Landships II

Built by Morris - probably! but this is in fact the Granville Fighter Car armed with two fixed machine guns to be aimed by pointing the vehicle. See the following item I wrote some time ago.

The Fighter Car was a single seater with two fixed forward machine guns. It was intended to be used as a sort of ground based equivalent of a fighter plane. No doubt its designers had experienced frustration in traffic congestion and wish their car to be able to blast away the vehicle in front. As a practical armoured car it was effectively useless. A motor vehicle simply does not have the manoeuvrability of an aircraft. On a perfectly flat plain with no buildings, trees walls etc it might have had some limited ability to point its self (and its guns) at a stationary target but it would have been much more difficult for the driver to bring fire to bear on a moving target. Every time it hit a dip its guns could be pointing down into the ground and then up into the sky. And swerving could spray more bullets around the vicinity than would go anywhere near its target.

The inadequacy of the Granville fighter car did not bring an end to the search for a one man armoured car. The result was a design which mounted a turret fitted with the Molins Gun (an magazine loading version of the six pounder anti tank gun). This was supposed to act as a wheeled tank destroyer. Quite how its occupant was supposed to be able to steer the vehicle and aim the gun at the same time is not clear. In any case by the time it would have been ready for service the six pounder was already insufficiently powerful to effectively deal with the more heavily armoured (and armed) tanks that Germany was putting into the field. . The gun found useful employment as an anti shipping weapon fitted to the Mosquito fighter bomber.

Now if you want a really odd single seat armoured vehicle try the Opperman Scorpion

I had no idea there was more than a single one-man armored car ever designed!

Are these the only one-man armed ACs of any country you know of? I already knew that Great Britain had by far expressed the most interest in the one-man AFV concept, but I had thought that interest waned in the 20's with Martel and Carden-Loyds machines. I had no idea interest was rekindled in WWII, but in the form of armored cars! Incredible. Thank you for sharing Centurion!

---Vil.
Edit:
Apparently there was an article on the Scorpion in the April 2003 issue of Classic Military Vehicles. Too bad the issue is sold out. Is anyone here a subsriber to CMV?
http://www.cmvmag.co.uk/cgi-bin/purchase.cgi?s=bi&i=032304CMV

I believe both Centurion and I would greatly enjoy reading scans of the Opperman Scorpion article if anyone has access to it! Perhaps at a public library? I don't know where to get an old back issue of this magazine, I already tried Ebay.

Oh, and Centurion... Which manufacturer produced the 6 pounder one-man AC? Was it designed by "Granville" and built by Morris Motors, as was the Fighting Car?

-- Edited by Vilkata at 21:18, 2007-02-07

Eugene

I already have that article - I did some research on the Opperman some time ago. I'll dig out and post in the miscellaneous section.

Its a long way from WW1 tanks but atached is photo of two one man French armoured cars based on a Simca chassis. They were part of an improvised armoured unit attacking the German pocket at la Rochelle in 1945 (yes 1945 not 1944)

Mainly because a number of French, British and American sources all say its a single seater!. I have another picture which I'll dig out tonight and post - this shows one of these next to a full size armoured car and it's small - very small. The Simas used were civilian models with very small engines and I suspect that with the weight of armour the manning was due to weight limitations as much as space.