Am just reading Murray Sueter's "The Evolution of the Tank." Blimey. He makrs Ernest Swinton look self-effacing.
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Ooh. Finished reading the book. If you read it, I'd advise wearing oven gloves. He was a cross man. He is respectful about the roles played by Swinton, Boothby, Crompton, Churchill, Stern,Macfie, and many more, but will not be moved from the view that the caterpillar tank was his idea, and he rejects the claims of the others in entertainingly scathing terms. He says that it was he who presented the first drawing of a tracked landship, that he showed Churchill the Diplock truck on Horse Guards Parade (although other sources say Churchill must have known about caterpillars before that), that he advised Churchill to set up the Landships Committee, and that he organised the demo for Lloyd George {with the Killen-Strait). Everything is backed up with documents and letters. It's a complicated book. For example, he fumes that insufficient recognition went to him, Squadron 20, and the Admiralty, but slags off the Sea Lords and others at the Admiralty who tried to put a stop to the landships programme.
This is the revised, 1941 edition, so he also deals with the beginning of WWII, but not until he's spent 286 pages insisting that he invented the tank.
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"Sometimes things that are not true are included in Wikipedia. While at first glance that may appear like a very great problem for Wikipedia, in reality is it not. In fact, it's a good thing." - Wikipedia.
