Engineering heritage
Those who know anything of Lincoln and Licolnshire will tell you that it is an agricultural county, which is, of course true, but what few people know is that Lincolnshire has also got a great engineering heritage - largely because of its agricultural background. During the ninteenth century, Lincoln was one of the centres where farm machinery was invented, developed and manufactured. Great names like Hornsby, Foster, Rustons and Clayton and Shuttleworth were all based here in Lincolnshire and became important agricultural engine and machine builders.
Breaking the stalemate
Because of this well established industry and the expertise that went with it, it was to Lincoln that the government looked in 1915 for machinery to help break the catastrophic stalemate of the trench warfare of World War One. The engineering firm of Fosters, then based at Firth Road, was asked to design a trench crossing machine. The managing director of Fosters at that time was William Tritton and together with the soldier and engineer, Walter Wilson, they formed the team that would design this military machine.
The birth of the tank
A series of wird and wonderful devices were proposed that might cross the broken gorund and muddy morass that formed the Flanders battlefields. They had fantastic names such as the Pedrail Landship, Hetherington's Big Wheel and Elephant Feet, but none of the designs were of any practical use. Then William Tritton hit in the idea of using caterpillar tracks to carry the vehicle over muddy and uneven ground and the idea for the first ever tank was born.
Track laying vehicles were not new, They had been invented and manufactured in America in the 1880s for steam powered tractors to work in the great cornfields of the Prairies.
The answer to German guns and wire
Early in 1915 Tritton produced his Tritton Trench Crosser, a forerunner of the tank which led him to designing a fully armoured track laying vehicle. There were several prototypes but the final model, known originally as Big Willie, but later simply as Mother, was tested on 2nd February 1916. Mother performed faultlessly and Prime Minister Lloyd George wrote 'at last we have the answer to German guns and wire'.
An order was immediatley placed for 100 of the the new tanks and this was swiftly increased to 150. They could not all be made by Fosters, whose factory was still producing steam traction engines for both army and agricultural use, so part of this first order went to Birmingham.
Into war and beyond
The first tank went into battle on the Somme on 15th September 1916. Initially they were not very effective and of the 49 tanks used at the Battle of Flers, 17 got bogged down and stuck before they even got to their starting points. However, as the war progressed the new machines improved and in November 1917 tanks were responsible for a resounding victory at the Battle of Cambrai.
By the end of the was it was clear that the tank was here to stay and it soon became a major and irreplaceable feature of the British Army. So the tank, which changed the course of the First World War and has been a major player in every war since then, was invented and first manufactured here in Lincoln.
Dave Start
Director Heritage Lincolnshire
