Tanks, for the most parts of history, were commonly understood as a large container of water that supplied water for daily household activities, or trucks and ships that were used to transport oil from one place to another. Since the 20th century, however, tanks became well-known as a combat vehicle, among the staples of modern military ground forces of almost any army across the globe.
What brought about the new meaning for the word ‘tank’? Did the vehicles have any other names before being called tanks? And furthermore, what exactly is a ‘tank’?
In 1912, someone in Europe came along with a new invention, the ‘combat tractor’. He saw that tractors were used by farmers on the field, as they could move around easily on roads that would be unsuitable for cars, thanks to their tracks. He also noticed that soldiers would have to drag high-caliber canons whenever they needed to move them. Thinking it would be a great idea to combine the two, he proposed his creation to the military department, who turned it down immediately as they thought it was unnecessary.
Then World War I broke out across Europe. And for a short period of time at the beginning of the war, the opposing armies would fight one another in open fields until one side retreated and the other succeeded in capturing the area. Then, ground forces were ordered to strengthen their defense lines, leading to an era of battle referred to as ‘the trench war’. The defending force would dig various parallel trenches spanning the length of an area, fortifying them with barbed wires and machine guns. The attacking force would then send waves after waves of soldiers running across the open to reach the trenches, until they completed their objective, or until they ran out of reinforcements. Obviously, this was not an efficient tactic, and casualties were extortionately high. War strategists knew something had to be done soon, or things would turn against their favor.
In 1914, sir Ernest Winston, a British officer and an engineer, presented his design of an armoured combat vehicle which he called the ‘machine-gun destroyer’. The project was then backed by none other than the First Lord of the Admiralty, sir Winston Churchill. The vehicle was constructed by The Armoured Car Division of the Royal Naval Air Service, and later The Admiralty Landships Committee. People working on the project came from a naval background, accompanied by the fact that the vehicle was armed with guns that were originally mounted on ships, the new machines were called ‘landships’.
However, the new name did not last long, since during times of war, spying and intel gathering was a large issue. Therefore, the newly produced vehicles were falsely described as a transport tractor that helped carrying water to the frontline, hence the name ‘tank’. However, the cover was blown once the ‘water tanks’ appeared in the Battle of the Somme. 32 units of landships rolled out onto the muddy battle field. Five of them became stuck, and nine broke down before they could do anything much. The remaining 18 landships, however, punched through the enemy lines, piercing 5 kilometers into enemy territories. The Germans were terrified, as up to that point everything on the battle fields had been men, guns, and horses. Soon they rolled out their own version of landships, which they called ‘mobile forts’. They functioned the exact same way: covering the infantry while trying to overrun enemies’ trenches and fortifications.
From then on, throughout the course of history, tanks took on various other roles in battles. They started out as metal shields for ground forces, then became tools to wreck havocs among enemy lines with their increasingly bigger guns, then functioned as anti-tank measures during World War II with thicker armours and heavier armaments. Tank designs rapidly changed from gigantic machines to little vehicles with high mobility, then again back to huge moving machines, but with thicker metal plates. Then thanks to scientific advances during the last half of the 20th century, the old lines of tanks were retired, replaced with a new line of vehicles – the Main Battle Tanks (MBTs), combining both the agility of smaller tanks, and high-caliber canons of heavier tanks, into one single unit.
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