Читать книгу The Tank Corps онлайн

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For by 1914 the Tank had successively passed through several tentative and inconclusive incarnations.

In 1482 Leonardo da Vinci invented a kind of Tank;1 a wooden “War Cart” was used by the Scottish in the fifteenth century.2

There were designs for a Tank for the Crimea, but the project of this weapon was abandoned as being barbarous. Lastly, a really practical design for a kind of “Caterpillar” to be driven by steam was made in 1888. A trial machine was even constructed. But Fate decreed that all trace of design and model should be instantly lost, only apparently to be rediscovered after the modern Tank had been thought out afresh.

Why, if the Tank was constantly being invented, did it as constantly disappear? The reason appears to have been that, like the early aeroplanes, all these abortive machines had failed in one particular.

The engine was not powerful enough. The steam Tank had not in the least answered the riddle. The horse-power could, it is true, be almost indefinitely increased, but, like a kind of Old Man of the Sea, the engine weight would have increased proportionately and the “free” power have been no more.