Landships II

Is that the man who did the illustrations for "Batailles & Blindes"? - If so, the accuracy should be counter-checked; I remember the A7V-drawings, which all were wrong some way or the other...

The Aubriot Gabet was a new one on me, but it turns out to be a remote-controlled "land torpedo" like the American Wickham and the German Goliath of WWII.

http://modelarchives.free.fr/Bestiaire/Torpter_P/index.html

The Frott Turmel Laffly was an early experiment with an armoured body on rollers. See below:

There's a profile drawing of the Turmel-Frot-Laffly (by Hubert Cance, incidentally) here:
http://www.chars-francais.net/new/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=786&Itemid=36

Two Aubriot-Gabet designs are also illustrated by Cance here:
http://www.chars-francais.net/new/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=787&Itemid=36

There's a photo of the wheeled Aubriot-Gabet thing in Jeudy's 'Chars de France'.

Hubert Cance's drawings appear in the magazine 'Batailles & Blindes'. I've seen his series on early British projects such as Crompton's machines and Sueter's Pedrail published in 'Batailles & Blindes' in 2006 (http://www.batailles-blindes.com/chars_anglais.htm), and they look remarkably similar to Dick Harley's drawings of the same subjects in 'Tankette' published in the early 1980s.

Incidentally, that French website I linked to is superb - there's a photo of a completed Char Lourd FCM 1A here that I've not seen anywhere else (together with a wooden mockup that appears in Jeudy's book):
http://www.chars-francais.net/new/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8&Itemid=37

-- Edited by Roger Todd at 15:59, 2008-01-06