The Tank Mk II shared much with the Tank Mk I to which the 'Tank Mk III' was devised as a another more advanced trainer intended to share features of the upcoming 'Tank Mark IV' series. As in the Tank Mk I before it, 'male' variants were the cannon-armed marks while 'female' variants were machine gun-armed marks intended to protect the males on their approach.

The 'Tank Mk II' was developed from the Tank Mk I was a crew trainer yet even these were pressed into service, some 50 examples being completed and shipped to France. Within time, the Germans developed wider trenches, anti-tank ditches, strategically placed artillery and minefields, an anti-tank rifle and armor-piercing machine gun ammunition to stop these steel beasts in their tracks. Its initial use came as a nasty shock to the Germans which allowed the British to gain territory on their historical enemy through psychology alone. Conversely, the vehicle was armed with a pair of cannon, led her crew in relatively safety from small arms fire and could cross trenches of approximately 9 feet across. The type brought about limited success for it was prone to breakdowns, vulnerable to artillery fire and managed a snail's pace of roughly 3 to 4 miles per hour - and the latter only on ideal surfaces. Development of the prototype 'Little Willie' tracked armored vehicle gave way to the production level Tank Mk I ('Big Willie') to which 150 of the type were produced and used in the first recorded tank actions of World War 1 in September of 1916.

It was the British Navy - under Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty - that pushed the 'tank' into existence (then known as 'landships').

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