Talk:British heavy tanks of the First World War

It says male and female weights in the specifications. Is this vandalism? 17.107.83.31 01:23, 19 June 2007 (UTC)H.H.

As stated in the article, there were Male and Female versions (meaning with and without cannon, indeed very Freudian :o); so, no, it is not vandalism.--MWAK 05:40, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I did this. ( and Whippet ) GDL 3/2/2005

And you have done well. :o) However there's always room for improvement.

MWAK--84.27.81.59 21:25, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be better to split the article? Surely each of these interesting vehicles deserves its own!

MWAK--84.27.81.59 21:45, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Since the differences between the tanks is actually so little, certainly to the untrained eye, all the diffreent Marks should be treated as variants rather than separate vehicles. Compare with the treatment of the Churchill tank, and the layout for Whippet. Should I get a moment, I will work the article over myself.GraemeLeggett 08:56, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your effort! And sorry for my horrid English.... I tend to agree with you as far as the earlier marks are concerned. Marks VI, VIII and IX are so different though, a separate article seems justified. Of course I'm a bit prejudiced - they are among my favourite tanks :o).

MWAK--84.27.81.59 12:38, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Good jod too bad my tank article is not vary long(Uber555 04:53, 14 January 2006 (UTC))

You mean the Vickers Medium Mark II? :o) I'll try to help you out on that one a bit.--MWAK 08:31, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Just put in the bit about surviving tanks... feel free to add to it. I know there're others at Duxford and the IWM in London, but I've not included them as I've no idea of their details. Catsmeat 10:07, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

I've completed the list. The Duxford vehicle is the same as the Lincoln tank. All Ukranian exemplars are Mark Vs.--MWAK 10:38, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Oops, I made a mistake. The Lincoln tank is of course not from Duxford. Let me put it this way: I'm not aware of any entire WWI tank at Duxford. Are you sure there is one?--MWAK 18:30, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Does anyone have reliable information on the tank used in that movie? Internet sources frequently call it a German "Mark 7", but the only "Mark" tanks appear to be these British ones, which is rather confusing. 70.20.217.197 04:32, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

The tank was a newly built vehicle, externally resembling rather closely the British-American Mark VIII (see: http://www.indygear.com/props/images/Beast2.jpg and http://www.filmtrickery.com/truck.htm ) but with a turret added. That "German Mark 7" would be a reference to the A7V, which type however is quite unlike the Indiana Jones vehicle. The Mark VIII was perhaps chosen because an exemplar was available in the USA. An informative site about all such film tanks is http://filmpanzer.squarespace.com/ --MWAK 05:33, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Time to end this "popular culture" stuff ?

These "popular culture" entries contribute nothing to the article itself - no information about the subject or its impact on war, history or society. If it leads to e.g. new phrases in a language, that's important because it tells us about the subject's impact on the world. But references in entertainment movies or commercial games do not meet these criteria, they are just things creative writers dream up with no context. Time to stop it ? Rod. Rcbutcher (talk) 02:27, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, they are not without context: evidently, simply by referring to the British tanks, these then become the context of the later cultural expression. And it shows to what extent these tank types are still alive in the collective imagination. Furthermore, if someone has the movies or the games as the departure point for his investigation — I fear this is much more common than the opposite case :o) — and then tries to find out what these strange thingies are, we can help identifying them. Such humble tasks are the core business of an encyclopedia.--MWAK (talk) 05:51, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

The portrayal of tank by British, wartime, popular culture is indeed relevant because they became a hugely significant tool of British propaganda. Look out for the short poem "Blighters" by Siegfried Sassoon in which he ridicules this. Catsmeat (talk) 08:29, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

A Mark I style tank is used in the opening scene of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" movie. Bizzybody (talk) 09:41, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Tag & Assess 2008

Article reassessed and graded as start class. Referencing and appropriate inline citation guidelines not met. With appropriate citations and references, this article would easily qualify as B class if not higher. --dashiellx (talk) 16:32, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Time to split this article up into separate Marks ?

