Landships II

Bodlosh is right, those are the best online sources of information. The drawings in Eugene's article are scans of the Foster's drawings of the final design. Note that the main gun was intended to be a 3-inch gun, not a 6-pdr as is usually stated. It would also appear that towards the end of the project's life, Tritton was trying to get the machine's weight down to 60-tons by the simple expedient of thinning the armour.

This is a jpegged version of a drawing from plans I'm working on (extra rivet detail has been added):

-- Edited by Roger Todd at 15:39, 2006-05-06

Thanks, and speedy responses . And does anyone know how accurate the specs given here are? How about an approximate armor thickness at the reduced weight?

Those are scans of photos I took at Bovington about fifteen years ago. The model was one of many built by a Mr J Pickering, all of which were displayed in a large cabinet (he concentrated on the evolution of the tank, with models showing medieval siege towers, Leonardo's design, Cowen's Battle Car, the Batter caterpillar tractor of 1888, right up to Tritton's Big Wheel machine and the unbuilt Mk VI, among others).

As for the TANKS link specs, overall dimensions, engines and complement of MGs are accurate; the main gun isn't (see my note above); armour is for the 100-ton version (that is, 3-in front, 2-in sides), but the 60-ton design would have had 1.5-in armour (probably all over, but there is uncertainty about that - d'Eyncourt is noted in the minutes of a TSC meeting as being of the opinion that 1.5-in was enough to keep out German 77-mm shells, so presumably that was felt to be enough for the front as well). Performance-wise, although the War Office specified originally a similar performance to that of the Mark I, it is doubtful that this would have been achieved. There is an unpublished monograph by MJ Verrall at Bovington on the FE in which he estimates that the machine's speed would have been 2mph over broken ground.

-- Edited by Roger Todd at 15:58, 2006-05-06

No problem. Another thing about the TANKS article is that it states that the project was 'nearly complete' upon cancellation. MJ Verrall writes that William Rigby, chief draughtsman at Foster's, went to great pains to refute this belief, saying that apart from a frame being built for the double-engine and some work having started on the track frames, very little progress had been made. In all of my digging around for information, I have never found any evidence to prove Verrall wrong.

Roger,

How is you flying elephant kit going?
last time I heard it was to be done by christmas?