The D-Day landings of mainland Europe on June 6, 1944 involved the most extensive wartime planning, with the most men and equipment, the world had ever seen. Over five thousand ships carried troops across the English Channel to Normandy, while eight hundred planes dropped thirteen thousand paratroopers who were the advanced attack force. A further
Tanks developed much more rapidly in World War II than any time before, with all the major tank building countries designing and making bigger, faster, better armored tanks as the war progresses. The UK had been the leader in cutting edge tank technology in World War One, but by the outbreak of World War Two
During World War Two, especially in the period when Hitler had almost total control over Europe before D-Day, the tank proved itself capable in some of the most unlikely places on Earth.
After being victorious in Europe, Hitler decided to turn on his Russian allies and invade their country in a campaign named Operation Barbarossa
Two German Army Groups sped across the borders of Poland on September 1st 1939. Leading the assault that began the Second World War were two Panzer Groups engaged in trapping and destroying the Polish Army in a massive pincer formation.
The Germans were aware that the Polish would be hard to beat psychologically, emboldened by
During World War I British tanks were involved in 3060 separate battles, French Tanks were involved in 4356 battle and American tanks in 250. Germany was slow to adapt to the idea of tanks so that their tank presence during WWI battles was practically non-existent.
Still, despite their success in WWI, the future of the
The attack of Cambrai by the British was not success because the heavy tanks were unable to keep up the advance. Therefore, in 1917 the Ministry of Munitions gave the go ahead to create a new tank, the Medium A, to exploit the shortcomings of the heavy tanks.
The Medium A tank had a low
The idea of armored vehicles wasn't new to the Germans, German and Austrian engineers had in fact tinkered with armoring vehicles before the First World War but they'd had a hard time convincing higher authorities that they were useful.
Indeed, it wasn't until the British attacked with tanks at Flers that the German authorities realized
After the invention of the tank in Britain, France was developing her own tank designs totally independently of the British, which meant their versions of the tank were quite a bit different. They began in a similar way to the British, developing tracked farm vehicles, but they also gave wheeled tractors a try as well
While the use of tanks in France and Belgium may not have being a roaring success to begin with, or at least not as big a success as was hoped, they did fare rather better in the less muddy conditions of the Middle-East, fighting the Turkish Army at Gaza in Palestine.
The Turkish were eventually
There was an increased interest in these new war machines after their initial successes in the Somme in 1916 and more people came to sign up to drive them. The small tank companies became larger battalions, which all coincided with the government ordering 1000 tanks to be made ASAP. Two more tanks, the Mark II
The new Heavy Section tank unit moved to France in August 1916, following the British General Staff's command that they needed the new vehicles in use as soon as possible because of disastrous losses during the Somme offensive the previous month.
A second attack began on September 15th 1916 with C and D Companies' thirty
During the building phase of 'Little Willie', Tritton and Wilson were working on its successor, which would be able to meet the War Office's new requirements of traversing a trench 8 feet 6 inches (2.6 meters) across and climb over obstacles up to 4 and a half feet (1.37 meters) high.
The new machine was