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The Vickers Medium Mark I was a British
tank A tank is an armoured fighting vehicle intended as a primary offensive weapon in front-line ground combat. Tank designs are a balance of heavy firepower, strong armour, and good battlefield mobility provided by tracks and a powerful ...
of the Inter-war period built by
Vickers Vickers was a British engineering company that existed from 1828 until 1999. It was formed in Sheffield as a steel foundry by Edward Vickers and his father-in-law, and soon became famous for casting church bells. The company went public i ...
from 1924.


Background

After the
First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
Britain disbanded most of its tank units leaving only five tank battalions equipped with the
Mark V Mark V or Mark 5 often refers to the fifth version of a product, frequently military hardware. "Mark", meaning "model" or "variant", can be abbreviated "Mk." Mark V or Mark 5 can specifically refer to: In technology In military and weaponry * B ...
and the Medium Mark C. At first a large budget was made available for tank design but this was all spent on the failed development of the Medium Mark D. When the government design bureau, the ''Tank Design Department'', was closed in 1923 any direct official involvement in tank development was terminated. However private enterprise in the form of the
Vickers-Armstrong Vickers-Armstrongs Limited was a British engineering conglomerate formed by the merger of the assets of Vickers Limited and Sir W G Armstrong Whitworth & Company in 1927. The majority of the company was nationalised in the 1960s and 1970s, w ...
company built two
prototype A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process. It is a term used in a variety of contexts, including semantics, design, electronics, and software programming. A prototype is generally used to ...
s of a new tank in 1921.


Vickers Light Tank

In 1920 the Infantry had plans to acquire a Light Infantry Tank. Colonel Johnson of the Tank Design Department derived such a type from the Medium Mark D. In competition Vickers built the Vickers Light Tank. The Vickers design still was reminiscent of the Great War types. It had a high, lozenge-shaped, track frame with side doors but it also showed some improvements. There was a fully revolving turret and the suspension was provided by vertical helical springs, while the Medium Mark C still had a fixed turret and was unsprung. The Vickers was much smaller than the Medium C at just high and weighing only . It was driven by a separately compartmented engine through an advanced hydraulic Williams-Jenney transmission, allowing infinitely variable turn cycles. The first prototype was a "Female" version with three
Hotchkiss machine gun The Hotchkiss machine gun was any of a line of products developed and sold by Hotchkiss et Cie, (full name Société Anonyme des Anciens Etablissements Hotchkiss et Cie), established by United States gunsmith Benjamin B. Hotchkiss. Hotchkiss moved ...
s; the second prototype was a "Male" which had a 3-pounder (47 mm) gun in place of one of the machine guns and also a machine gun for anti-aircraft use. It looked far closer to a modern tank than its predecessors with the turret, the front of the fighting compartment and the hull front plate all strongly rounded. The advanced transmission proved to be utterly unreliable however and the project was abandoned in 1922 in favour of a generally more conventional design, the Vickers Light Tank Mark I. This would be renamed the "Vickers Medium Tank Mark I" in 1924 . The first prototypes were sent to Bovington for trial in 1923. The General Staff designation was A2E1.


