Tank Drawing

The first combinations of the three principal components of the Tank appeared in the decade before World War One. In 1903, a Captain Levavasseur of the French Artillery proposed mounting a field gun in an armoured box on tracks. A Major in the British Army's Mechanical Transport Service suggested fixing a gun and armoured shield on a British type of track-driven vehicle. In 1911, a Lieutenant Engineer in the Austrian Army, Günther Burstyn, presented to the Austrian and Prussian War Ministries plans for a two-man tank with a gun in a revolving turret. In the same year an Australian civil engineer named Lancelot de Mole submitted a basic design for a tracked, armoured vehicle to the British War Office. In Russia, Vasiliy Mendeleev designed a tracked vehicle containing a large naval gun.
All of these ideas were rejected and, by 1914, forgotten, although it was officially acknowledged after the War that de Mole's design was at least the equal of the tanks that were later produced by Great Britain, and he was voted a cash payment for his contribution. Various individuals continued to contemplate the use of tracked vehicles for military applications, but by the outbreak of the War no one in a position of responsibility in any army had any thoughts about Tanks.
• World War I