you
this is the mark to tank of 1917 in fact
only 50 were built they were built for
as training tanks now one of the reasons
for that was they'd they built 150 mark
one they were building about 2000 mark
fort and follow the mark one and they
reckoned that they would need tanks to
train the eight-man crew so they chose
the mark 2 and the mark 3 to do that and
built 50 of each they were mostly built
by Fosters and by metropolitan in
Birmingham now the thing is because of
that they were not built of armor
although it feels hardly nothing you can
attack it if you want to and do any good
but there they are recent really
bulletproof and they would even a
machine gamble it would go right through
it if you weren't careful however they
were used once in action the Battle of
Arras in April 1917 simply because the
new model the mark 4 hadn't been made
ready by then so they had to use these
they would just as slow just like the
mark 1 really now the only thing is that
most of them were supplied as male tanks
that's because some of the females have
been made into experimental transmission
mounts so although they were built as
male tanks this one she's the only
survivor has actually got a female
sponsor on the right hand side which at
least means that we've got one tank with
an early First World War female sponson
honor they are very rare indeed and the
female sponson you can see it here is
equipped with two Vickers 303 machine
guns each one's in an armoured jacket
and the idea is that those two guns will
sweep the whole of one side of the tank
of sweep of 180 degrees so they can
really whip out the firepower and at
reasonable range for the vehicle so
they'll get right down the side of it
easily the drawback is that the back of
the sponsor and the door which the crew
are supposed to get out of is a tiny
little thing the problem is that if this
tank caught fire which it would do when
it was hit because the fuel in 25 gallon
petrol tanks was in the front here and
the tanks just wrap in flames that
nobody's busy
you had to get out quickly and although
it wasn't the only way out it was the
usual way out and it meant that four men
on each side had to dive through that
tiny little door and they very rarely
all made it most when silenced and burnt
alive because the other way out to the
roof was difficult enough anyway so
that's one of the reasons the females
weren't really popular and one of the
reasons they changed the design of the
female sponson later on but this is the
only one left as far as we know complete
fitted to a tank so it's quite
interesting from that point of view and
we got the identity of the tank we found
these numbers letters underneath the
paint so we know that at one point it
was called f53 Flying Scotsman but then
it served that she would C or D
companies in France in win' Atlas much
earlier on and the other thing about the
mark - only a small detail really the
cab is a bit narrower than the old Mark
one the idea was to they were going to
use wider tracks in Everette she did but
that's why they narrowed the cab a
little bit and the cab the arrangement
of the rivets natural thing all helped
to identify it as a mark - if you can't
see it any other way but it's quite an
interesting tank but it's not really one
of the most significant tanks of the
First World War it has the same danger
engine and the same clumsy transmission
as the mark one
but really it's a it was meant as a
training tank that are meant to be used
here at Bovington to train drivers and
down at lulworth to train gammas and
that was all they were not intended to
go into action they only did on a couple
of occasions and that rather
disastrously this one fat got some
superb holes in the back made by shells
later on they were converted to
survivors were converging to supply
tanks carrying stores for about five
fighting tanks and that was about all
they were any good for really but they
lasted that form for many years because
you could change the engine over easily
and keep them updated by that means but
most of them were wrecks by the end of
1917 and had to be tensioned off and
scrapped but quite interesting all the
same and that's the mark two
you