![]() ![]() Slower to industrialise, the USSR, meanwhile, expanded its war manufacturing exponentially during the Second World War, turned the tide at Stalingrad, and cranked out what many consider to be the war's best tank: the T-34.Ĭheaply and efficiently made, with a brilliant design featuring sloped frontal armour, vast numbers of T-34s poured off production lines where they swamped German tanks on the battlefield. Thus, ‘Little Willie’ was redundant almost as soon as it was built.As the nation that invented the world's first tank, brought it into battle in 1916 at the Somme, and then deployed it in spectacular fashion the following year at Cambrai, Britain can claim a special place in the history of armoured warfare. This would become the classic British tank design of the Great War. ![]() Its designers, William Tritton and Walter Wilson came up with a set of workable tracks which were fitted to the ‘Landship’ now known as ‘Little Willie,’ said to be an irreverent nickname for the German Crown Prince, Kaiser Wilhelm.īy the time ‘Little Willie’ was built, Wilson and Tritton had already come up with an improved idea of a machine with tracks running all the way around the vehicle, which would be able to cross trenches. of Lincoln, was contracted to build a prototype machine. After many experiments and false starts an agricultural firm, William Foster & Co. In 1915 the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, created a Landships Committee to tackle the problems of trench warfare. ![]() It proved that a vehicle encompassing armoured protection, an internal combustion engine, and tracks was a possibility for the battlefield. Little Willie was the first working tank in the world. ![]()
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