Matador Models 1/76 "Little Willie"

On the Real Thing

By the beginning of 1915 the Western Front was in deadlock with neither side able to penetrate the hail of machine-gun fire or cross the enemy trenches. The answer to the problem was to produce a Land Battleship. To co-ordinate operations, the Landship Committee was formed and their recommendations were that an armoured vehicle firing a high explosive shell should be produced capable of crossing a standard German trench of eight foot gap, and four foot mound. Various designs were tried ranging from vehicles that “walked” to gigantic powered wheels, but none were 100 per cent successful, or strategically satisfactory.

In America agricultural tractors with caterpillar tracks were receiving wide acclaim and the Landship Committee eventually purchased two “Creeping Grip” tractors from the Bullock Co of Chicago. After their initial tests the tracks were passed to Foster's of Lincoln, who under the direction and inspiration of William (later Sir William Tritton) had been responsible for many of the earlier designs. They produced a mild steel box with Bullock tracks and a standard 105 HP Foster petrol traction engine. This was named the No 1 Lincoln Machine (or Tritton No 1) . Long before its completion Tritton realised that the Bullock tracks were far too small for the overall size of the vehicle and he began work on custom built tracks to overcome these failings. The new tracks replaced the Bullock tracks and together with other minor modifications, the new tank, called “Little Willie”, began trials in November 1915.

Little Willie was about 26 feet long by 9 feet high, and weight was about 14 tons. Trackplates were 20.5 inches wide steel plates riveted to guided links. The 105hp engine was retained. Steering was achieved by applying brakes or clutch to one track, with minor course corrections made using rear tail wheels. The round plate on the superstructure blanked out the turret ring, which was to support a 2pdr gun giving a 360 degree transverse. A dummy gun had been fitted to the No 1 Lincoln machine, but it had been covered during trials. In this form Little Willie still did not meet the Committee's specifications as it was found to be top heavy and the proposed 2 pdr gun was not capable of delivering an HE shell. A revised design known as “Big Willie” or "Mother", was produced, and it became the basis for the Mk I, the first operational tank in the history of warfare.  

The Model

Matador Models kit is, as far as I know, the only one of this vehicle. It comes packed in a little box with orange cover, and is made in a grey and rather hard resin, with some finer details done in white metal. The main parts are a hull, the two track assemblies and that peculiar rear steering gear, typical of these first tanks. (For a more detailed breakdown, see the exemplary instructions supplied with the kit, which also contains painting instructions. 

Only one small problem: the exact mounting points for the tension wires of the steering assembly is not shown: you have to make a informed guess.) The mouldings are of good quality. Some details are a little bit fuzzy, but it will hardly be noticable in the finished kit. The rivets are well defined and well aligned.

There is also some moulding flash on some parts, noticably the rather complex framwork of the steering wheel, and that will need some cleaning up, but that is no big snag. The tracks are made up by lengths of track and individual track links.

The accuracy of the kit is very good, as far as I can see. There are some small problems in the front: the towing schackle is over-simplified, the mountings for the headlights are wrong - it should be a sort of a cradle - and the small horse-shoe attached to the top of the drivers compartment is missing, and also the ballast weights sometimes used in the mud chutes, to simulate the weight of the turret. But they have remembered other things, for instance that the lie of the top track run was not completely horizontal - as shown in some plans - but had a sort of step in it. 

The kit also contains instructions for the 1916 variant of "Little Willie". 

This is a nice kit. It can be bought directly from Matador Models, who are mentioned on the kitlist.