Under the utmost secrecy, design and construction of experimental landships began. The new machine was dubbed a land battleship, or, simply, a landship. Swinton thought that an armed, armored vehicle running on caterpillar treads might have a chance on the modern battlefield. The machine could navigate almost any terrain-including trenches. The tractor ran on a continuous band of treads driven by inner wheels. He also knew of the American-made Holt caterpillar tractor. Swinton, assigned as a war correspondent, had seen the bloody battlefields of France. In early 1915, British Lord of the Admiralty (the Royal Navy) Winston Churchill was looking for a new idea, and he found one.īritish Army Lieutenant-Colonel E. Repeated assaults on heavily defended trenches caused still more carnage. Battlefronts settled into static trench systems. This form of combat produced carnage on an unprecedented scale. One weapon, however, developed as a direct result of the fighting in the war: the armored combat vehicle known as the tank.īattles in World War I tended to be fought by men charging through barbed wire into machine gun and artillery fire. Airplanes, too, already existed, as did observation balloons, submarines, hand grenades, and flame throwers. Machine guns, heavy artillery, barbed wire, and poison gas all existed before World War I (1914-1918). Credit: © The Illustrated London News Picture Library
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