Why tanks are called tanks

The riddle of the trenches was to find a way to overcome the power of the defender. The defender had many advantages:. The First World War tank developed from the interest of some military officers in the marriage of tractors with caterpillar tracks as a means of crossing trench obstacles and breaking through barbed wire.

The first prototypes were completed in early , and the first several dozen machines were at the front by mid British forces first used tanks during the Battle of the Somme in September They had a dramatic effect on German morale and proved effective in crossing trenches and wire entanglements, but they failed to break through the German lines. At the Battle of Courcelette, the Canadian Corps fought with half a dozen tanks, with a seventh held in reserve.

They were as slow as a walking soldier and easily knocked out by artillery fire. On the other hand, tanks inspired terror, rolled over barbed wire, and provided important firepower to the infantry with their machine-guns and artillery pieces.

The workers called them "water tanks" or simply "tanks" for short. And that's how the armored vehicles got their name. One of the British officers who helped develop the tank, Ernest Swinton, liked the nickname and made it official. The first 50 tanks were sent to France in August to join the big British push that summer along the river Somme.

They were thrown into the attack on Sept. Almost no British troops had seen a tank before, and British commanders had few tactical ideas about how to use a tank in battle.

The journey from the UK had been stressful on the ton machines, and almost half of them broke down before coming into contact with the enemy. They managed to advance a couple of miles through two of the three German lines, inflicting heavy casualties.

But lack of communication they had no radios and lack of coordination with infantry and artillery stalled the attack. Some historians have criticized the British High Command's decision to deploy the tanks, arguing there were too few of them to make a decisive difference, and that their principle advantage — shock and surprise — was somewhat lost as the Germans could begin preparing weapons and tactics to counter them.

But Germany only ever built 20 of their own tanks to counter the thousands eventually built by the Allies during World War I. The British were the first to use them, but the French were also developing tanks in secret. The early French tanks were even less well-designed than the first British ones.

The armor was too thin on one, and the tracks too narrow on another. Later in the war, the French car company Renault produced a new design. The Renault FT was the first with that distinctive feature of modern tanks: a rotating turret on the top. The British heavy tanks all had their weapons on the side. But in , On September 6, , an estimated 2.

During her year marriage to Prince Charles, the son of Queen On September 6, , British Brigadier General Benedict Arnold, a former Patriot officer already infamous and much maligned for betraying the United States the previous year, adds to his notoriety by ordering his British command to burn New London, Connecticut. The Continental Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. World War I. Sign Up.

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