Our  September meeting was well attended with 89 members present, and a further 6 people who came along as visitors.

The September meeting was also our Macmillan Coffee Morning and a large selection of excellent cakes were available thanks to the generosity of our members. A total of £340 was raised on the day from the sale of cakes, teas and coffees.

Speaker

Our speaker was Andrew Blow who gave an interesting talk on the History of the Tank in World War 1, and concentrated primarily on the earliest days of the tank from its inception in Lincoln in 1915 to the first active service the following year.

Andrew showed a short film, thought to be the earliest known film of the first tanks undergoing testing in Lincoln. The film had been acquired by his uncle many years previously after being found in a can probably left at the old Astoria Cinema which used to operate in the Cornhill in Lincoln. The original prototype – “Little Willie” could be seen, along with members of the workforce from William Foster & Co. an agricultural engineering company in Lincoln.

Work on what we now know as the tank had begun early in 1915 with the creation of The Landship Committee, established by the then First Lord of the Admiralty – Winston Churchill, and which consisted primarily of Naval Officers, although once the War Office became aware of its existence the Landship Committee was reassigned to the army. Secrecy dictated that the work required a codename and tanks were referred to as “Watercarriers for Mesopotamia”.

In July 1915, William Tritton, then Managing Director of Foster & Co. secured the contract to build an armoured vehicle capable of crossing trenches using tracks rather than wheels. Fosters already had a contract to build tractors to pull naval guns to the Western Front.

A meeting took place in what is now known as The Tank Room at the White Hart Hotel in Lincoln between William Tritton, his chief draughtsman William Rigby and Walter Wilson who at the time was an officer in the Navy. Wilson later transferred to the Army with the rank of Major. Out of this meeting came the basic design for Tank Number 1. The prototype was called Little Willie,  and over the following months testing was carried out on an undulating test track which had been created on land close to the then Lincoln Avoiding Railway line, and which is now Tritton Road.

Eventually, the design of Tank Number 1 known as “Mother” was approved and tanks saw their first action at the Battle of Flers-Courcelette as part of the Somme Offensive in September 1916.

Andrew’s talk introduced us to Tritton’s test driver Charlie Maughan who kept an autograph book of all the people – famous and not so famous who came to see the tank in development, including one entry signed by King George V. He also described how, as the toll of war called for more men to sign up, which had a detrimental effect on Foster’s workforce the emergence of women “munichionettes” helped to overcome the shortage.

Lincoln’s and William Foster’s role in the development of the tank is now celebrated in the memorial on the roundabout at the end of Tritton Road.