Why did they have MALE and FEMALE tanks in the First World War? The original idea was to fit cannon and machine guns to every tank but there was a fear that tanks might be overwhelmed in a mass attack by enemy infantry. They therefore decided that 50 per cent of the tanks should just carry heavy machine guns and these would be used directly against infantry. The tanks were otherwise identical, so to distinguish between them; those with cannon were described as MALE, those with machine-guns only as FEMALE. In practice, by 1917, experience was showing that the female tanks were more useful, since there was very little else to shoot at but infantry. So when the Mark IV tank appeared it was built on the ratio of two FEMALE to one MALE. It was only when the Germans started using tanks in 1918 that MALE tanks again became important. The little French Renault FT-17 tank also appeared in MALE and FEMALE variants with a 37mm cannon or a machine-gun in the turret. Back to FAQ index Why do the names of British tanks all begin with C? Well in fact they don't; one only has to think of Matilda, Tetrarch or Valentine for instance. However the practice began in 1940 and it is attributed to the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. He felt that tanks should have names, just like aircraft, so that they would sound more glamorous, Challenger II although the first tank to be named under this system was the Covenanter, a name hardly anyone had ever heard of. Apart from the Churchill tank itself, which was a coincidence, all wartime tanks that had names starting with C were Cruisers, and that may well be the original explanation. Since the war it has been adopted for virtually all tanks, including some experimental prototypes, and has now gone about as far as it can go with suitably martial words starting with C. Back to FAQ index The Early Days Who invented the tank? The Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors, which sat in 1919, decided that the true inventors of the Tank were; Sir William Tritton, managing director of Fosters of Lincoln, and Major W G Wilson. There is no doubt at all that it was these two men who turned the idea of the tank into a working reality. Many others were commended for their part in the process; Winston Churchill, Sir Albert Stern and Admiral Sir Murray Sueter to name a few, as did Colonel R E B Crompton, but many believe that Sir Ernest Swinton deserves the credit. Swinton certainly suggested the idea to Lord Kitchener at Christmas 1914 but he played little or no part in translating the concept into a working machine. Of course people have been designing such machines since they built the first chariot but one may cite Leonardo da Vinci (1482), James Cowan (1855), the Austrian Gunther Burstyn (1911) and the Australian Launcelot de Mole (1912) in particular. Back to FAQ index