Fighting armor with infantry - the T-Gewehr

Even early in the World War, armor-piercing ammunition was developed for rifles to help defeat trench armor. The Mark I and Mark II were somewhat vulnerable to the 7.92x57mm steel-cored K bullet, but the Mark IV was essentially impervious. Thus, the Germans created a rifle around a 13.2x92mm steel-cored round that had been in development for the Maxim machinegun.

The first "modern" tank - the Renault FT

The Renault FT was the first tank that looked like what modern readers will consider a tank - an armored chassis with a rotating turret on top containing the main armament. The design was done by the Societe des Automobiles Renault, who had declined Colonel Estienne's original request to produce an armored vehicle based on the Holt tractor (the Colonel would move on to the Schneider company that produced the CA1). After Colonel Estienne approached Louis Renault again, Renault agreed to produce an armored vehicle, but to his design.

Other Universes: The Grand Unified Traveller Universe

This essay is a bit different from my standard fare. It's a parallel Traveller universe, with an attempt to include some of the ideas and species from other GDW games. Your Mileage May Vary, caveat emptor, and here be dragons - this may not be for everyone. You have been warned.

The First Medium Tank - Mark A Whippet

While definitely useful, the heavy tanks lacked a certain flexibility on the battlefield due to their low speed and large size. The Medium Mark A, called the Whippet, filled a role that cavalry once filled, the faster unit used for scouting and to exploit holes opened up by their slower, heavier counterparts.

The last British Heavy - the Mark V

As German anti-tank weapons proliferated, even the Mark IV was showing flaws on the battlefield. The steering was problematic, it was vulnerable from behind, and the overheating machineguns were a significant flaw.

Incremental Improvement - the Tank Mark IV

While the Tank Mark I had been an impressive vehicle when it debuted, it was clear very quickly that it had significant flaws, some easy to fix, others less so. It was slow, difficult to maneuver, had a tendency to damage its heavy guns, had only 14-round strips for the Hotchkiss MGs, was thinly armored enough that special rifle bullets could penetrate the front armor, and had fuel tanks perched above the driver at the front of the tank. Clearly, improvements were needed.

Other Wars: In honor of the blog's Australian visitors

Editor's note: After coming back from TravellerCon US, I want to broaden my scope a bit, but still focus on the original intent. To help people recognize when I'm going off-topic, anything not connected to WW1 or the Interwar period will have the Other Wars title.

So the blog's been up for a few days now, and I've been checking in fairly regularly. It's been reassuring to see that there are visitors; there's always a bit of fear, I think, that an author is the only person interested in their topic. One thing I like with this is that it tracks general information on who's visiting - lots of Americans, the UK second, Canada and Germany tied for third. And then, in a tie for fifth, there's Australia. Australia gets forgotten about when discussing armor, probably even more than Canada does (the T2K Facebook group had a nice discussion about Ram tanks, Kangaroos, and Skinks just recently). So, while it's a little outside this blog's stated remit, I have a remedy.