![]() That same summer was the 50th Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, highlighted by the Great Reunion of Union and Confederate veterans. That summer, 159 students representing sixty three colleges and universities spent two weeks at the park studying the tactics of Lee and Meade and walking the ground still trod by a handful of Civil War veterans. Gettysburg National Military Park was selected to host the first-of-its-kind camp for students on the east coast. As far back as the summer of 1913 then Army Chief of Staff Major General Leonard Wood initiated camps of instruction for qualified undergraduate college students destined for Army service. One of the first national military parks in the United States, Gettysburg was administered by the U.S War Department and had long been a training ground for National Guard units and officer training prior to America’s entry into World War I. Little Willie is the oldest single tank at The Tank Museum, Bovington, England.Infantry train with a Renault FT-17 tank at Camp Colt. Unfortunately, Little Willie ended up weighing 14 tons, moved just 2mph and was prone to getting stuck in trenches. The first tank prototype in history was built in the autumn of 1915. Little Willie was a prototype for the British Mark I tank. However, British commanders believed that they would prove crucial in future warfare, so they ordered hundreds of more tanks to be manufactured. When the German counterattack began, they were slow and began to quickly break down. These first-round, primitive tanks were too slow to maintain their positions and were subject to mechanical breakdowns when German counter attacks were launched at Flers Courcelette.įorty-nine tanks were shipped to the Somme thirty-two began attacking the first time they were used, and only nine managed to reach German lines across no man’s land. Unfortunately, they did not fare well amid the 7-day battle. The British Mark I was the very first tank deployed in the middle of a war. ![]() In the Battle of the Somme, the British deployed the British Mark I tank in a massive offensive move against the Germans. On this day in 1916, the first tanks were deployed during warfare. ![]()
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