tank for the first time, with the creation of the [[Renault FT]] light tank, with the turret containing the tank's main armament. In addition to the traversable turret, another innovative feature of the FT was its engine located at the rear. This pattern, with the gun located in a mounted turret and the engine at the back, has become the standard for most succeeding tanks across the world even to this day.<ref>{{cite book |last=Zaloga |first=Steven J. |title=The Renault FT Light Tank |date=1988 |location=London, UK |publisher=Osprey Publishing |isbn=978-0850458527 |page=3}}</ref> The FT was the most numerous tank of the war; over 3,000 were made by late 1918.

====Germany====
Germany fielded very few tanks during [[World War I]], and started development only after encountering British tanks on the Somme. The [[A7V]], the only type made, was introduced in March 1918 with just 20 being produced during the war.<ref>[[#Willmott2003|Willmott (2003)]], ''First World War'', p. 222</ref> The first tank ''versus'' tank action took place on 24 April 1918 at the [[Second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux]], France, when three British [[Mark IV tank|Mark IVs]] met three German [[A7V]]s. Captured British Mk IVs formed the bulk of Germany's tank forces during World War I; about 35 were in service at any one time. Plans to expand the tank programme were under way when the War ended.

====Other nations====
The United States [[Tank Corps of the American Expeditionary Force|Tank Corps]] used tanks supplied by France and Great Britain during World War I. Production of American-built tanks had just begun when the War came to an end. Italy also manufactured two [[Fiat 2000]]s towards the end of the war, too late to see service. Russia independently built and trialed two prototypes early in the War; the tracked, two-man [[Vezdekhod]] and the huge [[Tsar Tank|Lebedenko]], but neither went into production. A tracked self-propelled gun was also designed but not produced.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://vadimvswar.narod.ru/ALL_OUT/TiVOut9801/RuTLe/RuTLe008.htm |title=Легенда о русском танке |publisher=Vadimvswar.narod.ru |access-date=13 May 2012 |language=ru |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130614054809/http://vadimvswar.narod.ru/ALL_OUT/TiVOut9801/RuTLe/RuTLe008.htm |archive-date=14 June 2013 }}</ref>

Although tank tactics developed rapidly during the war, piecemeal deployments, mechanical problems, and poor mobility limited the military significance of the tank in World War I, and the tank did not fulfil its promise of rendering trench warfare obsolete. Nonetheless, it was clear to military thinkers on both sides that tanks in some way could have a significant role in future conflicts.<ref name = "Willmott2003">[[#Willmott2003|Willmott (2003)]], ''First World War''{{Page needed|date=May 2012}}</ref>