Little Willie was a prototype in the development of the
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
Mark I tankThe British Mark I was a tracked vehicle developed by the British Army during World War I and the world's first combat tank, entering service in August 1916, and first used in action on the morning of 15 September 1916...
and the first completed tank prototype in history.
Little Willie was designed from July 1915 by the
Landships CommitteeThe Landships Committee was a small British war cabinet committee established in February 1915 to deal with the design and construction of what would turn out to be tanks during the First World War...
to meet Great Britain's requirement in
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
for a war engine able to cross a five foot trench. After several other projects with single and triple tracks had failed, on 22 July William Ashbee Tritton, director of the agricultural machinery company William Foster & Company of
LincolnLincoln is a cathedral city and county town of Lincolnshire, England.The non-metropolitan district of Lincoln has a population of around 101,000 - the 2001 census gave the entire urban area of Lincoln a population of 120,779...
, was given the contract to develop a "Tritton Machine" with two tracks, after a concept proposed by his chief designer William Rigby.
Little Willie was a prototype in the development of the
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
Mark I tankThe British Mark I was a tracked vehicle developed by the British Army during World War I and the world's first combat tank, entering service in August 1916, and first used in action on the morning of 15 September 1916...
and the first completed tank prototype in history.
Number 1 Lincoln Machine
Little Willie was designed from July 1915 by the
Landships CommitteeThe Landships Committee was a small British war cabinet committee established in February 1915 to deal with the design and construction of what would turn out to be tanks during the First World War...
to meet Great Britain's requirement in
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
for a war engine able to cross a five foot trench. After several other projects with single and triple tracks had failed, on 22 July William Ashbee Tritton, director of the agricultural machinery company William Foster & Company of
LincolnLincoln is a cathedral city and county town of Lincolnshire, England.The non-metropolitan district of Lincoln has a population of around 101,000 - the 2001 census gave the entire urban area of Lincoln a population of 120,779...
, was given the contract to develop a "Tritton Machine" with two tracks, after a concept proposed by his chief designer William Rigby. It had to make use of lengthened tracks and suspension elements (seven road wheels instead of four) provided by the
Bullock Creeping Grip Tractor Company in
ChicagoChicago is the largest city in the U.S. state of Illinois, and with more than 2.8 million people, the 3rd largest city in the United States...
. When the tracks arrived it transpired they were very crude.
On 11 August actual construction began; on 16 August Tritton decided to fit a wheeled tail to assist in steering. On 9 September the
Number 1 Lincoln Machine, as the prototype was then known, made its first test run in the yard of the Wellington Foundry. It soon became clear that the tracks were so flat that ground resistance during a turn was excessive. To solve this the suspension was changed so that the bottom profile was made more curved. Then the next problem showed up: when crossing a trench the track sagged and then wouldn't fit the wheels again and jammed. Tritton and Lieutenant
Walter Gordon WilsonMajor Walter Gordon Wilson was an engineer and member of the British Royal Naval Air Service. He was credited by the 1919 Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors as the co-inventor of the tank, along with Sir William Tritton....
tried out all sorts of alternative track design including Balata belting and flat wire ropes. Tritton, on 22 September, at last devised a system using cast flat steel plates riveted to links and incorporated guides to engage on the inside of the track frame. This system was unsprung as the tracks were held firmly in place, able to move in only one plane. The track frames as a whole however were connected to the main body by large spindles allowing for a modicum of movement in relation to the hull. This was a successful design and was used on all First World War British tanks up to the
Mark VIIIThe Tank Mark VIII or Liberty was an Anglo-American tank design of the First World War. Initially intended to be a collaborative effort to equip France, the UK and the US with a single tank design, it did not come to fruition before the end of the war and only a few were produced.-Early...
though it limited speed.
