Mk V Tank

[David]

The worst fault in the early Tanks, Marks I-IV, lay in the clumsy and inefficient driving system, which required the services of no less than four men - the driver, the tank commander (who acted as brakesman) and two other men, one on each side, who engaged the secondary gears for steering, on the instructions of the driver.

Steering for turns of around 50 meters radius in good conditions could be managed by use of the tail wheels alone, but these were omitted after the Mark I because of failures in the mud of France. Otherwise, turns were made by the use of the brakes on one or the other side or the use of high or low gear on either side or by a combination of brakes and gears.

Even before the Mark IV was built, it was realized that a better form of transmission was necessary and experi­ments were put in hand to determine the best of alternative systems. The most likely of these were demonstrated at Oldbury on 3 March 1917 - when the Mark IV was already in production - before a large audience of interested parties. The competing transmission systems for the heavy tank shown were the Williams-Janney Hydraulic, Wil­son Epicyclic, Daimler Petrol-Electric, Westinghouse Petrol-Electric and Wil­kin's Multiple Clutch. All were linked with the Daimler six-cylinder engine; although in the case of the Daimler Petrol-Electric it had aluminium pis­tons, a lighter flywheel and ran at 1400 r.p.m. instead of 1000 r.p.m. The engine with the Westinghouse trans­mission ran at 1200 r.p.m.

All the systems could be operated by one man but Major Wilson's epicyclic was the most successful and it was adopted for Mark V, the heavy tank to follow Mark IV.The Mark V was little changed in external aspect, but internally in addition to the new transmission it had a new engine specially designed for tank use by Mr H. Ricardo. This was a six­cylinder unit, developing 150 b.h.p. at 1250 r.p.m. It proved very reliable in service and was used for most of the other British tanks built during the war.

The increased power gave the Mark V a higher speed of 4.6 m.p.h. The average speed of the Mark V was, however, even greater than the average of the Marks I-IV because the difficulty of changing gear in the earlier tanks meant that often this was neglected and an inferior performance resulted.Although performance was better and driving easier and the armour thickness increased to 14 mm not all progress is upwards and the Mark V was less well ventilated than earlier tanks. The louvres on the hull sides near the rear are a feature which, together with the addition of a fixed conning tower in the centre of the hull, most readily distinguishes the Mark V from the Mark IV. All Mark Vs used Hotchkiss machine­guns, but, otherwise the armament corresponded with that of Mark IV Male and Female respectively.

Four hundred Mark Vs - equally divided between Male and Female­ - were built during 1918 and the first time they were in action was in July of that year. To help Mark Vs tackle the wide trenches of the Hindenburg Line in the attack at the end of September 1918, “cribs” were carried. This was a braced cylindrical framework which, dropped in the trench from the nose of the tank as a form of stepping stone, helped the machine to cross it. Cribs served the same purpose as the fascines (large bundles of chestnut palings) which had been used in the same fashion at Cambrai in 1917. However, whereas the fascine weighed 30 cwt. the crib weighed only 12 cwt.

The Mk V was used by the British, and also to a limited extent by the Americans. Mk V's were also employed in the Russian Civil War, where they were first given to the "Whites" as military aid, Many of these were captured by the Soviets, and used well up into the 20-ies by them. At the same time both Latvia and Estonia had some tanks left over from the fighting during the early 20-ies. Some were obviously still running at the outset of WW2 and taken over by the Soviets when they occupied the Baltic States in 1939, and at least one of these were put to the road when the Germans attacked in 1941 - to what use is doubtful. There has been some recurring rumors of the Germans in their desperation using Mk 5's during the final battle in Berlin, but the true story seems to have been, that there were one or two museum tanks in Berlin at this time (actually taken from from the Soviet Union) and these static objects were shot up by suspicious Soviet Tankers.

The tanks below can be seen in Lugansk, in Ukraine. Notice that they are so called Hermaphrodites, i.e. equipped with one MG sponson, and one Gun sponson. (Most, if not all, of the Mk V:s sent to Russia were of this type. The tanks you can see are veterans of the Russian Civil War.)


Beneath you can find a "walk-around" collection of photos of the Mk V tank that can be seen at the Imperial War Museum in London. It is a splendidly preserved vehicle, alone making a visit to the museum well worth the effort. This individual tank was by all accounts used first in France in 1918, and after the War in training duty. Note that the Green colour scheme is not the original one.

Mk5_wa1.JPG Rear details 114259 Bytes	Mk5_wa101.JPG Rear details 86340 Bytes	Mk5_wa11.JPG Rear details 78943 Bytes	Mk5_wa12.JPG Rear details 85354 Bytes	Mk5_wa122.JPG Rear details 104461 Bytes	Mk5_wa13.JPG Rear details 99491 Bytes
Mk5_wa131.JPG Cupola 103429 Bytes	Mk5_wa14.JPG Left Sponson 68293 Bytes	Mk5_wa140.JPG Left Sponson 75936 Bytes	Mk5_wa15.JPG Left Sponson 82068 Bytes	Mk5_wa16.JPG Left Sponson 66974 Bytes	Mk5_wa17.JPG Track tensioning device 120396 Bytes
Mk5_wa21.JPG Front details 102558 Bytes	Mk5_wa211.JPG Front details 95800 Bytes	Mk5_wa22.JPG Front details 85698 Bytes	Mk5_wa7.JPG Side details 96005 Bytes	Mk5_wa8.JPG Side details 100961 Bytes	Mk5_wa81.JPG Side details 86548 Bytes
Mk5_wa87.JPG Side details 115377 Bytes	Mk5_wa88.JPG Side details 122161 Bytes	Mk5_wa89.JPG Side details 101448 Bytes	Mk5_wa9.JPG Side details 107811 Bytes	Mk5_wa91.JPG Interior 100301 Bytes	Mk5_wa92.JPG Interior 97961 Bytes
Mk5_wa93.JPG Interior 93349 Bytes	Mk5_wa94.JPG Interior 93946 Bytes