117 Fun Facts About Tank

Why were the first British armoured vehicles called "tanks"?

To keep their purpose secret, the hulls were described to factory workers as mobile water tanks bound for Mesopotamia, and the Landships Committee adopted the word 'tank' in December 1915.

Which British commander-in-chief first sent tanks into battle?

Douglas Haig, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, committed all 49 tanks that were ready on 15 September 1916 despite their small number and hastily trained crews; several broke down before reaching the start.

Vehicle 131 at Bovington, captured in Tunisia in 1943 and restored to running order, is which German heavy tank?

Tiger I number 131 was disabled in Tunisia in April 1943 when a 6-pounder shot jammed its turret; restored to running order at Bovington, it played the German tank in the 2014 film Fury.

Which Soviet medium tank, famed for its sloped armour, was WWII's most-produced tank?

The T-34's sloped armour and 76 mm gun outmatched German tanks in 1941, and Germany designed the Panther as a direct answer; more than 80,000 T-34s were built, including post-war T-34-85s.

The M4 Sherman was named by the British after a general from which war?

The American Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman, who marched through Georgia in 1864, gave his name to the M4; the British named their Lend-Lease American tanks after US generals.

In which city did the lone "Tank Man" halt a column of tanks in June 1989?

Beijing's Chang'an Avenue, beside Tiananmen Square, was the scene on 5 June 1989: the man with the shopping bags then climbed onto the lead tank to speak to its crew before two men pulled him away; he has never been identified.

What does the German word "blitzkrieg" literally mean?

Blitz means lightning and Krieg means war, so blitzkrieg is literally 'Lightning war'; Germany's 1939-40 campaigns massed tanks with motorised infantry and aircraft to punch through and collapse enemy fronts.

Which future prime minister created the Landships Committee in 1915 to develop the first tanks?

Winston Churchill created the Landships Committee in February 1915, backing trench-crossing machines when the War Office showed little interest; its first prototype was running before the end of 1915.

Which country developed the Leclerc main battle tank and has fielded it since 1992?

France fields the Leclerc, named for Marshal Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque, whose 2nd Armoured Division liberated Paris in August 1944; it entered French service in 1992 to replace the AMX-30.

The Type 99 is the first mass-produced third-generation main battle tank of which country?

China unveiled the prototype, the Type 98, at its 1999 National Day parade, then put an improved version into army service in 2001 as the Type 99.

The "tank biathlon", a military sport, was launched in 2013 by which country's armed forces?

Russia's armed forces staged the first contest at the Alabino range near Moscow: as in ski biathlon, crews race laps over rough ground, firing at targets on each lap, and a miss costs a penalty loop.

The Soviet IS heavy tanks, including the IS-2 that spearheaded the assault on Berlin, were named after whom?

IS stands for Iosif Stalin, Joseph Stalin in English; the series was designed in 1943 as breakthrough tanks after a Tiger was captured near Leningrad, and the line ended with the T-10.

The American M48 tank carries the name of which Second World War general?

The M48 Patton honours General George S. Patton, who set up the US Army's first tank school in 1917 and was wounded leading its light tanks into battle on the Western Front in September 1918.

Which Renaissance figure sketched a never-built armoured vehicle often called the first tank design?

Leonardo da Vinci promised Milan's ruler Ludovico Sforza armoured wagons in a letter seeking work around 1482, then sketched the cone-shaped, cannon-ringed vehicle, to be cranked along by men inside.

What was the nickname of the first completed tank prototype in history, built in 1915?

Little Willie is said to borrow the British press's irreverent nickname for Germany's Crown Prince Wilhelm; first run in September 1915, it survives at Bovington as the oldest tank in existence.

The prototype that became the pattern for Britain's First World War tanks was nicknamed what?

Mother, officially His Majesty's Land Ship Centipede, was run over a mock battlefield of trenches and wire for ministers and generals in February 1916; the trial won an order for 100 tanks, the Mark I.

British Mark I 'Male' tanks carried cannon, while 'Female' tanks carried only what?

Machine guns alone armed the Female: half of the 150 Mark Is got Vickers guns instead of 6-pounders, whether for want of cannon or, as Ernest Swinton urged, so that pairs could shield each other from infantry.

