Little Willie
Prototype tank
United Kingdom
N/A
July 1915
August–September 1915
1
16.5 tonnes (16.2 long tons; 18.2 short tons)
19 ft 3 in (5.87 m) 26 ft 6 in (8.08 m) inc. rear steering wheels
9 ft 5 in (2.87 m)
8 ft 3 in (2.51 m) to top of hull 10 ft 2 in (3.10 m) to top of turret
(Projected) 6
(Projected) Vickers 2-pounder (40 mm) gun
(Projected) Various suggestions of Maxim, Hotchkiss, Lewis, or Madsen machine guns
Foster-Daimler Knight sleeve valve petrol
105 hp (78 kW)
6 hp/tonne (4.5 kW/tonne)
Two-speed forwards, one reverse
final drive by Renolds chains
Unsprung
2 mph (3.2 km/h)
Little Willie was a prototype in the development of the British Mark I tank. Constructed in the autumn of 1915 at the behest of the Landship Committee, it was the first completed tank prototype in history. Little Willie is the oldest surviving individual tank, and is preserved as one of the most famous pieces in the collection of The Tank Museum, Bovington, England.
Description[edit]
The vehicle's 13 litre 105 bhp (78 kW) Daimler-Knight engine, gravity fed by two petrol tanks,[3] was at the back, leaving just enough room beneath the turret. The prototype was fitted with a non-rotatable dummy turret mounting a machine gun; a Vickers 2-pounder (40 mm) Maxim gun ("Pom-pom") was to have been fitted, with as many as six Madsen machine guns to supplement it.[4] The main gun would have had a large ammunition store with 800 rounds. Stern suggested to Tritton that the gun could be made to slide forward on rails, giving a better field of fire, but in the event the turret idea was abandoned and the aperture for the crew plated over. In the front of the vehicle two men sat on a narrow bench; one controlling the steering wheel, the clutch, the primary gear box and the throttle; the other holding the brakes. Overall length of the final version with the lengthened tracks and rear steering wheels in place was 8.08 m (26 ft 6 in). The length of the main unit without the rear steering wheels installed is 5.87 m (19 ft 3 in).
Most mechanical components, including the radiator, had been adapted from those of the Foster-Daimler heavy artillery tractor. As at least four men would have been required to operate the armament, the crew could not have been smaller than six. The maximum speed was indicated by Tritton as being no more than two miles per hour. The vehicle used no real armour steel, just boiler plate; it was intended to use 10 mm plating for production.[5]
Today[edit]
Little Willie was preserved for posterity after the war, having been saved from being scrapped in 1940. During the Second World War it may have been positioned to act as a pill box to defend the camp at Bovington.[11] It is today displayed at The Tank Museum at Bovington. It is essentially an empty hull, without an engine, but still with some internal fittings.[12] The rear steering wheels are not fitted and there is damage to the hull plating around the right–hand vision slit, possibly caused by an attempt at some point to tow the vehicle by passing a cable through the slit.[13][14] This would have torn the tank's comparatively thin steel plating.[14]