In the December 1903 edition of the Strand Magazine, science fiction author HG Wells penned a dark vision of the battlefield of the future. Mammoth armoured fighting vehicles dominated the landscape, rolling inexorably forward against the enemy, spewing a heavy volume of fire. Wells called these war vehicles “ironclads” and described them as “…essentially long, narrow, and very strong steel frameworks carrying the engines, and borne upon eight pairs of big pedrail wheels, each about ten feet in diameter, each a driving wheel and set upon long axles free to swivel round a common axis. This arrangement gave them the maximum of adaptability to the contours of the ground. They crawled level along the ground with one foot high upon a hillock and another deep in a depression, and they could hold themselves erect and steady sideways upon even a steep hillside.”
Wells seemed to foresee the advent of the tank and its potential on the battlefield. However, the concept of the armoured fighting vehicle exerting its sheer power
