COBI Mark I Male no C.19 Set 2993

COBI's Mark I (Male) no. C.19 is a 1:35 model built from 878 blocks, 28 cm long, made in cooperation with The Tank Museum at Bovington, which holds the original. The tracks work, the sponson guns rotate and the flaps open. A figure of a British tank driver of the Great War is included, plus a plate with the set name and the museum's logo.

Why it is called a tank

The word every language now uses for an armoured fighting vehicle comes from a lie told to a factory workforce in 1915.

The machines were being built at William Foster & Co in Lincoln and at Metropolitan Carriage in Birmingham, in sheds full of civilian workers who could see perfectly well that something strange was being assembled. The programme needed a cover story that explained a large steel box on tracks.

The committee considered calling them water carriers — mobile water tanks for the Mesopotamian front — and then noticed that the initials would be W.C. They settled on tank. Shipping documents described them as water tanks for Russia, and some hulls were stencilled in Cyrillic to sell the story.

The cover name stuck to the machine, and by the time the secret was out it was too late to call it anything else. Panzer, char, carro armato and танк all describe the thing directly; English alone still calls it a water container.

Male and female

Male means cannon. This version carried two 6-pounder guns in sponsons on the hull sides plus machine guns, for destroying strongpoints. The female carried machine guns only, for killing the infantry that would otherwise swarm a tank. They worked in pairs because neither could do both jobs.

First used at the Somme in September 1916, at around 6 km/h, with armour that stopped rifle fire and little else. It was not a good combat vehicle. It was the first one.

In the COBI range

Set 2995 is the later Mark V (Male) no. 9199, also from Bovington and still in running order. Set 3094 is the German A7V it fought at Villers-Bretonneux, and 2983 the A7V "Wotan".

Specifications

Pieces: 878 · Figures: 1 · Scale: 1:35 · With The Tank Museum
Model dimensions: 28 × 13 × 9 cm (11.0 × 5.1 × 3.5 in)