On January 29th 1916, “Big Willie” went through it first major demonstration – under the tightest of secrecy. Haig sent a major, Hugh Elles, to find out more about the machine and he reported favourably to Haig. Churchill had directly contacted Haig to convince him about the usefulness of the new weapon. “Big Willie” ran with these specifications for the first time on January 16th 1916. There would be a crew of eight and the large guns would be 57-mm naval guns mounted on the sides. Tritton and Wilson designed a new and more reliable version and on September 29th a meeting took place in London that recommended the new weapon should have 10-mm frontal armour and 8-mm side armour. However, these officials were impressed as they knew that any new weapon was bound to have teething problems and their recognised the potential that the new weapon had.
The same happened on September 19th when government officials were watching. The first model came off the factory floor on September 8th 1915. The start of life for the tank did not bode well. “Big Willie” was rhomboid in shape and had guns mounted in blisters on the sides of the hull. “Little Willie” developed in to “Big Willie” which started to bear a resemblance to the first Mark 1 seen in the photo. “Little Willie” was never designed to fight but to serve as a template for development. The first ‘tank’ to have any form of caterpillar track was a vehicle designed by Lieutenant W Wilson and William Tritton called “Little Willie”. However, their vehicles were designed to operate on muddy land but not the churned up landscape of the Western Front. Most of the original designs were based on designs from the Holt tractor company. However, by the end of 1915, his name was not held in high esteem because of the Gallipoli fiasco.Īs the stalemate on the Western Front continued, so the drive to find a weapon that could break this lack of mobility became more intense.
One supporter of the prospective new weapon was Winston Churchill. A crew of ten men with two machine guns on board and one light artillery gun.The ability to turn sharply at top speed.
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