tank trivia

I have heard that before. I believe the shipping manifests showed them as water tanks on the ships carrying them across the Atlantic too in order to throw off any spies.

I suppose to justify the weight on the manifests they claimed they were shipping full water tanks??????

Eric

I heard that before... I think on the Histroy Channel. It was quite a devastating little secret if I remember right.

And the tanks were developed with help from the Royal Navy since they had the armor and gun turret experience on their warships. They were envisioned as land battleships and many of the terms used to describe tank parts are naval terms like "back deck", "hatches", "periscopes", "hull".

yeah, and the name stuck for some reason. another piece of trivia. did you know the first german tank had a crew of 18, and weighed 73,700 lbs. that's heavy for WWI. the m4a3 sherman weighed 71,000 lbs. it (not the sherman) had an amazing top speed of 8 mph!!! LOL

the brits also had a male and female version, .................. and no I won't go there

they also had a mother.

Back to the question.
I thought that they were called "tanks" because when they arrived at the front in ww1 some of the brits thought they looked like water tanks and the name just stuck.

But when you think about it the name seems to fit almost all armored vehiciles.
From a Whippet to a Char B,or a Semovente to a Merkava.
No matter what it is ,its still a tank.

I have got this from several books: It was called (codenamed) a supply tank for security reasons

Their original name was "land ship" but to keep spies from finding out what the new secret weapon was a codename was needed. The original design looked similar to a towed water tank used by the British so the code name "tank" was picked (I think at the time Winston Churchill was head of the Admiralty so the choice was his). When they got to the field the name stuck. I think the German name is more accurate, Panzer Kampfwagen- Armoured struggle(war, combat, etc.) car.