To turn a British tank before 1918, you had to stop it. Steering a Mark IV took four men — the driver, two gearsmen working the secondary gears on each track, and the commander on the brakes — and it could only be done at a halt. So in the middle of no man's land, under fire, the tank stood still while four men wrestled it round. Major W. G. Wilson's epicyclic gearbox ended that. In the Mark V one man drove, and he could steer on the move. It is a piece of engineering rather than a battle, and it did more for a tank crew's chances than any thickness of armour.

"Male" is a specification, not a flourish: male tanks carried a 6-pounder gun in each side sponson, females only machine guns. Tradition supplies the tank with an infantry section walking behind it, bayonets fixed — which is the whole point of the machine. It was not there to win the battle on its own; it was there to cross the ground so they could follow. In a diorama it pairs with the Renault FT17, the other answer to the same question, and it belongs near the Somme, where tanks first appeared in September 1916. For what it was built to defeat, look at the German MG08 team.

Tradition of London model 824. 54mm, white metal, hand-painted in gloss enamel. Mark V Male tank with an eight-figure infantry section, 1918. Supplied in the Tradition Classic Red Box. Allow 2–3 weeks delivery.