Description
The vehicle's 105 hp
DaimlerThe Daimler Motor Company was a British motor vehicle manufacturing company, founded in 1896, and based in Coventry. The company became a subsidiary of BSA in 1910, and was acquired by Jaguar Cars in 1960....
engine, gravity-fed by two petrol tanks, was at the back, leaving just enough room beneath the turret. The prototype was fitted with a non-rotatable dummy turret mounting a machine gun; a
VickersVickers was a famous name in British engineering that existed through many companies from 1828 until 1999.-Early history:Vickers was formed in Sheffield as a steel foundry by the miller Edward Vickers and his father-in-law George Naylor in 1828. Naylor was a partner in the foundry Naylor &...
2-pounder gun was to take its place, with as secondary armament six
Madsen machine gunThe Madsen was a light machine gun developed by a Captain Vilhelm Herman Oluf Madsen of the Danish artillery in 1896 and adopted by the Danish Army in 1902. It was one of the first true light machine guns produced in quantity and sold to over 34 different countries worldwide, seeing extensive...
s. The main gun would have had a large ammunition store with 800 rounds. It was considered by Tritton to use an open-topped superstructure, with the turret being able to slide forward on rails. In the front of the vehicle two men sat on a narrow bench; one controlling the steering wheel, the clutch, the primary gear box and the throttle; the other holding the brakes.
Most mechanical components including the radiator had been adapted from those of the Foster-Daimler heavy
artillery tractorArtillery tractor is a kind of tractor, also referred to as a gun tractor, a vehicle used to tow artillery pieces of varying weights. The first such devices were designed prior to the outbreak of World War I, often based on agricultural machines such as the Holt tractor. Such tractors allowed the...
. Two more men were needed to adjust the secondary gearboxes near the engine. As at least two more had to operate the armament, the crew could not have been smaller than six. The maximum speed was indicated by Tritton as being no more than two miles per hour. The vehicle used no real armour steel, just boiler plate; it was intended to use 10 mm plating for production.
Little Willie and Big Willie
Wilson was unhappy with the basic concept of the
Number 1 Lincoln Machine, having conceived of a better design on 17 August and began the construction of an improved prototype on 17 September; for this second Mark I prototype, later known as "His Majesty's Land Ship" (HMLS)
Centipede or
Mother, a rhomboid track frame was fitted taking the tracks up and over the top of the vehicle, the rear steering wheels were retained in an improved form but the dummy turret was removed and replaced by side
sponsonSponsons are projections from the sides of a watercraft, for protection, stability, or the mounting of equipment such as armaments or lifeboats, etc...
s holding the armament.
Number 1 Lincoln Machine was rebuilt with an extended (ninety centimetres longer) track up to 6 December 1915, but merely to test the new tracks in Burton Park: the second prototype was seen as much more promising. The first was renamed
Little Willie, the scabrous name then commonly used by the British yellow press to mock the German Imperial Crown Prince Wilhelm;
Mother was for a time known as
Big Willie after his father
Emperor Wilhelm IIWilhelm II was the last German Emperor and King of Prussia , ruling both the German Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia from 15 June 1888 to 9 November 1918....
of Germany. That same year the cartoonist W.K. Haseldon had made a popular comic anti-German propaganda movie:
The Adventures of Big and Little Willie. In January 1916
Little Willie, now without any turret, contended with
Mother for the first production order; its inferiority in crossing trenches decided against it.
Later the track system of the Medium Mark A Whippet was directly derived from that of
Little Willie.
Though it never saw combat,
Little Willie was a major step forward in military technology, being the first tank prototype to be finished (the development of the similar French
Schneider CA1The Schneider CA1 was the first French tank. It was inspired by the need to overcome the stalemate of the trench warfare of the Great War.-Caterpillar development:...
started earlier in January 1915, but its first real prototype was only made in February 1916).
Today
Little Willie was preserved for posterity after the war, saved from being scrapped in 1940 and is today displayed at the
Bovington Tank MuseumThe Tank Museum is a collection of armoured vehicles in the United Kingdom. With almost 300 vehicles on exhibition from 26 countries it is the most wide-ranging collection of tanks and armoured vehicles in the world...
. It is basically an empty hull now, without internal fittings.