Cars are getting bigger. Newer models of the Mini are 50 per cent larger than the 1959 original. Indeed, every time I leave the house I seem to encounter ever-expanding SUVs that threaten to block out the sun and decapitate anyone unfortunate enough to get in their way. But nothing, not even west London’s gaudiest, has anything that can match the awesome size and destructive power of the tank.
Upon hearing the rumbling of the first British-made Mark Is on 15 December 1916, German soldiers supposedly cried “the Devil is coming”. Like many early-stage technologies, tanks were cumbersome, slow (the Mark I had a top speed of 3.7mph) and prone to break down. And they were not advanced enough to end the trench stalemate and hand the allies swift victory. But the tank would go on to fundamentally change the nature of warfare in the twentieth century.