The first tank-versus-tank action, in April 1918, pitted British Mark IVs against which German tank?

The A7V was the only German-built tank to fight in the war, with just 20 completed; Germany fielded more captured British Mark IVs, around 50, than A7Vs of its own.

Which November 1917 battle opened with more than 400 British tanks attacking without a long preliminary bombardment?

Cambrai, launched on 20 November 1917, sent 476 tanks through the Hindenburg Line for gains of up to 8 km in a day; about 180 of them were out of action by nightfall, though only 65 had been destroyed.

Which French light tank of 1917-18 was the first production tank with a fully rotating turret?

The Renault FT put the crew in front, the engine behind and the gun in a turret that turned full circle, a layout tanks still follow; over 3,000 were built, most of them in 1918.

Heinz Guderian's influential 1937 book on armoured warfare was titled what?

Achtung – Panzer! (1937) argued for concentrating tanks in independent armoured divisions; Guderian then led XIX Corps' thrust through the Ardennes and across the Meuse at Sedan in May 1940.

The Soviet 5th Guards Tank Army charged an SS panzer corps on 12 July 1943 in a clash named after which place?

Prokhorovka cost Pavel Rotmistrov's army hundreds of tanks in a single day's charge, far more than the Germans lost, yet the SS advance stalled there and the offensive was soon called off.

Which Soviet tank series, with up to 100,000 built, is history's most-produced tank?

The T-54/T-55 line was built in the USSR, Poland and Czechoslovakia into the 1980s; after Hungarians drove a captured T-54 into the British embassy in Budapest in 1956, a look at its armour prompted Britain's L7 gun.

What is the British-developed ceramic composite armour of the M1 Abrams and Challenger tanks commonly called?

Chobham armour was developed in the 1960s at a British tank research centre in Surrey; the first tank to carry it was America's M1 Abrams, and its exact make-up is still secret.

Tandem warheads, with a small precursor charge ahead of the main one, were developed to defeat what tank protection?

Reactive armour sandwiches explosive between steel plates that fly apart to break up a shaped-charge jet; a tandem warhead's precursor sets the brick off early so the main charge meets bare steel.

What is the lightweight shell around a kinetic-energy tank round's dart, discarded after leaving the barrel, called?

A sabot is the lightweight carrier that fills the bore around the narrow penetrator so propellant gas can push it, then falls away at the muzzle; the dense tungsten or depleted-uranium dart flies on alone.

Soviet tanks since the T-64 need only three crew because a machine replaced which crewman?

The loader gave way to a carousel autoloader in the T-64, which let designers make the tank smaller and lighter; the T-72, T-80 and T-90 followed, while the Abrams and Challenger 2 keep a fourth man to load.

Which country built the turretless Stridsvagn 103, a tank aimed by steering and tilting its whole hull?

Sweden's Strv 103, the 'S-tank', swung on its tracks to traverse the fixed gun and pitched on its suspension to elevate it, which gave it a very low profile; it served from 1967 to 1997.

What headline feature sets the T-14 Armata apart from earlier main battle tanks?

An unmanned turret is the T-14 Armata's headline feature, with the crew sealed in an armoured capsule ahead of it; at a rehearsal for its 2015 Moscow parade debut, one stopped dead on Red Square and resisted a tow before driving off.

The Israeli Merkava breaks with most tank designs by placing its engine where?

At the front: the Merkava's engine and transmission sit ahead of the crew compartment as extra protection against frontal hits, which frees a rear hatch through which the tank can carry a few infantry or evacuate casualties.

What does "Merkava" mean in Hebrew?

Merkava is Hebrew for 'Chariot', the war chariot of the Bible; Israel Tal led the programme after foreign tank purchases fell through, and the Merkava Mark 1 entered service in 1979.

The M1 Abrams is unusual among main battle tanks for using what kind of engine?

A gas turbine, the 1,500 hp AGT1500, powers the Abrams because Chrysler's winning prototype used one while General Motors' rival ran on a diesel; it will burn diesel, petrol or jet fuel.

Which German firm makes the Leopard 2's 120 mm gun, also licence-built for the Abrams?

