Once again, it seems that determination of Winston Churchill was decisive for History of armoured vehicles to begin to roll. A lot of time has passed since then, and if those engineers who developed Little Willie could see them now, they would not believe the progress made in these vehicles.The performance of Little Willie were not very dazzling, but at least it managed to show the right way to go. With a maximum speed of 3.2 km/h, it was easily surpassed by the infantry and was built with a 6mm thick boiler plate, although it was planned to be built with 10mm armour plates. No less than 6 crew members would go inside, 2 would drive the vehicle and the rest would be responsible for handling the 4 Madsen machine guns that made up the armament.The Little Willie is one of the jewels on the Tank Museum’s collection. Willie has already passed a century of life, and the truth is that he does not look bad at all to be an “adorable grandpa”.The crossing of trenches was not one of its strong points either, because it got stuck in them many times. However, with the assembly of two rear wheels it was possible to improve its cross trenches and turning ability.Most of the mechanical parts were adaptations of Foster-Daimler artillery tractors and the engine was a gasoline 6-cylinder Daimler that developed 105 hp at 100 rpm. The design of their tracks limited the speed, although they were reliable and they got the vehicle to move safely enough.