Description

Despite being in general more conventional, in one aspect the Medium Mark I looked rather modern: instead of a high track run it possessed a low and flat suspension system with five bogies, each having a pair of small double wheels. The axles of these were too weakly constructed; as Major-General N.W. Duncan put it in his ''Medium Marks I-III'': "(...) a perpetual nuisance. The axles were continually breaking and the path of the Mark I tanks was littered with discarded wheels". This was cured by switching to a "box bogie" in 1931. To ease repairs the suspension was not protected by an armoured covering. There were two vertical helical springs of unequal length in each of the five bogie casings attached to the hull. In front and behind the normal ten road wheel pairs, there was a tension wheel pair. Ground pressure was very high, even though at the vehicle was not very heavy for its size. The engine was an air-cooled 90 hp
Armstrong Siddeley Armstrong Siddeley was a British engineering group that operated during the first half of the 20th century. It was formed in 1919 and is best known for the production of luxury vehicles and aircraft engines. The company was created following t ...
engine derived from an aircraft type. Surprisingly the engine and transmission was distributed throughout the hull - with the engine to the left of the driver, the gearbox underneath the commander and final drive at the rear, which Duncan describes as "an unbelievable retrograde step in view of war-time experience". The Medium Mark B and the Mark VIII heavy had introduced compartmentalisation to reduce the debilitating effects of engine noise and fumes on the crew. However, with the Medium Mark I considerations of ease of maintenance took precedence. The engine drove, via a multiple dry-plate clutch, a four-speed gearbox. It had no
synchromesh A manual transmission (MT), also known as manual gearbox, standard transmission (in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States), or stick shift (in the United States), is a multi-speed motor vehicle transmission system, where gear change ...
and switching between gears without excessive noise was a challenge to the driver. A propeller shaft connected the gearbox to a bevel box at the end of the tank which divided the power to a separate epicyclic gear for each track. These gears automatically provided extra emergency torsion to the normal first and second gear if the vehicle suddenly slowed down due to an obstacle or soft ground. The
petrol Gasoline (; ) or petrol (; ) (see ) is a transparent, petroleum-derived flammable liquid that is used primarily as a fuel in most spark-ignited internal combustion engines (also known as petrol engines). It consists mostly of organic c ...
tanks were at the very rear of the hull, so the fuel lines had to run along the whole length of the vehicle, pumping fuel to a secondary tank that fed the engine by gravity. The engine was lubricated and partially cooled by oil; leakage was common and the original reservoir had to be replaced by a one. The tank could be electrically started, but only if the motor was already warm, so the first start had to be done by hand from the inside of the vehicle. Maximum speed was about and the range about . There was a cylindrical bevelled turret on top of the hull that carried a "Quick Firing" (shell and cartridge in one complete round) three-pounder gun (47 mm calibre) and four ball mountings for Hotchkiss machine guns. A novel, unique feature was a three-man turret. This meant that commander was not distracted with performing either the loader's or gunner's tasks and could fully concentrate on maintaining situational awareness. This gave a huge potential combat advantage, but went largely unnoticed at the time. Except for the Lago prototype, a predecessor to the
Stridsvagn m/42 Stridsvagn m/42 (Strv m/42) was a Swedish medium tank in service in the World War II period. Known by its manufacturer AB Landsverk as Lago II-III-IV, it fielded a 75 mm L/31 gun, the first of its size in a Swedish tank. It entered service ...
, produced by
Landsverk :''This is about the origin of the family name Landsverk. For the Swedish heavy industry manufacturer, see AB Landsverk.'' Landsverk is the name of two forest farms located in the village of Lisleherad, in the municipality of Notodden, Norway ...
in 1934 no other manufacturer constructed a tank with a three-man turret until the German
Panzer III The ''Panzerkampfwagen III'', commonly known as the Panzer III, was a medium tank developed in the 1930s by Germany, and was used extensively in World War II. The official German ordnance designation was Sd.Kfz. 141. It was intended to fight ot ...
. The practical importance of this feature is signified by the fact that later into the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
, most of both sides tank designs either quickly switched to the three-man turret, or were abandoned as obsolete. There was no co-axial machine gun. There was only room to operate one machine gun from the turret; normally one gun was switched between the respective mountings as the guns were removable. The turret machine gunner doubled as main gun loader. In each side of the hull was a Vickers machine gun. There was one gunner to operate these, he also functioned as a mechanic. The shape of the Mark I Medium hull was very distinctive. The back was a simple armoured box; the front plate was high and perfectly vertical. Between them, from the armoured hood of the driver at the right of the vehicle six armour plates fanned out to the left, making for a complex hull geometry at that side. In all the tank made an ungainly squat impression. The crew of five was only poorly protected by 6.25 mm plating, rivetted to the chassis, barely enough to counter the threat posed by light machine guns. With its many shot traps the vehicle was unable to withstand even
anti-tank rifle An anti-tank rifle is an anti-materiel rifle designed to penetrate the armor of armored fighting vehicles, most commonly tanks, armored personnel carriers, and infantry fighting vehicles. The term is usually used for weapons that can be carri ...
fire and it had a high-profile. The internal lay-out worsened this vulnerability as the petrol tanks were inside the main compartment.