Rheinmetall's 120 mm smoothbore arms the Leopard 2; the first M1 Abrams tanks carried a British-designed 105 mm gun until the M1A1 switched to a licence-built copy of the German weapon, the M256.

The British Challenger 2 stands out among modern main battle tanks for having what kind of main gun?

A rifled barrel sets the Challenger 2 apart: its 120 mm L30A1 descends from the Chieftain's L11 and fires spin-stabilised HESH rounds, while the Leopard 2, Abrams and most other modern tanks use smoothbores.

At 188 tonnes, which German prototype of 1944 is the heaviest tank ever built?

Maus, German for 'mouse', was too heavy for bridges, so it was designed to cross rivers along the bottom, breathing through a snorkel and powered by cable from a second Maus on the bank; only two hulls were completed.

Instead of tracks, the 1915 Tsar Tank rolled on what?

Two giant spoked wheels, each nearly 9 metres across, carried Nikolai Lebedenko's Tsar Tank, with a small roller behind; its engines could not free the rear roller from soft ground at the 1915 trial, and it was scrapped.

The Bob Semple tank, built from corrugated iron on a tractor base in World War II, came from which country?

New Zealand's Minister of Works, Bob Semple, had the tank improvised on a Caterpillar D8 tractor from June 1940, when the country feared a Japanese invasion and could expect no tanks from Britain; it never entered production.

The armoured bulldozer dubbed the "Killdozer" demolished buildings in Granby in 2004 — in which US state?

Granby, Colorado, a small town in Grand County, was where welder Marvin Heemeyer drove his concrete-and-steel-armoured Komatsu bulldozer through 13 buildings on 4 June 2004 over a zoning dispute.

The swimming "DD" Sherman tanks used on D-Day earned what nickname?

Donald Duck was the troops' name for the Duplex Drive tanks: a raised canvas screen gave buoyancy and twin propellers drove them, but 27 of the 29 launched by one battalion off Omaha Beach sank in rough seas.

The mine-flail, flamethrower and bridge-laying tanks of Britain's 79th Armoured Division on D-Day were nicknamed what?

Hobart's Funnies took their name from Major-General Percy Hobart, a tank pioneer forced into retirement in 1940 and serving as a Home Guard lance corporal when Churchill had him recalled to the Army.

The Battle of 73 Easting, 'the last great tank battle of the 20th century', was in which war?

The 1991 Gulf War battle of 26 February 1991 saw the US 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment destroy scores of Iraqi Republican Guard tanks and vehicles; '73 Easting' is a north-south map grid line in the featureless desert.

The British Centurion, introduced in 1945, first saw combat in which war?

The Korean War was the Centurion's first action: the 8th King's Royal Irish Hussars took Centurions to Korea in late 1950 and fought at the Imjin River in April 1951; prototypes had reached Belgium in May 1945, just too late.

J. Walter Christie's 1919 prototype tank could do what that most tanks could not?

Run on wheels without its tracks: Christie's convertible design let the crew take the tracks off and drive on the road wheels at speed; the Soviets bought two of his later prototypes in 1930 and built the BT fast tanks on their suspension.

The Rolls-Royce Meteor tank engine was a de-rated version of which aero engine?

The Merlin, the V12 that powered the Spitfire and Lancaster, was de-rated and stripped of its supercharger to become the Meteor, which powered the Cromwell, Comet, Centurion and Conqueror; Rover took over its production in 1943.

The saucer-shaped hull of the Soviet Object 279 heavy tank was designed to withstand what?

The blast wave of a nuclear explosion was the threat: the flattened, saucer-like hull was shaped to stop the tank being flipped over, and four sets of tracks spread its 60 tonnes over soft ground.

Which British infantry tank earned the nickname "Queen of the Desert" in 1940-41?

The Matilda II, with 78 mm frontal armour that Italian guns could not pierce, dominated Operation Compass in 1940-41 and earned the title 'Queen of the Desert'; the German 88 mm ended its reign in 1941.

The Sherman Firefly was a British conversion that mounted which powerful anti-tank gun?

The 17-pounder, Britain's 76.2 mm anti-tank gun, was squeezed into the Sherman's turret to make the Firefly, which could defeat Panthers and Tigers at normal combat ranges; crews painted the barrel to disguise its tell-tale length.

