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The first proposal for a tank was by the Austrian Oberleutenant Günther Burstyn who, in 1911, proposed a design for "motor
artillery" (Motorengeschütz) with a turret, but his design never progressed beyond a German patent in 1912.
Tank or "landship" development, originally conducted by the British Navy under the auspices of the Landships
Committee was sponsored by the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill and proceeded through a number of prototypes
culminating in the Mark I tank prototype 'Mother'. The first tank to engage in battle was named "D1", a British
Mark I, during the Battle of Flers-Courcellette on 15 September 1916. For further information on British World War I tank
actions, see Tanks in World War I.
In contrast to World War II, Germany fielded very few tanks during WWI, with only 15 of the A7V type being produced in
Germany during the war. The first tank versus tank action took place on 24 April 1918 at Villers-Bretonneux, France, when
three British Mark IVs met three German A7Vs.
Mechanical problems, poor mobility and piecemeal tactical deployment limited the military significance of the tank in World
War I and the tank did not fulfil its promise of rendering trench warfare obsolete. None the less, it was clear to military
thinkers on both sides that tanks would play a significant role in future conflicts.
In the inter-war period tanks underwent further mechanical development and, in terms of tactics, J.F.C. Fuller's doctrine
of spearhead attacks with massed tank formations was the basis for work by Heinz Guderian in Germany, Percy Hobart in Britain,
Adna R. Chaffee, Jr. in the U.S., Charles de Gaulle in France, and Mikhail Tukhachevsky in the USSR. All came to similar conclusions,
but in the Second World War only Germany would put the theory into practice on a large scale, and it was their superior tactics
and French blunders, not superior weapons, that made blitzkrieg so successful in May 1940.
During the Cold War, the two opposing forces in Europe were the Warsaw Pact countries on the one side, and the NATO countries
on the other side. The Warsaw Pact was seen by the West as having an aggressive force outnumbering the NATO forces and tank
development proceeded largely as it had during WWII to maintain the balance of power. The essence of tank designs during the
Cold War had been hammered out in the closing months of World War II. Large turrets, capable suspension systems, greatly improved
engines, sloped armour and large caliber (100mm+) guns were all introduced to tanks during WWII. Tank design during the Cold
War built on this foundation and included improvements to fire control, gun stabilisation, communications and crew comfort.
Armour technology progressed in an ongoing race against improvements in anti-tank weapons, especially antitank guided missiles
like the TOW.
Medium tanks of WWII gradually evolved into the Main Battle Tank of the Cold War and took over all tank roles on the battlefield.
This transition happened gradually in the 1950s, as it was realized that medium tanks could carry guns (such as the US 90
mm, Soviet 100 mm, and the excellent British L7 105 mm) that could penetrate any practical thickness of armour plate at long
range. The WWII concept of heavy tanks, armed with the most powerful guns and heaviest armour became obsolete, since they
were just as vulnerable as other vehicles to the new medium tank guns. Likewise, WWII had shown that lightly-armed, lightly-armoured
tanks were of little value in most roles; speed was not a substitute for armour and firepower.threat.
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| British_Mark_IV_Tadpole_tank |
A tank's protection is the combination of its ability to avoid detection, to avoid being hit by enemy fire, its armour to
resist the effects of enemy fire, and to sustain damage and complete its mission, or at least protect its crew. In common
with most unit types, tanks are subject to additional hazards in wooded and urban combat environments which largely negate
the advantages of the tank's long-range fire-power and mobility, limit the crew's detection capabilities and can restrict
turret traverse. Despite these disadvantages, tanks retain high survivability against previous generation RPGs in all combat
environments by virtue of their armour. By contrast, tank survivability against newer generation tandem-warhead anti-tank
missiles is a concern for military planners
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| Matilda |
A tank avoids detection using the doctrine of CCD: camouflage (looks the same as the surroundings), concealment (cannot be
seen) and deception (looks like something else).
Working against efforts to avoid detection is the fact that a tank is a large metallic object with a distinctive, angular
silhouette that emits copious heat and noise when mobile. Consequently, it's difficult to effectively camouflage a hull-up
tank in the absence of some form of cover or concealment (eg. woods). The tank becomes easier to detect when mobile due to
the large, distinctive auditory, vibration and thermal signatures of a power plant with an output comparable to that of a
diesel locomotive.[citation needed] Tank tracks and dust clouds also betray past or present tank movement. Powered down tanks
are vulnerable to infra-red detection due to differences between the thermal conductivity and therefore heat dissipation of
the metallic tank and its surroundings. At close range the tank can be detected even when powered down and fully concealed
due to the column of warmer air above the tank and the smell of diesel.
