Stolen medals of war hero who co-invented the tank found 50 years after theft

Tank Museum curator David Willey, said the medals are of ‘great significance and importance’.

The medals awarded to one of the inventors of the tank have been donated to the Tank Museum after they emerged following a 50-year disappearance.

Medals belonging to Walter Gordon Wilson, whose work led to the tracks used on the first tanks, were stolen in 1954.

Wilson’s grandson, Brigadier Henry Wilson, has taken possession of them after learning that they had come up for sale, and subsequently donated them.

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.

Brigadier Henry Wilson said: ‘Thanks to the vendor’s cooperation the medals were returned to the family.’

“Due to Walter’s pioneering role in the invention of the tank, I felt that the Tank Museum was the appropriate home for them so we decided to donate them.”

When Winston Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty during WWI pushed for ‘landships’ to be created, Wilson was put in charge of testing.

With William Tritton of the agricultural manufacturing firm Fosters of Lincoln, he worked to create what would become known as the tank.

Credited with inventing numerous key features

He is credited with inventing numerous key features, notably the track design for the test vehicle Little Willie, now on display at the museum.

He also invented 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.

Walter Wilson (pictured), the owner of the lost medals, known for being an ‘innovative thinker’

Tanks entered the fray in WWI on September 15, 1916, and would become a vital weapon in the allies’ victory.

Reflecting their leading role, Walter Wilson and his partner Sir William Tritton jointly received the largest financial award from the post-Great War Royal Commission for Inventors for their work on the tank.

Wilson’s medals are now on display at the Royal Armoured Corps regimental museum in Dorset, along with the very early tanks that he helped to design.

The donated medals are the War Medal – awarded to all those who served in WWI – and the Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George (CMG).

The CMG was awarded in June 1917 in recognition of Wilson’s contribution to the war effort.

Medals ‘of great significance’ 

David Willey, curator of the 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.”

Brigadier Henry Wilson said: “My grandfather, after a brief early spell in the Royal Navy, studied mechanical science at King’s College, Cambridge.

“Always an innovative thinker, he became involved with early powered flight before building his own motor cars, the Wilson-Pilcher, from 1901 to 1904.

“He then worked on designing commercial vehicles for Armstrong-Whitworth before his leading wartime role in the tank story.”

Wilson was born in Ireland in 1874. At Cambridge he met Charles Rolls – of Rolls-Royce fame – and acted as his mechanical engineer on several occasions.

After the First World War, Wilson patented the epicyclic pre-selector gearbox which was built by the family firm Self-Changing Gears Ltd at Coventry for over 40 years.

Walter Wilson died in 1957.

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