Landships II

Love it, thanks! Can you post a link to the original page please?

Whilst bowsing I found this:

"Tanks" of Other Days: Old-Time "Forts" on Wheels

http://www.illustratedfirstworldwar.com/item/tanks-of-other-days-old-time-forts-on-wheels-iln0-1916-1021-0011-001/

The Kaiser's bonkers scheme is there, the first time I've seen it in a contemporary source.

Note the text which says that on the opposite page is James Cowen's "Locomotive Land Battery" - unfortunately, if you try to find the next page, it is indeed present but the bottom is cut off because it concentrates on another article! What a berk who scanned it...

EDIT! I'm the berk! I went the wrong way, here's the other half of the article, with Cowen's machine:

http://www.illustratedfirstworldwar.com/item/tanks-of-other-days-old-time-forts-on-wheels-iln0-1916-1021-0010-001/

But being reminded of Cowen's scheme - which always fascinated me - led me to do a bit of googling and uncover this fascinating record by the proto-socialist thinker Robert Owen of a public presentation in 1855 on the subject of Cowen's machine: Behold the Devastator

http://spirithistory.iapsop.com/devastator.html

I am grimly amused by Owen's regret that the fearsome engine of war was never built as he reckoned such a powerful machine would make war so terrible that universal peace would be the new dispensation... Shades of dynamite, the atomic bomb, the hydrogen bomb etc.