Landships II

Heres a collage of the AFVs that I've never seen before...

I don't know that much about the soft-skin vehicles, so I can't really make a call on that.

But ok... The 'Armored Car With Grapnel' - is that a gigantic cannon sticking out the back of it? I reckon what the picture is showing, is a grapling hook being tossed into the barbed wire, and then the armored car trying to wrench it out of the ground and pull it away. That's a really novel idea for defeating barbed wire!!! It's too bad that there were no perfect roads leading up to the barbed wire entanglements, haha!! So that idea seems rather silly.

I have never seen the second armored car, the one with the strange egg shaped turret, but I'm guessing its some Russian armored car by the looks of it.

And ok... The third vehicle, that "Armored Tricycle"... That thing has to be one of the strangest AFVs I've ever ever seen. Its incredibly small! Armed with a machine gun, and the driver must have been hunched over like a chimp in order to drive it!! Absolutely bizarre. It would have no chance of crossing broken terrain, it would be an easy target in street-fighting... Perhaps it was some sort of scout...? Or just another stupid idea someone thought up while getting hammered?

The fourth vehicle, the lorry with wire-cutting cage thingy on it, is another idea that just doesnt make a shred of sense........

And that final armored car, which looks French, has a fixed, open, fighting compartment so the machine gun can only shoot out one side of the car...? Now that's peculiar.

Odd stuff, that's for sure.

---Vil.

Aha! BT White to the rescue!

We were both wrong - the EggTurret car is a Belgian S.A.V.A. armored car apparently.

And, there are quite a lot of Belgian and French armored cars that resemble the tan Lower Left armored car. (in my collage)

Likewise, there are a lot of English vehicles that sort of resemble the Top Left green grapple car.

However, no armored car I can find looks exactly like either of them, or even comes very close to looking like them.

So, hmmm.

---Vil.

Vilkata wrote:

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The fourth vehicle, the lorry with wire-cutting cage thingy on it, is another idea that just doesnt make a shred of sense........

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Nevertheless this sort of wire cutter/deflector was built in various forms on both French and Italian vehicles. I think that it wasn't so much intended to deal with wire on the trench front but to protect the occupants (and possibly convoys) from malicious people stretching wire across a road as happened in some of the North African campaigns (Algeria, Morocco and Tripolitania) just before WW1. The ciggy card illustration looks like a pastiche of some of these.

Centurion wrote:

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Vilkata wrote:  And that final armored car, which looks French, has a fixed, open, fighting compartment so the machine gun can only shoot out one side of the car...? Now that's peculiar. Odd stuff, that's for sure. ---Vil. I think its actually Italian. The artist has probably used a rather murky photo to work from and has failed to notice that the gun has a shield that is not an integral part of the cars superstructure (and the gun is an Mg). Take a look at my latest posting on 'Armoured cars thant didn't quite..' thread this contains a clearer concept. There were a number of Italian cars that were very similar.

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No, it ain't. It's all in B.T. White. All will be revealed on Sunday.

Stand by.

OK, here's my theory:

https://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f209/a7v/CigSAVA.jpg This one is definitely the S.A.V.A. AC. The rather rococo turret (which is actually a half-turret) has an Italian look, but it's Belgian, made in Antwerp. Armed with Short Hotchkiss.

https://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f209/a7v/CigMors.jpg     Autocanon Mors: Made by a French company which worked closely with Minerva, hence the similarity. The 37mm cannon wasn't fixed on the right but was pivoted and is shown trained to the right of the vehicle. White says "the shield . . . gave the impression from some angles of a tall, angular turret". The Belgian Armoured Car Corps sent to Russia comprised 5 of these plus 3 armoured command vehicles based on the same model and the same of 18hp Peugeots.

https://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f209/a7v/CigIsotta.jpg I believe this is the Isotta-Fraschini, designed by a British racing driver for the Russian govt and based on an Italian chassis. It had seating for nine(!) and consisted of a wooden frame with armour plate bolted on. There was an MG in the turret and provision for a rear-firing MG. The engine was 4-cylinder, 11,000c.c. and the vehicle was shipped to Russia in November 1914. The projection at the rear must have resulted from confusion with the Pierce-Arrow AC armed with a 3pdr gun, or possibly the Renault Autocanon 47mm.

As regards the rails to carry barbed wire up and over vehicles, the Italians were particularly fond of that feature.

All of which leads to this observation: These drawings are remarkably precise in many ways and a bit vague in some. For example, the Mors and Minerva are lacking in detail at the rear, and the Austin AC is highly misshapen, in addition to the hybridisation mentioned above. I wonder how they came about - an artist would have had to be remarkably well-travelled or lucky to see all these vehicles in person, especially as some were one-offs and a number in Russia. Where did he get his subjects from; first-hand, photos, plans, or other drawings? The cards were supposedly passed for publication by the Press Bureau on Sept 22nd, 1916, but where did the originals come from? Or should we face the possibility that these aren't contemporary at all?

-- Edited by JamesH at 21:42, 2006-04-30

Hmmm. Okay then.

There is, though, a way of sorting this out if you're prepared to lay out £50.

It seems they are genuine:  http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6243641048&ssPageName=MERCOSI_VI_ROSI_PR4_PCN_BIX

With best wishes from Ashton-upon-Mersey.