The picture above shows, I believe, a Royal Armoured Corps demonstration of the the "battlefield of the future" in around 1927. I suspect the aeroplanes are Bristol Bulldogs, though I'm not 100% sure of that, and anyway it is the tanks which are most interesting, representing as they do two extremes of thinking about the future of armoured vehicles - neither of which actually proved very useful.
Firstly, let's sort out the tiny little things that look like kids have made them out of cardboard boxes. These are almost certainly "tankettes" manufactured by Carden-Loyd Tractors Ltd., later absorbed by Vickers Armstrong. They built a series of tiny tanks designed by Major Gifford Martel; around 450 of the Mark VI model were built, of which maybe 150 were exported to a number of countries. Amongst these were Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Japan and Italy, who subsequently used the design as an inspiration for local mini-tank designs. The Carden-Loyd series would also form the basis of the "Universal Carrier" design which was used during WW2 for carrying support weapons, as tractors for light guns, or for moving personnel around in conditions hostile to more conventional vehicles. Over 100,000 of these little vehicles were built, so the "tankette" can't be accounted a failure.
A short film in which the Carden-Loyd MkVI makes its appearance at about 0:17.
The voice-over seems to be either Polish or Czech, both countries which bought
The voice-over seems to be either Polish or Czech, both countries which bought
the MkVI, and subsequently built similar tankettes of their own.
It's difficult to make definite judgements from our rather fuzzy photograph, but it looks to me as if the two tankettes depicted are of different models. I suspect that the one to the right of the photo is an example of the Mark VI, but that the one at left front is a Mk 1* - a one-man design of which this may well be the only example.
A Carden-Loyd Mark VI in Latvian service.
The much bigger tank in the centre of shot, however, is most definitely unique - and, what is more, is still in existence. It is the huge, multi-turreted Vickers Independent, of which only a single prototype was ever produced, which may now be found in the Tank Museum at Bovington, Dorset.
Bovington's Independent; so, 100% of the class has survived :)
A specification for a new heavy tank was issued in 1922; it was intended to be a "land battleship", capable of independent action or "working in conjunction with cavalry", with a 3-pounder gun and two machine guns. The War Office envisaged that the tank would mount its main gun in the nose and the secondary armament in side sponsons, after the manner of tanks of the Great War, but Vickers supplied them in addition with another design. This carried its large gun in a central turret, surrounded by four smaller machine gun turrets, and it was this speculative alternative design that was accepted by the War Office. Tank development, however, was in the doldrums, with most tank units having been disbanded after the war, and what little development funding there was squandered on dead-end projects. The heavy tank order was not placed till 1926, with the prototype - which came to be known as the Vickers Independent - delivered in October of that year.
The 29-ton tank which Vickers came up with (later modifications increased this to over 31 tons) carried 8 crew (!), was well armoured, and could hit 20 mph on-road. But it had a voracious appetite for engine oil, and persistent problems with its transmission and brakes; moreover, it proved very difficult for the tank commander effectively to control the fire from so many turrets. The Independent's narrow hull and long tracks also made it difficult to steer. Despite an expenditure of £150,000 on the project (about £7 million in today's terms), including £27,000 on the engine alone, it eventually became clear that the Independent was another dead end. The contemporaneous Vickers Medium Tank, despite being less than half the weight and requiring three fewer crew, carried comparable armament and was a better performer. The Independent project was thus terminated in 1935, and the one prototype survived as part of Bovington Camp's defences during World War II, after which it was passed on to the Tank Museum being set up there. Like the little Carden-Loyd tankettes, however, the Independent had its imitators. It also featured in a forgotten piece of cack-handed espionage...
In 1931, disaffected army officer Norman Baillie-Stewart of the Seaforth Highlanders offered his services to the German government as a spy. Baillie-Stewart was a rather inadequate, status-obsessed character who believed himself unjustly overlooked for promotion in favour of the "well-born" (his double barrelled name was itself an affectation). Before being discovered and court-martialled in 1933, this buffoon passed on plans for the Vickers Independent and a rifle design, which he had removed from the Aldershot Military Library. Convicted of selling secrets to a foreign power, he spent five years in the Tower of London, the last person to be imprisoned there. Having become a Nazi sympathiser, he moved to Germany on his release and became a citizen. During World War II he broadcast propaganda by radio; either he or Wolf Mittler was the voice originally dubbed "Lord Haw Haw", before being eclipsed by the better known William Joyce, to whom the nickname was then transferred. Not only was his erstwhile deputy Joyce a more effective broadcaster, but Baillie-Stewart became increasingly disenchanted with his job, and was eventually sacked. He spent the rest of the war working as a translator.
Following the defeat of Nazi Germany, Baillie-Stewart was convicted of acts likely to assist an enemy, having narrowly avoided the capital charge of high treason, and served another five years in prison before moving to Ireland, where he died in 1966.
The early model Lord Haw-Haw.
What use, if any, the Germans made of the plans that Baillie-Stewart supplied is debatable. A number of heavy tank prototypes were produced from 1933 on, under the obfuscatory title of "Neubaufahrzeug" ("new construction vehicle", tank development at that time still being forbidden under the post-WW1 peace settlement). It is possible these were influenced to some extent by the Vickers Independent, though they have a distinctly Germanic appearance and any similarity is fairly superficial. Rather than four small turrets arranged around a larger central turret, these vehicles had secondary turrets mounted fore and aft, below the level of the main gun. They too proved over-complex and the designs were not pursued, though the tanks were occasionally brought out for propaganda purposes. In one such action during the invasion of Norway, one of the prototype tanks was lost, deliberately blown up after getting hopelessly stuck in a swamp near Andalsnes.
The Neubaufahrzeug prototypes arriving in Oslo.
However, Germany was not the only power interested in the Vickers design. Soviet arms designers acted much more directly in imitation of the Independent when designing the T-35, even if they didn't have the plans. The first prototype, constructed in 1932, also had five turrets; the main central turret was equipped with a 76mm gun, two of the subsidiary turrets with a 37mm weapon each, and the remaining two with machine guns. However, a familiar story developed - the tank was overly complicated, and suffered from serious transmission problems. The design was abandoned and subsequent prototypes were much simplified, using many components in common with a contemporaneous but smaller Soviet triple turreted tank, the T-28.
Eventually, a production model of the T-35 emerged, though their high cost meant only 61 were constructed.
The clumsy and poorly armoured T-35 did not inspire much confidence amongst those who operated it, and by 1940 consideration was being given to removing them from service by sending them to military academies, or converting them to self-propelled artillery. Instead, it was decided that the remaining T-35s should be given to combat units to make as best use as was possible. They were, however, an abject failure; their contribution to the Great Patriotic War involved all being lost through mechanical failure and crew abandonment.
Soviet T-35
Though the Soviets remained the most enthusiastic proponents of multi-turreted tanks, subsequent such designs were no more successful than the wretched T-35s they were intended to succeed, even when the number of turrets was whittled down to a more manageable two.
Another monstrous Soviet tank, the SMK.
A prototype of the colossal SMK tank was sent into action during the Winter War, but was disabled by a Finnish land mine and abandoned, as its inert 55-ton bulk proved impossible to recover. Its competitor design, the T-100, survived being sent to the same front, but was equally ineffective, and eventually the multi-turret concept was killed off even in the USSR. Without the aid of bouyancy to mitigate their huge bulk, "land battleships" proved unwieldy and unreliable; this particular steampunk dream would never come to pass...
Never happened. Damn you, physics!
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