A New Excalibur: The Development of the Tank 1909-1939

The story of the inventors, engineers, soldiers, and politicians behind the emergence of the armored fighting vehicle.The birth and infancy of the tank had an enormous number of technical problems to be solved--but the issues with its construction paled in comparison to the endless squabbles among the people involved. This fascinating study of the vehicle which was born out of the stalemate of the Western Front in the First World War looks at all the obstacles that had to be overcome.As is inevitable in almost any work of history set in the first half of the century, the figure of Winston Churchill looms large--but the role that he played in this instance is remarkable even by his standard, when it is remembered that at the crucial time he was First Lord of the Admiralty and theoretically had nothing to do with warfare on land. Foremost among the leading actors in the drama are Sir Eustace Tennyson-d'Eyncourt, Sir Ernest Swinton, Bertie Stern, Sir William Tritton, and Walter Gordon Wilson.This is the first exhaustive study of the men behind the earliest tanks. The story of their furious quarrels and the machines they produced combine to make a remarkable and compelling study.