Editing Tank (section)

===Conceptions===
The tank is the 20th-century realization of an ancient concept: that of providing troops with mobile protection and firepower. The [[internal combustion engine]], [[armour plate]], and [[continuous track]] were key innovations leading to the invention of the modern tank.

During the 119 BC [[Battle of Mobei]] of the [[Han–Xiongnu War]], the [[Han dynasty|Han]] general [[Wei Qing]] led his army through a fatiguing expeditionary march across the [[Gobi desert]] only to find [[Yizhixie]] [[chanyu]]'s main force waiting to encircle them on the other side. Using armored heavy wagons known as "Wu Gang Wagon" ([[Chinese language|Chinese]]: 武剛車) in ring formations that provided Chinese [[Archery|archers]], [[crossbowmen]] and [[infantry]] protection from the Xiongnu's powerful [[Charge (warfare)|cavalry charges]], and allowed Han troops to utilize their ranged weapons' advantages of [[Accuracy and precision|precision]]. This forced a [[stalemate]] and allowed time for his troops to recover strength, before using the cover of a [[sandstorm]] to launch a counteroffensive which overran the [[nomad]]s.

[[File:DaVinciTankAtAmboise.jpeg|thumb|left|Model of [[Leonardo da Vinci]]'s [[Leonardo's fighting vehicle|fighting vehicle]]]]
Many sources imply that [[Leonardo da Vinci]] and [[H. G. Wells]] in some way foresaw or "invented" the tank. Leonardo's late-15th-century drawings of what some describe as a "tank" show a man-powered, wheeled vehicle surrounded by cannons. However, the human crew would have difficulty moving the heavy vehicle over long distances, while usage of animals was problematic in a space so confined. In the 15th century, [[Jan Žižka]] built armoured wagons known as ‘''Wagenburg''’ containing cannons and used them effectively in several battles during the [[Hussite Wars|Hussite-wars]]. The continuous "[[Continuous track|caterpillar track]]" arose from attempts to improve the mobility of wheeled vehicles by spreading their weight, reducing ground pressure, and increasing their traction. Experiments can be traced back as far as the 17th century, and by the late nineteenth they existed in various recognizable and practical forms in several countries.

It is frequently claimed that [[Richard Lovell Edgeworth]] created a caterpillar track. It is true that in 1770 he patented a "machine, that should carry and lay down its own road", but this was Edgeworth's choice of words. His own account in his autobiography is of a horse-drawn wooden carriage on eight retractable legs, capable of lifting itself over high walls. The description bears no similarity to a caterpillar track.<ref>Edgeworth, R. & E. ''Memoirs of Richard Lovell Edgeworth'', 1820, pp. 164–66</ref> Armoured trains appeared in the mid-19th century, and various armoured steam and petrol-engined vehicles were also proposed.

The machines described in Wells's 1903 short story ''[[The Land Ironclads]]'' are a step closer, insofar as they are armour-plated, have an internal power plant, and are able to cross trenches.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Wells|first1=H.G.|title=The Land Ironclads|journal=The Strand Magazine|date=1903|volume=23|issue=156|pages=751–69|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015011810515;view=1up;seq=767}}</ref> Some aspects of the story foresee the tactical use and impact of the tanks that later came into being. However, Wells's vehicles were driven by steam and moved on [[pedrail wheel]]s, technologies that were already outdated at the time of writing. After seeing British tanks in 1916, Wells denied having "invented" them, writing, "Yet let me state at once that I was not their prime originator. I took up an idea, manipulated it slightly, and handed it on."<ref>{{citation |last=Wells |first=H.G. |title=War and the Future |chapter-url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1804/1804-h/1804-h.htm#2H_4_0011 |chapter=V. Tanks |page=1 |year=1916 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130327131513/http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1804/1804-h/1804-h.htm#2H_4_0011 |archive-date=27 March 2013 }}</ref> It is, though, possible that one of the British tank pioneers, [[Ernest Swinton]], was subconsciously or otherwise influenced by Wells's tale.<ref>Harris, J.P. Men, Ideas, and Tanks. Manchester University Press, 1995. p. 38</ref><ref>Gannon, Charles E. Rumors of War and Infernal Machines: Liverpool University Press, 2003. p. 67</ref>

