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'Little Willie' was a prototype in the development of the British Mark I tank and the first completed tank prototype in history.

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Number 1 Lincoln Machine

Description

Little Willie and Big Willie

Today

Number 1 Lincoln Machine

''Little Willie'' was designed from July 1915 by the Landships Committee to meet Great Britain's requirement in World War I for a war engine able to cross a five foot trench. After several other projects with single and triple tracks had failed, on 22 July William Ashbee Tritton, director of the agricultural machinery company William Foster & Company of Lincoln, was given the contract to develop a "Tritton Machine" with two tracks, after a concept proposed by his chief designer William Rigby. It had to make use of lengthened tracks and suspension elements (seven road wheels instead of four) provided by the ''Bullock Creeping Grip Tractor Company'' in Chicago. When the tracks arrived it transpired they were very crude.
On 11 August actual construction began; on 16 August Tritton decided to fit a wheeled tail to assist in steering. On 9 September the ''Number 1 Lincoln Machine'', as the prototype was then known, made its first test run in the yard of the Wellington Foundry. It soon became clear that the tracks were so flat that ground resistance during a turn was excessive. To solve this the suspension was changed so that the bottom profile was made more curved. Then the next problem showed up: when crossing a trench the track sagged and then wouldn't fit the wheels again and jammed. Tritton and Lieutenant Walter Gordon Wilson tried out all sorts of alternative track design including Balata belting and flat wire ropes. Tritton, on 22 September, at last devised a system using cast flat steel plates riveted to links and incorporated guides to engage on the inside of the track frame. This system was unsprung as the tracks were held firmly in place, able to move in only one plane. The track frames as a whole however were connected to the main body by large spindles allowing for a modicum of movement in relation to the hull. This was a successful design and was used on all First World War British tanks up to the Mark VIII though it limited speed.

Description

The vehicle's 105 hp Daimler engine, gravity-fed by two petrol tanks, was at the back, leaving just enough room beneath the turret. The prototype was fitted with a non-rotatable dummy turret mounting a machine gun; a Vickers 2-pounder gun was to take its place, with as secondary armament six Madsen machine guns. The main gun would have had a large ammunition store with 800 rounds. It was considered by Tritton to use an open-topped superstructure, with the turret being able to slide forward on rails. In the front of the vehicle two men sat on a narrow bench; one controlling the steering wheel, the clutch, the primary gear box and the throttle; the other holding the brakes.
Most mechanical components including the radiator had been adapted from those of the Foster-Daimler heavy artillery tractor. Two more men were needed to adjust the secondary gearboxes near the engine. As at least two more had to operate the armament, the crew could not have been smaller than six. The maximum speed was indicated by Tritton as being no more than two miles per hour. The vehicle used no real armour steel, just boiler plate; it was intended to use 10 mm plating for production.

Little Willie and Big Willie

Wilson was unhappy with the basic concept of the ''Number 1 Lincoln Machine'', having conceived of a better design on 17 August and began the construction of an improved prototype on 17 September; for this second Mark I prototype, "His Majesty's Land Ship" ''HMLS Centipede'' or ''Mother'', a rhomboid track frame was fitted, the rear steering wheels were retained in an improved form but the dummy turret was removed and replaced by side sponsons holding the armament.
''Number 1 Lincoln Machine'' was rebuilt with an extended (ninety centimetres longer) track up to 6 December 1915, but merely to test the new tracks in Burton Park: the second prototype was seen as much more promising. The first was renamed ''Little Willie'', the scabrous name then commonly used by the British yellow press to mock the German Imperial Crown Prince Wilhelm; ''Mother'' was for a time known as ''Big Willie'' after his father Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany. That same year the cartoonist W.K. Haseldon had made a popular comic anti-German propaganda movie: ''The Adventures of Big and Little Willie''. In January 1916 ''Little Willie'', now without any turret, contended with ''Mother'' for the first production order; its inferiority in crossing trenches decided against it.
Though it never saw combat, ''Little Willie'' was a major step forward in military technology, being the first tank prototype to be finished (the development of the similar French Schneider CA1 started earlier in January 1915, but its first real prototype was only made in February 1916).

Today

''Little Willie'' was preserved for posterity after the war, saved from being scrapped in 1940 and is today displayed at the Bovington Tank Museum. It is basically an empty hull now, without internal fittings.