The major starting point of World War I was when Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were assassinated. About a month later this then caused Austria-Hungary to officially declared war on Serbia on July 28th, 1914. By this time much of Europe had already become entangled in the dispute. However, the first tank did not appear until September 1916 at the Battle of Flers-Courcelette, in France. This was the first time tanks had been used in military conflict. 1 Tanks had a massive impact on WWI as they increased mobility greatly and now the soldiers were able to cross no man’s land, the area in between opposing trenches. However, tanks did break down a lot and the men in side were often left stranded. The main things tanks were useful …show more content…
The invention of tanks was quite remarkable, especially considering they had never been used in warfare before. The first tank was called “Little Willie”. It held 3 men and travelled at a speed of 3 mph but could not cross a trench wider than five feet. By 1918 the tanks were able to carry 24 soldiers on board. 3 The invention of tanks in WWI had an enormous impact. Before tanks arrived there was a stalemate in warfare. Both sides had dug trenches and were both heavily in defence, so when Lancelot de Mole came along and invented the tank, the British were able to break through. Therefore the enemies trenches and heavy barbed wire became useless with the might of tanks. 4 Tanks did have there downsides though, the major problem was that they were just too slow and couldn’t exceed more than 4 miles an hour. This caused them to get bogged down easily in the heavy mud of no-man’s land and did not have good mobility over cross country. No man’s land is a stretch of land representing the area of ground between opposing armies. It belongs to either of the armies. Tanks also had fairly poor firing power which was bad for when they were trying to attack from a distance.