Com-Central.net

Little Willie
The AFV ASSOCIATION was formed in 1964 to support the thoughts and research of all those interested in Armored Fighting Vehicles and related topics, such as AFV drawings. The emphasis has always been on sharing information and communicating with other members of similar interests; e.g. German armor, Japanese AFVs, or whatever.

Forum Index › AFV News Discussion Board

View previous topic :: View next topic

Author

Message

jch_in_uk
Power User

Offline
Joined: Jan 25, 2006
Posts: 29

Posted: Sun Jun 11, 2006 12:42 pm
Post subject: Little Willie

To complement the pictures from the Tank museum, a brief resume of the two Willies.

The tank now know as "Little Willie" was commenced by William Foster & Co in August 1915, designed by William Tritton & Lt. Wilson (RNAS). It was constructed of bolier plate and used tracks ordered from the US and used on the 'Bullock Creeping Grip Tractors'. It had a fixed, dummy turret and a pair of wheels at the rear to aid steering. At that stage it was known as the "Tritton Machine", the tracks looking more like those units on a modern bulldozer.

During testing the tracks proved unsatisefactory and too short to facilitate trench crossing.

The vehicle was re-built to incorporate longer track units and used track links of Foster's design. At the same time the steering wheels were removed as was the dummy turret, hence the circular hole in the interior of the vehicle today. The revised vehicle, now christened "Little Willie" proved a better performer, but was abandoned in favour of the lozenge-shaped "Wilson Machine", which became known as "Big Willie", and later still "Mother".

JH

JimWeb
Power User

Offline
Joined: Jan 24, 2006
Posts: 1439
Location: The back of beyond

Posted: Sun Jun 11, 2006 7:19 pm
Post subject: Re: Little Willie

- jch_in_uk

The revised vehicle, now christened "Little Willie" proved a better performer, but was abandoned in favour of the lozenge-shaped "Wilson Machine", which became known as "Big Willie", and later still "Mother".

And of course 'Mother' was armed with six-pounders so technically was a 'male' tank...

Cool

_________________
TTFN
Jim

If your not a member of JED then your
not serious about anything military..

***********************
www.jedsite.info
JED Military Equipment
***********************

Forum Index › AFV News Discussion Board
Page 1 of 1

All times are GMT - 6 Hours

You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You cannot download files in this forum

Select Language

Login

`±`Recent Visitors

`±`User Info-big

Com-Central.net

Select Language

Login

±Recent Visitors

±User Info-big

`±`Recent Visitors

`±`User Info-big