5 of History's Weirdest Military Vehicles

We love a good military vehicle. Over the years we’ve seen big vehicles, slow vehicles, great vehicles, terrible vehicles, and today, it’s the turn of the weird ones.

So, let’s not faff about, and get right into it!

1. Simms’ Land Torpedo

Many of you are no doubt already aware of this, the Goliath Tracked Mine, and for those of you not already in the know, it was a German remote controlled bomb from WWII. A lot has been written about it over the years, but did you know that while the Goliath may steal the limelight, it was far from the first vehicle to have a crack at that concept, with a particularly interesting earlier example being this, Simms’ Land Torpedo.

It was designed by Frederick Simms, hence the name, a Briton who had something at his disposal that would inspire fear in any enemy: a shed, within which he kept tools he could use to make things. And if you know anything about British military history, you’ll know that it’s a long-standing tradition that when Old Britannia finds herself in jeopardy, middle aged fellas blighty over will retreat to their sheds and begin tinkering away on various wacky Wallace-and-Gromit-esque contraptions that they are sure will bring about victory.

The Land Torpedo was far from the first such contraption to emerge from Simms’ shed too, with him also having made the Quadricycle Motor Scout, the first internal combustion powered armed vehicle, the Simms Draisine, an early armoured rail car, and the War Car, the first armoured car ever built. These were all built in response to the Boer War of 1899 to 1902, and didn’t really affect things, at all, but nonetheless, when WWI broke out in 1914, Simms returned to his shed ready to try and do his part for King and Country once again. His shed had grown a bit since the Boer War however, as it had now become ‘Simms Motor Units Ltd,’ a reasonably sized supplier of dynamos and magnetos to the automotive industry.

As for the Land Torpedo that emerged from this, design work on it was finished in May 1915, at which point he submitted it to the patent office under the title Improvements on Motor Propelled Vehicles. In stark contrast to his earlier martial contraptions, and very much in line with the vogue of that war, it made use of tracks, and had quite the clever propulsion system that made use of mechanical gearing that was powered by a dynamo drawing power from a petrol engine. It was, in essence, what we would today call a hybrid!

As for the warhead, we don’t know exactly how big Simms intended it to be, as he failed to tell us on his patent application, but we do know that he envisioned it being detonatable both electronically by remote, and on impact. We also don’t know exactly how armoured Simms intended the Land Torpedo to be, because he answered such questions simply by stating it would be ‘bullet proof.’

As you have likely ascertained already from the tone of this chapter, the Land Torpedo was never actually built, and was only ever a machine on paper only. Chiefly, this was because he received a total lack of enthusiasm from the War Office when he pitched it, with them being worried that its reliance upon a control cable would make it easily disabled as it trundled along to its target, and that the need of the operator to remain hidden behind something solid would complicate effective deployment.

Simms, for his part, although disappointed with the lack of interest in his Land Torpedo, would live on until 1944, just long enough to at least see his core concept vindicated by the Goliath Tracked Mine that we mentioned at the start of the chapter.

2. 40RBL78 MA Field Gun

Now let’s have a look at this, the oh so snappily named 40RBL78 MA Field Gun, which was, in essence, an industrial crane that had a whopping great cannon plonked on top of it.

It was devised in the early stages of WWII, just after the Austrian Armband Enthusiast had delivered a firm shoeing to the British Army in the Battle of France, who then had to scarper back home double quick like in the face of his ever advancing army. A scarper that proved to be so hurried in fact, that they had had to abandon insane quantities of vehicles, because there was simply no time to get them out; 64 thousand of them to be precise – everything from motorbikes to tanks, just dumped and abandoned.

This, naturally, wouldn’t have been ideal even at the best of times, but at that time specifically, with the full might of the Wehrmacht now poised a mere 30 kilometres away from Blighty on the other side of the English Channel, and seemingly about to strike at any moment, it was really not ideal, because if they did indeed make the leap, the Brits would have basically no vehicles to send to the defence.

