Landships II

This topic has a long history and gets very convoluted, but I think that we have arrived at the bottom of it. Bear with me.

Our story begins ten years ago, with Vilkata's inquiry about this badge/pin, supposedly the first worn by the U.S. Tank Corps:

As Roger Todd pointed out, it bears little resemblance to any known tank, but could pass for the Land Cruiser designed by, but not necessarily built by, the Automatic Machine Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut:

Mr. Todd also observes that there is no front view of this vehicle. That's worth remembering.

That's where we seemed to get stuck. (Btw, a lot of images on the original site have disappeared, so apologies if I'm repeating things.)

The last post on this was my link to the Encyclopedia of United States Army Insignia and Uniforms by William K. Emerson, which shows no fewer than 4 badges and buttons carrying this image:

. . . and supplies the information that: In December 1917 army regulations described the first insignia for the army's newest combatant arm, the Tank Corps, as "a conventional tank, one inch high, with the number of the regiment attached to the bottom." However, he then states that "No example of the insignia with a number below has ever been seen." That's a bit odd, isn't it?

He next says that, "several manufacturers also made the original Tank Corps insignia in a reduced size for the shirt collar. (There was also) a matching 1-inch-diameter bronze disk for enlisted soldiers." Fair enough.

But then there's this: "Most people did not readily understand this artistically attractive 1917 design. It showed the front view of a French tank with armor plate and large rivets, with an enclosure for three cannons and two additional cannons sticking out of the sides, all topped by a small turret." What does the first sentence mean? Who designed this very unusual symbol? Is there no information on the subject? What French tank? It doesn't look much like any that we know of. And why a French tank, especially if it's meant to be a Saint-Chamond? American troops hadn't trained on French tanks - Saint-Chamonds had only been in action on two occasions since the Americans arrived in France, and the two had never encountered each other.

We know that Patton had both seen tanks and played a part in the design of the U.S. Tank Corps uniform. But we know only that Patton held a competition that led to the creation of the Tank Corps shoulder patch; there's nothing AFAIK about badges/pins. And even so, why would he have chosen a non-existent tank when he had seen plenty of real ones, and why a Saint-Chamond (or, at a pinch, Schneider) when he was much more familiar with the FT at Champlieu and the British tanks he'd seen after Cambrai?

Of course, Wikipedia embraces the idea as only it can: "Paragraph 36, Change 1 to War Department Special Regulations No. 42, dated 1917-12-29, stated that "the insignia on the collar of the coat for Tank Service would be a conventionalized tank, 1 inch high, with the number of the regiment attached to the bottom". The approved design was a front view of a French tank."

(Btw, Wikipedia also says the following: "A new insignia for the Armored Forces was authorized by War Department Circular 56, dated 1942-02-25. This insignia was the side-view of the Mark VIII Tank used in World War I." It's a Mk V.)

But back to the plot.

Out of the blue, the excellent book Briefly Famous: The 1917 Caterpillar G9 Tank appears. It contains nothing about badges and buttons, but it has plenty about the Land Cruiser described all those years ago by Roger Todd. Too much, in fact. A criticism I forgot to make was that the book gets a bit confused about the Land Cruiser, and, somehow, the drawings of the vehicle are included twice. The author also is not clear as to whether this vehicle was designed by the Automatic Machine Company or by the Bullock Tractor Company of Chicago, Illinois. But what is both certain and important is that a front view of the vehicle is included. And here it is:

I think all doubt vanishes at this point. This is clearly the tank that appears on the badges. It's an artist's impression of the Land Cruiser.

So how did this imaginary tank manage to appear on a U.S. Army uniform? Well, a bit of research produced some evidence that strongly suggests it didn't. Look at this:

The American Emblem Company of Utica, New York, produced novelty badges such as this from 1914 until it closed down in 1963. It could be that the company was producing facsimiles of actual military badges, but in view of all that has gone before, I suspect that it was the other way round, and that the sequence of events was as follows:

We know that when news - but no pictures - of the first use of tanks reached the USA, various bodies began casting around for images. Jack Alexander's book shows many of the spurious ones that emerged. The front view of the Land Cruiser appeared in Scientific American on October 7th, 1916, before pictures of real tanks were available. So my contention is that the American Emblem Co., anxious to jump on the bandwagon, took its inspiration from the drawings of the Land Cruiser and offered them for sale as genuine insignia. Unless someone bought a large amount of them, shipped them to France, took them to Langres and/or Bovington, and issued them to the troops in training, I suggest that these badges never went anywhere near an American tanker. They were never anything more than collectibles, and William K. Emerson, perhaps mistakenly took them for genuine military issue. His misunderstanding has been propagated since. In practice, the Tank Corps' insignia were supplied, as one might assume, by Uncle Sam, beginning with those featuring replicas of British rhomboids.

Here's a closer look:

More than happy to be argued with.