Landships II

Craig York wrote:

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 Robert- I continue to be amazed and delighted by your drawings-I just wish you'd do full plan views!  

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Thanks Craig (and also Roger).for the comments, its nice to know that someone finds them interesting. I’ll try and do some plan views where I can but there are problems – as follows.

1. 
   Quite often there is just no information available. Many of my drawings have been derived from sketches and blurry photos (often of a mock up) and there is no information on what the thing looks like when viewed in plan, as side elevations are the most common views available. 


2. 
   Where there are plan views available they don’t always match with the side elevations! For example recently Tim R very kindly provided me with some old sketches of an early American tank design, there are two side elevations (one partly cut away) and one plan. They all appear to be from the same original source and yet there are significant differences in the proportions of certain parts of the vehicle, (for example there is a semi circular cupola at the front of the vehicle and on the plan it appears to be much broader than it is shown on the other two sketches, there are also some minor differences between all three on exactly where the gun ports in this structure are located). Without a photo of an actual vehicle one can only do a synthesis and produce what seems most likely (and would probably work). I normally do this in side elevation, as that’s the way most people look at vehicles. To then produce a plan view that matched this drawing I would need to take orthogonal projections from my new drawings, create a line drawing and from this produce one of my visualisation drawings. It can be done but it takes time.

What I’ve been trying to do is to create pictures that give one an idea of what these vehicles would have looked like in reality. In some cases since I’ve done this I’ve acquired more information and some of these drawing could do with some refinements (for example I need to redraw the suspension on the Russian Land Cruiser). I think that what I’ll do is continue to produce my side elevation views and post them in the hope that I’ll get some feed back that produces more information and then I’ll start a second pass to update where necessary and include plan views when possible.

It is quite likely however that in some cases there simply just isn’t any further information (for instance I’d guess that the pictures Tim R supplied me are the only ones to be found anywhere). It seems strange in today’s age that it was once often common engineering practice not to produce detailed true scale drawings until after the first prototype was completed and to use this as the source of measurements for production drawings. For example many aircraft prototypes in WW1 were built from chalk full size drawings on the floor of a drafting loft and paper scale drawing were produced later. I suspect that the same applied to some prototype tanks (as far as I can tell ‘Mother’ was built on the basis of a full scale wooden mock up). Thus it is quite possible that for tanks that never reached even a completed prototype there were no original scale drawings, only sketches and models. Even in the working lifetime of people alive today this still applied (my wife once worked as a draughtswoman in one of the famous British aircraft manufacturers and part of her work was producing scale drawings from full size drawings of components). It wasn’t until firms like Rolls Royce pioneered sophisticated computer based design, drafting and machine tool programming systems (in the face of some determined union opposition) that it became relatively easy to start with scale drawings and end up with a prototype (I know because I was there).

Thus for the ‘paper’ tank material is going to be rare. The more people are willing to share what info they have the easier it will be for people like me to produce drawings that may reflect what the vehicle would have looked like. I know from experience that members of this forum can be extremely open and generous with information. Unlike some other forums, I recently received the following response to an enquiry I made about a posting made on another forum  “Due to my busy schedule I have not done any more research into US WW1 tank design. Any info I have will some day go into an article, so I hope you understand that I do not post such things as Blue-prints design parameters and such to the net.”. This is a much nicer forum to be in.

I would like to add if any of you feel you might find it useful to use any of my drawings in anything you are writing (or have anything you would like to have a drawing of ) please just let me know.

Another one , American again. This time courtesy of Tim R who supplied the original sketches. I had seen it somewhere before but have no info on it so you'll need to ask Tim. It was called the Automatic Land Cruiser (obviously no manual shift). Looking at it, it was a definite move forward from the  'put a box on a Holt/Best tractor' approach. In fact it is essentially an American equivelent of the A7V ( extended tractor tracks, armoured box on top, driver in cab on top, guns at the corners, side and front). Looking at a semi cut away supplied by Tim one can se that it seems to have had somethings that the A7V did not have such as  a steering wheel and a large extractor fan.

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-11/1114252/AUTOMATIC.jpg

Great Job Robert!!!!!

   And you are correct Roger, They are the same drawings from Hunnicutt’s book, this tank was also the basis of the first American insignia pin and arm patch. As per the discussion on the link above.  I have attached some insignia photos from my collection, and you can see the resemblances.  As Robert stated, it was one American design that resembled the German A7V, the 200 ton Trench Destroyer did as well. More later.

All the Best

Tim R

Centurion wrote:

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Looking at a semi cut away supplied by Tim one can se that it seems to have had somethings that the A7V did not have such as  a steering wheel...

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Tim R wrote:

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 the 200 ton Trench Destroyer 

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Is it this? A quote from Patton

"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'."

Very interesting, Centurion. I've always wondered what they got up to during the Civil War. As a proto-industrial conflict, I always thought it was ripe for some kind of land ironclad. I was aware of Winan's weird steam cannon, but the drawings I've seen don't convince me that it was self-propelled, despite some accounts, unlike the machine you've drawn, which is completely new to me. Top banana!

Speaking of Cowan, I include an old drawing I did, basing the proportions on the Burrell-Boydell tractor of 1856. You wouldn't have caught me in that thing...

Horse-drawn, I'm not surprised - thanks for confirming my suspicions. Great drawing, by the way. As for being centrifugal, it would appear so, to judge by the Illustrated London News of 22 June 1861 (emphasis added):

The merits of the steam-gun are thus summed up by its inventor, Mr. Dickinson: “As a triumph of inventive genius in the application and practical demonstration of centrifugal force this most efficient engine stands without a parallel... Rendered ballproof, and protected by an iron cone, and mounted on a four-wheeled carriage, it can be readily moved from place to place or kept on march with an army. It can be constructed to discharge missiles of any capacity, from an ounce ball to a 24lb. shot, with a force and range equal to the most approved gunpowder projectiles, and can discharge from 100 to 500 balls per minute.

And the way Dickinson refers to the carriage doesn't imply a locomotive vehicle. Bonkers. Ingenious, but bonkers.

As for Cowan, I believe the British Army pinched the idea for their helmet from his work. Or possibly not...