What is a tank?
It might seem like a very simple question.
But it’s not an easy one to answer.
To realize how big the problem is,
take a look at an encyclopedia.
It will say something like
“a tank is an armored fighting vehicle,
typically tracked,
and carrying a cannon as main armament.”
This description is very loose.
Since there’s no ready answer,
we’ll have to find it for ourselves.
You are what you do.
You build—you’re a builder.
You fly—you’re a pilot.
Let’s see what tanks were designed to do in the past,
and how their role has evolved since.
It’s not exactly known
when the first armored fighting vehicle appeared.
Some historians point to the armored siege engines
of the ancient Greek era, medieval horse armor,
and the fantastic blueprints drawn by Leonardo da Vinci.
Something more familiar started to take shape
in the early years of the 20th century.
There’s little information about these projects.
And the stories were similar to some extent,
so they can even be put together.
One day, in Great Britain,
or maybe in Austria, or maybe in France,
in or around 1912, a plumber, or,
according to some versions,
a pipefitter came up with an idea for an unusual combat vehicle.
After a couple of sleepless nights,
the draft was ready.
The inventive plumber went to the appropriate military department
with his proposal.
He was already dreaming of fame and honor.
However, the commission
came back with an answer that was quite unexpected.
The military didn’t need tanks.
There was no place for them either in theory or in the practice
of military art.
But then the First World War broke out.
After a short period of active movement,
the opposing armies dug in with trenches bristling
with machine guns and covered in barbed wire.
Even if a defense line
could be broken through —at the cost of enormous casualties— armies
had trouble carrying forward the advance.
The standard methods didn’t work.
Military strategists realized
that they needed something new
to crack a deeply echeloned defense.
In 1914, sir Ernest Swinton,
a British officer, engineer,
and aristocrat, presented his design
for an armed and armored tractor.
Its working name was a “machine-gun destroyer.”
The British Army took no interest in the project.
The first person who saw the potential in the new proposal
was the First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir Winston Churchill.
He allocated money,
and on February 20, 1915, the Landships Committee was created.
Development was rapid and on September 10
the first tank in history,
Little Willie, was tested.
It failed the tests
because it couldn’t perform a key requirement—crossing trenches
and ditches.
Engineers improved the prototype
and mass production began.
The vehicle was given an unpretentious name: the Mark I.
Its shape seems bizarre to us today.
But having the tracks go all the way around the hull
solved the problem of ditch and trench crossing.
This was a landship
in more than just name.
Many design details were borrowed from the navy.
The tank was armed with naval guns,
which were mounted in sponsons,
just like the guns on cruisers of that period.
Even its engine was initially designed
for a towing car used by the navy.
The work on the first batch was done at several factories.
To conceal the project,
the government spread the story that the vehicles were
field reservoirs for water
ordered by the Russian Army.
In correspondence,
the vehicles were called “tanks.”
On September 15, 1916, landships,
already nicknamed tanks,
engaged in their first combat near the Somme River.
Thirty-two of the vehicles
moved into battle over muddy ground,
hoping for a miracle.
Five tanks became stuck
and nine broke down,
but the 18 remaining vehicles managed a breakthrough
that pierced 5 km into enemy territory.
British casualties were far lighter than usual.
The miracle had happened.
The huge steel monsters
with machine guns terrified the German soldiers
and gave the British hope
that this new weapon might win the war.
A year later, the Germans,
in response to the British “landship,”
rolled out their “mobile fort”—the A7V.
This tank had the largest number
of crewmen in history.
It was designed for the same role as the Mark I:
to help the infantry break through enemy defense lines.
In the very first period of tank building,
there was a single answer to the question “What is a tank?”
For the Germans and British,
it was a sort of ram
to help the infantry batter through enemy defenses.
However, the French brought
a different approach.
The father of French tank building
was Colonel Jean Baptiste Estienne.
He wrote in August 1915:
“Gentleman! Victory in this war
will go to the side that first manages
to mount a 75 mm gun on a vehicle
capable of crossing any terrain.”
And he was right.
When the first tanks appeared,
Colonel Estienne looked at them
and decided that the army needed
something different to support the infantry.
It should be light, small,
maneuverable, and cheap.
With this idea in mind,
he went to the largest
French manufacturer—Louis Renault.
This is how the new vehicle,
very unlike the landships, appeared.
It had two crewmen: a driver
who controlled the tank,
and a commander who did everything else.
The tank was armed with a single machine gun
or a 37 mm short-barreled cannon.
Nevertheless, the Renault FT17
became the most successful means of infantry support
and the main vehicle of the French armored forces.
Many countries became interested
in creating their own tanks
after World War I.
The military of most countries
saw the tanks as reinforcements
for the traditional military branches,
above all, the infantry.
The French and British separated their tanks
into infantry tanks and cavalry, or cruiser, tanks.
The USSR had five main tank types:
reconnaissance, combined arms,
operational, qualitative reinforcement,
and special operations vehicles.
These were supplemented with seven special types.
So, both theoretical and practical work
on the definition of “tank”
was humming along.
In the late 1930s,
tanks started getting heavier.
The age of thinly armored tanks
had come to an end.