Which was the most numerous German tank of World War II, and the only one in continuous production throughout?

The Panzer IV, about 8,500 built, began as an infantry-support tank with a short 75 mm gun; after meeting heavier Soviet armour in 1941 it was given a long gun and swapped roles with the Panzer III as Germany's main tank.

Which agricultural machinery firm in Lincoln built the first British tank prototypes?

William Foster & Co., makers of traction engines and threshing machines, built the first prototypes in 1915; its managing director William Tritton and Lieutenant Walter Wilson drew up the designs in a room at Lincoln's White Hart Hotel.

Which 1903 H. G. Wells short story imagined armour-plated, trench-crossing fighting machines?

The Land Ironclads, published in the Strand Magazine in December 1903, described 30-metre armoured machines on pedrail wheels crossing trenches; Wells later said he had merely taken up an idea, manipulated it slightly and handed it on.

In which English county is The Tank Museum at Bovington Camp?

Dorset is home to The Tank Museum at Bovington Camp, near Wareham; Rudyard Kipling suggested a museum after seeing the salvaged wrecks there in 1923, and the collection grew to around 300 vehicles.

Which British service set up the Landships Committee that developed the first tanks in 1915?

The Royal Navy took it on: the Admiralty's Landships Committee of 1915 and Royal Naval Air Service officers who had run armoured cars in Flanders drove the work, which is why the vehicles were first called landships.

Which Soviet general's massed tank-and-air attack crushed the Japanese 6th Army at Khalkhin Gol in 1939?

Georgy Zhukov's encirclement of 20 August 1939 trapped the Japanese 6th Army with some 500 tanks; the defeat helped turn Japan away from striking north at the USSR and won Zhukov his first Hero of the Soviet Union star.

What nickname was given to the Churchill AVRE's 40 lb Petard mortar round?

Flying Dustbin was the crews' name for the 40 lb demolition bomb lobbed by the Churchill AVRE's Petard spigot mortar, which Royal Engineers used at close range to smash bunkers and roadblocks from D-Day onward.

British-turret versions of the American M3 tank were called "Grant"; what were the US-turret versions called?

Lee was the US-turret M3, honouring Confederate general Robert E. Lee, while the British-turret version honoured Union commander Ulysses S. Grant; the 75 mm gun sat in a hull sponson with limited traverse.

In the 1940 campaign in the West, many French tanks lacked what every German tank had?

Radios were missing from most French tanks, while German tanks all carried at least a receiver, so German commanders could redirect and mass their armour on the move; French tanks were also often spread out in 'penny packets'.

At which 1942 battle did Rommel's Panzer Army lose most of its tanks and begin its long retreat to Tunisia?

El Alamein, fought from 23 October to 11 November 1942, cost Rommel about 500 of his 547 tanks; in London, Churchill called the victory 'perhaps, the end of the beginning'.

Germany's little two-man Panzer I of the 1930s was originally intended purely as what?

A training tank was all the Panzer I was meant to be, and it was developed under the cover name 'agricultural tractor' to veil its purpose; it still fought in Spain, Poland and the West.

What position did the driver of the British Chieftain tank take when closed down for battle?

Lying almost flat on his back: reclining the driver let the designers lower the hull front and slope its armour steeply, an idea first tried on the FV4202 test tank built from Centurion parts.

The French Char B1 heavy tank carried its 75 mm gun where?

In the hull sat the Char B1's 75 mm howitzer, with a 47 mm gun in the turret above; at Stonne in May 1940 one B1 bis destroyed 13 German tanks and drove home after taking 140 hits.

Which 15th-century Hussite commander fought from armoured war wagons carrying cannon, an ancestor of the tank?

Jan Žižka chained armed wagons into mobile forts bristling with handguns and small cannon, and went on commanding the Hussite armies after a siege wound left the one-eyed general totally blind.

Tanks went into battle for the first time at which engagement of the Battle of the Somme?

Flers-Courcelette opened on 15 September with only 49 tanks on hand; many broke down before or during the advance, yet a few crawled into the village of Flers and helped the infantry take it.

