Mark VIII Tank 1918 US Army Tests & Demonstrations of WWI Ordnance Materiel; JQ Music

• published: 24 Feb 2015
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more at http://quickfound.net/links/military_news_and_links.html US Army tests & demonstrations of the World War I Mark VIII Tank, a US-British codevelopment, also known as the Liberty or The International. Mark VIII production was too late for their use in WWI. After the war, about 100 of these tanks made in the US were used by the US Army until more advanced designs replaced them in 1932. Public domain film from the US National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied. The film was silent. I have added music created by myself using the Reaper Digital Audio Workstation and the Independence and Proteus VX VST instrument plugins. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Mark_VIII The Tank Mark VIII also known as the Liberty or The International was an Anglo-American tank design of the First World War intended to overcome the limitations of the earlier British designs and be a collaborative effort to equip France, the UK and the US with a single heavy tank design. Production at a site in France was expected to take advantage of US industrial capacity to produce the automotive elements with the UK producing the armoured hulls and armament. The planned production levels would have equipped the Allied armies with a very large tank force that would have broken through the German defensive positions in the planned offensive for 1919. In practice manufacture was slow and only a few vehicles were produced before the end of the war in November 1918. After the war, 100 vehicles assembled in the US were used by the US Army until more advanced designs replaced them in 1932. A few tanks that had not been scrapped by the start of World War II were provided to Canada for training purposes... The Mark VIII kept many of the general features of the Mark I-V series: it had their typical high track run and no revolving turret but two sponsons, one on each side of the tank, armed with a 6-pounder (57 mm) gun. But it also resembled the Mark VI-project in that it had more rounded and wider tracks and a large superstructure on top directly beneath the front of which the driver was seated. An innovative feature was the departure from the concept of the box tank with its single space into which all accessories were crammed. The Mark VIII was compartimentalised with a separate engine room at the back. This vastly improved fighting conditions as a bulkhead protected the crew against the deafening engine noise, noxious fumes and heat. There were no machine guns in the sponsons, only the 6-pounders each manned by a gunner and loader. The side machine guns were to the rear of the sponsons mounted in the hull doors. Major Alden had designed the sponsons to be retractable (they could be swung in at the rear by the crew, being pivoted at the front), to reduce the width of the vehicle if enemy obstacles were encountered. Five more machine guns were in the superstructure: two at the front—left and right next to the driver—and one on each of the other sides. As there was no machine gun position covering the back of the tank there was a dead angle vulnerable to infantry attack. To solve this problem a triangular steel deflector plate was attached. The rear superstructure machine gunner could use it to deflect his fire down into that area behind the tank. The tank carried 208 shells and 13,848 machine gun rounds, mostly in a large ammunition locker in the centre which formed a platform on which the commander stood behind the driver observing the battlefield through a cupola with four vision slits. Later the side superstructure guns were removed on US tanks. The twelfth crew member was the mechanic, seated next to the 300 hp Liberty V-12 (or in British tanks Ricardo V-12) petrol engine) cooled by a large horizontal radiator Three armoured fuel tanks at the rear held 200 Imperial gallons (240 US gallons, or 909 litres) of fuel giving a range of 89 km. The transmission used a planetary gearbox giving two speeds in either forward or reverse. Top speed was 5.25 mph (8 km/h). To improve its trench crossing ability to 4.88 m the vehicle had a very elongated shape. The track length was 34 ft 2 in... In absolute terms the vehicle was very large: at 10 ft 3 in (3.13 m) tall the Mark VIII was the second largest operational tank in history, after the Char 2C. However its weight was only 38.3 long tons (38.9 t) fitted for battle as the armour plate was thin with a thickness of 16 mm on the front and sides—a slight improvement over the Mark V but very thin by later standards. The roof and bottom of the hull were protected by only 6 mm thick armour plate, leaving the tank very vulnerable to mortar shells and landmines...