Tank

: This article is about armoured fighting vehicles. For other meanings, see Tank (disambiguation).

History

: Main article: History of the tank

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World War One: the first tanks

Having already seen armoured Rolls Royce cars used in 1914, and aware of schemes to create a tracked fighting vehicle, First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill sponsored the Landships Committee to oversee development of this new weapon. The first successful prototype tank, nicknamed "Little Willie", was tested for the British Army on September 6, 1915. Although initially termed "landships" by the Admiralty, the initial vehicles were colloquially referred to as "water-carriers", later shortened to "tanks", to preserve secrecy. The word "tank" was used to give the workers the impression they were constructing tracked water containers for the British army in Mesopotamia, and it was made official on December 24, 1915.

Related Topics:
Rolls Royce - Winston Churchill - British Army - September 6 - 1915 - December 24

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The first tank became operational when Captain H. W. Mortimore of the Royal Navy took a Mark I into action at Delville Wood during the Battle of the Somme on September 15 1916. The French developed the Schneider CA1 working from Holt caterpillar tractors, and first used it on April 16 1917. The first successful use of massed tanks in combat occurred at the Battle of Cambrai on November 20, 1917.

Related Topics:
Mark I - Battle of the Somme - September 15 - 1916 - Schneider CA1 - April 16 - 1917 - Battle of Cambrai - November 20

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The tank would eventually make trench warfare obsolete, and the thousands of tanks fielded by French and British forces made a significant contribution to the war. Initial results with tanks were mixed, with problems in reliability causing considerable attrition rates when getting the tanks into combat and on the move. This forced the development of tanks such as the Mark IV, which rhomboid shape could navigate large obstacles, especially long trenches, more easily than many modern AFVs. Allied tanks continued to evolve during the war, while Germany mostly fielded a small number of captured tanks, and only made twenty of their native design, the A7V.

Related Topics:
Trench warfare - Rhomboid

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1920s to the end of Second World War

With the tank concept now established, several nations designed and built tanks between the two world wars. The British designs were the most advanced, due largely to their successes in WWI, the state of the other European powers France and Germany, and the detachment of the USA.

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Throughout this period several "classes" of tanks were common, most of this development taking place in England. Light tanks, typically ten tons and less, were used primarily for scouting and generally mounted a light gun that was useful only against other light tanks. The "medium", or cruiser tank as it was known in England, were somewhat heavier and focused on long-range high-speed travel. Finally the heavy tank, or infantry tank, was heavily armoured and generally very slow. The overall idea was to use infantry tanks close concert with infantry to effect a breakthrough, their heavy armour allowing them to deal with antitank weapons the enemy would invariably carry. Once this combined force broke the enemy lines, groups of cruiser tanks would be sent through the gap, operating far behind the lines to attack supply lines and command units. This one-two punch was the basic combat philosophy of the British tank units, and adopted by the Germans as a major component of the Blitzkrieg concepts.

Related Topics:
Cruiser tank - Blitzkrieg

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There was thought put into tank-against-tank combat, but the focus was on powerful antitank guns and similar weapons, including dedicated antitank vehicles. This was put to its fullest expression in the United States, where tanks were expected to avoid enemy armour, and let dedicated tank destroyer units deal with them. In practice these concepts soon proved dangerous. As the amount of armour on the battlefield increased, the chance of running into a tank grew to the point where every vehicle had to be an effective antitank vehicle as well. This led to a rapid up-armouring and up-gunning of almost all tank designs. Tank shape, previously guided purely by considerations of obstacle clearance, now became a trade-off, with a low profile desirable for stealth and stability.

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World War II saw a series of advances in tank design. Germany for example, initially fielded lightly armoured and lightly armed tanks, such as the Panzer I, which was originally intended for training use only. These fast-moving tanks and other armoured vehicles were a critical element of the Blitzkrieg. However, they fared poorly in direct combat with British tanks and suffered severely against the Soviet T-34, which was superior in armour and weaponry. By the end of the war all forces had dramatically increased their firepower and armour; for instance, the Pz (Panzer) I had only two machine guns, and the Pz IV, the "heaviest" early war German design, had a low-velocity 75 mm design and weighed under twenty tonnes. By the end of the war the standard German medium tank, the Panther, mounted a powerful, high-velocity 75-mm gun and weighed forty-five tonnes.

