right now this is the whip-it tank it's
known as the medium a but was always
nicknamed the whip-it and the reason for
that was its speed by First World War
terms it was very fast and she went at 8
miles an hour which was considered fast
in those days won't be very fast today
the interesting thing is that the tank
has no suspension like any first world
war tank the tracks are going around the
hull and there are rollers which take
them weight and also provide some
movement for the tank and they are all
along the bottom of the hull and you'll
notice that the rollers here the middle
ones at the bottom of the weight bearing
rollers they were in with special
bearings on on roller bearings so that
they went a bit faster and that was the
real secret behind the tank the idea was
to build a tank that would work with the
cavalry the horse mounted cavalry that
is the drawback is of course that
actually the tank and the cavalry
working together were hopeless one could
stand bullets the other couldn't and one
could go faster than the other which was
rather silly what they do field to
realise was that in fact the Whippet
tank was the cavalry in its new form and
not an alternative to it or a support
for it now the tanks powered by two 45
horsepower 4-cylinder engines that she
London bus engine spray affirmed could
tailor in Kings Cross and they're
mounted side-by-side under the bonnet in
the front and they drive back through
two separate gearboxes and each goes to
a 90 degree turn at the back out to the
drive sprockets which were out here this
meant that the driver sitting in the cab
on the right there had to clutch pedals
and to gear changes so he had both hands
occupied both feet occupied pretty well
the whole time and it made driving very
different they said in fact if you've
been a juggler on the stage or in the
music halls then you made a good whip it
Drive or otherwise you were fairly
hopeless at it but it took a lot of
skill to learn the armor thickness is
about 12 millimeters so it'll keep out
small arms fire
that's the thing with nothing else this
particular tank with the brass plate on
the front is associated with a young man
could sessle's xual who won a posthumous
Victoria Cross by getting out of this
tank to rescue some other people they
built about 200 these tanks all together
they were actually built by Foster's of
Lincoln and fosters some people renowned
being the first people to invent and
build tanks so they built all of these
wear pits in fact they were not very
pleasant in the driver's cab he's
usually got three men a driver a tank
commander and a gamma we've got
Hotchkiss machine guns all the way round
then they can fire in all directions
the trouble is - heat coming back off
the engine made the fighting compartment
very unpleasant and they found that the
best thing to do was have a crew for a
different day so one crew would go out
on one day another crew on the next day
and then the first crew back again for
the third day that was the only way they
could cope otherwise the men got too
debilitated just with the heat and the
fumes off the engine and their mind
being shot at all the other nonsense
gotta put up with the fuel tank it runs
off petrol of course the fuel tanks at
the front
feeding backwards to the engines here
I've said the drivetrain is very
complicated but it goes straight back to
the rear of the tank and they were
fitted with a limited slip differential
actually joining the drive from the two
tracks so that if you really got into
trouble and one of your engines broke
down you could get home on one engine
that's just so long as you didn't let
the power exceed 12 horsepower
difference that was between the two
engines and then the differed start
slipping so you could only limp home you
get home these things here and actually
man suits the idea was that any mug
picked up by the tracks would slide down
there and get deposited on the ground
and they did get pretty muddy at times
as well I can tell you otherwise that's
about all there were no variations of
the whip it it was a tank that had was
built as it was and was used as it was
they were used briefly in Russia after
the war
and after that they Mallis vanish from
the scene because they really were not
the ideal tank they were the first of
their kind and really not ideal of
possibly not good for the crews so they
quickly fade from the scene when the
war's over but for a while they ruled
the roost and in fact they found at the
end of the war these tanks were as
useful as the heavy tanks for attacking
German positions and trenches the wide
trenches had gone and you didn't need
that much space so that these vehicles
could by charging about really do the
work of the heavy tanks and you didn't
need both that's really what they were
for and the idea of them working with
the cavalry forget it was actually
useless