Timeline
Eras of armour
Seventy-five years of trial, error and hard lessons, from a machine invented to cross a trench to one designed to survive a guided warhead.
WW1
1916-1918. The tank is invented to cross trenches and barbed wire. Rhomboid landships, the first rotating turret and the first tank-versus-tank fight.
Interwar
1919-1938. Cheap light tanks, export deals and doctrine arguments. Armies work out whether a tank should escort infantry or race behind the lines.
WW2
1939-1945. Six years of brutal iteration: sloped armour, long-barrelled guns, diesel engines and production on an industrial scale.
Early Cold War
1946-1962. The main battle tank arrives. One vehicle now does the work of the cruiser, infantry and heavy tanks that came before it.
Late Cold War
1963-1991. Composite armour, smoothbore guns, thermal sights and autoloaders. The template for every tank in service today.