Flying Elephant
In service Never entered service - Cancelled 1916
A 1916 design for a 100-tonne shell-proof super-heavy, cancelled before a hull was finished. Never built.
Built byWilliam Foster and Co. (design)
Photograph pending. No clearly licensed photograph of this vehicle was found.
Development history
Sir William Tritton Flying Elephant was the first super-heavy tank design: a hundred tonnes of hull with up to 76 mm of frontal armour intended to shrug off direct artillery hits while escorting lighter tanks. With only 210 hp it would have been desperately underpowered, and once trials showed the Mark I could survive the front well enough the project was dropped in 1916 before completion. No vehicle was ever finished; the design is documented from drawings and correspondence. It is listed here as a project, not a service vehicle.
Notable actions
- None - never built