Landships II

Not much info from me, I'm afraid, though I'd be interested in what turns up seeing as the Podeus tractors were used with the 42cm Dicke Berthas.

Herbert Jaeger has this to say in 'German Artillery of World War One', however:

In 1913 the APK [artillery testing committee], who already saw all guns pulled either by horses or by mechanical traction, asked the KM, the War Ministry, for motor traction for the transport of 30.5cm Beta-mortars as well as the coming 42cm M-Geraet and the 15cm KiSL guns. In 1914 the APK went for a light tractor for pulling 9 tons and a heavy one for 24 tons. For the latter, in 1914 Podeus came up with an improved motor plough that had 80hp. Of these, seventeen were ordered for further trials, and Podeus had to agree not to sell this type to foreign countries. Four-wheel drive was considered to be a waste of money, since the artillery was supposed to stay on the roads. The only exemption to this doctrine was granted to the Ballonabwehrkanonen (BaK), designed for chasing after balloons and dirigibles.

Also, this photograph, found elsewhere on the internet, may show Podeus tractors, but it wasn't labelled with any precision:

Same place as I found a magnificent photograph of a Big Bertha variant (see the Dicke Bertha page on Landships):

http://www.chez.com/franhaus/html/batterie_solf.htm

The caption simply reads:

'Conducteurs devant les tracteurs de type agricole utilisés pour les déplacements par voie routière'

'Drivers in front of the agricultural tractors used for road transportation'

So, not overly helpful...

I only suspect that some of the tractors (as there appear to be more than one type) may be Podeus as there are photographs of Big Berthas being emplaced in Richard Schindler's book (which, being out of print since 1934, they hold at the British Library) which feature, to the best of my memory, similar looking vehicles, and I know that, apart from steam tractors very early on, the Germans did use Podeus for the Berthas.