The first combinations of the three principal components of the tank appeared in the decade before World War One. In 1903, Captain Léon René Levavasseur of the French artillery [[Levavasseur project|proposed mounting a field gun in an armoured box on tracks]]. Major William E. Donohue, of the British Army's Mechanical Transport Committee, suggested fixing a gun and armoured shield on a British type of track-driven vehicle.<ref>''The Devil's Chariots: The Birth and Secret Battles of the First Tanks'' John Glanfield (Sutton Publishing, 2001){{Page needed|date=May 2012}}</ref> The first [[Armored car (military)|armoured car]] was produced in Austria in 1904. However, all were restricted to rails or reasonably passable terrain. It was the development of a practical caterpillar track that provided the necessary independent, all-terrain mobility.

In a memorandum of 1908, Antarctic explorer [[Robert Falcon Scott]] presented his view that man-hauling to the South Pole was impossible and that motor traction was needed.<ref>RF Scott (1908) ''The Sledging Problem in the Antarctic, Men versus Motors''</ref> Snow vehicles did not yet exist, however, and so his engineer [[Reginald Skelton]] developed the idea of a caterpillar track for snow surfaces.<ref>Roland Huntford (2003) ''Scott and Amundsen. Their Race to the South Pole. The Last Place on Earth.'' Abacus, London, p. 224</ref> These tracked motors were built by the [[Wolseley Motors|Wolseley Tool and Motor Car Company]] in Birmingham and tested in Switzerland and Norway, and can be seen in action in [[Herbert Ponting]]'s 1911 documentary film of Scott's Antarctic [[Terra Nova Expedition]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKBttUMKND4 |title=- YouTube |website=[[YouTube]] |access-date=23 October 2016 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161003104603/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKBttUMKND4 |archive-date=3 October 2016 |at=50-minute mark }}</ref> Scott died during the expedition in 1912, but expedition member and biographer [[Apsley Cherry-Garrard]] credited Scott's "motors" with the inspiration for the British World War I tanks, writing: "Scott never knew their true possibilities; for they were the direct ancestors of the 'tanks' in France".<ref>{{cite book| last = Cherry-Garrard | first = Apsley | author-link = Apsley Cherry-Garrard| title = The Worst Journey in the World chapter 9 | publisher = Penguin Books | location = London| year = 1970| orig-year = 1922| isbn = 978-0-14-009501-2 | oclc = 16589938| title-link = The Worst Journey in the World }}</ref>{{page needed|date=March 2021}}

In 1911, a Lieutenant Engineer in the Austrian Army, [[Günther Burstyn]], presented to the Austrian and Prussian War Ministries plans for a light, three-man tank with a gun in a revolving turret, the so-called Burstyn-Motorgeschütz.<ref>''Gunther Burstyn'' Angwetter, D. & E. (Verlag Der Österreichischen Akademie Der Wissenschaften, 2008){{Page needed|date=May 2012}}</ref> In the same year an Australian civil engineer named [[Lancelot de Mole]] submitted a basic design for a tracked, armoured vehicle to the British [[War Office]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article65020239 |title=Australia To The Fore. Invention of the War Tank |publisher=Trove.nla.gov.au |date=12 February 1920 |access-date=13 May 2012}}</ref> In Russia, Vasiliy Mendeleev designed a tracked vehicle containing a large naval gun.<ref>''Russian tanks, 1900–1970 The Complete Illustrated History of Soviet Armoured Theory and Design'' John Milsom (Stackpole Books, 1971){{Page needed|date=May 2012}}</ref> All of these ideas were rejected and, by 1914, forgotten (although it was officially acknowledged after the war that de Mole's design was at least the equal to the initial British tanks). Various individuals continued to contemplate the use of tracked vehicles for military applications, but by the outbreak of the War no one in a position of responsibility in any army seems to have given much thought to tanks.{{Citation needed|date=May 2012}}