ONE-MAN TANKS

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 118, 14 November 1925, Page 16

ONE-MAN TANKS

LATEST INVENTION FOR WARFARE.

If there must be wars in the future, and if they are not to be entirely conducted by an alliau.ee of chemistry and aviation, hostilities op the ground-level will be carried on very largely by meatus of tanks—'for that ridiculous name ia theirs in the army that first employed them, an<J appears to have the quality 0/ a name that wjl) stick. A private engineering enthusiast has designed and built an automobile armoured fighting machine to be operated by ope manarmed with a light rnachine-gnq, states the "Daily Telegraph." Jt can move almost as fast as a galloping horse and turn in almost as small a space, can mount a bank and rush across rough gorsq-clad country, cap climb a steep hill at sis or seven mile? an hour, and make its way through a tree*pUnt»tion as easily as a man on foot. In this dp yelopment of the tank principle-^high mobility, strong protection, and rapid fire-ran English inventor has, given a new turn to the possibilities of warfare. He lays stress, moreover, on the psycho* logical factor. The effect of the tank upon infantry attacked by it was a terrifying °ne, and remained so to the end; but the tank waj always some* thing that could be "knocked put" by or dodged by the soldier. The one-man tank is so small and so mobile RB to place artillery protection at the maximum disadvantage; and "its very sinallness imbues it with that personal menace which is the most demoralising factor in war, which in the past the close^qnarter charge with the bayonet inspired." It is cheap to build, and for t.he post of an infantry battalion not less than 30Q, perhaps 500, of thesa machines could be provided. They might well prove, moreover, to be toe most formidable, of weapons yet devised aeainst the larffer tank. There would seem to. be Rood grounds for the belief that the name of the inventor may become, as famous as that of Shrapnal or that of Maxim. He is still ensraged in perfecting his device; but the time will soon be ripe, we understand, for the publication of a more detailed account of it than js at present thought advis* able.