NO SMALL JOB

Opotiki News, Volume III, Issue 319, 4 October 1940, Page 4

NO SMALL JOB

MAKING A TANK 6200 DETAIL PARTS STRENGTH AND AGILITY 1 How much the soldier iii the fighting l.ne is dependent op. the engineer in the workshop would be drought home to tile least imaginative by a visit to a tank factory, writes a correspondent of the Mancaester Guardian. Everyone now knows the importance of the tank as a soldier’s weapon. Everyone realises that our inen in the field must have the best that British cuff, neering brains and- skill can provide.

But it is not a small job to make \ tank. In the factory everything is done except the making of the gins, certain mountings, and the caterpillar track. Entailed in the production of the modern tank are 8200 detail parts, requiring some 50,000 different machining and as•embling operations. Some of th' operations require accuracy of measurement to two ten-thous-andths of an inch. Revolving parts have, to be balanced with virtual exactitude to'avoid'vibrations when the tank’s powerful engines are at work. To the lay mind these feats border ’on the fantastic, but they are ach.eved, and achieved with relative ease and Speed. And when the finished tank comes out of the workshop—a fearsome, ciumsy-look-ing thing instinct with malignity —it does not seei.(i credible that s„ much delicate mechanism can have been put into it. A “Cruiser” On Test Clumsy as it looks, it can be manoeuvred with speed and agility. As one saw it being driven over a rough testing-ground one thought of an elephant with the nimbleness oi a hare. The type seen being tested is offic-ally described as a “cruiser.” It is capable of a speed in the neighbourhood of 40 miles an hour, it can turn in its own length in two or three seconds, and can climb ov.r obstacles with unbelievable easv. ,c carries quick-fir.ng guns and machin e-guns.

This is the type on the production of which the firm is concentrating at present. For some time the factory lias been working at full capacity in two 12-hour shifts a day tor seven days a week. It is exacting work for the big staff, but it is being faced with great cheerfulness; indeed, one thought, with grimness. The building of the factory was begun so recently as .1.937, and production was in full swing by February, 1938. By the end of May in the same year it made its first delivery of a small type of tank called a machine-gun carrier. This is a most extraordinary vehicle. The visiting party was shown one in. full, career over rough ground, and there were, times when passing over deeply rutted ground it literally sprang from the surface w.th every wheel in the air. As it ran round the testing enclosure in com pany with a larger “cruiser ’ it looked like a puppy gambolling around its mother.