‘Industrial marvel’ tank returns to Arsenal

Lucas Voss remembers when a World War I-era tank arrived in his work area at the Rock Island Arsenal for restoration work a few years ago. There were no blueprints or other plans to bring the old military vehicle back to its former glory. Workers were told to do their best. “It looked like a […]

Lucas Voss remembers when a World War I-era tank arrived in his work area at the Rock Island Arsenal for restoration work a few years ago. There were no blueprints or other plans to bring the old military vehicle back to its former glory. Workers were told to do their best.

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“It looked like a rusty piece of junk. … I was told to use my imagination and try to imagine what it looked like and restore it,” said Mr. Voss, a sheet metal fabricator. It took Mr. Voss and a lot of other workers on Arsenal Island more than three years to restore that old tank – a Mark VIII Liberty Tank that was built on Arsenal Island in 1920. The community got to see the results of hundreds of hours of restoration work during a ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday, April 30, to officially welcome the 104-year-old vehicle back to Arsenal Island. The tank is now under a roofed pavilion near the intersection of Gillespie Street and Rodman Avenue. More than 100 people attended the ceremony, including Mr. Voss. “See this section? I replaced the metal here and a couple of other places,” said the Blue Grass, Iowa, man as he looked over the tank after the ceremony. The circa 1920s tank was returned to the island in 2021 to begin restoration efforts. This work included stabilization, repair, painting, and the construction of the covered pavilion. The restoration work was accomplished by the Rock Island Arsenal’s Joint Manufacturing and Technology Center – the same organization that produced the tank more than 100 years ago. “This was a unique project. No blueprints. … We treated it like a prototype project,” Gregory Lupton, deputy commander of the JMTC, said during the ceremony. He told the crowd that more than 800 hours of work went into the tank restoration project. That restoration has brought back to life an “industrial marvel,” said Maj. Gen. David Wilson, commander of the Army Sustainment Command. “This would not be possible without the herculean efforts” of Arsenal workers, he said, adding that he hopes people will be “enlightened and inspired” by the restoration work done by the workers. Some of the tank’s statistics include:

• It weighs 37 tons. It measures 34 feet and two inches long; 10 feet and 3 inches tall; and has a width of 11 feet, 8 inches.
• Its maximum speed is 5.25 mph.
• Armament includes: two six-pound Hotchkiss guns; and seven 7.62 Hotchkiss machine guns or five M1917 Browning machine guns.
• The tank carried a crew of 10.
• Only 100 of the tanks were built. They were built to fight in World War I, originally planned as a joint British/French/American-produced tank for the anticipated Spring 1919 offensive. But the war was over by the time they were ready. So the tanks were sent to armor training camps at Camp Meade, Maryland, and Camp Colt, Pennsylvania, and used for training until the 1930s, said Major Gen. Wilson.
• Only three of these tanks still exist. One is at The Tank Museum in Bovington, England, and the other two are in the U.S. Army’s historical collection; one at Ft. Moore, Georgia, as part of the U.S. Army Armor and Cavalry Training Support Facility’s collection and the final one at Rock Island Arsenal.

The tank is now officially part of the artifacts cared for by the Rock Island Arsenal Museum, which has more than 7,000 artifacts. Patrick Allie, the museum’s director, said he is very pleased to see the tank displayed on Arsenal Island. He also likes the fact that the same community that built the tank helped restore the vehicle and bring it home. “One of the coolest things about all this, for me, was talking with the folks who restored it,” Mr. Allie added. One of those people was at the ceremony and also liked what he saw. “This really turned out great,” added Mr. Voss.