Just a little history on the reason for the Tank terminoligy. 1915 Feb. 22 - Churchill created the Admiralty Landships Committee chaired by sub expert Tennyson d'Eynecourt, and included Commander Briggs and the brilliant engineer Lt. Wilson. Work began at the William Foster Company by a team of engineers led by Wilson. The Company manager at Lincoln, William Tritton, made a significant contribution by modifying the caterpillar tread patented in 1901 by Alvin Lombard and used on farm tractors in America by Benjamin Holt. The team by Aug. made the first prototype, "Little Willie," and a second prototype "Mother" that had a rhomboid shape. These early models were known as "centipedes" or "landships."
1915 Sept. 6 - The British tested the first prototype, "Little Willie" built by the William Foster Company. The improved version called "Big Willie" performed successfully and 100 production models were ordered. The Royal Naval Division began to train 700 men as "crews" (a naval term) for the landships, as they were first called, and were formed into the Heavy Branch of the Machine Gun Corps in the Royal Naval Divison. The crews gave naval terms to the parts of the tank: "hatches," "hull," "bows," "bulkheads," "fore," and "aft." 1916 Jan. 28 - The Landships Committee met to make plans for production models, and selected the name "tank" for the models. The Mark I (male) had a 6-lb Hotchkiss canon in each of the side postoons, and the Mark I (female) had machine guns. Each tank weighed 28 tons and could travel at 2-4 mph. The first 50 would be sent to Gen. Haig in France. Workers at the Foster Company stencilled obscure names on the shipping crates to keep the contents secret, including the term "water carriers" bound for Mesopotamia. http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/ww1/tank.html Tod (ex-Navy) ;-) Doesn't surprise me, Clark. Although, I've never accused any of my Marine friends of being smart... :) Sorry, couldn't resist. Derek (ex-Army) T065 On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 10:02 PM, Clark Ward Jr < [email protected] > wrote: Might just be a Marine thing, but we referred to port and stbd sides of our LAVs... but when discussing identifying characteristics of target vehicles, we would refer to their right and left (i.e. 'driver sits left front' when referring to a particular tank, etc..) And when driving, the VC would tell you to turn left or right :) -- Clark in Georgia -- You are currently subscribed to the "R/C Tank Combat" group. To post a message, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected] Visit the group at http://groups.google.com/group/rctankcombat
