Tank Trivia
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119 free Tank trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Tank trivia that runs from the Landship Committee to today's main battle tanks. The quiz covers why the machine was ever called a "tank", the first one to go into action on the Somme, the first tank-versus-tank fight, the Renault FT layout every tank still copies, and the interwar theorists who dreamed up blitzkrieg. Then it moves through the Second World War (the T-34, the Sherman and its Firefly cousin, Tiger 131, Kursk, Hobart's Funnies, the 188-tonne Maus and the 1,000-tonne Ratte that never was) into the Cold War and beyond: Chobham and reactive armour, the Abrams and its turbine, the Leopard 2, the turretless Swedish S-tank, the Merkava's front engine, the T-14's unmanned turret, tank biathlon, and the lone man in front of a column of Type 59s in Beijing. About a third of the questions are easy for anyone who has watched a war film, a third are for regular readers of military history, and the rest are for people who know which duke the Churchill tank was really named after. Every answer is checked against the reference pages for each vehicle and battle.
30 of 119 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Why were the first British armoured vehicles called "tanks"?
To keep their purpose secret
To keep their purpose secret, the hulls were described to factory workers as mobile water tanks bound for Mesopotamia, and the Landships Committee adopted the word 'tank' in December 1915.
Q 02In what year did a tank first go into battle?
1916
1916: tank D1, a British Mark I 'Male', went into action on 15 September 1916 during the Somme offensive, the first time a tank was ever used in battle.
Q 03Vehicle 131 at Bovington, captured in Tunisia in 1943, is the only running example of which German heavy tank?
Tiger I
Tiger 131 is the only running Tiger I; disabled in Tunisia in April 1943 when a 6-pounder shot jammed its turret, it was restored to running order at Bovington and played the German tank in the 2014 film Fury.
Q 04Which Soviet medium tank, famed for its sloped armour, was WWII's most-produced tank?
T-34
The T-34, with its sloped armour and 76 mm gun, was the war's most-produced tank; more than 80,000 of all variants were built, including post-war T-34-85s.
Q 05The M4 Sherman was named by the British after a general from which war?
The American Civil War
The American Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman, who marched through Georgia in 1864, gave his name to the M4; the British named their Lend-Lease American tanks after US generals.
Q 06In which city did the lone "Tank Man" halt a column of tanks in June 1989?
Beijing
The scene was Beijing: on 5 June 1989 an unidentified man carrying shopping bags stepped in front of the lead Type 59 tank on Chang'an Avenue beside Tiananmen Square, and the column halted.
Q 07What does the German word "blitzkrieg" literally mean?
Lightning war
Blitz means lightning and Krieg means war, so blitzkrieg is literally 'Lightning war'; Germany's 1939-40 campaigns massed tanks with motorised infantry and aircraft to punch through and collapse enemy fronts.
Q 08Which future prime minister created the Landships Committee in 1915 to develop the first tanks?
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill created the Landships Committee in February 1915, backing trench-crossing machines when the War Office showed little interest; its first prototype was running before the end of 1915.
Q 09The Leclerc main battle tank, named for a Free French marshal, serves which country?
France
France fields the Leclerc, named for Marshal Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque, whose 2nd Armoured Division liberated Paris in August 1944; it entered French service in 1992 to replace the AMX-30.
Q 10The Type 99 is the first mass-produced third-generation main battle tank of which country?
China
The Type 99 (ZTZ-99) is China's first third-generation main battle tank, entering People's Liberation Army service in 2001 with a 125 mm smoothbore gun and an autoloader.
Q 11The "tank biathlon" is a military sport run by which country's armed forces?
Russia
Russia's armed forces launched the tank biathlon at the Alabino range near Moscow in 2013; crews race a multi-lap cross-country course, firing at targets between laps.
Q 12The Soviet IS heavy tanks, including the IS-2 that spearheaded the assault on Berlin, were named after whom?
Joseph Stalin
IS stands for Iosif Stalin, Joseph Stalin in English; the series was designed in 1943 as breakthrough tanks after a Tiger was captured near Leningrad, and the line ended with the T-10.
Q 13The American M48 tank carries the name of which Second World War general?
Patton
The M48 Patton honours General George S. Patton, commander of the US Third Army in 1944-45; its M67 flame-thrower variant was nicknamed the 'Zippo' by Marines in Vietnam.
Q 21Which 1917-18 French light tank was the first with a fully rotating turret and rear engine?
Renault FT
Over 3,000 were built, and its layout is still the standard, which is why some historians call it the first modern tank.
Q 22Heinz Guderian's influential 1937 book on armoured warfare was titled what?
Achtung – Panzer!
