Landships II

Centurion · Legend

The Holt one man tank (again)

Roger Todd · Legend

Yes, well, Popular Mechanics...

According to them, by now we should all be commuting to our paperless offices in our flying hover cars, or living on space stations in tinfoil jumpsuits. I regard anything they say as only slightly more reliable than the Sunday Sport (or, for Americans, the National Enquirer).

Centurion · Legend

Gosh you don't mean Elvis was driving it?

Centurion · Legend

However this one seems to have been horribly prophetic.

Vilkata · Brigadier

I'm beginning to think no one remembers anything I post :P

I have that copy of Popular Mechanics. Here is the article from inside it.

Also.. The "tank" was built specifically for a parade to honor the arrival of Colonel Swinton to the Holt factory, where Swinton met with Benjamin Holt. The HA-36 was never meant to be a functional prototype war vehicle any more than a Macys parade float.

Apparently, vast numbers of people (including the authors of Popular Mechanics!) started to get the silly idea it was a serious war machine proposal. And, if you accept that it was an "accidental prototype", it would have been the original progenitor of the later Carden Loyd one mank tanks, culminating in the Carden Loyd Mk.VI, which in turn was the progenitor of vast numbers of two-man tankettes used throughout the world up to and during WWII.

---Vil.

Craig York · Sergeant

While I think Roger is right about PM, I still have a soft spot in my heart for it, and its rival POPULAR SCIENCE. Sure, they're usual prophetic in the negative, but still.....

Interesting article, in any event.

Rectalgia · Legend

More pictures of the baby Holt from Swinton's tribute meeting with Benjamin Holt at Stockton, 22 April 1918.� From Wikipedia, http://www.airlandseaweapons.com/blog/574796-swinton-and-holt/ and ... I wish I could remember.� Incidentally, the link above continues the fiction that the baby was a serious prototype but it does include an enhanced picture of the (very serious) gas-electric hybrid as well.

Holt-one man.jpg

-- Edited by Rectalgia on Thursday 7th of April 2011 09:52:16 AM

Centurion · Legend

It wasn't built by Holt and not specifically for Swinton's visit. It would seem that the Red Cross in California was looking for a fund raising wheeze and commissioned a local motor cycle manufacturer to build this little miniature for a fund raising fair. By all accounts it was a great success and in demand for other events. There are video clips. The association with Holt appears to come from a photo of the little tank present at the Holt works when British tank pioneers were inspecting Holt tractors. Holt probably borrowed it for the occasion.