Landships II

From which book is the photo taken?

In May 1990 as part of my research into the Flying Elephant and K-Wagen, David Fletcher of the Tank Museum kindly sent me photocopies of drawings in their archives. The early version K-Wagen drawings illustrated above were among the documents he sent me, though as his archival materials were only photocopies themselves, my copies of those copies are somewhat poorer than what appears in the Kaufhold-Roll book (of which I now have a copy anyway). What's not in that book is an interesting drawing of roller-track links David Fletcher provided, which I scanned and posted on LS forum a while ago here:

http://landships.activeboard.com/t54291141/k-wagen-tracks/

They are, I suspect, the tracks designed for that early version of the K-Wagen, as the drawing shows the rollers in closely-linked pairs evenly distributed all around the track frames, rather than the bogies along the lower edge of the track frames in the drawings of the later K-Wagen design as actually built.

Roger,

Didn't realise there were two versions - I assumed the rollers shown on the drg were just the line of rollers attached to the alternate track.

Are there major differences between the two?

Have made a sketch of the two different track plates based on the drg mentioned above (which a much clearer version is attached)  and side elevation of the tracks and the chain joining them all, but haven't yet made a master for casting.

Tony

Roger Todd wrote:

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The main differences between the early and later designs, apart from the radically different tracks, are that the sponsons of the early version appear to be much smaller (there don't seem to be any machine guns), the tracks have more of a slope along the front underside, and the observation cupolas on the roof are wider and flatter.

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Because of the poor state of the sources, a lot has/had to be read from the few photographs known about that rare vehicle.

I am not quite sure about the two different tracks. Tonys sketch of the tracks with the chain joining them shows exactly that there were two different track plates (cover plate and connecting plate) in one and the same track.

The late version of the K-Wagen shows that arrangement clearly. Unfortunately my photobucket account doesn't allowe me to load up pictures here, but the factory picture on the Landships II article shows the same Ketten-Rollenwagen (the track plates still missing) clearly on the upper side of the nearly finished tank. The running tracks for those Ketten-Rollenwagen are also visible in the Kaufhold-Roll book on page 76.

Cheers, Peter