Tanks
Tanks.The tank, invented in World War I out of military necessity, immediately captured the popular imagination. The machine's raw power, gadgetry, speed, and size, along with the secrecy with which it was developed, created for it a mystique. Initially, the very name tank was employed as part of a deception to shroud its true nature as a weapon.
The British first developed this mobile, armored war machine in a program initiated by E. D. Swinton and Maurice Hankey; Winston S. Churchill, then first lord of the Admiralty, also supported the program. The first British tank, the Mark I, was a rhomboid‐shaped, tracked heavy vehicle weighing 26 tons, with two 57mm guns and a speed of 3.7 mph. On 15 September 1916, at the Battle of the Somme, after horrific infantry losses, forty‐nine Mark I tanks were sent in to support infantry attack across no‐man's‐land. Early critics charged they...
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