Which French artillery colonel, later called 'Father of the Tanks', urged Joffre in 1915 to build tracked armoured vehicles?

Jean Estienne wrote to Joffre in December 1915 urging a force of tracked armoured vehicles; early the next year the army ordered 400 Schneider tanks, and he went on to lead its new tank arm.

Besides four gun crew, what did a British Mark I tank's other four do?

Drive it: one man worked the brakes, one the main gearbox and one the gears for each track, all four toiling in step amid deafening engine noise and heat near 50°C.

What became of the turreted Motorgeschütz that Austrian officer Günther Burstyn designed in 1911?

It was never built: Austria-Hungary's war ministry would not pay to test Burstyn's tracked, turreted design, Germany showed no interest either, and he let the idea drop.

The first tank-versus-tank action was fought on 24 April 1918 at which French location?

Villers-Bretonneux, near Amiens, is where the German tank Nixe drove off two British 'Female' Mark IVs before Frank Mitchell's 'Male' knocked it out with its 6-pounder guns.

The Israeli Merkava's TROPHY system is an example of what kind of tank technology?

Active protection: Trophy's radar spots an incoming rocket or missile and fires a burst of projectiles to destroy it before it hits, and the US Army went on to fit the Israeli system to its own Abrams tanks.

In which James Bond film does 007 chase a kidnapper through St Petersburg at the controls of a tank?

GoldenEye's tank chase was the largest stunt sequence in the film and took around six weeks to shoot, partly on the real streets and partly on a studio backlot.

Which action-film star paid $20,000 to ship home the tank he had driven during his national service?

Arnold Schwarzenegger crewed the M47 as a conscript in the Austrian Army in 1965, and decades later he brought that same vehicle over to the United States.

At which Berlin crossing point did American and Soviet tanks face each other 100 yards apart in October 1961?

Checkpoint Charlie saw ten tanks a side stand facing each other weeks after the Wall went up, until Washington and Moscow agreed to pull them back.

Which actor plays 'Wardaddy', the Sherman commander at the centre of the 2014 tank film Fury?

Brad Pitt's crew rode a genuine wartime Sherman lent by a British museum, and the film was shot in Britain partly because working Second World War tanks were available there.

Which leader climbed onto a tank outside Moscow's parliament to rally crowds against the August 1991 coup attempt?

Boris Yeltsin offered amnesty to any soldier who changed sides, and as units defected the coup collapsed within days.

Which future US president spent World War I running the Army's tank training camp at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania?

Dwight D. Eisenhower made Camp Colt his first command, but he never reached the front: the armistice was signed a week before he was due to leave for France.

Tank tracks share a nickname with which crawling creature, a word tractor maker Benjamin Holt trademarked?

Caterpillar stuck after a company photographer remarked that the track rising and falling over its rollers looked like one, and the firm later took the word as its name.

Soviet tanks rolled into which Central European capital in November 1956 to crush a fifteen-day uprising?

Budapest's revolutionaries fought the armour in the streets with small arms and Molotov cocktails before the city fell.

Which 1988 US presidential candidate saw a photo opportunity riding in an M1 Abrams tank backfire badly?

Michael Dukakis meant to look strong on defence, but the image of him in the crew helmet was ridiculed and his rival's campaign turned the footage into a television ad.

Which Hollywood star commands the tank Lulubelle against an Afrika Korps battalion in the 1943 film Sahara?

Humphrey Bogart got the part only after it had first been offered to Gary Cooper, Glenn Ford and Brian Donlevy.

In which Indiana Jones film does Indy battle a Nazi colonel on top of a First World War-style tank?

The Last Crusade had its tank built from scratch over the frame of a 28-ton excavator, with the tracks driven by a pair of Range Rover V8 engines.

The M1 Abrams honours Creighton Abrams, whose tanks helped relieve which Belgian town in the Battle of the Bulge?

Bastogne's surrounded paratroopers were reached by a relief effort he helped lead, and in 1980 the US Army named its new main battle tank after him.

Named after the sloping bank outside a fortress wall, what is the angled front plate of a tank's hull called?

Glacis plates are the largest target a rival gunner sees head-on, so designers slope them: shots tend to glance off or must cut through more metal.

