TRAINING THE TANKS [Main Title]

Compilation piece from other films on the British use of the tank in the First World War.

The film consists of unedited, unrelated scenes of Mark I and Mark IV tanks, at the Tank Corps training school at Bovington, on the Western Front, and in Palestine. It opens with unarmed Mark IV tanks in a training exercise at Bovington, crushing barbed wire defences and dragging a tree trunk out of a wood. In Palestine, the Mark I Male HMLS "Otazel" followed by the Female HMLS "Nut" cross a training trench. At Tank Corps headquarters in France in July 1917 two Mark IV tanks have a race for the benefit of King George V. Mark I tanks move into position during the early stages of the Battle of the Ancre in 1916. The final scene is a return to the exercises at Bovington.

35mm