United Kingdom

Mk V Tank

The worst fault in the early Mk I-IV, was the clumsy driving system, which required the services of no less than four men. Even before the Mark IV was built, it was realized that a better form of transmission was necessary and experiments were made to find alternative systems. This resulted eventually in the Mk V.  The Mark V was little changed in external aspect, but internally in addition to the new transmission it had a new six­cylinder engine specially designed for tank use by Mr H. Ricardo. The increased power gave the Mark V a higher speed of 4.6 m.p.h. The average speed of the Mark V was, however, even greater than the average of the Marks I-IV because the difficulty of changing gear in the earlier tanks meant that often this was neglected and an inferior performance resulted. The louvres on the hull sides near the rear are a feature which, together with the addition of a fixed observation cupola in the centre of the hull, most readily distinguishes the Mark V from the Mark IV. All Mark Vs used Hotchkiss machine­guns, but, otherwise the armament corresponded with that of Mark IV Male and Female respectively. Four hundred Mark Vs - equally divided between Male and Female - were built during 1918 and the first time they were in action was in July of that year. Later, when civil war erupted in Russia after the Bolshevik coup, Mk V:s were shipped to Russia, where they were used with great effect by White Armies. (Most of these Mk V's were so called Hermaphrodites, i.e. they had one male gun sponson and one female MG sponson.) After the defeat of the Whites, surviving and captured Mk V's were used by the Red Army (who called them "Ricardos", after the engine) who used them up until the early 30-ies. My Model is a conversion of the truly excellent 1/76 MK V* kit made by Cromwell. (A small article on how to do this can be seen here.) It has been made as a Red Army Mk V Hermaphrodite, as they looked in the early 20-ies. Click on the thumbnails below to see more views of this model:

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