Note 3 — Chapter II · THE MARK I. AND MARK IV. TANKS: THE FIRST COMPANIES.

Although the Navy has specialised in the science of mechanical warfare, and although the very idea of the “landship” involves the application on land of some of the principles of war at sea, the Army, as soon as it assumed control of the tanks, refused to profit by the expert knowledge at its disposal. Had it been possible, no doubt every trace of the tanks’ original parentage would have been sedulously erased. As it was, the sponson and the 6-pounder gun, for which no feasible military equivalents could be proposed, necessarily were retained; but on such technical questions as ventilation, the use of telegraphs, and the various mechanical contrivances in respect of which the tank, in its small way, resembles the engine-room of a ship, all the suggestions put forward by experienced nautical engineers were contemptuously rejected.