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The Mark IV was a great improvement over earlier types, and were first used in action in June 1917 and by November formed the greater part of the strength of the Tank Corps at the battle of Cambrai. Especially the last battle finally made the German High Command sit up and notice, and a number of hurried counter-measures were introduced by the German Army. One of them was quite simply digger much wider trencher, making it well near impossible for the tanks to get across. As a way of countering the counter-measure the so called "Tadpole Tail" was introduced. It consisted of a mild steel extension of the rear horns which increased the span which could be traversed from 10 ft to about 14 ft. This device lacked rigidity, however, and also the tank became diffucult to control. Dozens of these Tadpole extensions were actually shipped to france, but there is no hard proof that they were ever used in action. A “Tadpole Tail” Mark IV was later fitted with a 6-in. trench mortar between the rear horns, to experiment with close support for tanks in the attack. There were also made some experiments using these Tadpole Tail Tanks as supply carriers: the platform at the rear could be used to carry stores, and at the same time supply sledges could be towed. My model (the basis is, of course, the EMHAR Mk IV) uses the Tadpole tail conversion kit from Matador Models PLUS the corrected Mk IV Sponsons from the same company - the sponsons in the EMHAR Mk IV Male kit is, as we all know, wrong. Click on the thumbnails to see more views of this model:
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