Considering this weapon's importance to the history of modern warfare, can one of the tank experts out there consider splitting off Mks I - V into separate pages for each Mark, like other wikis have done ? There is enough difference and material to support separate pages, and would make linking easier, especially interwiki links. Rcbutcher (talk) 07:51, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

At itself this is a good idea — which I have proposed many years earlier :o). However, this does not mean that the present article need to be much condensed as it can serve as a general treatment of the subject.--MWAK (talk) 11:31, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Split! Andy Dingley (talk) 22:13, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Can we get the referencing better first? Then when split we could have a number of B class articles rather than a bunch of starts.GraemeLeggett (talk) 10:41, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

The present chapters certainly are unfit to serve as separate articles; each article should be full length. So the "splitting" should not be taken literally; we can rename this one into British heavy tanks of WWI or something similar.--MWAK (talk) 12:21, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

cost effective?

I feel like there is something wrong with this sentence:

"suffered from many bugs because of its primitive and cost-effective nature"

"Cost-effective" wouldn't qualify as a bug...maybe the author meant "costly"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.82.133.73 (talk) 01:49, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

"Cost-effective" is here a euphemism for "cheap" :o).--MWAK (talk) 03:59, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

New intro

I've been trying to change the intro to this, but the server doesn't seem to like me:

The British Mark I was a tracked vehicle developed by the British Army during World War I and the world's first combat tank, entering service in August 1916, and first used in action on the morning of 15th September 1916. Born of the need to break the domination of trenches and machine guns over the battlefields of the Western Front, it was the first vehicle to be named "tank", as an expedient to maintain secrecy and to disguise its true purpose. It was developed to be able to cross trenches, resist small-arms fire, travel over difficult terrain, carry supplies, and be able to capture fortified enemy positions. It is regarded as successful in many respects, but suffered from many problems due to its primitive nature. It spawned nine subsequent variants, and initially proved so successful that their impact in battle was out of all proportion to their number and British Army infantry could not be properly deployed to take advantage of the unexpected success.Brutaldeluxe (talk) 00:56, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Article titles

Could we have some standardization please? Some of the article titles include the word "tank" and others don't. I think all articles about tanks should have "tank" in the title. Biscuittin (talk) 19:39, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

All articles about tanks in general or just the articles mentioned here? The first seems unnecessary — titles should in principle simply consist of the common name of a subject, not explain it — and the second seems already to be the case.--MWAK (talk) 06:51, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Bizzare "facts"

"entire crews lost consciousness or became violently sick when again exposed to fresh air" "or by runners who were encouraged... by strong drink as a reward." "later marks carried semaphore arms for [sic] signalling." Really? This stuff all sounds pretty dubious to me. Seems like you would pass out inside the tank and wake up when you got fresh air; it seems laughable, the idea that a soldier would be unwilling to risk his life, unless of course there was a bottle of liquor handy, in which case it would be "bottoms up and over the top;" and the idea of semaphore arms on top of a tank sounds highly impractical, if not totally unworkable. I think these factoids should be removed if proper citations cannot be produced. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.177.15.81 (talk) 21:04, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Semaphore:

Because radio reception quickly proved impossible due to noise and vibration, tankers had to rely on lamps, flags, semaphore, colored discs, or even carrier pigeons (if they survived the journey within the tank long enough)—Dowling, Timothy (2005). Personal Perspectives: World War I. New York: Harper Perennial. p. 139. ISBN 9781851095650.