Britain's fast Medium Mark A tank of 1918 took its nickname from which breed of racing hound?

Whippet suited a machine built to race through gaps that the slow heavy tanks had opened, and the name is traditionally credited to the engineer who proposed it.

Why did Britain's Tank Corps choose black for the beret it modelled on French Alpine troops' headgear?

It hid oil stains, and any cap with a peak was useless inside early tanks because crews had to hold their eyes right up against tiny vision slits.

The hit online game World of Tanks comes from Wargaming, a studio founded in 1998 in which Eastern European capital?

Minsk is where Victor Kislyi set up the studio, which spent a decade making strategy titles before it switched to free-to-play online combat.

Which official British war correspondent of 1914 urged armouring Holt tractors and helped coin the name 'tank'?

Ernest Swinton said the idea struck him while driving behind the front in October 1914, after a friend's letter had described an American tracked tractor.

Which 1980 Atari arcade game, played from inside a wireframe tank, was adapted to train US Army gunners?

Battlezone so impressed the military that a version called The Bradley Trainer followed, though its programmer joined only after a promise of no more army work.

Which singer served with a US Army tank battalion in West Germany, where he met his future wife?

Elvis Presley trained on tanks at Fort Hood before joining the 3rd Armored Division in Germany, where he worked as an armor intelligence specialist.

What nickname describes a tank's turret being blown skyward by its own exploding ammunition, a known T-72 weakness?

Jack-in-the-box is the grim name for it: exploding shells build pressure inside the sealed hull until it bursts out at the weakest point, the ring where the turret sits.

Which British reconnaissance tank set a Guinness record as the fastest production tank, topping 82 km/h in 2002?

Scorpion designers had to meet tight limits on size and weight, so they gave it an aluminium alloy hull and an adapted Jaguar car engine.

British tank gunners long favoured HESH rounds, whose name stands for 'high-explosive' followed by which two words?

Squash head describes it exactly: the soft explosive flattens into a pat against the plate before it goes off, and the shock throws metal scabs off the inside wall.

What propels the amphibious Soviet PT-76 light tank when it swims, mounted one on each side of its hull?

Hydrojets suck in water beneath the hull and blast it out at the rear, letting the PT-76 swim at about 10 km/h for as far as 100 km.

The M551 Sheridan light tank, built to be dropped by parachute, could fire which guided missile through its gun?

Shillelagh missiles made the Sheridan's combined gun and launcher advanced but troublesome, and the tanks sent to Vietnam went without the missile system altogether.

The 1973 Yom Kippur War tank battle remembered as the 'Valley of Tears' was fought in which disputed territory?

Golan Heights defenders were massively outnumbered yet held on, and on the fourth day the Syrians withdrew just as the Israeli line neared collapse.

India's home-grown Arjun main battle tank is named after an archer prince from which ancient epic poem?

Mahabharata hero Arjuna gives the tank its name, and the armour that protects it is named in turn after Kanchanbagh, the place where it was developed.

The Musée des Blindés, one of the world's largest tank museums, is in which Loire Valley town?

Saumur trained cavalry officers for more than a century, which is why the armoured branch's school and its huge vehicle collection are found there.

A Leopard 2 tank can drive through water four metres deep once fitted with which piece of equipment?

A snorkel lifts the fording depth from 1.2 metres with no preparation to four, so the tank simply drives along the riverbed instead of floating.

During the Cold War, NATO planners expected a Soviet tank attack through which lowland corridor near Frankfurt?

Fulda Gap defences became a centrepiece of NATO planning because the two lowland corridors there offered attacking armour a direct route to the Rhine crossings.

Which animals did the Red Army train to carry explosive charges up to advancing German tanks?

Dogs proved unreliable: they had been trained on diesel-engined Soviet tanks, so in battle many sought out that familiar smell instead of the petrol-engined enemy.

German tanks surprised the Allies in May 1940 by driving through which forest region thought impassable to armour?

The Ardennes had been written off by French planners, who ignored intelligence warnings of long armoured columns stuck in a huge traffic jam there.

What kind of decoy tanks did the American 'Ghost Army' use to fool German reconnaissance in 1944 and 1945?

