‘I managed to get astride one of the German trenches in front of the wood and opened fire. Mortimore was tasked to attack enemy strongpoints at Delville Wood and then provide support for the assault on the village of Flers. I’d been very frightened indeed, both before and after the day, but on that particular morning the whole thing seemed unreal, besides which we all had the utmost confidence in our new weapon - the tank.’ ‘Looking back on it, I don’t think I was frightened. Like other recruits to the new tank unit, he was entering a complete unknown. Mortimore, known as ‘Morty’, was 23 years old when he commanded his Mark I tank at the Battle of Flers Courcelette. This was the first tank in history to see action on a battlefield. on 15th September 1916, Lieutenant Harold Mortimore led his tank Daredevil across No Man’s Land. Either way, the new vehicles were shipped in crates labeled “tank” and the name stuck.At 5:15 a.m. To keep the project secret from enemies, production workers were reportedly told the vehicles they were building would be used to carry water on the battlefield (alternate theories suggest the shells of the new vehicles resembled water tanks). The men appealed to British navy minister Winston Churchill, who believed in the concept of a “land boat” and organized a Landships Committee to begin developing a prototype. In 1914, a British army colonel named Ernest Swinton and William Hankey, secretary of the Committee for Imperial Defence, championed the idea of an armored vehicle with conveyor-belt-like tracks over its wheels that could break through enemy lines and traverse difficult territory. The British developed the tank in response to the trench warfare of World War I. However, improvements were made to the original prototype and tanks eventually transformed military battlefields. It weighed 14 tons, got stuck in trenches and crawled over rough terrain at only two miles per hour. Little Willie was far from an overnight success. On September 6, 1915, a prototype tank nicknamed Little Willie rolls off the assembly line in England.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |