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Title (Dublin Core)
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Giant destroyer
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Article Title and/or Image Caption (Dublin Core)
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The Giant Destroyer of the Future
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Caption 1: The machine proposed by Mr. Shuman would be irresistible. With its front wheels measuring 200 feet in diameter, and the weights aggregating many tons dangling down in front from chains, it would plow through a whole town, blotting it out of existence as if it were a mere antheap. The wheels would be latticed, so that shot might pass through without destroying them.
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Caption 2: Ordinary rivers and marshes would not stop the machine. Few rivers are more than fifty feet deep. The 200-foot wheels of the machine would dash through them as easily as an automobile thorough a pool of mud.
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extracted text (Extract Text)
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CLUB, a bow and arrow, a blunder-
buss, an infantryman'’s rifle, a forty-
two centimeter howitzer are merely
instruments for delivering blows. The
essential difference between the battles of
prehistoric times and those of today lies
in the manner of delivering blows. Smoke-
less powder has merely lengthened the arm
of a modern fighter. He strikes and kills
at a distance of miles.
For all our machine-guns, for all our ter-
rible “artillery preparation,” battles are
still won by bayonets. Tactics have been
somewhat modified since Napoleon's day,
because of the invention of the machine-
gun and the high-powered field-piece. But
the individual fighter is still as important
as he ever was. We speak of the German
or French or Russian “war machine,”
when we mean a million or more indi-
viduals trained to act with a precision that
roughly approximates that of a modern
university football team.
Only the Battleship Is a Real War Machine
Because armies are still composed es-
sentially of many individuals, fighting
ships may be more fittingly termed “war
machines.” A modern battleship is a real
machine. The men on board are merely
somany intelligences that control the steam-
engines, the turrets, the great guns, the
searchlights. No one ever hears now of
hand to hand conflicts at sea. Ships are
sunk at ranges of five and seven miles. But
land warfare is still waged not by a few
machines, as on the sea, but by organized
millions of men.
Armies have increased in size. Fighting
ships, on the other hand, have diminished
in number. Contrast the numerical strength
of the British Navy now with what it was
in the days of Drake and Nelson. A few
dozen ships, highly intricate machines,
have taken the place of hundreds.
Why is there no land battleship, some-
thing comparable with our own Penn-
sylvania, something which will concen-
trate within one volume the striking
power of an army?
Why Not a Battleship On Land ?
There is no good engineering reason why
an enormous wheeled structure, heavily
armored and capable of traveling at high
speed should not wage the battles of the
future. Technically, it is a far easier task
to design and build a super-dreadnought
than a wheeled destroyer to run on solid
ground. The ocean is a vast, level expanse.
There are no hills and valleys. Water is
the same in density everywhere. But land
varies from the hardest rock to the softest
quagmire. Here we have the reason
why we still oppose armies against
each other instead of machines.
Undeniable as these difficulties
are, it seems to me that they
could be overcome by boldly
designing a machine of such
dimensions and of such
energy that it could
travel over ordinary
land much as an automobile travels over a
country road. A hill fifty feet high would be
to that machine what a six-inch ridge of clay
would be to an automobile; a swamp would
no more hinder its course than half a foot of
mud would stop a touring car. Its speed
would be at least one hundred miles an
hour on the long, level, sandy beaches
along our coasts. And even over rough
infand country it would rush far more
swiftly than any touring car on a poor road.
Indeed, in its speed would lie its destruc-
tive possibilities. The impact of a heavy
mass moving with the velocity of an express
train would be irresistible. It could mow
down everything before it with the relent-
lessness of a steam-roller. Guns would
not be required to rout an enemy. An
army would be as helpless in offering
resistance as a flock of geese in the path of
an automobile.
A Giant Three-Wheeled Armored Car
It is impossible within the limits of a
short article to describe this machine which
I have conceived in all its details. Picture
to yourself, however, a self-propelled ma-
chine, comprising three wheels and a
heavily armored body or car. There are
two wheels, one hundred and fifty to two
hundred feet in diameter in front, and
a single smaller steering-wheel in the
rear. The entire structure is short, so
that the turning radius will be small.
No doubt you are familiar with the mili-
tary masts of our American battleships.
They are latticed towers, not unlike cages.
They are thus constructed so that whole
sections of the lattice work may be shot
away; but the remaining portions will
still support the mast.
So I would build the wheels of my war
machine. Why not armor them instead?
They would weigh far too much—thousands
of tons in fact. But the hub I would ar-
mor—and heavily. There the spokes would
be concentrated so thickly that they might
be shot away in great numbers. Besides,
the hub and axle must be well protected.
