The M1917 was the United States' first mass-produced tank, entering production shortly before the end of World War I.

The United States entered World War I on the side of the Entente Powers in April, 1917, without any tanks of its own.

[4] A joint Anglo-American program was set up to develop a new type of heavy tank similar to those then in use by the British.

The design was to be carried out by the Ordnance Department, under the job title "Six-ton Special Tractor," and orders for the vehicles placed with private manufacturers.

However, the project was beset by problems: the French specifications were metric and incompatible with American (imperial) machinery; coordination between military departments, suppliers, and manufacturers was poor; bureaucratic inertia, lack of cooperation from military departments, and possible vested interests delayed progress.

In the summer of 1918, with no sign of the M1917s and US troops desperately needed at the Front, France supplied 144 Renault FTs, which were used to equip the US Light Tank Brigade.

George S. Patton Jr. states in his diaries that these vehicles were carried in trucks as a deterrent, but contemporary film shows them moving on their tracks along Pennsylvania Avenue.

[9] A M1917, stolen from the Army, is used to rob banks in the rural American west, in an episode of the 1971 television series Bearcats!.