Inflatable ones were pumped up with air compressors and then camouflaged badly on purpose, so that enemy observers would be sure to spot them.

Germany's dreaded '88', which ambushed British tanks in the North African desert, was designed to shoot at what?

Aircraft were its intended prey, but the carriage let it fire at ground targets while still on its wheels, and its success inspired a tank gun based on it.

Which German general led the tank division nicknamed the 'Ghost Division' in the 1940 campaign in the West?

Erwin Rommel got the command only after Hitler intervened on his behalf, and he took it up just three months before the offensive began.

The Sherman Crab, a specialised British tank of 1944, cleared paths through minefields by doing what?

Flailing the ground with chains set mines off harmlessly ahead of the tank: a spinning rotor carried 43 of them, driven by the Sherman's own engine.

The steel 'Rhino' tusks welded to American tanks in Normandy in 1944 were made to break through what?

Hedgerows up to 15 feet high boxed in the Norman fields, and the first tusks were cut from the steel obstacles the Germans had planted on the invasion beaches.

The Ferdinand tank destroyer of 1943 took its name from its designer, the founder of which German carmaker?

Porsche had already built the hulls for a heavy tank contract that his firm then lost to a rival design, so they were recycled into these tank destroyers.

Soviet widow Mariya Oktyabrskaya sold all her possessions to donate a tank to the Red Army on what condition?

That she could drive it was her request, and it was granted: she trained as a driver and mechanic and named the tank 'Fighting Girlfriend'.

How did the British Army deliver its Tetrarch light tanks to the Normandy battlefield on D-Day?

By glider: each rode in a specially designed Hamilcar, an aircraft planned from the start to carry either a single Tetrarch or two Universal Carriers.

Which industrial city in the Urals was nicknamed 'Tankograd' for the tanks it built during World War II?

Chelyabinsk's industries turned out 18,000 tanks and 48,500 tank diesel engines during the war, built around a tractor plant that had opened only in 1933.

British crews nicknamed which American light tank the 'Honey' because of its smooth ride?

Stuart crews prized its speed and reliability, and in the Philippines in December 1941 it became the first American-crewed tank of the war to fight enemy armour.

The 't' in the German designation of the 38(t) light tank came from the German word for which nationality?

Czech in German is 'tschechisch': the tank was developed by the firm ČKD and adopted by Germany after it occupied Czechoslovakia.

The ridged Zimmerit paste that coated many later German tanks of World War II was meant to defeat which weapon?

Magnetic mines could not cling through the coating, but Germany stopped applying it in September 1944 over a fear that shell hits could set it alight, a fear that proved false.

Which carmaker built and ran the Detroit Arsenal, the plant set up in 1940 to mass-produce American tanks?

Chrysler put the plant up at record speed, and the first tanks rumbled out before the building itself was finished.

Percy Hobart, creator of the specialised 'Funnies' tanks of D-Day, was brother-in-law to which British field marshal?

Bernard Montgomery married Hobart's sister Elizabeth, and the specialised tanks his brother-in-law developed were credited with helping the Allies get ashore.

What nickname was given to the late-war M4A3 Sherman fitted with the new HVSS suspension?

Easy Eight came from the tank's experimental E8 designation, and the name fitted: the new suspension and wider tracks spread its weight for a far smoother ride.

The 60-tube rocket launcher mounted above some Sherman tank turrets was nicknamed after which musical instrument?

Calliope, a steam organ, has rows of parallel pipes much like the launcher's tubes, the lower two groups of which could be jettisoned.

The American M26 heavy tank of 1945 was named after which general?

John J. Pershing led the American Expeditionary Force in 1917 and 1918; the tank named for him began as a heavy but was later reclassed as a medium.

An Australian Centurion dubbed 'The Atomic Tank' survived a 1953 bomb test and later fought in which war?

Vietnam War service followed for tank 169041, which was driven away from the blast site three days after the test while it was still radioactive.

Germany's Goliath of World War II, a miniature tracked vehicle packed with explosives, was steered by what means?

A trailing cable some 650 metres long linked it to a joystick control box, and each one was single-use, destroyed when its own warhead went off.