70 Fun Facts About Tank

Why were the first British armoured vehicles called "tanks"?

Crates were labelled as water carriers, and the shipments were marked "With Care to Petrograd" to suggest they were snowploughs headed east.

In what year did a tank first go into battle?

Tank D1, a British Mark I "Male", led the way at Flers-Courcelette on 15 September, and a signaller described "three huge mechanical monsters" scattering the Germans.

Vehicle 131 at Bovington, captured in Tunisia in 1943, is the only running example of which German heavy tank?

Only nine survive anywhere; it was the first German vehicle to carry the fearsome 88 mm gun derived from the Flak 36.

Which Soviet medium tank, famed for its sloped armour, was WWII's most-produced tank?

German generals praised it when they first met it in 1941; the Soviets went on to build more than 80,000 of all variants.

The M4 Sherman was named by the British after a general from which war?

William Tecumseh Sherman lent his name to 49,324 tanks, the most-produced American tank of the Second World War.

In which city did the lone "Tank Man" halt a column of tanks in June 1989?

He stepped in front of the lead tank on Chang'an Avenue carrying shopping bags, and the column stopped rather than run him over.

What does the German word "blitzkrieg" literally mean?

Germany's opening campaigns of 1939 massed tanks with motorised infantry, artillery and air power to punch through and collapse the enemy front.

Which future prime minister, as First Lord of the Admiralty, formed the 1915 Landship Committee?

Lloyd George later said the credit for the tanks was due to him more than anyone; the committee was renamed to disguise its purpose.

The Leclerc main battle tank, named for a Free French marshal, serves which country?

It replaced the AMX-30 in 1992, and the United Arab Emirates actually owns more Leclercs than the country that built it.

The K2 Black Panther, built by Hyundai Rotem, is the main battle tank of which country?

The first six entered service in 2014 after a home-grown powerpack held things up for years.

The Type 99 is the first mass-produced third-generation main battle tank of which country?

More than 1,300 have been built over two decades as the spearhead of the PLA's modern manoeuvre forces.

The "tank biathlon" is a military sport run by which country's armed forces?

Crews race a three-lap course of up to 10 km, shooting at targets between laps, as part of the annual International Army Games.

The Soviet IS heavy tanks, including the IS-2 that spearheaded the assault on Berlin, were named after whom?

They were designed as breakthrough tanks after a German heavy tank was captured in 1943, and the line ended with the T-10.

The American M48 tank carries the name of which Second World War general?

Its flame-thrower variant, the M67, was nicknamed the "Zippo" by troops in Vietnam.

Which Renaissance figure sketched a never-built armoured vehicle often called the first tank design?

The human-powered wheeled machine would have been almost impossible to move, and putting animals inside would have been worse.

Which 1943 battle, opened by Operation Citadel, is called the largest and deadliest armoured battle in history?

Its opening day, 5 July, was also the costliest single day of aerial warfare ever in terms of aircraft shot down.

What was the nickname of the first completed tank prototype in history, built in 1915?

It is the oldest surviving individual tank and sits at Bovington; its tracks were bought from a tractor firm in Chicago.

The prototype adopted in January 1916 as the pattern for British tanks was nicknamed what?

Officially it was His Majesty's Land Ship Centipede, and it also went by Big Willie and the Wilson Machine.

British Mark I 'Male' tanks carried cannon, while 'Female' tanks carried only what?

Of the first 150 ordered, Fosters built 37 males and the Metropolitan works in Birmingham built 38 males and 75 females.

The first tank-versus-tank action, in April 1918, pitted British Mark IVs against which German tank?

Germany built only 20 of them in the entire war and relied mostly on captured British Mark IVs for its tank force.

Which November 1917 battle saw the first massed use of tanks, with more than 400 Mark IVs committed?

After a big first-day success, breakdowns and German artillery left only about half the tanks running by day two.

Which 1917-18 French light tank was the first with a fully rotating turret and rear engine?

Over 3,000 were built, and its layout is still the standard, which is why some historians call it the first modern tank.

Heinz Guderian's influential 1937 book on armoured warfare was titled what?

His superior asked for a polemical tone; Guderian went on to lead the armoured thrust through the Ardennes in 1940.