The turning point was the Spanish Civil War.
It became clear that infantry,
at least in Europe, was capable of defeating tanks.
Light, small-caliber,
quick-firing cannons and heavy machine guns
had no trouble perforating them.
As soon as the early 20th century,
the Germans had started to develop
a theory of “lightning war”—blitzkrieg.
They weren’t able to fully implement this idea
during World War I, but they continued
to refine the concept.
By the new rules,
blitzkrieg should be carried out
by large tank formations.
Now their task was not to support infantry,
but to break through,
punching deep into the enemy defenses.
Tanks were no longer expected to fight with field defenses.
They should wreak chaos in the enemy rear:
overrunning enemy headquarters,
capturing transport routes and supply depots,
and breaking up enemy forces
attempting to reinforce.
Victory would be achieved by disrupting enemy communication
and supply.
The modern army s not a Roman legion.
It can’t fight without gasoline and ammunition.
According to the Germans,
tanks were not
a “supplementary means of warfare,” but
“the most powerful offensive weapons.”
All other forces should serve their interests.
The role of supporting the infantry
was given to another vehicle type—assault guns.
Two tanks were created
to fit this theory:
the Panzerkampfwagen III and IV.
They complemented each other on the battlefield.
The Panzer III was designed
as the main Wehrmacht tank.
It was intended to be used
to attack points without heavy anti-tank defenses.
It was designed to fight,
not vehicles, but infantry.
That’s why its armament maximized the number of weapons
and rate of fire:
it was armed with three machine guns
and a 37 mm cannon.
This armament was supplemented
by an excellent observation system.
The Panzer IVs were to support
the Panzer IIIs.
Its short-barreled 75 mm gun
was good at dealing with enemy artillery
and field fortifications.
The German tank divisions proved the theories
of the general staff officers
by smashing the French Army in just a few weeks.
France had more tanks,
and their technical characteristics were not inferior.
It was the way they were used
that was obsolete.
The Panzer IIIs and IVs
played their roles perfectly
at the beginning of the German invasion
in the USSR.
But then, rather suddenly,
things started to go wrong.
The Panzers were being forced
to do something their creators hadn’t planned:
fight against a new generation of tanks.
In the USSR, armored vehicles
had traditionally been designed
with greatest attention paid
to two attributes:
mobility—understandable considering
the distances and quality of roads
in the USSR—and firepower.
A third factor was added
after the Spanish Civil War.
The tanks of the new generation—the T-50,
T-34, and KV-1—received armor designed
to defeat enemy shells.
These tanks emerged as excellent vehicles
with balanced characteristics.
Realizing that they would have to fight
masses of Soviet armored vehicles,
the Germans revised their views
on what tanks should do.
The anti-tank role
became the priority.
New Panzers, like the Panther,
for example, had long-barreled guns
and thicker armor.
No longer were they envisioned
conducting lightning-fast attacks on the enemy rear.
Now they were built to fight enemy tanks.
The ambition of the German military
and designers to achieve qualitative superiority
in armor and armament by any means
became a sort of mania.
The Tiger appeared in 1942.
It was good, but not big enough.
The engineers designed the Maus.
Also, not big enough.
They made it a little bit bigger
and got the Ratte.
Someone said: “Too small!”
And this project turned into a 1500-ton monster… but,
only on paper.
If the Third Reich’s tank designers
had had more time,
perhaps we would have seen something even bigger.
In the period immediately after
the end of World War II,
there was still no single answer
to the question “What is a tank?”
Actually, there were two answers:
medium tanks, the “work horses”
of armored forces;
and heavy tanks and assault guns,
which would be deployed as
“reinforcement in offense and defense.”
The military wanted to have one type of tank
for both roles,
but the engineers couldn’t deliver it.
They were limited by technology,
especially in engine power and transmission.
In the late 1950s, the British designed
a 105 mm tank gun that,
just like the Beatles,
became very popular in all the Western countries.
It was used in the Centurion 7 and M60,
and then in the M48 Patton 3
and Leopard 1.
The reason for its success was simple:
a medium tank equipped
with this gun could penetrate
the Soviet heavy tanks head on.
Besides an excellent armor-piercing shell,
the gun could fire powerful high-explosive shells.
In response, the Soviet 115 mm
smoothbore gun appeared.
It did the same thing against the NATO heavy tanks—it could
penetrate their front armor
with certainty.
After the British L7 rifled gun
and Soviet smoothbore gun
entered mass production,
heavy tank development
shut down in all countries.
Heavy tanks were still used,
but MBTs—main battle tanks—gradually
replaced them.
The designers had managed
to create vehicles that were fast,
well-armored, and heavily-armed,
all at the same time.
The curse had been lifted.
Vehicles of the new type
finally made it very simple
to answer the question
“What is a tank?”
It’s a versatile combat vehicle
with good firepower,
strong armor,
and high maneuverability,
capable of breaking through
a defense or defending a certain area.
When tanks first appeared
they were exotic machines,
designed to overcome the deadlock of trench warfare.
Now they are a mainstay
of modern ground forces.
It is sometimes said
that tanks are out of fashion.
But they seem unlikely to give
their place to something else in the near future.