Sir William Tritton And The Tank

As I think I mentioned in a previous blog, there were ideas of erecting a statue of a tank as a memorial to Lincoln’s industrial past, and to those who served in the Great War, on the large roundabout on Tritton Road.

Tritton Road was named after Sir William Tritton who designed and built the first tanks at William Foster & Co Ltd. The company’s Wellington Foundry was situated where Morrisons supermarket now stands…not far from the roundabout.

Sir William Tritton was officially asked ‘to design a machine, strongly armoured, carrying powerful guns, capable of negotiating all reasonable impediments of the battle area and crossing the opposing trenches.’ He set to work, and ‘motivated by the impelling urgency of solving the trench warfare impasse’ designed and built the first machine, known as Little Willie, in the record time of thirty-seven days.

At its first trial, Little Willie failed because it kept coming off of its tracks, so improvements had to be implemented, and new tracks were built onto it. This time it was deemed to be a success.

To deal with the changes to conditions at the Front, a new machine had to be designed that was longer and more manoeuvrable. The result was Big Willie, later re-christened Mother. Complete secrecy surrounded the official unveiling and trial at Hatfield, and six days later King George V saw for himself this innovation in land warfare.

An official order for a fleet of twenty-five of these machines was soon increased to 150, and as production increased so too did the need to expand the works. The Landships Committee decided to invite the co-operation of other engineering firms, so Fosters prepared many copies of their designs.

As a steady stream of tanks rolled off the production lines, the first Tank Training Camp was founded in Norfolk to train the crews who were to man them, and on September 15, 1916 the tanks went into action.

The rest, as they say, is history.