There are at least three possible explanations of the origin of the name "tank". One is it first arose in British
factories making the hulls of the first battle tanks: workmen and possible spies were to be given the impression they were
constructing mobile water containers or tanks for the British Army, hence keeping the production of a fighting vehicle secret.
Another is the term was first used in a secret report on the new motorized weapon presented to Winston Churchill, then
First Lord of the Admiralty, by British Army Lt.-Col. Ernest Swinton. From this report, three possible terms emerged: "cistern",
"motor-war car", and "tank". Apparently "tank" was chosen due to its linguistic simplicity.
Perhaps the most compelling story comes from Churchill's authoritative biography. To disguise the device, drawings were marked
"water carriers for Russia."
When it was pointed out this might be shortened to "WCs for Russia," the drawings were changed to "water
tanks for Russia." Eventually the weapon was just called a tank.
The cruiser tank (also called cavalry tank or fast tank) was a British tank design concept of the inter-war period. This concept
was the driving force behind several tank designs which saw action during the Second World War.
Like the ships of the same name, cruiser tanks were fast and mobile, and were designed to operate independently of the
slow-moving infantry and their heavier Infantry tanks.
Once gaps had been punched in the enemy front by the infantry tanks, the cruisers were intended to penetrate to the rear,
attacking lines of supply and communication in accordance with the theories of Hobart and Liddell-Hart. Speed was therefore
a critical factor, and to achieve this the early cruiser designs were lightly armoured and armed. This emphasis on speed unbalanced
the British designs; insufficient attention was paid to armour protection. At the time it was not well understood that lightly-armoured
vehicles would not survive on the modern battlefield. An even bigger problem for most cruiser tanks was the small calibre
of their main gun. Most cruisers were armed with the QF two-pounder (40 mm) gun. This gun had good armour penetration (the
best at the time), but was never issued high explosive ammunition. This made the cruisers vulnerable to towed Anti-tank guns.
However, as fighting enemy tanks was part of the projected role of the Cruiser tanks they were the first to be upgraded to
the heavier 6 pounder (57 mm) gun when it became available, and a great deal of effort was put into developing (admittedly
unsuccessful) Cruiser tanks armed with the 17 pounder QF (76 mm) gun. Ironically, given the emphasis on high mobility, most
cruisers were plagued by mechanical unreliability. This problem was usually caused by insufficient development as most of
the early Cruiser tank designs were ordered "off the drawing board" and was not fully solved until the debut of
the Cromwell in 1944, with its powerful, reliable Rolls-Royce Meteor engine.
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| TigerITank |
World War II was the first conflict where armoured vehicles were critical to success on the battlefield. During the German
Invasion of Poland (1939) the Germans used a combination of Panzer I (a training tank), Panzer II light tanks, and captured
Czechoslovakian tanks (Panzer 35 and Panzer 38. Early war German tanks sacrificed firepower and protection for mobility and
reliability. In contrast, the French had good tanks like the Somua S35 and Char B1 but employed a defensive doctrine and had
poor tank command and control systems, lacking radios in many of their tanks and headquarters. The French and British used
a range of tank designs with different roles (see British tank classification). One of the more successful British tanks of
the war was the Matilda tank.
The German doctrine of blitzkrieg or "Lightning War" made use of radios in all of the tanks to provide command
and control, which made them more effective tank for tank than their Allied opponents in the Battle of France, despite the
Allied machines being more than a match for the panzers one-on-one. German tanks bypassed enemy strong-points and could radio
for close air support to destroy them, or leave them to the infantry on foot. A related development, mechanized infantry,
allowed some of the troops to keep up with the tanks and create (for the period) highly mobile combined arms forces.
By 1941, the Germans had the newer Panzer III and Panzer IV tanks with which to invade the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa.
In an echo of the Battle of France the Soviets had several good tanks and one superb tank design, the T-34. German crews were
initially shocked by the excellent all-round performance of the T-34 and the protection and firepower of the KV-1. As before,
the rigid Soviet command structure and poor leadership allowed their machines to be surrounded and destroyed in detail, but
the Germans could not precipitate the same tactical and strategic panic as they had in France; instead they found an enemy
that doggedly kept fighting without food, water and communications. Despite early successes against the Soviets, the Germans
began up-gunning their Panzer IVs, and eventually built larger Panther and Tiger tanks to (ultimately unsuccessfully) deal
with the Soviet tank
The three traditional factors determining a tank's effectiveness in battle are its firepower, protection, and mobility. In
practical terms, the cost to manufacture and maintain a given tank design is also important in that it determines how many
tanks a nation can afford to field.
