The attack of Cambrai by the British was not success because the heavy tanks were unable to keep up the advance. Therefore, in 1917 the Ministry of Munitions gave the go ahead to create a new tank, the Medium A, to exploit the shortcomings of the heavy tanks.
The Medium A tank had a low
The idea of armored vehicles wasn't new to the Germans, German and Austrian engineers had in fact tinkered with armoring vehicles before the First World War but they'd had a hard time convincing higher authorities that they were useful.
Indeed, it wasn't until the British attacked with tanks at Flers that the German authorities realized
After the invention of the tank in Britain, France was developing her own tank designs totally independently of the British, which meant their versions of the tank were quite a bit different. They began in a similar way to the British, developing tracked farm vehicles, but they also gave wheeled tractors a try as well
While the use of tanks in France and Belgium may not have being a roaring success to begin with, or at least not as big a success as was hoped, they did fare rather better in the less muddy conditions of the Middle-East, fighting the Turkish Army at Gaza in Palestine.
The Turkish were eventually
There was an increased interest in these new war machines after their initial successes in the Somme in 1916 and more people came to sign up to drive them. The small tank companies became larger battalions, which all coincided with the government ordering 1000 tanks to be made ASAP. Two more tanks, the Mark II
The new Heavy Section tank unit moved to France in August 1916, following the British General Staff's command that they needed the new vehicles in use as soon as possible because of disastrous losses during the Somme offensive the previous month.
A second attack began on September 15th 1916 with C and D Companies' thirty
During the building phase of 'Little Willie', Tritton and Wilson were working on its successor, which would be able to meet the War Office's new requirements of traversing a trench 8 feet 6 inches (2.6 meters) across and climb over obstacles up to 4 and a half feet (1.37 meters) high.
The new machine was
After the successful trials of the Killen-Strait the committee decided to test two more American tractors, namely the Bullock 'Creeping Grip' machines. First they tried coupling two machines together with an articulated platform, but this proved extremely difficult to maneuver and the coupling often snapped off. After this a bizarre attempt at adding six
After the failure of Pedrail's Lanship and due to a need for better track units, the Landship Committee turned to America's tractors and soon began experiments with the small Killen-Strait, which utilized a tri-wheeled arrangement with three individual steel track units with wooden shoes.
Lloyd George and Winston Churchill were very impressed with the Killen-Strait
Lieutenant Colonel Ernest Swinton suggested adding armor to an American Holt, a type of artillery tractor, in 1914 but his idea was initially rejected. However, a few months later, in February 1915, the Landship Committee was formed to analyze the possibilities available for manufacturing armored vehicles.
The Landship Committee was a collection of clever people