The Flying Elephant was a proposed
super-heavy tank
A super-heavy tank is any tank that is notably beyond the standard of the class heavy tank in either size or weight relative to contemporary vehicles.
Programs have been initiated on several occasions with the aim of creating an extremely resi ...
, planned but never built by the
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies.
* British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...
during
World War I
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
.
Development
After the last
order
Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to:
* A socio-political or established or existing order, e.g. World order, Ancien Regime, Pax Britannica
* Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood
...
for an additional fifty
Mark I vehicles in April 1916, it was not certain that any more tanks were to be produced. Everything would depend on the success of the new weapon.
William Tritton, co-designer and co-producer of the Mark I, thought he already understood what would prove to be its main weakness. A direct hit by a
shell
Shell may refer to:
Architecture and design
* Shell (structure), a thin structure
** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses
Science Biology
* Seashell, a hard outer layer of a marine ani ...
would destroy the vehicle, a major drawback on a battlefield saturated with
artillery
Artillery consists of ranged weapons that launch Ammunition, munitions far beyond the range and power of infantry firearms. Early artillery development focused on the ability to breach defensive walls and fortifications during sieges, and l ...
fire. Tritton decided to design a tank that would be immune to medium artillery fire in April 1916.
Tritton was unsure what this would entail. He did not know how thick the
armour
Armour (Commonwealth English) or armor (American English; see American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, spelling differences) is a covering used to protect an object, individual, or vehicle from physical injury or damage, e ...
should be to ensure complete protection. The same month Lieutenant Kenneth Symes began to test 2 inch (51 mm) armour plate by firing at it with various captured
German guns. In June, this programme was expanded by testing several types of plate at
Shoeburyness, delivered by armour producer
William Beardmore and Company
William Beardmore and Company was a British engineering and shipbuilding Conglomerate (company), conglomerate based in Glasgow and the surrounding Clydeside area. It was active from 1886 to the mid-1930s and at its peak employed about 40,000 peo ...
. The
Tank Supply Committee approved the production of a
prototype
A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process. It is a term used in a variety of contexts, including semantics, design, electronics, and Software prototyping, software programming. A prototype ...
on 19 June 1916, but the design was not to be finalised until late August 1916.
Description
Partial drawings have survived and show a vehicle long and about tall and three metres wide, not that much larger than the
Mark I. However, the
weight
In science and engineering, the weight of an object is a quantity associated with the gravitational force exerted on the object by other objects in its environment, although there is some variation and debate as to the exact definition.
Some sta ...
was estimated at a hundred
tons, much heavier than the 28 tons of the Mark I. The huge increase in weight came from the enormously thick armour for the time (three inches at the front, two inches on the sides). The hull roof consisted of a horizontal half-cylinder, apparently also with a uniform armour two inches thick. The front was a vertical half-cylinder, the transition between the two being a half-dome.
Many sources claim that the main armament, a nose-mounted cannon, was a standard 57-millimetre
6-pounder gun. John Glanfield, in his history ''The Devil's Chariots'', states that it was a 75-millimetre or 13-pounder gun. A 6-pounder main gun for such a heavy machine would have meant half the main armament of contemporary vehicles. The preliminary design, for which partial blueprints are in the
Albert Stern archive at
King's College London
King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public university, public research university in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV ...
, featured two six-pounders in
sponson
Sponsons are projections extending from the sides of land vehicles, aircraft or watercraft to provide protection, Instantaneous stability, stability, storage locations, mounting points for weapons or other devices, or equipment housing.
Watercra ...
s either side of a bulbous nose equipped with no fewer than five machine guns. Each side had two
machine-gun positions on the flanks, with two more at the rear (the original Foster drawings make this quite clear; the reproduction of the drawings in David Fletcher's book ''British Tanks 1915–19'' is cropped and makes the rear guns ambiguous in nature). Originally, the shell-proof tank was referred to simply as the Heavy Tank, then Foster's Battle Tank. Where the nickname 'Flying Elephant' came from no one knows for sure, though it was probably the result of the trunk-like nose gun, domed front, and enormous bulk combined with a traditional British lightheartedness.

The tank was fitted with two pairs of
caterpillar track
Continuous track or tracked treads are a system of vehicle propulsion used in tracked vehicles, running on a continuous band of treads or track plates driven by two or more wheels. The large surface area of the tracks distributes the w ...
s. The outer tracks resembled those of the Mark I, but were flatter and 61 centimetres wide, while a pair of additional, narrower tracks were fitted to the underside approximately 6 inches higher than the main tracks. They were not intended to be used for normal driving but were to be engaged to give extra traction over rough ground and would have helped to prevent "bellying", i.e. the tank becoming stuck on higher ground between the two outer tracks. All four tracks could be simultaneously driven by two
Daimler 105 horsepower (78
kilowatt
The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of Power (physics), power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantification (science), quantify the rate of Work ...
) engines, positioned on the centre-line, with the inner tracks connected to the main units via
dog clutch
A dog clutch (also known as a dog box, dog gears, dog ring, clutch dog, or positive clutch) is a type of clutch that couples two rotating shafts or other rotating components by engagement of interlocking teeth or dogs rather than by friction. T ...
es. Each engine had its own primary
gearbox
A transmission (also called a gearbox) is a mechanical device invented by Louis Renault (who founded Renault) which uses a gear set—two or more gears working together—to change the speed, direction of rotation, or torque multiplication/r ...
, both of which drove into one single
differential. This differential powered two secondary gearboxes, one for each main track. This differs from the solution chosen for the later
Whippet
The Whippet is a British breed of dog of sighthound type. It closely resembles the Greyhound and the smaller Italian Greyhound, and is intermediate between them in size. In the nineteenth century it was sometimes called "the poor man's raceh ...
in which each engine drove its own track.
Results
It is certain that construction was started at some point, but did not result in a completed prototype.
Albert Gerald Stern, the head of the Tank Supply Department, wrote that the
War Office
The War Office has referred to several British government organisations throughout history, all relating to the army. It was a department of the British Government responsible for the administration of the British Army between 1857 and 1964, at ...
ordered the end of the project late in 1916, because it deemed mobility more important than protection.
Historian
David Fletcher speculated that the project ran into trouble because the vehicle was grossly underpowered; top speed was estimated at two miles per hour, and it seems unlikely that it could have worked itself free when stuck in mud. The fact that the Mark I series turned out to be a success removed one of Tritton's main motives for building the heavier tank. However,
John Glanfield writes that Tritton, in an effort to lighten the machine and make it more practicable, halved the thickness of the armour, reducing the overall weight to a still hefty 50–60 tons. Its appearance would have remained unchanged. Furthermore, the role of the Flying Elephant was changed from a vague 'attack' role to that of a 'tank-buster' when it was feared that the Germans were developing their own
armoured fighting vehicle
An armoured fighting vehicle (British English) or armored fighting vehicle (American English) (AFV) is an armed combat vehicle protected by vehicle armour, armour, generally combining operational mobility with Offensive (military), offensive a ...
s. Apparently, Stern planned to build twenty of the machines, before the project was cancelled.
Citations
References
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Further reading
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{{Use dmy dates, date=June 2017
Abandoned military projects of the United Kingdom
Super-heavy tanks
World War I tanks
History of the tank