Those semaphores nevertheless were really there (whether they were practical is an entirely different matter ;o). Also the other factoids are authentic or at least part of the traditional early tank lore. It is of course precisely because of their bizarre nature that these details are remarkable enough to be mentioned. The sentence "entire crews lost consciousness or became violently sick when again exposed to fresh air" is however, somewhat ambiguous: what you correctly indicated as the most plausible event, that crews passed out inside of a tank, is indeed what it meant to say — combined with the fact that if they "merely" suffered from a severe shortage of oxygen and an abundance of toxic fumes they couldn't quickly recuperate outside because this incapacitated them for half an hour. Also there is a misunderstanding regarding the sequence of events in case of the alcohol reward: those bottles of strong liquor were carried by the tanks themselves, so in a process of typical psychological conditioning, the stimulus was applied after the trick was performed. Bizarre, no?--MWAK (talk) 06:19, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Mark V series use in Berlin 1945

I have reverted the latest addition about this. Weaving some original research around some linked images is not provision of a reliable source. The conclusions need to be made by the source, not the editor. (Hohum ^@) 18:33, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

So why did you remove the references to images? Whatever evidence there is for the Berlin MkVs is based on these photographs. Andy Dingley (talk) 19:10, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Are the images on Wiki-compatible licences? If there are suitable photos showing the tanks in action in Berlin in 1945, then they should be added to the article to back up the claim. Mjroots (talk) 19:25, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

(EC)Because we need a reliable source which draws the conclusion, not our interpretation of what an image means. I could just as well assert that the tank was a static display outside a museum which was blown up during the course of combat. You presented theories that the images do not record.

Mjroots, the tank is shown as a wreck, not in action. (Hohum ^@) 19:29, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm happy to change the wording to avoid claiming anything definitively that isn't supportable, and I'd suggest that my wording was an improvement here.

There is still, despite this reversion, a widely circulating view that two Mark Vs appeared on the streets of Berlin. It is supported by clear photographic evidence (whether they are hosted on Wikipedia or on Flickr). We should record this, clarify what is credible (i.e. they're MkVs, not MkIVs, so the WWI beutepanzer theory doesn't really hold water) and record just how much is supportable by the evidence. Deleting the history of the Berlin tanks entirely would be as much POV as claiming the existence of foo fighters or the Bell. Andy Dingley (talk) 19:10, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

If it is a widely circulating view, you should have no problem finding documentary comment by a reliable historian, which is what we need. Not the opinions of wiki editors based on pictures of destroyed tanks. (Hohum ^@) 21:26, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Split articles

In accordance with the de facto Manual of Style, this article should be split into several articles. The Mark II - Mark X tanks can all get their own articles. Each vehicle can get a brief description in a section labeled "Derivatives". The article Mark tank could be created to provide an overview of tanks in the series. Marcus Qwertyus 23:36, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

"Mark tank"? Where the hell does that come from? 8-( Andy Dingley (talk) 23:43, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, it would not be easy to find a correct name for an overview article. Surely, the as yet non-existing Mark II, Mark III and Mark VII articles should be written first in a serious form, i.e. not as stubs, before the strictly Mark I-related content could be split off and the article renamed.--MWAK (talk) 07:04, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

See past discussion high up the page. Personally I don't have a problem with them as stubs (so long as no one then seeks to delete them). Besides which, there's not a huge amount to say on the II & III - we'd hopefully have someone with the time to do them fairly soon afterwards. It might be useful to split Mark I off too - keep much of this article and rename it as British tanks of World War I to make a more historical view (which is probably the most useful article of the lot), have the per-model articles as more technical descriptions. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:35, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I think that since the production and development of the British heavy tank of the First World War is interleaved it would be best to keep the majority of the text together, though renaming to British tanks of World War I would mean having to fold the Whippet story in as well - perhaps the title should make clear it refers to the Heavy tank only. With the exception of the Marks VI, VIII, and IX (which already have their own articles) the Mark I evolves rather than changes across the war - perhaps "Variants" could be renamed "Evolution". The current article is lacking in some areas, chiefly the actual service use. GraemeLeggett (talk) 12:55, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure about the Whippet. "Heavy tanks" would be fine be me, but if the point of that separate article was to give a military history of the tanks, as opposed to an engineering history, then maybe the Whippet belongs in there too? Andy Dingley (talk) 13:16, 15 December 2010 (UTC)