Editing Tank (section)

====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>}}