70 free Tank trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 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 70 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Why were the first British armoured vehicles called "tanks"?
To keep their purpose secret
Crates were labelled as water carriers, and the shipments were marked "With Care to Petrograd" to suggest they were snowploughs headed east.
Q 02In what year did a tank first go into battle?
1916
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.
Q 03Vehicle 131 at Bovington, captured in Tunisia in 1943, is the only running example of which German heavy tank?
Tiger I
Only nine survive anywhere; it was the first German vehicle to carry the fearsome 88 mm gun derived from the Flak 36.
Q 04Which Soviet medium tank, famed for its sloped armour, was WWII's most-produced tank?
T-34
German generals praised it when they first met it in 1941; the Soviets went on to build more than 80,000 of all variants.
Q 05The M4 Sherman was named by the British after a general from which war?
The American Civil War
William Tecumseh Sherman lent his name to 49,324 tanks, the most-produced American tank of the Second World War.
Q 06In which city did the lone "Tank Man" halt a column of tanks in June 1989?
Beijing
He stepped in front of the lead tank on Chang'an Avenue carrying shopping bags, and the column stopped rather than run him over.
Q 07What does the German word "blitzkrieg" literally mean?
Lightning war
Germany's opening campaigns of 1939 massed tanks with motorised infantry, artillery and air power to punch through and collapse the enemy front.
Q 08Which future prime minister, as First Lord of the Admiralty, formed the 1915 Landship Committee?
Winston Churchill
Lloyd George later said the credit for the tanks was due to him more than anyone; the committee was renamed to disguise its purpose.
Q 09The Leclerc main battle tank, named for a Free French marshal, serves which country?
France
It replaced the AMX-30 in 1992, and the United Arab Emirates actually owns more Leclercs than the country that built it.
Q 10The K2 Black Panther, built by Hyundai Rotem, is the main battle tank of which country?
South Korea
The first six entered service in 2014 after a home-grown powerpack held things up for years.
Q 11The Type 99 is the first mass-produced third-generation main battle tank of which country?
China
More than 1,300 have been built over two decades as the spearhead of the PLA's modern manoeuvre forces.
Q 12The "tank biathlon" is a military sport run by which country's armed forces?
Russia
Crews race a three-lap course of up to 10 km, shooting at targets between laps, as part of the annual International Army Games.
Q 13The Soviet IS heavy tanks, including the IS-2 that spearheaded the assault on Berlin, were named after whom?
Joseph Stalin
They were designed as breakthrough tanks after a German heavy tank was captured in 1943, and the line ended with the T-10.
Q 21Which November 1917 battle saw the first massed use of tanks, with more than 400 Mark IVs committed?
Cambrai
After a big first-day success, breakdowns and German artillery left only about half the tanks running by day two.
Q 22Which 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 23Heinz Guderian's influential 1937 book on armoured warfare was titled what?
Achtung – Panzer!
His superior asked for a polemical tone; Guderian went on to lead the armoured thrust through the Ardennes in 1940.
Q 14The American M48 tank carries the name of which Second World War general?
Patton
Its flame-thrower variant, the M67, was nicknamed the "Zippo" by troops in Vietnam.
Q 15Which Renaissance figure sketched a never-built armoured vehicle often called the first tank design?
Leonardo da Vinci
The human-powered wheeled machine would have been almost impossible to move, and putting animals inside would have been worse.
Q 16Which 1943 battle, opened by Operation Citadel, is called the largest and deadliest armoured battle in history?
Kursk
Its opening day, 5 July, was also the costliest single day of aerial warfare ever in terms of aircraft shot down.
Q 17What was the nickname of the first completed tank prototype in history, built in 1915?
Little Willie
It is the oldest surviving individual tank and sits at Bovington; its tracks were bought from a tractor firm in Chicago.
Q 18The prototype adopted in January 1916 as the pattern for British tanks was nicknamed what?
Mother
Officially it was His Majesty's Land Ship Centipede, and it also went by Big Willie and the Wilson Machine.
Q 19British Mark I 'Male' tanks carried cannon, while 'Female' tanks carried only what?
Machine guns
Of the first 150 ordered, Fosters built 37 males and the Metropolitan works in Birmingham built 38 males and 75 females.
Q 20The first tank-versus-tank action, in April 1918, pitted British Mark IVs against which German tank?
A7V
Germany built only 20 of them in the entire war and relied mostly on captured British Mark IVs for its tank force.
Q 24Which Soviet formation attacked the Waffen-SS armoured corps at Prokhorovka on 12 July 1943?
5th Guards Tank Army
Hitler had repeatedly delayed the offensive so more new heavy tanks could reach the front, giving the Soviets time to dig defensive belts.
Q 25Which Soviet tank series, with up to 100,000 built, is history's most-produced tank?
T-54/T-55
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.
Q 26Chobham armour, the composite armour on the Abrams and Challenger, takes its name from what?
A lane in Chertsey, Surrey
Its exact construction is still secret, but it is described as ceramic tiles in a metal frame that shatter incoming penetrators.
Q 27How does explosive reactive armour protect a tank when a shaped charge strikes it?
A layer detonates outward against the jet
Tandem-charge weapons defeat it by firing two warheads in quick succession at the same spot.
Q 28What is the lightweight shell around a kinetic-energy tank round's dart, discarded after leaving the barrel, called?
A sabot
Concentrating the force into a heavy tungsten or similar core in a smaller diameter is what lets the dart punch through armour.
Q 29Thanks to an autoloader, Soviet tanks from the T-64 onward need how many crew?
3
The human loader was dropped; Western tanks such as the Abrams and Challenger still carry one.
Q 30The Swedish Stridsvagn 103 had a fixed gun and no turret; how did the crew aim it?
By steering and tilting the whole hull
Traverse came from the tracks and elevation from the adjustable suspension, giving a very low silhouette.