Therefore the center of each wheel would
be a mass of armor as thick as that of a
battle cruiser.
The two front wheels of this war machine
would have to be spaced about three hun-
dred feet apart. They would have a tread
about twenty feet wide,—in other words,
about as wide as an ordinary room. I
would make them of steel plates four
inches thick, bolted together in sections.
Since the machine is to destroy by virtue
of its inherent energy and not by means
of guns, it would have a comparatively
small car—a car which would not rise
above the tops of the front wheels, which
would be heavily armored, and which
would serve primarily as a housing for the
engines. The crew would be small—not
more than perhaps thirty men.
I am fully aware that the problem of
obtaining engines which will give this war
machine a speed of one hundred miles an
hour is not easily solved. But if thousands
of horsepower can be developed by the
engines of pitching and rolling battleships
it is not unreasonable to suppose that
competent engineers can be found to design
and build steam engines of twenty thousand
horsepower, fed by oil-fired boilers.
Once more let me state that the front
wheels are one hundred and fifty to two
hundred feet in diameter. Hence, they
would make less than fifteen turns to the
mile.
How Shocks Would Be Absorbed
That simplifies the matter of absorbing
shocks. If a racing automobile on a fine
track leaps into the air when it strikes even
a pebble, simply because the spring sus-
pension has not time to respond to the
shock, it is obvious that the huge structure
that I have in mind must be provided with
inordinately strong yet sufficiently sensitive
shock-absorbers. The shock that would be
experienced in knocking down a small
factory building, would certainly not be as
great as the shock that must be absorbed
asa modern fifteen-inch naval gun suddenly
recoils after discharge. If cylinders filled
with oil can check the terrific recoil of a
big gun, they can also act as shock-absorb-
ers on a land war machine. And so they
can be imagined on the machine—huge
cylinders, three feet in diameter, filled with
oil which would resist the pressure of
pistons on the axle.
‘The weight of the entire structure would
be probably five thousand tons. Since the
machine is to batter down everything in its
ath, there are to be suspended from the
front of the machine a series of heavy
weights, each weighing several tons. The
weights may be raised or lowered. When
dropped into position their impact at high
speed would level everything before them.
Only Big Guns Could Stop the Machine
Terrible as this contrivance would be, it
‘would not be able to withstand bombard.
ment by 16-inch Skoda or Krupp guns. It
is not intended for that. Ordinary field
artillery will not stop it. Its sole purpose
is to move up and down an enemy's coun-
try, to make a whole region untenable, to
crush down resistance offered by ordinary
field fortifications. Mines will be planted
to blow up the destroyer. Mines do not
prevent a battleship from venturing upon
the sea. Moreover, the maneuvering power
of the land war machine will be such that
it may change its course wilfully with such
rapidity that a whole countryside would
have to be blown up in order to affect it.
Imagine yourself standing at one front
wheel of this machine. Comparatively you
would be no bigger than a baby standing
beside the driving wheel of a passenger
locomotive. Far above you would be the
maze of spokes constituting the latticed
wheel. Perched midway between the two
gigantic front wheels, as tall as many a
moderate sized office building, would be the
ship-shaped armored car for the engines
and the crew. You reach it by means of an
elevator resembling that in which miners
rise from deep coal mines. Once in the car,
you might fancy yourself in the engine
room of a ship; there is no difference so far
as general appearances go. With the com-
mander you step into the conning-tower—
a circular, armored chamber well forward,
dominating the entire landscape.
The commander gives a signal. The
machine moves. It gains headway. Soon
it travels at express-train speed. A mile
ahead is a densely wooded park. In a min-
ute the machine reaches it. Does it stop or
swerve? It plunges on. Trees are crunched
as if they are mere weeds. You look back
in thewakeof the machine. It is asif a storm
had laid low every poplar and elm. And yet
the machine is not even scratched. An
enemy village, occupied by enemy soldiers
lies in front. The machine speeds on toward
it. It reaches them. Houses are battered
down as if they were made of paper. Wher-
ever the weights that dangle down in front
strike, wherever the wheels move, there is
a rending and a crushing. And so, every-
thing is leveled before the war machine—
walls of earth or masonry, houses big and
little, railway stations and signal bridges.
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Contributor (Dublin Core)
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Frank Shuman (inventor and writer)
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Edwin F. Bayha (illustrator)
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Language (Dublin Core)
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eng
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Date Issued (Dublin Core)
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1916-12
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pages (Bibliographic Ontology)
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897-901
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Rights (Dublin Core)
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Public Domain (Google digitized)
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Archived by (Dublin Core)
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Filippo Valle
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Alberto Bordignon (Supervisor)
Popular Science Monthly, v. 89, n. 6, 1916
