I ran across this quote from Patton today, does any one have any idea what he is talking about??
"While in France in 1918, I was directed to report on the military value of a machine going by the euphonious name of the 'moving fort and trench destroyer'. An elaborate set of blueprints accompanied the description of the horrid instrument. Those prints depicted a caterpillar propelled box of generous proportions covered with two inch armor and bearing in it's bosom six '75's', 20 machine guns, and a flame thrower while in the middle was a rectangular box 6 by 3 by 2 feet in size with the pathetic epitaph 'engine not yet devised'. I do not know if atom bursting was known at that date, but if it was, I feel certain that an engine actuated by that sort of power must have been intended as no other form of power occupying so small a space could have propelled the 200 tons of estimated weight of the 'fort'."
All The Best
Tim R.
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"The life given us by nature is short; but the memory of a well-spent life is eternal" -Cicero 106-43BC
It looks to me that he either exaggerated a design we do know about due to the passage of years, or he saw drawings for something we don't know about but which, if it really was that big and heavy, sounds like one of the many 'mad inventors' schemes the military were deluged with that got nowhere.
Sounds like it was written a long time after the event (specially the 'atom bursting' bit) so it could be almost anything. Presumably the US Army got lots of speculative designs sent unsolicited and Patton was lucky (and junior) enough to be the recipient of them.