The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
Tank inventor’s stolen medals turn up after 70-year absence
MEDALS awarded to one of the inventors of the tank have emerged after they were stolen 70 years ago.
They had been presented to Walter Gordon Wilson shortly after the First World War and went missing three years before his death in 1957.
But the war veteran’s grandson, Brigadier Henry Wilson, has now taken possession of them after learning they were to be sold at auction.
He said: “My grandfather’s medals had been missing since stolen in 1954 so it was fortunate that I heard they were being put up for sale.
“Thanks to the vendor’s cooperation the medals were returned to the family.”
Brig Wilson has now donated the War Medal and the Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George to the Tank Museum in Bovington, Dorset.
His grandfather helped create what would become known as the tank when Winston Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty pushed for “landships” to be built.
He is credited with inventing numerous key features, notably the track design for the test vehicle Little Willie, now on display at the museum.
Mr Wilson also created Little Willie’s rhomboid successor “Mother” with the tracks running around the whole vehicle. Later he improved the gear system in the Mark V tanks so a single operator could drive them, rather than a team of four as with earlier designs.
Tanks entered the fray on Sept 15 1916 and would become a vital weapon in the allies’ victory.
David Willey, curator of the Tank Museum, said: “These medals might be modest in one sense, but they are of great significance and importance to us because of whose they were.
“Without Wilson’s drive, creative mind and problem-solving skills the story of what became known as the tank might have been very different.
“It is extremely generous of the family to donate the medals which will help us tell the story of how the ‘landships’ were turned from an idea into reality.”
Mr Wilson was born in Ireland in 1874. After a brief spell in the Royal Navy he attended Cambridge University where he studied mechanical science at King’s College.
It was there he met Charles Rolls – of Rolls-Royce fame – and acted as his mechanical engineer on several occasions.
After the First World War he patented the epicyclic pre-selector gearbox which was built by the family firm Self-Changing Gears Ltd at Coventry for more than 40 years.