Operational history

The Medium Mark I replaced some of the Mark V heavy tanks. Together with its successor, the slightly improved Vickers Medium Mark II, it served in the
Royal Tank Regiment The Royal Tank Regiment (RTR) is the oldest tank unit in the world, being formed by the British Army in 1916 during the First World War. Today, it is the armoured regiment of the British Army's 12th Armoured Infantry Brigade. Formerly known as t ...
s, being the first type of the in total 200 tanks to be phased out in 1938. The Medium Mark I was the first tank to see "mass" production since the last of the ten Char 2C's was finished in 1921. As only about thirty of the next most produced tank, the Renault NC27, were built, the British Mediums represented most of the world tank production during the 1920s. They never fired a shot in anger and their performance in a real battle can only be speculated upon but, as the only modern tanks in existence in the decade after the First World War, they provided the British with a unique opportunity to test the many new ideas about mechanised warfare using real operational units. The knowledge thus gained would prove invaluable in the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
.


Operators

* *
Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, S ...
(proposed) – In 1926, the Reșița works proposed to locally produce a British Vickers tank under license. The tank would have weighed 10.5t and would have been able to reach 24 km/h. The proposal was rejected by the Romanian army because of the tank's characteristics being considered inadequate. Although not specifically stated, the given characteristics indicate that the tank in question was the Medium Mark I.


Variants

*Medium Mark I: first type of which thirty were built from 1924 onwards. *Medium Mark IA: fifty were built of a slightly improved type with 8 mm armour at the vertical surfaces, a split driver's hood, a bevelled back plate of the turret to facilitate anti-aircraft fire by the Hotchkiss machine gun and improved brow and chin pads for the gunners. The Mark IA's could be started from the outside. The troublesome bogies were replaced on all eighty tanks by a stronger type. *Medium Mark IA*: the original tank turrets were rebuilt and upgraded by removing the Hotchkiss mountings, installing a front
Vickers machine gun The Vickers machine gun or Vickers gun is a water-cooled .303 British (7.7 mm) machine gun produced by Vickers Limited, originally for the British Army. The gun was operated by a three-man crew but typically required more men to move and o ...
, compensating for its weight with a lead counterweight at the back of the turret and putting a "Bishops's Mitre" traversable
cupola In architecture, a cupola () is a relatively small, most often dome-like, tall structure on top of a building. Often used to provide a lookout or to admit light and air, it usually crowns a larger roof or dome. The word derives, via Italian, f ...
on top. *Medium Mark I CS and Medium Mark IA CS: a dozen tanks were rebuilt as close support vehicles, mainly for smoke laying, equipped with a 15-pounder mortar. *Experimental Wheel and Track Medium Mark I: this was a wheel-cum-track project of 1926 to improve strategic mobility by overcoming track wear. The tank could be elevated by jacks on four enormous rubber-tyred wheels, two to be lowered at its extremes, the front ones steerable. The back ones could be driven, making the vehicle look "rather like a house perched on a very inadequate roller skate"; more practical was to tow it by a truck. This vehicle was also equipped with an experimental driver's hood. The contraption was later removed. On one Medium Mark I the engine was replaced by a Ricardo diesel engine.


Surviving vehicles

One Vickers Medium Mark 1 has survived at the Special Service Battalion Museum,
Bloemfontein Bloemfontein, ( ; , "fountain of flowers") also known as Bloem, is one of South Africa's three capital cities and the capital of the Free State province. It serves as the country's judicial capital, along with legislative capital Cape To ...
,
South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring coun ...
.


Notes


References

* * {{Interwar tanks, style=wide Tanks of the United Kingdom Medium Mark I Medium tanks of the United Kingdom Interwar tanks of the United Kingdom Medium tanks History of the tank Military vehicles introduced in the 1920s