Landships II

As you all probably know, the Tank Museum in Dorset, UK has the finest collection of WWI vehicles in the world. Here's the pre-WW2 exhibits, mainly WWI but a few interesting and unusual between the wars designs. No tripods allowed but the lighting was very good so didn't use my mini pod hidden in my pocket! Best shop i've seen at a museum as well, picked up a great book by David Fletcher, the leading WWI tank historian and curator of the museum about British Tanks 1915-1919, and a 1/72 Whippet

An officer in part of the very large trench reconstruction, along with a friendly rat (I counted four at least!)

The first Tank you see in the museum (well, you would if the museum was open normally - it's currently under development so apart from the WWI section the museum is all over the place). Anyway, it's a Mk I Male, the oldest surviving combat tank, serving at the first ever tank battle, Flers, in September 1916

The first ever tank - Little Willie of 1915. It was originally planned to built these fitted with turrets as combat tanks, but it would give it too high a centre of gravity. The body style was instead used on WWI tanks instead, but with all around tracks instead. As you'll see later, the style of tracks was later used on the Whippet tank

The interior of 'Little Willie' - not much left except the chassis

57mm gun from a Mk IV onwards WWI 'Male' tank - for those that don't know, a Male tank was fitted with cannon as well as machine guns, whereas a Female was purely machine guns

German 77mm field gun, captured at the Battle of Cambrai

German Skoda 21cm Howitzer, captured by the British in WWI

1909 Ruston-Hornsby tractor, believed to the be the oldest surviving tracked vehicle

The first turreted tank to be used in action, the French Renault FT17 light tank, armed with either a Hotchkiss machine gun as shown or a 37mm gun. They were even used up to WWII by various countries

Mk II 'Female', with two Vickers heavy machine guns in each side sponson. This was built as a Male tank but fitted with a Female sponson post-war (sponsored removed on the left hand side so you can see the interior), personally I think it's a good thing they did this as the Mk I/II Female's look different to the Mk IV onwards, plus there's more Male tanks left than Female ones. This tank served at the Battle of Arras in 1917 and you can see some of the damage done to it

My favourite, the Medium A 'Whippet' tank. Twice as fast as the 'heavy' tanks, and armed with four machine guns, they were designed to exploit breakthroughs by the heavy tanks. Actions by Whippets include a company of Seven Whippets, whilst covering the British retreat during the German spring offensive in 1918, sped towards two German batallions cavalry style and completely wiped them out, killing over 400.

One, named 'Musical Box', broke behind German lines and spent nine hours shooting up infantry, transport and artillery, only ending when the tank caught fire after hit by artillery, the commander of the tank noting that although getting kicked in by German troops after bailing out was extremely unfair, at least it help put out the fire, as his clothes were ablaze!

This Whippet took part in the earning of the VC by Lietenant Sewell who rescued the crew of another Whippet which had turned over, by getting out of his tank, digging out the rear entrance of the sunken Whippet, rescuing the crew but getting shot as he went back to his Whippet

Peerless armoured car of 1919, with very similar bodywork to that used on the Austin armoured cars, used by the Russians and British in WWI

Mk IV Male

Mk VII 'International', much larger than the previous WWI tanks with a new body style. They were designed to be used in 1919 by the British and Americans, faster and more heavily armed and armoured than the previous tanks.

Mk V tank, still in running condition. This one fought at Amiens in 1918 - the white/red/white stripes seen on this and several others was to show it was a 'friendly' tank, as many tanks captured by the Germans were now being used by them, causing confusion (the Germans only made twenty of their own design of tanks, and they had a nasty habit of falling over!)

Rear firing machine gun on the Mk V

Mk IX troop carrier, nicknamed 'The Pig'. It was designed to carry 50 troops and was twin engined. Like Mk VII, it was planned for use in 1919. You can go inside this and the Mk V** (a stretched version of the Mk V, the Germans responded to the introduction of trench crossing tanks by increasing the width of the trenches, so we responded by making longer tanks!), although they look huge from the outside they really are very cramped inside, even I had to bend down a bit inside them

1920 Rolls Royce Armoured Car, almost identical to the WWI version of Rolls Royce ac's but with disc wheels and a few other detail differences. Even Her Majesty has had a ride on this one!

Huge 1930's Irish Leyland armoured car, fitted with a Swedish built turret

Vickers 'Independent', with five turrets!

1930's Crossley armoured car, designed for colonial use, looks like it was designed for shooting people on either side of the road!

1920's Vickers Medium tank

one of the Vickers MG's on the side of the hull. They also had, at various points around the museum, shooting simulators with a real weapon for the Vickers, Bren, Lee Enfield No 4 and a PIAT. The Vickers one was great!