Which Soviet formation attacked the Waffen-SS armoured corps at Prokhorovka on 12 July 1943?

Hitler had repeatedly delayed the offensive so more new heavy tanks could reach the front, giving the Soviets time to dig defensive belts.

Which Soviet tank series, with up to 100,000 built, is history's most-produced tank?

Its arrival in the West spurred Britain to design the L7 gun and the US to build the M60, and up to 50 armies still use it.

Chobham armour, the composite armour on the Abrams and Challenger, takes its name from what?

Its exact construction is still secret, but it is described as ceramic tiles in a metal frame that shatter incoming penetrators.

How does explosive reactive armour protect a tank when a shaped charge strikes it?

Tandem-charge weapons defeat it by firing two warheads in quick succession at the same spot.

What is the lightweight shell around a kinetic-energy tank round's dart, discarded after leaving the barrel, called?

Concentrating the force into a heavy tungsten or similar core in a smaller diameter is what lets the dart punch through armour.

Thanks to an autoloader, Soviet tanks from the T-64 onward need how many crew?

The human loader was dropped; Western tanks such as the Abrams and Challenger still carry one.

The Swedish Stridsvagn 103 had a fixed gun and no turret; how did the crew aim it?

Traverse came from the tracks and elevation from the adjustable suspension, giving a very low silhouette.

What headline feature sets the T-14 Armata apart from earlier main battle tanks?

The crew sits together in an armoured capsule low in the vehicle, and Rostec claimed it entered service in 2024.

The Israeli Merkava breaks with most tank designs by placing its engine where?

The layout adds protection against frontal hits and frees a rear door so the tank can carry infantry.

What does "Merkava" mean in Hebrew?

The name came from the development programme, and the first version entered service in 1979.

The M1 Abrams is unusual among main battle tanks for using what kind of engine?

Chrysler chose the 1,500 hp Lycoming AGT1500, which runs on multiple fuels but drinks them.

Which German firm makes the Leopard 2's 120 mm gun, also licence-built for the Abrams?

The Leopard 2 itself was developed by Krauss-Maffei and entered service in 1979.

The British Challenger 2 stands out among modern main battle tanks for having what kind of main gun?

Its L30A1 descends from the Chieftain's L11, whereas nearly everyone else fields smoothbores.

The German Maus, the heaviest fully enclosed armoured vehicle ever built, weighed roughly how much?

Only two hulls and one turret were finished; the great problem was finding an engine strong enough yet small enough to fit.

Who cancelled the 1,000-tonne Landkreuzer P. 1000 "Ratte" project in early 1943?

It was to carry a battleship gun turret left over from the Scharnhorst class, and Hitler had liked the idea.

Instead of tracks, the 1915 Tsar Tank rolled on what?

The front pair were nearly 9 metres across, inspired by Central Asian carts, but the machine proved underpowered and was scrapped.

The Bob Semple tank, built from corrugated iron on a tractor base in World War II, came from which country?

Designed without blueprints by the Minister of Works, it never saw production or combat.

The armoured bulldozer dubbed the "Killdozer" demolished buildings in Granby in 2004 — in which US state?

Welder Marvin Heemeyer built it in secret as revenge in a zoning dispute.

The swimming "DD" Sherman tanks used on D-Day earned what nickname?

A canvas screen kept them afloat and propellers drove them, but almost all of those launched off Omaha Beach were lost.

"Hobart's Funnies", the specialised assault vehicles of D-Day, belonged to which British formation?

They were dreamed up after the Dieppe disaster and mostly converted from Churchills and Shermans.

The Battle of 73 Easting, 'the last great tank battle of the 20th century', was in which war?

It was named for a north-south GPS grid line the coalition used to track its advance across the desert.

The British Centurion, introduced in 1945, first saw combat in which war?

Six prototypes reached Belgium less than a month after VE Day, just too late, and the design stayed in production into the 1960s.

J. Walter Christie's 1919 prototype tank could do what that most tanks could not?

The Soviets reverse-engineered his suspension for their BT fast tanks, and it lived on in far bigger designs.

The Rolls-Royce Meteor tank engine was a de-rated version of which aero engine?

Rolls-Royce could not build the engines itself, so it handed the work to Rover, and the Meteor stayed in British tanks until 1964.

