Throughout time, there has always been conflict, from a feeble argument over a ham sandwich to full scale wars. And throughout the most heated conflicts, people have always tried to protect themselves from getting hurt. From armor in the early ages of man, to riot gear and armored vehicles in the early twentieth century and past. One of the most iconic protective and offensive items in all history is the tank.

After a few months into World War One, the combatants encountered a stalemate. When this became a solid problem, both sides began crude designs of “Landships”, as they called them, to break the stalemate. The British were one of the first to complete the designs in 1916. Their model was known as the Mark V. There were two deigned model types, the male and female variants. Male designs were shaped as a Rhombus as seen from the side, and had Two Six pounder guns (57mm), one on each side of the landship with a rear machine gun, tending to be a Vickers-Berthier. However the female variant had only one Six pounder on the front, with Vicker Berthier MGs on both sides instead of Six pounders. The design was the first ever to use tracks. The tracks allowed them to be all-terrain vehicles. However, there was one problem with this design: World War one was a world of trench warfare.

Trenches in the war tended to be seven feet deep and five feet wide. This caused the Mark V to get stuck in the trenches while trying to get out as they were not front-heavy enough to lift themselves out of the trenches. This led to an add on to the back of the Mark V to what they called a “Trench tire”. The wheel would roll against the back of the trench as the Mark V tried to get out, allowing the Mark V to edge its it’s way up and out of the trench. The main use for the Mark V was to give support to the infantry as they moved up. However, with these tanks being made crudely when they were first designed, their motors were unreliable and tended to break after more than three hours of being ran.

This and the weak armor that could be pierced by most blunt-force bullets and heavy machine guns, made the Mark V an easy-to-decommission target. Another thing made these machines a deathtrap, but this was not the machine’s fault. The designer, Walter Gordon Wilson, claimed the landships to be airtight, so the British government didn’t issue gas masks to their tank crews. This left Mark V crews at the mercy of enemy troops; any mustard or chlorine gas attack would render the crew lifeless. The Mark V may have been a unreliable, crude, underprotected landship, but it paved the way of tank combat. After initial successes, French, Germans, Austro-Hungarians, and even Russians began designing and using landships in the war. As ages went on, more designs were made by every side, changing tank combat, and eventually leading to the designs and uses we have now for modern tankery.