Now you'd have every right to ask, and quite justifiably too, why I couldn't write just one article about the Medium Tanks in general, instead of dealing with the Mk I and the Mk II separately. Well apart from the obvious fact that I need to write more articles rather than fewer, there is another reason. You see the two tanks are distinctly different - in the layout of the hull, the transmission systems they used and even the gun they mounted, and since I wanted to make that point I thought it would be better to deal with them individually, starting with the Mk I. It should also help to clarify matters from a reader's point of view. But first I need to say a word or two about Vickers Ltd. No matter what you might read elsewhere, the company did not build tanks during WW1. A number of firms it took over later did, which is the basis for most of the claims, and one of its subsidiaries, Wolseley Motors Ltd. was involved in the Medium D tank programme in 1919, but apart from that, Vickers' first experience of building tanks came with the construction of two experimental medium tanks in 1921 which I covered in a CMV article in May 2012.
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