The saucer-shaped hull of the Soviet Object 279 heavy tank was designed to withstand what?

It ran on four tracks so it could cross swamps and anti-tank obstacles, and only a prototype was ever built.

Which British infantry tank earned the nickname "Queen of the Desert" in 1940-41?

It was the only British tank to serve from the first day of the war to the last, though only two were ready in September 1939.

The Sherman Firefly was a British conversion that mounted which powerful anti-tank gun?

It could reliably punch through the heaviest German tanks in Normandy, and crews painted the barrel to disguise its tell-tale length.

Which was the most numerous German tank of World War II, and the only one in continuous production throughout?

8,553 were built; only the StuG III assault gun, on a related chassis, was more numerous among German tracked fighting vehicles.

Which agricultural machinery firm in Lincoln built the first British tank prototypes?

The designers locked themselves in a room at Lincoln's White Hart Hotel to keep the project secret.

Which 1903 H. G. Wells short story imagined armour-plated, trench-crossing fighting machines?

Wells later denied inventing the tank, saying he took up an idea, manipulated it slightly and handed it on.

In which English county is The Tank Museum at Bovington Camp?

Rudyard Kipling suggested the museum after seeing salvaged wrecks there in 1923; it holds almost 300 vehicles.

With the British Army uninterested, which service carried out early tank development in Britain?

Naval officers who had run armoured cars on the Western Front pushed the idea, which is why the vehicles were first called landships.

Which Soviet general's massed tank-and-air attack crushed the Japanese 6th Army at Khalkhin Gol in 1939?

The Soviets fielded over two thousand tanks against about 73 cannon-armed Japanese ones and learned hard lessons about petrol engines.

The Churchill tank was named not for the wartime prime minister but for which of his ancestors?

Winston joked to Jan Smuts that it was the tank they named after him "when they found out it was no damn good".

British-turret versions of the American M3 tank were called "Grant"; what were the US-turret versions called?

One name honoured the Union commander and the other the Confederate; the tank's 75 mm gun sat awkwardly in a hull sponson.

In the 1940 campaign in the West, many French tanks lacked what every German tank had?

The French tanks were as good or better in quality and number, but they were tied to the infantry and could not react to fast-moving thrusts.

At which 1942 battle did the Afrika Korps lose 95% of its tanks and begin its long retreat?

Both sides in the desert kept outrunning their supply lines, and the crippling of Axis logistics finally decided it.

Germany's little two-man Pz.Kpfw. I of the 1930s was originally intended purely as what?

It ended up fighting in Spain, Poland and the West anyway despite its light armament.

What unusual driver position gave the British Chieftain its low, heavily sloped hull?

The supine seat became a hallmark of British designs and carried over to the Challengers.

The French Char B1 heavy tank carried its 75 mm gun where?

A 47 mm gun in a small turret was added later so it could also fight other tanks.

Which 15th-century Hussite commander used armoured war wagons carrying cannon, an ancestor of the tank?

His Wagenburg formations chained the wagons into mobile fortresses that repeatedly beat crusading knights.

The first tank ever to go into battle, Mark I 'D1', fought at which September 1916 engagement?

It was part of the wider Somme offensive; Male tanks carried naval cannon while Females had only machine guns.

Which French artillery colonel took detailed plans for a tracked tank to the commander-in-chief in 1915?

The result was 400 each of the unsatisfactory Schneider and Saint-Chamond tanks, both based on the Holt tractor.

Which was the most numerous tank of the First World War, with more than 3,000 built by late 1918?

Its rotating turret and rear engine became the template for almost every tank since.

In 1911 an Austrian army engineer proposed a three-man turreted tank. What was it called?

Günther Burstyn's design was ignored by both Austria and Prussia; the same year Australian Lancelot de Mole pitched a tracked vehicle to the British.

The first tank-versus-tank action was fought on 24 April 1918 at which French location?

Three British Mark IVs met three German A7Vs; Germany only began tank development after meeting British machines on the Somme.

The Israeli Merkava's TROPHY system is an example of what kind of tank technology?

It intercepts shoulder-launched anti-tank weapons before they hit; the Merkava also has a rear door so it can carry infantry.