The British military hoped that its new weapon—the tank—could finally break the deadly impasse of the Battle of the Somme. Early in the war, British Army Colonel Ernest Swinton proposed the development of an armored vehicle that could traverse difficult terrain, and First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill approved the development of the so-called “landships” in early 1915. Much of the design work was done by two men working secretly inside a Lincoln, England, hotel room near a threshing machine manufacturer commissioned to build the prototypes.
The first prototype, “Little Willie,” was tested in September 1915 to poor results. A second prototype, “Big Willie,” achieved much greater succes.
Swinton formed the Heavy Section of the Machine Gun Corps in March 1916 to train 500 recruits to operate the vehicles. Production workers noted that the oddly-shaped shells of the vehicles resembled water tanks, and they were secretly shipped to the front lines in crates labeled “tanks.” The name stuck.
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