you
now this is the mark 8 tank otherwise
known as the International and it's
actually quite remarkable the tanks were
built as a cooperative design between
Britain and the United States and it's
the only example I can think of of the
tank built under international
conditions which has been successful all
the others that's coming right up to
date have been an utter failure between
Germany and America between Britain and
America everywhere else where they've
tried to come up with sort of euro tank
for everyone to use
it's just failed every time but the
markets interesting anyway it came out
at the very end of the war and they were
built mostly by the North British
locomotive company in Glasgow and they
actually built 13 of which six were
given to the British Army of which now
of course only one survives that's this
one here and none that no others were
built they did actually come up with the
idea of erecting a factory in France
they got French engineers to build the
factory the Americans were going to
supply all the mechanical components for
the tank and Britain was going to supply
all the structural steel all the armor
and all that kind of thing
and these were all going to be assembled
in a huge factory in France and then
given to all the armies for use on the
Western Front but of course that didn't
happen the war finished and they were
relegated first of all to spare and then
they were done away with most of them
but it's an interesting tank all the
same
it's powered by a 300 horsepower engine
which is a lot more powerful than any
other engine in any of the tanks in the
First World War
and it was actually done originally in
Britain it was done by taking a Ricardo
six cylinder engine and amalgamating two
of them together to make a 300
horsepower v12 and this one had a
rolls-royce engine and then the Ricardo
engine in it in America they used the
Liberty engine which was an aero engine
it was also 300 horsepower it was also a
VTOL it was they're called but they had
trouble making the right ones for tanks
they made loads of them for aircraft
that the ones they made for
tanks weren't really ready in time so
the whole project can have failed anyway
but they they are interesting machines
and of course they're very big they were
built long to get over wide trenches
which really wasn't necessary then but
them they don't have a primary gearbox
like most tanks do it's got the engine
the v12 it's situated at the back in a
separate compartment away from the crew
so you're not actually gassing everyone
while it's going along which is rather
light but they don't have an ordinary
gearbox they have a two-speed epicyclic
which allows the tank to speeds forward
and reverse if need be and that was all
the British actually argued for a
four-speed gearbox thinking it would
give it a bit more range but the day
that didn't seem to work and the
two-speed one seemed to be okay at least
well this particular tank came down to
bobbington they spent a lot of time on
training runs around the Dorset around
this part of the country and then it
went into the open-air museum which was
outside but it's an amazing design it
had they didn't have male and female
versions as they did with most other
tanks the male version in this case was
represented by the two 6-pounder guns
there in sponsons actually designed by
an american engineer and they were
designed to push him woods
rather than go square in that the
British tanks did they folded in from
the back and it just narrowed the tank
down to enable it to pass down narrow
passageways and get onto trains that
sort of thing and the interesting thing
to look at is the front of the tank the
driver sits centrally quite high up so
he's got quite a good view the tracks
are much wider than the tracks on the
earlier tanks but the main thing is the
frames are wider too so although the
tracks themselves are a lot wider
they're well supported out to their ends
and they've got big dimples in the
central driving probably see them and
the dimples are there to strengthen each
track link so from that point you is
quite interesting it's the first tank
that's really quite different from any
other than a gamba
or it now the odd thing is that in the
United States they built about another
hundred of these but that's where we ran
the ground the hundred were built in
1919 they were built at the Rock Island
Arsenal but what we don't know we really
don't know is where the armour came from
we know it came from Britain and it came
in a package presumably too made into a
tank when it got over there but we don't
know who made that armour so if anyone
does just let us know soon as you can
because it's something we'd like to know
now those tanks the American tanks
lasted for about Oh some ten years or
more before they started to get a bit
low in the tooth and there's still two
of them in the USA now which are kept in
as preserve vehicles but that's all that
rare anyway one here and two in the
States is all there is they had the
usual crew of eight men a driver at the
front the to the gallon load on each
side and the rest for the commander who
had a place up the top to look out and
the machine gunners who were above him
and working all around and the machine
gunners could sweep the whole area
around the tank so you didn't actually
need male or female versions really the
one version would do and from all these
points of view it's quite original this
thing they were designed in to be built
in mass production in fact they started
a big firm in Manchester to build them
and none of them were actually built at
all as far as we know that the company
was started and it was done by
amalgamating all the local industries
that didn't work too well anyway but
that's the market is quite a handy tank
you