This question has been taxing our brain this weekend, so when we started looking into the whole world of tanks a little bit more closely, we discovered it’s actually quite an interesting tale that involves none other than Winston Churchill. And no, he didn’t go tank driving…

In fact, it seems the word ‘tank’ was first used to describe these British ‘Landships’ way back in 1915. Churchill was then the First Lord of the Admiralty and these new armoured weapons were being developed under the codename ‘water tanks for Russia’ and well, it seems the name kind of stuck after that.

A nice anecdote from Churchill’s autobiography says that the original codename ‘water carriers for Russia’ was dropped after it was pointed out that it could be shortened to ‘WCs for Russia’!

So there you have it. Soldiers were first driving tanks into war in 1915 during World War One and us Brits are credited with the invention of a fully tracked vehicle, even though genius dude Leonardo Da Vinci had some very early ‘tank-like’ drawings in his mitts.

You learn something new everyday. I just wish I could have a go at driving a tank myself!