Mark VIII tank

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Mark VIII tank
A British Mark VIII
Type	Heavy tank
Place of origin	United Kingdom, United States
Production history
Designed	1917
Manufacturer	UK: North British Locomotive Company US: Rock Island Arsenal
Produced	1918–1920
No. built	125
Specifications
Mass	37 long tons (38 t) (dry weight)
Length	34 ft 2 in (10.41 m)
Width	11 ft 8 in (3.56 m) 9 ft (2.7 m) sponsons in
Height	10 ft 3 in (3.12 m)
Crew	12 British tanks 10 US tanks
Armor	16 mm (0.63 in) maximum
Main armament	two QF 6 pdr 6 cwt Hotchkiss (57mm - 2.24in) guns
Secondary armament	seven 7.92 mm Hotchkiss machine guns or five M1917 Browning machine guns
Engine	V-12 Liberty or V-12 Ricardo 300 hp (220 kW)
Power/weight	7.89 hp/tonne (5.79 kW/t)
Suspension	unsprung
Operational range	50 mi (80 km)
Maximum speed	5.25 mph (8.45 km/h) governed to 6.25 mph (10.06 km/h) maximum

The Mark VIII tank also known as the Liberty or The International was a British-American tank design of the First World War intended to overcome the limitations of the earlier British designs and be a collaborative effort to equip France, the UK and the US with a single heavy tank design.

Production at a site in France was expected to take advantage of US industrial capacity to produce the automotive elements, with the UK producing the armoured hulls and armament. The planned production levels would have equipped the Allied armies with a very large tank force that would have broken through the German defensive positions in the planned offensive for 1919. In practice, manufacture was slow and only a few vehicles were produced before the end of the war in November 1918.

After the war, 100 vehicles assembled in the US were used by the US Army until more advanced designs replaced them in 1932. A few tanks which had not been scrapped by the start of World War II were offered to Canada for training purposes.^[1]