>>7402227I guess I could start with the basics, and briefly talk about one of my favorite subjects, tanks. And the history of the first tank more specifically.
Maybe you are already aware of the fact that tanks were first used during WWI on the western front.And maybe you've also heard that they were built to attack across the western front, through what is called the no-man's-land. But what about the very first tank that saw service? How did they come up with it, and what was it like?
Germany, France and the UK were, in the middle of the first world war, thinking of ways to break the stalemate of the western front, where machineguns, artillery and barbed wire made cavalry charges of old all but useless at breaking through the enemy lines and making a push. The germans tried to find a way around this problem by creating what they called "sturmtruppen" (literally assault troops), specialized soldiers chosen among the bravest, equipped with loads of grenades and pistols, whose mission was to sneakily invade the enemy trench and disrupt the enemy, throwing 'nades around the place and stealing as much enemy equipment as possible. This was only moderately effective, as this was obvisously extremely dangerous, and sturmtruppen usually had high casualties.
But the british and the french thought of making the tank, which at first was called a "landship": as the name suggests, the goal was to make the equivalent of a warship on land, with big guns and bulletproof armor, that could cross the no-man's-land. Before the war, almost every nation had armoured cars, but these were no good in cross-terrain, so they had to come up with something else.
Thankfully, a few years prior, caterpillar tracks became a thing in the US, primarily with a tracked tractor, called the Baby Holt. The brits saw the potential in this machine, and hastily put together a prototype. They simply took one of those tractors, and strapped some armor plates on top, to see if this could work.
part 2 coming
