I was wondering, what was the assesment of the performance and value of the "male" (low-velocity gun armed) and "female" (MG armed) tanks in British service during WWI?

Was there any preference for either?
What sort of doctrinal employment did they use (Or was it simply anything goes so long as its forwards and going bang?)
Did units use both?
Was there a significant difference in effectiveness due to armaments vs likely targets?

I look forward to your responses.

Was the "Female" variant actually designed to have just MG-armed tank or was i designed because there was a lack of guns? IIRC one of the WWI rhomboids had even one sponson Male and one Female.

That was the Transgender tank... Hemeprdoite (sp)

Had the best of both worlds, BFG for hard targets, and a MG for soft ones... which became the standard for all future tanks

I think hermaprodites were mainly produced for training roles (ie the Mk2 which was supposed to never see combat). I vaguely recall some discussion that some of the later ones may have been lashups produced from recovered battle damaged vehicles.

Any comparisons or analysis on effectiveness? Preference? Use and employment?

Can't say i've ever seen the "hermaphrodite" tanks though.

Did they use lewis or vickers guns?

Hotchkiss in the main. They were lighter and easier to maintain and load, I understand while the infantry had first preference on the Lewis. The Vickers was considered too heavy and its need for water and an armoured water jacket told against it.

There is a Mk2 Hermaphrodite preserved at Bovington, if I recall correctly it turned out to be a combat veteran.

There was a claim in Albert Sterns 'Logbook of a tank pioneer' the move to Lewis guns was dictated by the small supply of Hotchkiss machine guns, and that they didst want the Lewis gun for the reasons described. Though I cant imagine the feed strip they had in the Hotchkiss was very practical in an AFV.

There doesn't appear to be a lot around on the tactical use of WW1 tanks. The most ive found was in 'Tank Vs Tank' which described the use of WW1 tanks in carrying fascines and the tactics used in trench strafing. The other good book out at the moment is 'Band of Brigands', but that mostly dwells on the political infighting characterised by Sterns memoirs, though no less interesting for that.

There is a compilation of ww1 Tank reminiscences put together by David Fletcher, but Im damned If I can find my copy to be able to read it. He describes in the preface it was from a 1920s issue of Tank magazine, and not an awful lot of material had been contributed. I can only assume that most of those who served in Tanks in ww1 preferred to forget the experience, which is part of the reason why little material on their tactics survives. Not that in the days before radio cooperative tactics would have been very workable anyway.

No idea if this was the feeding system used, but there was a sort of "belt" feeding for the Hotchkiss using three round "trays" linked to create a compact, continuous "belt". This system was used in the aircraft version and would have been handy aboard a tank. Given the room inside a Whippet, looks like this was also probably used.