Mark IV Tank - Surviving Vehicles

Surviving Vehicles

Seven Mark IVs survive.

• A Mark IV Female, F4: Flirt II, which fought at the Battle of Cambrai, is at the Museum of Lincolnshire Life, Lincoln.

A local company, William Foster & Co., manufactured the first tanks, although as the only Mark IVs built in Lincoln were Male, Flirt was probably built by Metropolitan in Birmingham.

• A Mark IV Female is preserved at Ashford in Kent. This is one of many that were presented for display to towns and cities in Britain after the war; most were scrapped in the 1920s and 1930s.
• The Royal Museum of the Army in Brussels has a Male Mark IV tank, the Lodestar III, still in original colours.
• A Mark IV Female, Grit, is displayed in the ANZAC hall at the Australian War Memorial.
• In 1999, a Mark IV Female, D51: Deborah, was excavated at the village of Flesquières in France. It had been knocked out by shell-fire at the Battle of Cambrai (1917) and subsequently buried when used to fill a crater. Work is underway on its restoration.
• A Mark IV Male, Excellent, is displayed at Bovington. After World War I, this tank was presented by the army to HMS Excellent, a Royal Navy shore establishment where some tank crewmen were trained. During World War II, it was made operational again for service with the Home Guard when German invasion threatened in 1940. It is still maintained in working order.
• Mark IV Female Liberty: displayed at United States Army Ordnance Museum, Aberdeen, Maryland. Originally named Britannia, this tank took part in the Battle of Arras where it penetrated the German trench lines, destroyed four machine gun positions, helped take 395 prisoners and repulse two German counter-attacks. The tank and her crew were afterwards sent to the US to help sell War bonds. Renamed Liberty, the tank joined the Ordnance Museum collection in 1919. After decades of exposure to the elements it is in poor condition, but about to undergo restoration.