Achtung – Panzer! (1937) argued for concentrating tanks in independent armoured divisions; Guderian then led XIX Corps' thrust through the Ardennes and across the Meuse at Sedan in May 1940.
Q 23Which Soviet formation attacked the Waffen-SS armoured corps at Prokhorovka on 12 July 1943?
5th Guards Tank Army
Q 14Which Renaissance figure sketched a never-built armoured vehicle often called the first tank design?
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci sketched the conical, cannon-ringed 'fighting vehicle' around 1487 while working for Ludovico Sforza in Milan; hand-cranked and human-powered, it was never built.
Q 15Which 1943 battle, opened by Operation Citadel, is called the largest and deadliest armoured battle in history?
Kursk
Kursk began on 5 July 1943 when Germany launched Operation Citadel against the salient; roughly 6,000 tanks and assault guns took part, and the German offensive was called off within a fortnight.
Q 16What was the nickname of the first completed tank prototype in history, built in 1915?
Little Willie
Little Willie, built in Lincoln in 1915, first ran that September and survives at The Tank Museum, Bovington, as the oldest individual tank in existence.
Q 17The prototype adopted in January 1916 as the pattern for British tanks was nicknamed what?
Mother
'Mother', officially His Majesty's Land Ship Centipede and also called Big Willie, was the rhomboid prototype with sponson-mounted guns that became the pattern for the Mark I.
Q 18British Mark I 'Male' tanks carried cannon, while 'Female' tanks carried only what?
Machine guns
Machine guns were the Female tank's only armament: Vickers guns in the sponsons instead of the Male's two 6-pounders, meant to sweep infantry off the Males; 75 of each were built.
Q 19The first tank-versus-tank action, in April 1918, pitted British Mark IVs against which German tank?
A7V
The A7V was the only German-built tank to see action in the war, with just 20 completed; three A7Vs met three Mark IVs on 24 April 1918, and Germany fielded more captured British Mark IVs than A7Vs.
Q 20Which November 1917 battle saw the first massed use of tanks, with more than 400 Mark IVs committed?
Cambrai
Cambrai, launched on 20 November 1917, committed 476 tanks without a long preliminary bombardment; breakdowns and German guns put nearly half of them out of action by the end of the first day.
The 5th Guards Tank Army under Pavel Rotmistrov struck the II SS Panzer Corps at Prokhorovka on 12 July 1943 and lost hundreds of tanks in a single day, though the German advance there stalled.
Q 24Which Soviet tank series, with up to 100,000 built, is history's most-produced tank?
T-54/T-55
The T-54/T-55 line, built from 1947 into the 1980s in the USSR, Poland and Czechoslovakia, reached an estimated 86,000-100,000 vehicles; a T-54 driven into Budapest's British embassy in 1956 prompted Britain's L7 gun.
Q 25Chobham armour, the composite armour on the Abrams and Challenger, takes its name from what?
A lane in Chertsey, Surrey
A lane in Chertsey, Surrey, gave Chobham armour its name: Chobham Lane was home to the Fighting Vehicles Research and Development Establishment, which developed the ceramic-and-metal composite in the 1960s; the Challenger 1 and M1 Abrams carried it first.
Q 26How does explosive reactive armour protect a tank when a shaped charge strikes it?
A layer detonates outward against the jet
A layer detonates outward against the jet: the explosive sandwiched between two steel plates fires, driving the plates across the shaped-charge jet and breaking it up; tandem warheads counter this with a second charge.
Q 27What is the lightweight shell around a kinetic-energy tank round's dart, discarded after leaving the barrel, called?
A sabot
A sabot is the lightweight carrier that fills the bore around the narrow penetrator so propellant gas can push it, then falls away at the muzzle; the dense tungsten or depleted-uranium dart flies on alone.
Q 28Thanks to an autoloader, Soviet tanks from the T-64 onward need how many crew?
3
3 crew, commander, gunner and driver, man the T-64, T-72, T-80 and T-90 because a carousel autoloader feeds the main gun; Western tanks such as the Abrams and Challenger 2 keep a fourth man as loader.
Q 29How did the crew of Sweden's turretless Stridsvagn 103 aim its fixed gun?
By steering and tilting the whole hull
By steering and tilting the whole hull, the crew aimed the fixed 105 mm gun: the tracks turned the vehicle for traverse and a hydropneumatic suspension pitched it for elevation, giving the Strv 103 a very low silhouette.
Q 30What headline feature sets the T-14 Armata apart from earlier main battle tanks?
An unmanned turret
An unmanned turret is the T-14 Armata's headline feature: its crew sit in an armoured capsule in the forward hull while an autoloader feeds the 125 mm gun; it debuted at Moscow's 2015 Victory Day parade.