BIG AND LITTLE WILLIES.
STORY OF THE TANKS. "MOST WONDERFUL WEAPON IN MODERN WARFARE." The arrival in the United States of Colonel E. D. Swinton, C.8., D.5.0., 8.E., .Assistant Secretary of the British War Cabinet, who develdped the British "tank," is coincident with the first authentic account of the tank's development. Colonel Swinton, who is on 'his first visit to America, tells a correspondent of the New York Herald that the original idea for the invention came from America in What is known as the Holt tractor. "In the British Army certain of us had been talking a long time about the necessity of some new,war machine capable of "climbing over rough ground and being able to fight," Colonel Swinton told the Herald correspondent, "We had our eyes open for it, but jmade little headway until July, IDlts n month before the war began., when an | officer reported to me that he had seen a tractor near Antwerp which was able to climb over rough ground, and which might serve as the principle of the machine for wliich wo were searching. This tractor was? being used in a field, he said, and was a remarkable contrivance, which might be investigated to advantage. "I went out to see the machine, and found a farmer at work with it in a field Without letting him know my identity or purpose, I got him to demonstrate the thing to me. I pretended to think highly of its possibilities, and the farmer, who was enthusiastic a.bout it, tried to prove that it was a wonderful invention. He climbed over some rough ground with it just, to show of what it was capable. I saw immediately that there were possibilities in the tractor. \ "Then the war broke out in August, and events eame in such rapid succession that it was October before we were able to give our attention to the development of the tank. T am not an inventor, but I obtained the services of two officers who are inventors, and we set about making a war machine along entirely new lines. The development of the machine was slow, and it was almost two years later before the first tank appeared upon the battlefield to terrify (he Germans." NAMING THE TANK. What to name the tank, according to Colonel Swinton's article in The Strand Magazine, puzzled its makers. A name that would reveal nothing of it 3 nature was deemed essontial, and finally the non-committal word "tank" was chosen. Aside from being called "Panzerkraftwagen" and "Beliutzengrabenvornichtimgautomobil" by the Germans the machines were otherwise miscalled. During the summer of 1916 an enemy agent, trying to tap the wires in England, might Kve been mystified to pick up some sucTi messages as "Twelve Willies reach you' today,' or "Send tails for six f«inale9." "Willie," a pot cognomen adopter, as suitable for the telephone and obviating the use of a code for telegrams was suggested by the fact that the first experimental "landship" completed, though equally malevolent, was smaller and less powerful for evil than its immediate successor—eventually the typo adopted. When the two creatures were together they gave the ludicrous irnjtresson of being child and parent of a monstrous evil brood. Hence naturallv "Little Willie" and Big Willie." The "Big Willies" were also somewhat unbiologically and interests .Miclassified as males and females according to their armament
"The male is par excellence the ma-diine-gitn hunter irA .lcsfroyrr. fie Carries light, quick-f'.'ng gun's, capable of firing shell, and is intended to be to the machine-gun what the torpedo boat destroyer was designed to be to the torpedo boat, or the lady-bug is sunpoj. <] t ; be to the aphis. The female, which, in accordance with the law of Nature! is the man-killer, carried nothing but ma-chine-guns for employment aga'nst :ho enemy personnel. Her special rob; h to keep down hostile rifle fire, to beat bajk counter-attacks and rushes of in f nitry, and to act generally as a consort to her lord and master,"
NEED OF STRICT SECRECY. The utmost secrecy enveloped the tanks from their manufacture to their arrival at the front. To help conceal their destination at the stage when anv reference of their purpose was precluded, they were painted with the inscription: "With care. To '.Pstrograd," in largo Russian characters, following up the suggestion that they were meant for snow•plonghs in Russia. While being transported by rail they were covered by tarpaulins, and were always loaded after night. The trains were of flat trucks, and the special lengths of side-track needed were brilliantly lit by acetylene flares.
"From out the gloom, into the circle of light and back again into the outer dark, over glistening mud or through shimmering clouds of dust, continually crawled a procession of slug-shaped monsters, purring, panting., and emitting flames as they slid over the ground." On'one occasion Zeppelin raiders brokfr in upon this Dantesque scene of loading. "At once every light in the loading yard was extinguished, and every tank froze to stillness where it stood, darkness and' uncanny silence taking the place of glare and the throbbing bustle of work. After a few minutes of tense expectancy ... a faint humming noise made itself heard afar off on high. The sound approached, grew louder, and gradually changed to nhH>-pitched purring, which seemed to fill the whole sky as a' Zeppelin droned up overhead and circled above the stationary machines in the 'tankodrome,' like a night owl quartering a field of corn above a colony of paralysed field mice. "No hint was given, however, to betray to the Hun skipper that directly underneath him lay a collection of new and secret weapons for the Maying of his Gebruderei—a nest of scorpions in pickle for his kameraden on terra firma. wliich, even to his mind, might' have seemed a target worthier of high explosive than sleeping women and children; and after a few minutes the airship sailed away, to unload its murderous cargo of bombs at a point some miles distant. Thrice was this visit repeated during the night—whether by the same Zeppelin or by others it is not easy to say. Finally, after a respectful interval, up went the lights, the tanks came back to life, and the circus performance pro. oeeded. "It was a curious phase of modern war as waged in three dimensions." SAVED 20,000 I.IVES AT THE SOMME. What the tanks have done is now history, their use in increased numbers alone testifying to their '. essential sue-
cess. According to Frederick Palmer. American War correspondent with tlie British Army:— "In the latter stages of the battkof the Somme the intervention of the tanks—though many machines failed from mechanical anfl other defects—ipaved some 20,000 British lives. "In spite of the ridicule usually pourv ed on the new weapon by their newspapers—the object of which is plainarticles do occasionally appear which sound another note. For instance, Lieu-tenant-General Baron von Anlenne has recently stated in the Berliner Tageblatt that: " 'These powerful armored cars, which were first used 'by the Birtish, are undoubtedly the most wonderful weapons which modem tactics have revealed in warfare.'"
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Taranaki Daily News, 26 November 1917, Page 2
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1,181BIG AND LITTLE WILLIES. Taranaki Daily News, 26 November 1917, Page 2
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