Landships II

Vilkata · Brigadier

T G. Tulloch's 1914 'land cruiser'.

Roger Todd · Legend

Swinton we all know, so I won't go into any more detail about him, but Tulloch was an interesting chap. At the time, he was Capt. Thomas Gregorie [sic] Tulloch, an explosives expert and former Chief Experimental Officer at Woolwich. He retired in 1903 to join the board of the Chilworth Gunpowder Co. which was a subsidiary of a German explosives manufacturer (in Germany Tulloch became aware of TNT and urged the British to adopt it, which led to his nickname 'Tri-Nitro' Tom). Anyway, this gave him extraordinary access to Germany's munitions industry, thanks to which he discovered in November 1911 that the Germans were covertly stockpiling vast numbers of machine-guns, which he brought to the CID and Swinton's attention (Swinton, of course, was gravely concerned by the machine gun, which led him to his suggestion for a caterpillar machine-gun destroyer in 1914).

Tri-Nitro Tom's solution was this: a wildly ambitious machine-gun destroyer based on twin-coupled Hornsby caterpillars, each set mounting six 12-pdr guns and twelve machine guns, and carrying a hundred men, to be armoured and powered with locomotive steam engines. Tulloch tried to convince Vickers and other to build it, but none showed interest. It would appear that these ideas would have been floating around in early 1912 or so.

Information from Glanfield.

-- Edited by Roger Todd at 11:12, 2005-12-13

-- Edited by Roger Todd at 11:25, 2005-12-13

Treadhead · Major

Wow! Very cool info, and it sounds like quite the machine....I don't suppose there are any photograhs or drawings of this behemoth?...?

Tread.

Also, many thx for the quick 'bio' on Tri-Nitro Roger

Roger Todd · Legend

Not so far as I know. I doubt it was fleshed out in any detail, it rather sounds like a back-of-the-envelope job.

Tulloch was involved with Swinton later on at the outbreak of war when they tried to develop an idea for armouring some Holt tractors and sending them out with guns. Again, a still-born idea.

Tulloch, whom I'd not heard of before I got Glanfield's book, sounds a fascinating character - apart from his 1911 success in uncovering German machine-gun stockpiling, he also got hold of a secret German pointed bullet in 1904. His 'espionage' efforts all seem to have revolved around the use of liberal quantities of alcohol to loosen his targets' tongues.

Tim R · Hero

Hey Guys

Found a little information on T.G. Tulloch:

THE man who managed Chilworth�s gunpowder works in the early 1900s was also spying on Germany�s armaments industry.
In the years before the First World War he passed on numerous secrets to the British War Office. Unfortunately, few of the top brass there were willing to listen to him. Military historian John Glanfield, who lives in Guildford, tells the story of Capt Tom Tulloch.

In 1904 Capt Tom Tulloch resigned his commission to manage the German-owned Chilworth Gunpowder Company near Guildford.
Its links gave him unrivalled access to Germany�s armaments industry, and for 10 years he passed vital information on her munitions and weapons development to the Admiralty and War Office. He even conducted extensive weapons trials with Herr Mauser.

There was just one catch � despite Tulloch�s great experience (he had been Woolwich Arsenal�s principal explosives officer and secretary to the explosives committee), he faced a fog of inertia among the naval and military authorities at home.

Alcohol floated several coups. In Spandau in 1904 an over-indulged range officer confided that a revolutionary pointed bullet � the spitzgeschoss � was being introduced throughout Germany�s armed forces. Tulloch alerted the War Office and produced a stolen round. He was credited as the first to bring to notice a significant advance in small arms ammunition.

He later got wind of Germany�s military adoption of TNT, a new propellant much superior to Lyddite. For six years Tulloch pressed the Admiralty and War Office to take it up, offering full details of German TNT manufacture and the related weapons systems.

They refused, on cost grounds. His persistence earned him the nickname Tri-Nitro Tom from the director of Naval Ordnance. Tulloch discovered in November 1911 that Germany was secretly amassing huge quantities of machine guns, mistrusted at Aldershot as an unreliable weapon. He first smelt a rat in conversation with some reticent Berlin gunmakers, then drove on to their ranges at Koenigswuster-hausen.

During a well-irrigated dinner with the experimental officer, a Colonel Jacob, he trapped the poor fellow into revealing that the Prussian government had imposed a news and royalty payments embargo to conceal the volume of Vickers-Maxims pouring from his plant.

The War Office refused to believe Tulloch. They said they had passed his report to the British Military Attach� in Berlin who replied that it was untrue � because he had heard nothing of it!

Tom Tulloch was one of the handful of visionaries who produced the first tanks in 1916. Following his machine gun revelations in 1911, he tried to persuade Albert Vickers the gun�s licensor (and incidentally a major Chilworth shareholder), to build armoured machine-gun destroyers.

Tulloch sketched huge tracked machines coupled in pairs, each set mounting six 12-pounder guns, 12 machine-guns and carrying 100 men.

He proposed to power these articulated monsters with locomotive steam boilers.

Perhaps understandably, neither Vickers nor the military showed interest. Tulloch renewed his appeals to the Army in 1914-15 before discovering and supporting Churchill�s top-secret naval tank design team in 1915. (The world�s first tank was designed and built by the navy, the army having dismissed the idea).

Winston, First Lord of the Admiralty and true father of the tank, thought highly of him. For the rest of the First World War Tulloch served Chilworth Gunpowder and advised the Ministry of munitions.

As managing director of the Tillingbourne mills, he finally had to shut them down in June 1920.
Tulloch later secured a mineral rights concession in Palestine and established the Palestine Potash Company near the Dead Sea. He settled there until his death in Jericho in 1938.

Tulloch�s exploits are included in John Glanfield�s account of the tank�s pioneers in his book The Devil�s Chariots, (Sutton Publishing, Stroud, 2001).

All the best

Tim R.