Medium C Hornet |
| Written by Marcia Malory | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Medium C Hornet was an improved version of the Medium B Whippet. Like the Medium B, the Medium C had an engine in the rear of the tank.
A fixed turret on the Hornet had four Hotchkiss 0.303 inch (7.7mm) machine guns. The turret had a rotating cupola for the tank commander. In all, 45 Medium Cs were built. Although the Hornet was designed in 1917, no tanks were completed until after the end of World War I. Those tanks that were built were in service until 1925. Another medium tank, the Medium Mark D, was the last tank to be designed during World War I. A working Medium Mark D was never built. However, after the war, some tanks, including the Johnson Light Infantry Tank, were built based on the Mark D design. The Johnson Light Infantry Tank had three ball-mounted machine guns in a fixed turret. The driver sat who sat above the gunners' stations, in the rear, and used a small conning tower to steer the tank. The Johnson Light Infantry Tank was able to move more quickly than the Medium C because of the addition of a new wire rope suspension system.
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The Medium C Hornet weighed 20 tons (20,320kg) and had a 150hp Ricardo engine. This tank could hold 150 gallons of gasoline, more than twice as much as the Medium A Whippet could hold. The Hornet still could not move very fast - only 8 miles per hour (12.9kph).