Firepower is the ability of a tank to identify, engage, and destroy a target. Protection is the tank's ability to resist
being detected, engaged, and disabled or destroyed by enemy fire. Mobility includes tactical (short range) movement over the
battlefield including over rough terrain and obstacles, as well as strategic (long range) mobility, the ability of the tank
to be transported by road, rail, sea, and/or air, to the battlefield.
Tank design is a compromise; it is not possible to maximize firepower, protection and mobility simultaneously. For example,
increasing protection by adding armour will result in an increase in weight and therefore decrease mobility; increasing firepower
by installing a larger gun will force the designer to sacrifice speed or armour to compensate for the added weight and cost.
Since WWII tank development has shifted focus from experimenting with large scale mechanical changes to the tank design
to focussing on technological advances in the tank's subsystems to improve its performance.
With respect to tanks, firepower means the ability to rapidly detect, identify, engage and destroy targets on the battlefield.
The main weapon of all modern tanks is a single, large calibre (105 to 125mm) gun mounted in a fully traversing turret.
The typical tank gun is a smoothbore weapon capable of firing armour-piercing kinetic energy penetrators (KEP), also known
as armour-piercing discarding sabot (APDS), and high explosive anti-tank (HEAT) shells and/or anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM)
to destroy armoured targets, as well as high explosive (HE) shells for engaging soft targets or fortifications. A modern type
of tank ordnance arising from the close range urban combat in Iraq is a 120mm caliber "shotgun" round for the M1
Abrams which will fire 1100 tungsten pellets.
A gyroscope is used to stabilise the main gun, reducing the effect of manoeuvring on accuracy. Modern tank guns are also commonly
fitted with insulating thermal jackets to reduce gun-barrel warping caused by uneven thermal expansion, bore evacuators to
minimise fumes entering the crew compartment and (less often) muzzle brakes to minimise the effect of recoil on accuracy and
rate of fire.
Modern target detection relies on telescopic periscopes and sophisticated light intensification and thermal imaging equipment
to improve fighting capability at night, in poor weather and in smoke. The accuracy of modern tank guns is pushed to the mechanical
limit by computerized fire control systems. The fire control system uses a laser range-finder to detect the range to the target,
a thermocouple, anemometer and wind vane to correct for weather effects and a muzzle referencing system to correct for gun-barrel
temperature, warping and wear. Two sightings of a target with the range-finder enable calculation of the target movement vector.
This information is combined with the known movement of the tank and the principles of ballistics to calculate the elevation
and aim point that maximises the probability of destroying the target.
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| Centurion |
To effectively protect the tank and its crew, tank armour must counter a wide variety of anti-tank threats. Protection against
kinetic energy penetrators and high explosive anti-tank (HEAT) shells fired by other tanks is of primary importance, but tank
armour must also aim to protect against infantry anti-tank missiles, anti-tank mines, bombs, direct artillery hits, and (less
often) nuclear, bacterial and chemical threats, any of which could disable or destroy a tank and/or its crew.
Steel armour plate was the earliest type of armour. The Germans pioneered the use of face hardened steel during WWII and the
Soviets also achieved improved protection with sloped armour technology. WWII developments also spelled the eventual doom
of homogeneous steel armour with the development of shaped charge warheads, exemplified by the Panzerfaust and bazooka infantry
weapons which were lethally effective, despite some early success with spaced armour.
British tank researchers took the next step with the development of Chobham armour, or more generally composite armour,
incorporating ceramics and plastics in a resin matrix between steel plates, which provided good protection against early HEAT
weapons. Magnetic mines led to the development of anti-magnetic paste and paint, squash head warheads led to Kevlar (or equivalent)
anti-spall armour linings, and KEPs led to the inclusion of exotic materials like depleted uranium in the composite matrix.
Reactive armour consists of small explosive "bricks" that detonate when damaged by HEAT fire, bending or disrupting
the incoming molten metallic jet. Tandem warheads defeat reactive armour by causing the armour to detonate prematurely. Grenade
launchers which can rapidly deploy a smoke screen and the modern Shtora soft-kill countermeasure system provide additional
protection by disrupting enemy targeting and fire control systems.
The Tank, Cruiser, Mk IV (A13 Mk II) was a British cruiser tank of World War II. It followed directly on from the Tank, Cruiser,
Mk III (A13). The first Mk IV's were Mk III's with extra armour fitted to the turret. Later Mk IVA's were built with the complete
extra armour.
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