On October 3rd, 1916, William Tritton, about to be knighted for developing the Mark I, proposed to the Tank Supply Committee that a faster and cheaper tank, equipped with two engines like the Flying Elephant, should be built to exploit gaps that the heavier but slow tanks made, an idea that up till then had been largely neglected. This was accepted on November 10th and approved by the War Office on November 25th. At that time the name for the project was the Tritton Chaser. Traditionally the name Whippet is attributed to Sir William himself. Actual construction started on December 21st.

The first prototype, with a revolving turret taken from an Austin armoured car - the first for a British tank design, as Little Willie's original turret was fixed - was ready on February 3rd, 1917. and participated (probably without one) in the tank trials day at Oldbury on March 3rd. The next day, in a meeting with the French to coordinate allied tank production, the Commander-in-Chief of the British forces Field Marshal Haig ordered the manufacture of two hundred vehicles, the first to be ready on 31 July. Although he was acting beyond his authority, as usual, his decisions were confirmed in June 1917. The first production tanks left the factory in October and two were delivered to the first unit to use them, F Battalion of the Tank Corps (later 6th Battalion), on December 14th, 1917. In December 1917 the order was increased from 200 to 385 but this was later cancelled in favour of more advanced designs, the Medium Mark B, Medium Mark C and Medium Mark D.

In the autumn of 1917, a light tank called the Mark A was ready to be used on the Western Front. Nicknamed the Whippet, it was faster than previous tanks, particularly the ponderous Mark IV, but was still unreliable and vulnerable to artillery fire. Weighing in at 18 tons, it could traverse ground at nearly double the speed of its heavier counterpart, clocking in at a blistering 6 mph.

The Whippet had a crew of three or four men who could operate machine guns from within the fixed turret - a revolving turret was still something foreign to the WWI battlefield.

Pictured here is a 1:72 scale replica of a British Mk. A "Whippet" light tank that was nicknamed "Firefly", and attached to B Company, 3rd Tank Brigade, then deployed to Amiens, France, on August 17th, 1918. Sold Out!

Dimensions:
Length: 3-1/4-inches
Width: 1-1/2-inches

Release Date: December 2017

Historical Account: "X Companies" - Whippets arrived late in the First World War, at a time when the entire British Army, recovering from the offensives in Flanders, was quite inactive. They first went into action in March 1918, and proved very useful to cover the fighting withdrawal of the infantry divisions recoiling from the German onslaught during the Spring Offensive. Whippets were then assigned to the normal Tank Battalions as extra "X-companies". In one incident near Cachy, a single Whippet company of seven tanks wiped out two entire German infantry battalions caught in the open, killing over 400. That same day, April 24th, one Whippet was destroyed by a German A7V in the world's second tank battle, the only time a Whippet fought an enemy tank.

British losses were so high however that plans to equip five Tank Battalions (Light) with 36 Whippets each had to be abandoned. In the end only the 3rd Tank Brigade had Whippets, 48 in each of its two battalions (3rd and 6th TB). Alongside Mark IV and V tanks, they took part in the Amiens offensive (August 8th, 1918) which was described by the German supreme commander General Ludendorff, as "the Black Day of the German Army". The Whippets broke through into the German rear areas causing the loss of the artillery in an entire front sector, a devastating blow from which the Germans were unable to recover. During this battle, one Whippet - Musical Box - advanced so far it was cut off behind German lines. For nine hours it roamed at will, destroying an artillery battery, an Observation balloon, the camp of an infantry battalion and a transport column of the German 225th Division, inflicting heavy casualties. At one point, cans of petrol being carried on Musical Box's roof were ruptured by small-arms fire and fuel leaked into the cabin. The crew had to wear gas masks to survive the fumes. Eventually, a German shell disabled it and as the crew abandoned the tank one of them was shot and killed and the other two were taken prisoner.

The Germans captured fewer than fifteen Whippets, two of which were in running condition. They were kept exclusively for tests and training purpose during the war, but one of them saw action afterwards with the Freikorps in the German Revolution of 1918-1919. The Germans gave them the designation Beutepanzer A.

After the war, Whippets were sent to Ireland during the Anglo-Irish War as part of the British forces there, serving with 17th Battalion, Royal Tank Corps. Seventeen were sent with the Expedition Forces in support of the Whites against Soviet Russia. The Red Army captured twelve, using them until the 1930s, and fitted at least one vehicle with a French 37 mm Puteaux gun. The Soviets, incorrectly assuming that the name of the engine was "Taylor" instead of "Tylor" (a mistake many sources still make) called the tank the Tyeilor. A few (perhaps six) were exported to Japan, where they remained in service until around 1930.