Landships II

Centurion wrote:

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This was one of the veteran tanks which fought in an action on the ROYE ROAD near YPRES salient on August 7th, 1918, an action in which General Worthington took part with his battery of the Canadian Motor Machine Gun Brigade during which he won the Military Cross."

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I don't think the Ypres part can be right. As far as I can make out, there was no activity to speak of near Ypres until September 1918. Canadian troops trained with Tanks in that sector after Amiens to lead the Germans to believe that the next offensive would be there, but I can find no mention of Whippets being anywhere but in France.

There's nowhere in Belgium called Roye. There's one to the south-east of Amiens, and the Canadians were deployed north of the road between the two on August 8th and subsequent days, with the Whippets of 3rd Brigade amongst the Tank support.

Frank Worthington was at Third Ypres as a Private with the Canadian Machine-gun Corps, but had become a Lieutenant by the time of Amiens and went on to create the Royal Canadian Armoured Corps, finishing up as a General. References are a bit lax about whether he was with the Machine-gun Corps or Motor Machine-gun Brigade at Amiens. Either way, Amiens must be the only occasion he could have encountered Whippets.

The plot thickens with the outbreak of WWII. Worthington was now in charge of an Armoured Corps with no armour. He purchased obsolete Tanks from the USA, and a resident of Borden remembers a line of railway trailers arriving full of Whippets and has a photograph to prove it. They turn out to be American 6 Tonners, not Whippets at all - perhaps this is the habit of using the term loosely, as previously discussed. Worthington purchased over 200 as scrap and had them refurbed for training purposes.

The real Whippet is said to have arrived (sic) in Canada shortly after WWI and been brought to Borden in the 1930s. So I think FW was just reminded of seeing them at Amiens.

If it helps, the Tank's number is A371.

(I've got some pics, but I'm posting this first rather than risk losing it all . . .)

-- Edited by James H at 00:52, 2007-04-13

Trying to dig further into this. There is a (very) brief reference to a British Whippet being used in a war bond parade in Canada (possibly Toronto). If correct this might tie in with it ending up at Exhibition Place Toronto before being aquired by Worthington. It was not unusual for tanks in such parades to be said to have seen action whether or not this was actually true.

BTW Re the faux Whippets sent to Borden. Borden was "officially" designated as a foundry for the exercise. This allowed the tanks to be sold as scrap this circumventing US laws (later repealed) prohibiting such transactions. Such manouvres were not unusual especially on the part of the French ('scrap' FTs being sold to less savoury governments or into civil wars for example, scrap aircraft being supplied to the Spanish Republicans etc) Poland also applied the same approach supplying some aircraft to the Nationalists. I also believe that the American four funnel destroyers supplied to the Royal Navy in return for naval bases were "officially" scrap.

As can be seen the Borden Whippet was stripped down to the metal on at least one occasion. (I suspect possibly more than once as Worthington might have needed to have had a new paint job if it had been sitting on the Toronto Exhibition Place site for say ten years) so there is no guarantee that the finish or number it is in now represents its original state - thats the problem with museum exhibits.

I don't believe that Mark I tanks carried stamped numbers, but later ones like the Mark V 9303 did. I would have thought that Whippets would have done as they were built at the same time as Mark Vs, if not by the same firm.

There might be some scope with the engine. Mk IVs certainly had an engine plate with a unique number (see attached) and I think this might have applied to all British tanks (it certainly did in a much later period), but whether one could relate the engine no to the tank ID I don't know. The example is from a tank called Lurcher which was presented to a French town (perhaps most of the male presentation tanks went to France for the wine and food?)
I rather like the reminder that the engine is covered by Austrian and German patents, We may be at war sir but damit all a patent is a patent.

-- Edited by Centurion at 00:01, 2007-04-14

-- Edited by Centurion at 00:04, 2007-04-14

Forget it - found the attachment!

I've certainly seen accounts of tank having engine changes, though I've no idea whether it was comonly done. Don't believe that the civil service don't like throwing papers out - the papers at The National Archives are heavily weeded - usually to get rid of just the stuff you want to see, or so it seems.

I'd be delighted to think Great War maintenance records are at Woolwich.