Landships II

Some time ago I discovered that the LHMA held a lot of papers, letters, photographs, and other items relating to Albert Stern, many of them donated by his family. http://www.kingscollections.org/catalogues/lhcma/collection/s/st30-001/

There was also a 16mm acetate film that had been in store for the best part of 50 years. It was available for viewing only by appointment at King's College. It so happened that a fellow Landshipper worked in the very same building, and he and I urged the College to put it onto DVD before it crumbles into dust. It took literally years to persuade them to do it - I'm not exaggerating. I even offered to pay to have it done, but they weren't interested. Finally, after many years they agreed to digitize it. They still won't put it on Youtube or sell copies or do anything that would make it more widely available, and you still have to make an appointment to view it. Which I did last Monday.

This is how the contents are described:

STERN: 6/4

1957

Roll of 16 millimetre acetate film with soundtrack produced by the BBC Television Film Unit entitled 'First hand - tanks (sequences)', relating mainly to World War One tanks and consisting of seven separate sequences, including:

film of a Mark I tank at the Royal Armoured Corps Centre, Bovington, Dorset, showing exterior shrapnel damage, compartment, ammunition storage, 6 pounder gun and engine, with commentary;

the prototype tank, 'Little Willie', (manufactured by William Foster and Company, Lincoln, Lincolnshire in 1915) at the Royal Armoured Corps Centre, Bovington, Dorset, with commentary;

a description of tank operations on the Western Front, 1917-1918;

footage of Stern taken at his home at Barham Court, Kent in 1957, in which he describes his difficulties with the War Office while engaged in pioneering work on the development of tanks with the Mechanical Warfare Supply Department, 1916-1917, his meeting with the Right Hon David Lloyd George, Minister of Munitions at which an order was placed for one thousand tanks, Sep 1916, the cancellation of that order by the Army Council, his refusal to cancel the order, his order for Ricardo engines and his meeting with the Rt Hon Winston (Leonard Spencer) Churchill, Minister of Munitions, Oct 1917, which culminated in his dismissal;

a description of training with Heavy Branch, Machine Gun Corps and Tank Corps 1916-1917.

The film was forwarded to Stern with a covering letter from the BBC Film Librarian, 11 Dec 1957. Duration 10 minutes.

Because there's a lot of stuff, I propose to start a thread on each of the sequences to make it easier to follow up. Some of it might spark a bit of detective work. It might be that there are copies of some of the sequences at Bov or the BBC or IWM, but all these were in the same place.

If I'd had more time and realised how the system works, I'd have had a look at a lot more stuff. Worth noting that in the Reading Room there were shelves full of the Tank Corps Journal going back to 1925. A lot of the content is social activity for serving and former tankers - dinner dances, cricket matches, etc - but each issue also contains historical articles. The first picture I came across showed Major Donohue of the Mechanical Transport Committee showing his dummy gun on the Hornsby trailer to the King and Queen.

The Landshipper who was our man inside at King's was Roger Todd, who strove valiantly against baffling inertia.

I also visited the British Film Institute to watch the whole of  "The Somme" (1927), which answers some questions but raises some more. And visited the IWM for the first time since the refurb, which, I  think, from a Great War point of view is a disaster. Reports to follow.