Related Topics:
World War II - Panzer I - T-34 - Panther

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Another major wartime advance was the introduction of radically improved suspension systems. Although this might not sound important, the quality of the suspension is the primary determinant of a tank's cross-country performance. Tanks with limited suspension travel will subject its crew to massive loads, making it difficult to operate the tank properly, and firing on the fly essentially impossible. Newer systems like the Christie suspension or the torsion bar systems used in some Soviet, US, and German tanks dramatically improved performance, allowing the late-war Panther to travel cross country at speeds that would have been difficult for earlier designs to reach on-road.

Related Topics:
Christie suspension - Torsion bar

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By this time all tanks were equipped with radios, vastly improving the direction of units. Tank chassis were adapted to a wide range of military jobs, including mine clearance and engineering tasks. Some of these vehicles remain as other classes of armoured fighting vehicle. All major combatant powers also developed tank destroyers and assault guns?armoured vehicles carrying large calibre guns but often without turrets.

Related Topics:
Radio - Direction - Mine - Engineering - Armoured fighting vehicle - Tank destroyer - Assault gun

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Turrets, which were not previously a universal feature on tanks, were recognised as the way forward. It was appreciated that if the tank's gun was to be used to engage armoured targets then it needed to be as large and powerful as possible, making having one large gun with an all-round field of fire vital. Multiple-turreted vehicles like the Soviet T-35 slowly died out during World War II, but never entirely disappeared. Most tanks retained at least one hull machine gun. Even post war, the M60 MBT had a smaller secondary turret for the commander's cupola.

Related Topics:
Turret - T-35 - M60

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The Cold War and beyond

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After WWII, tank development proceeded largely as it had been, with improvements to both the medium and heavy classes. Light tanks were now limited to the reconnaissance role and, in US use, airborne support as well. However, the weight limitations of air transport made a practical light tank almost impossible to build, and this class gradually disappeared over time.

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But the seeds for a true transformation had already been working their way into existing designs. A combination of better suspensions and greatly improved engines allowed late-war mediums to outperform early-war heavies. With only slightly more armour and a somewhat larger engine to compensate, mediums were suddenly able to deal with almost all antitank weapons, even those mounted on heavy tanks, while at the same time having the mobility of the medium class. Many consider the turning point to be the Panther, which became the basis for almost every tank design after it. However the Panther was not terribly well armoured, and could not really deal with the heavy tanks on an equal basis.

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The first tank to get it all "right" is generally considered to be the British Centurion tank, which (in its later versions) was able to take hits from the infamous German 88 mm gun, was armed with the deadly Royal Ordnance L7 that was superior to anything in the field, and could reach 35 km/h due to its excellent 650-hp Rolls Royce Meteor engine. The Centurion replaced all British medium cruiser tanks and led to the demise of the heavy infantry tank class entirely, becoming what the British referred to as the universal tank, soon to be known as the main battle tank in most forces, abbreviated MBT.

Related Topics:
Centurion tank - 88 mm gun - Royal Ordnance L7 - Rolls Royce Meteor

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As a result of heavy antitank guided missiles (ATGMs), the focus in development shifted away from just the tank's size, to the technologies within it. The long range of ATGM made it useless to concentrate resources into fewer heavy tanks, because they could no longer perform in the stand-off role, the one thing they were really useful for. So rather than just producing tanks with much thicker armour, radically more effective armour was implemented. Gun technology remained remarkably similar even to WWI-era gun technology, with most tanks in service still being manually loaded, but with big advances in shell effectiveness.

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The continued need for vehicles that could carry and protect infantry, resulted in the development and use of combination vehicles, Cavalry Fighting Vehicles and Infantry Fighting Vehicles (CFVs and IFVs) such as the M2 Bradley, which combines the roles of a light tank and an APC.

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Although the basic roles and traits of tanks were almost all developed by the end of WWI, the performance of twenty-first-century counterparts had increased by an order of magnitude. They had been refined dramatically in response to continually changing threats and requirements, especially the threat of other tanks. The advancing capabilities of tanks have been balanced by developments of other tanks and by continuous development of antitank weapons.

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