Tank, armoured track-laying military vehicle, with flexibly mounted armament.

The tank was first developed in Britain in 1915, in an attempt to break the deadlock of trench warfare on the Western Front of World War I. It had no single inventor. The Royal Naval Air Service, which operated some armoured cars, originated ideas for “landships”. Simultaneously, Colonel Ernest Swinton proposed the military use of caterpillar track-laying tractors. Both suggestions came to the attention of the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill. He set up a Landships Committee that laid down specifications. By the end of 1915 British engineers had built a prototype landship, nicknamed “mother”. Almost immediately the cover-name “tank” was adopted for such vehicles, quickly passing into general use. Tanks first saw action on September 15, 1916, during the Battle of the Somme. Their military effects were initially limited, but their psychological and propaganda impact was huge. British tanks carried their armament in sponsons on either side of the hull. “Female” tanks carried machine-guns only, while “male” tanks also had two 6 lb (2.75 kg) guns. As the war progressed, their armoured protection and engines were improved. In November 1917, at the Battle of Cambrai, 400 British tanks achieved a notable success in breaking through the German lines. In 1918 they formed an important element of many attacks during the Allied advances that preceded the Armistice. The French army had introduced its own tanks in 1917, but the Germans had produced only a handful before the end of the war.

The slowness and unreliability of early tanks prevented them from being a decisive weapon in their own right, as they were unable to exploit any success that they achieved. They were exhausting to operate and, with the exception of the French Renault light tank, deployed their armament in their hulls rather than in a rotating turret. However, they had achieved enough to secure their place on the battlefield, and development continued during the inter-war era. Military thinkers in many countries speculated on the best future employment of tanks. However, when World War II broke out in 1939 it was only the Germans who put such theories into practice. A group of German officers, most notably General Heinz Guderian, had formulated a method of attack that became known as blitzkrieg (“lightning war”), using mobile forces spearheaded by tanks and supported by dive-bombers. The German’s expert handling of massed tanks enabled them to defeat the Allied forces in 1940, which, even when equipped with effective tanks of their own, tended to employ them clumsily, in small formations. As the war progressed, the Allies themselves created large armoured formations, challenging the Germans on their own terms. The Soviet Union was particularly successful in this, and between 1943 and 1945 launched a series of successful tank-led offensives, in particular at the Battle of Kursk, culminating in the final defeat of Germany in Berlin. A further important cause of the German Army’s defeat was the fact that the Allies’ tank production massively outstripped that of Germany.

World War II witnessed huge advances in tank technology. In 1939 most armies had employed considerable numbers of small light tanks, largely because they were relatively cheap to build. However, events proved that their thin armourplating made them a liability. A race ensued to produce tanks with an optimum combination of firepower, speed, and armoured protection. The Soviet T-34, US M4, and German Panther were notably successful in balancing these requirements. However, it was heavier tanks, such as the Soviet Josef Stalin series, or the British Centurion (which appeared just too late to see action), which foreshadowed modern tank development. Powerful though these vehicles were, the war also proved that they required the support of other arms. Tanks attempting to fight alone were vulnerable to anti-tank guns and to a range of newly developed infantry anti-tank weapons. The most effective of these employed shaped-charge munitions, which could penetrate very thick armour.

In the post-war era, the world’s major armies have all maintained large fleets of tanks. During the Cold War massive armoured forces faced each other across the Iron Curtain. However, the only major tank battles since 1945 have occurred in the Middle East in the Six-Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Israel’s victories in wars with its Arab neighbours have been founded on the aggressive use of tanks. More recently the mechanized assault mounted by Coalition forces on the Iraqi Army during the Gulf War emphasized the continued potency of tanks on the modern battlefield. The tanks used by the world’s leading armies today are a far cry from those of World War I. Main battle tanks such as the US M1A2 Abrams, or the British Challenger 2, can cross battlefields at 40 km/h (25 mph) despite weighing over 60 tonnes. They are protected by composite armour incorporating ceramics, which is highly effective against shaped-charge anti-tank munitions. Their 120-mm (5-in) guns benefit from computerized targeting and gunnery control systems, enabling them to destroy enemy targets at extreme ranges, even while moving.