The Newton Universal Military Tractor. In case your literacy skills have just let you down.
Or you’re dyslexic. The original Newton tractor, powered by a pair of Ford Model T engines, is seen here with an armoured canopy covering the cargo area. It also seems to be covering the drivers seat and the engine shown in the plan below, so I don’t quite know how that was supposed to work,…
…and these photos of the machine undergoing trials show no sign of any sort of canopy.
Perhaps the canopy was just for transportation purposes?
Or secrecy?
The point being that once the front lines in France had become static, experiments were soon underway, doubtless on both sides, to find ways of transporting troops and equipment across No Man’s Land as quickly, and as safely, as possible.
The actual state of No Man’s Land seems to have been overlooked, or at least underappreciated.
And thus, although the feasibility of such ideas may seem slightly ludicrous in hindsight,…
…these experiments need to be viewed through the eyes of the men whose task was to find ways to break what had become, by 1915, a deadlock.
Here we have an advert for the Strait’s Tractor – never slips, never skids – manufactured in America by the Killen-Strait Manufacturing Company, and featuring a ‘long chain tread’, which thankfully, from a typing point of view, would soon be referred to as a ‘track’.
It had this nice parasol arrangement you could attach to it,…
…as seen here, this postcard showing a Killen-Strait tractor ‘in action’ at an artillery school at Sainte-Mesme, to the north east of Paris,…
…and here negotiating rough ground during trials at Wormwood Scrubs in London during the summer of 1915. The requirement for human ballast at the back suggests a possible design flaw in action here, folks.
As much an experiment in tracks as in tractors, here a Killen-Strait tractor negotiates an obstacle,…
…and encounters a barricade during testing.
Killen-Strait tractor with a naval torpedo net wire-cutter attached to the pole extruding from the front,…
…as seen on the plan on the right.
Among those watching on this occasion, illustrating the seriousness with which these experiments were being taken, that’s Winston Churchill hiding behind the post, with Lloyd George in the hat on the right, Wormwood Scrubs, 30th June 1915.
A second cutter, on a separate pole, could be added, as shown here, the two cutters at different heights.
More human ballast.
The British soon began experimenting with an armoured version of the tractor,…
…by fitting the superstructure from a Delaunay-Belleville armoured car, seen here,…
…with the turret removed, on to the tractor chassis, creating what is sometimes described as the very first tracked armoured vehicle. And no, they’re not ballast, they’re just trying to see exactly where they are going.
A more traditional-looking tractor, this is the Diplock Pedrail tractor undergoing trials. The WD refers to War Department, and its inventor, J. B. Diplock, is present in the bowler hat. Pedrail refers to the ‘elephant feet’ attached to the rear wheels.
And then came this type of Diplock tractor, with its two sets of tracks, each powered by a separate engine. Note the massive steering wheel on the right!
The same example with the basic framework and both raised fuel tanks now attached.
Designed as an infantry carrier to transport troops across No Man’s Land with some degree of safety, it is seen here undergoing trials on nice, grassy Salisbury Plain, with tarpaulin sheets covering the sides,…
…here shown rolled up. It probably won’t surprise you to hear that it was never adopted,…
…although later in the war there was an idea to fit it with a flame thrower. WD again stands for War Department, and MM for Ministry of Munitions.
In due course tracks, of course, would lead to tanks, and we will indeed take a look at the early days of those monsters at some future point.