This tank has been or will be moved to the US Army’s Armor & Cavalry Collection at Ft. Benning, which is not open to the public.
The Ft. George G. Meade Museum’s Mark VIII heavy tank is one of only a few survivors in the US.
Today’s Joint Strike Fighter is an example of the modern push to have militaries create a single product to be shared by multiple services. One shared design to simplify logistics between partners by allowing them to use the same tools to accomplish the same goal has a modern appeal but the concept goes back much further and in World War I it spanned two continents. America’s first home-built heavy tank was the result of such a joint program with Great Britain in World War I.
A rare example of that project’s fruit is housed in the Fort George G. Meade Museum, the massive Mark VIII heavy tank. The Mark VIII had a short but important career, though not doing what it was intended to do. A typical World War I rhomboid with over-sized tractor treads and side-sponsons, the 37-ton tank is longer and heavier than the World War II M4 Sherman tank that came 20 years after it.
“It was literally a moving shield for infantry,” said Barbara Taylor, Fort George G. Meade Museum exhibits specialist. “They were designed to give the foot soldier a way to breakthrough and get across no man’s land.”
Britain invented the tank during the Great War out of necessity. Needing a vehicle that could break the stalemate of trench warfare and support infantry movement, the Landships Committee was created in 1915 by First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill. This was the same Churchill who would become prime minister and lead Britain during World War II. The committee’s work resulted in the first working tank, which incidentally, also made use of American parts.
The U.S. entered the war in 1917 without armor but soon licensed light French tanks and had taken an interest in Britain’s heavy tanks such as the Mark V. Though instead of licensing or ordering the Mark V, the Americans and British came up with a plan to jointly design a tank that could be built with American and British parts in American, British and French factories by the thousands. The standard tank of all three armies, it would support the thrust to victory in the 1919 offensive.
The Mark VIII collaboration had automotive components such as a drive train and transmission from the U.S., and hulls and cannons from England. Overall, 65 percent of the parts would be British. The difference between the American and British versions would be in machine gun armament and engines. The British nicknamed the tank “International,” because of its multinational origin and intended production, though in the U.S. it was called the “Liberty,” after its 12-cylinder “Liberty” aircraft engine.
The Mark VIII was also simplified for production in that it came in one version instead of two. Previously heavy tanks came in “male” and “female” varieties. “Male” tanks mounted cannons in sponsons, while “female” tanks were only armed with machine guns. The Mark VIII would be given a primary armament of 57mm cannons in side-sponsons supported by seven machine guns in the command superstructure and doors.
The first Mark VIIIs were being built as the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918, ending the “war to end wars” and the need for a tank that could help end it. Britain cancelled its order with only six built. The U.S. decided to push on with the new tank, but in vastly reduced numbers. Only 100 were built at the Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois, between 1919 and 1920. Today, a single British example in Britain’s Bovington Tank Museum and two American examples, one of which is the Fort Meade tank, survive.
After World War I, the Office of the Chief of the Tank Corp was established at Camp Meade, Maryland and all of the U.S. Army’s tank units which served in France were assigned to the camp. The tank school was established there in 1919 with the Mark VIII as its training vehicle.
The new school and new tanks didn’t mean it would be an easy time for the tankers, who’s role in the post-war world was far from certain. Tanks were designed as infantry support and the infantry wanted the tanks to be kept under their control whereas the tankers felt their full potential wasn’t realized acting as solely infantry support. The other major branch in the debacle, horse cavalry, had no interest in mechanization.
An early supporter of armor was future president and general, Capt. Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eisenhower served in the 305th Tank Brigade at Camp Meade, working with Maj. George Patton on tank doctrine and tactics, while the future of tanks was up for debate. Supporting the potential of armor, the future general came close to court-martial for writings on tanks that Chief of Infantry Maj. Gen. Charles S. Farnsworth felt was “dangerous” and “wrong.”
Mannequins of Maj. George Patton, along with Capt. Dwight D. Eisenhower stand before the Mark VIII. Both served at Camp Meade’s tank school where the Mark VIII was used to train America’s tank corps. (But only one of them looks like he could have been played by Matt Damon.)
“Eisenhower had the tenacity, the interest in seeing the good of the Army, over the detriment to his career, to an idea that was unpopular, so he kept fighting for the autonomy of the tank corps,” Taylor said.
The Mark VIII and the school at Camp Meade were retired and decommissioned in 1932. The armor was scrapped or stored. The Mark VIII’s last hurrah would be when a few were sent to train Canadian crews during World War II. The American tank corps endured, with new vehicles being designed and tested that would lead to the armor used in World War II.
The full story of the museum’s Mark VIII is unknown. The tank has simply “always been here,” according to Taylor. It was delivered to Camp Meade after its manufacture in 1920 and even today, after nearly a century, the tank appears to be factory fresh. It bears none of the scars of training use and abuse and may have possibly never had its armament installed. Delivered and stored or possibly forgotten for decades, at some point it was on display after World War II and moved to the museum after its founding in the 1960s.
It was displayed outdoors until the 1980s when it was moved into a garage to protect it from the elements and pending funding for proper display in the museum.
Inside the belly of the beast.
“People came from all over to see that tank,” said Taylor. Because of its niche in American history, and for a time being the only displayed Mark VIII in the U.S., it has attracted attention from modelers and armor enthusiasts. “That tank is pretty famous by its rarity.”
Despite this, the museum had trouble getting Fort Meade to fund building the tank a proper housing until two things happened. First, someone else wanted it. The Patton Museum of Leadership in Fort Knox, Kentucky and the 6th Armored Cavalry Regimental Museum in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia both requested to have Fort Meade’s tanks, including the Mark VIII, transferred to them. This changed the base leadership’s attitude toward the Mark VIII, but the money still wasn’t there to do anything about it.
Then the First Army, which had been stationed at Fort Meade, left for the Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois. Once the move was complete, left over money was used to improve the museum and build a new wing to house the museum’s World War I tanks, legacy items of the First Army.
“All the right things happened in the right sequence so that people were motivated to do something, there was money to do something and the initiative to do something,” Taylor said.
The Mark VIII was craned out of the garage and trucked to Hagerstown, Maryland, which is home to one of the two companies in the area with a paint booth large enough to handle the 34 foot long tank. Minor rust was removed and it was given a fresh paint job inside and out. As it was being worked on, the museum began work on its new home.
“It was kind of a ballet with timing because we had to have the tanks delivered after the floors had been poured and after the floor had been cured for 30 days but before they began building the building,” said Taylor.
Once in place on a three foot reinforced rebar and concrete pad, the new museum wing was built around the Mark VIII where it is still on display today.
The Mark VIII’s legacy is a mixed bag. It’s a footnote to history, the result of a joint project built to fight a war that was over before it hit the battlefield and the first American-built heavy tank based on a partially American design. That’s not exactly great, but its real value can be measured in the training of the American tank corps during a period when the future of armor was uncertain and ensuring we had a trained force ready to fight until the value of armor was realized again. In that regard, the Mark VIII did its job well and makes it a tank worth preserving and visiting.
The Ft. George G. Meade Museum is located inside Ft. George G. Meade, Maryland and is open 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday. There is no admission charge but there is a nice little armor collection including an M4A3E8 Sherman, M5 Stuart, M41 Walker Bulldog, M47 Patton and just because, a Nike missile.
Looking up the Mark VIII’s aft end.