The Foster-Daimler Tractor

Apparently, kids of my generation liked tractors.  I couldn’t have cared less.  They just looked old and I was interested in new.  But I find I quite like them now, at least those used for military purposes in the Great War.  This is the Foster-Daimler (or, sometimes, Daimler-Foster) tractor, first produced in 1912, this example pictured on the Somme in 1916. 

It was a powerful beast, weighing close to twelve tons (some sources say fourteen),…

…its small front wheels dwarfed by those huge rear wheels, eight feet in diameter and two feet in width.

The 1909 military tractor trials had persuaded tractor manufacturers Foster & Co. of Lincoln in Suffolk that combining their company’s experience in steam power with an internal combustion engine could create a heavy tractor with considerably more power than the winner of the trials, a Thorneycroft providing just 50hp.

Daimler, also in Coventry, could supply a 6-cylinder, sleeve-valve, 105hp petrol engine of 14.6 litres, which they duly did, and the result was this Foster-Daimler tractor, producing over double the horsepower of the Thornycroft, and capable of towing loads weighing up to 35 tons.

Still in Coventry, very early in the war the Coventry Ordnance Works, suppliers of 15-inch naval guns to the Admiralty, had, precipitated by the German bombardment of the forts at Liège, privately designed and manufactured the BL 15-inch howitzer, the heaviest artillery piece used by the British during the Great War, weighing in, emplaced, at a massive 94 tons.

The howitzer could be transported in nine separate loads, leaving just one question; what, exactly, could do the transporting?

Rear-Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon, the managing director of Coventry Ordnance Works at the time, knew exactly what could do the transporting.  Here, he watches trials of the Foster-Daimler tractor at South Park, Lincoln in 1915.

Actually, if you check out South Park today, there are areas that, apart from the trees, really don’t look so different, well over a hundred years later (inset).  This shot shows gradient trials, the tractor using winding gear to haul two trucks weighing sixteen tons up the hill.

A total of eight tractors would be required for each of the howitzers and its ammunition trailers, and once trials were satisfactorily completed, Bacon offered his new gun to the Army, who, unimpressed by its range (under 11,000 yards) and the huge logistical operation required to transport it, said thanks, but no thanks.

Bacon then approached Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, who proved far more amenable and ordered a dozen howitzers for the Royal Marine Artillery.

Foster-Daimler tractors hauling trucks containing howitzer parts, again at Lincoln in 1915.  The first guns would be shipped to France in February 1915, where they would be driven by men of the Army Service Corps, and fired by Royal Marine gunners, at least for a while.

The original order had been for ninety seven tractors, at £1,866 per unit, along with 291 special towing wagons, and in due course* the guns would be transferred, along with their tractors, to the Royal Artillery (and thus the Army ended up with them, despite not wanting them, anyway), where they would spend the rest of the war dragging large pieces of artillery (above, hauling a naval gun in 1918), as well as their unloved howitzers, around the French countryside.

*once Churchill lost interest, perhaps.

The tractors were maintained and repaired by the Army Service Corps at the 3rd Heavy Repair Shop at St. Omer in northern France, and after the war, in 1920, along with their howitzers, they were all scrapped.

The tractors dd have other uses; this photograph shows them towing pieces of a railway artillery gun for the defence of Paris (above & below),…

…this the previous shot seen from the side.  According to the original annotations, although I am not entirely sure I believe them, these pictures were taken as early as September 1914.

More heavy artillery ostensibly for the defence of Paris, again pictured in September 1914 (above & following).

These annotated pictures appear to have been taken somewhere on the south coast.

Fitting the Foster-Daimler with flanged wheels allowed it to operate on railway lines, too.  Note that No. 28 (pictured) has been badged as a Daimler-Foster.

Line up of Foster-Daimler tractors at the Lincoln Works.  One of the men pictured is Sir William Tritton, who was the managing director of Foster & Co, who of course built these tractors,…

…and who also built this thing, and you might remember this contraption from a couple of posts back when I introduced you to Tritton’s Trenchcrossing Machine (and now you know whence it got its name).

Basically a Foster-Daimler tractor with its front wheels removed and replaced by two central wheels and a metal bridge that could be dropped over a trench and then released, unfortunately, and this will surprise none of you, it wasn’t a great success.  It could lay its bridge across a trench satisfactorily (above), but once down, it required a large area to turn and retrieve it (can you imagine all this on the Somme?) so that it could be used on the next trench.  Oh, and it was underpowered and nose-heavy, and this example, most probably pictured here at trials in June 1915, would be the only one ever made.

However, there was one good thing that came out of all this early experimentation, and that was the admission of William Tritton (Sir William Tritton from 1917) into the ranks of official British boffinhood, leading to his later involvement with all manner of tracked military vehicles, most notably,…

…the tank, a very early version of which is seen here, covered, just in case the Kaiser’s spies were on hand, with a Foster & Co. Lincoln tarpaulin.