Faced with this rather underpant browning situation, the British Government did the only thing it could do while it waited for replacement vehicles to be made; turn around to the civilian sector and beg them for anything that they could throw together. This led to things such as the Bison Lorry, which used concrete for its armour, the Standard Beaverette, basically just a Standard Flying 14 car chassis that had some armoured plating quickly bolted on top of it, and of course, as you have no doubt guessed by now, the 40RBL78 MA Field Gun, which we will just called the ‘MA Field Gun’ herein to keep things simple.

It came from the Ruston-Bucyrus Company, a Lincolnshire based manufacturer of earthmoving and excavation vehicles, and the effort to make it saw them take their ‘10-RB’ model of crane, a then very popular model that was widely used in both the commercial and military sectors, and modify it by replacing the normal cab with a 10mm thick armoured box, which, in what was actually quite an advanced move for the time, was fully welded together rather than rivetted together. This armour happily gave enough protection to fend of small arms fire.

And in another smart move, its cannon, the exact model of which is unclear, was also fully enclosed within said armour, rather than having an open cabin as many self-propelled guns of the era did, examples of which include the German Wespe and the British Archer. It also retained the full 360-degree traverse of the original 10-RB crane, giving it a degree of flexibility in firing that could only be matched by turreted self-propelled guns such as the Soviet KV-2… and they weren’t exactly the norm at the time.

Unfortunately, however, while it might have had some serious pluses to its design, despite what its frankly ridiculous appearance may have originally led you to believe, it also had many downsides. For example, an early upgrade with its gearing saw its speed rocket from a pedestrian 4kph up to a much handier 24kph… and this made it borderline impossible to steer. And what’s worse, it was also rather prone to falling over, as its weight and height gave it quite the high centre of gravity.

All in all then, a noble effort from the Ruston-Bucyrus Company to be sure, but one that was a complete swing and a miss, as unsurprisingly, the MA Field Gun was never adopted.

3. P.1000 Landkreuzer

Onto something a tad bigger now: the mighty P.1000 Landkreuzer, which, had it ever been completed, would have weighed in at a simply mind boggling 1,000 tonnes.

It was a design of the interwar period, a very special time in tank design when, to be blunt, no one had any idea what the future of armoured warfare would look like, and so, all manner of muck ended being flung at the wall to see what stuck. This led to tiny tanks, such as the Polish TKS and Italian L3/35 tankettes, and big tanks such as the Soviet T-35 and French Char 2C, as well as all manner of everything in between them.

The P.1000 was an effort to see the latter end of that spectrum taken to its most extreme; to create not just a proverbial ‘fortress tank,’ as the Soviets referred to their T-35, but a real fortress tank – literally, a tank which was just a rolling mobile fortress.

It was devised in the Soviet Union, where Edward Grote, an ethnic German who had relocated there on account of his communist sympathies, had been tasked with developing a heavy breakthrough tank capable of rivalling the 2C, which had been in service with France since 1921.

His initial design work, which began in April 1930, resulted in the creation of the TG-1 tank prototype. Certainly, it was a mean looking thing, especially by 1930 standards, but unfortunately, there is more to quality tank design that just looks, and so the TG-1, which was shaping up to be ungodly expensive to mass produce and had a really weird track design that never quite worked properly, was cancelled.

Setback, but undeterred, Grote continued to work away on new designs. He did this in his own free time however, rather than within the limiting confines of a State backed project, and so, with no one to reign his ideas in, he got a bit carried away, which led to him drafting the design of the P.1000 come March 1933.

As for how carried away he got, well, put it this way, the final design envisioned a tank that was 34 metres in length, 10 metres in width, 11 metres tall, and was armed with a fearsome array of weapons including two 305mm naval guns on rotating turrets, and a whole load of smaller turrets that housed various 152mm, 76mm and 45mm guns. As for power, that was to come from 12 2,000hp diesel engines, with the cumulative 24,000hp produced being intended to push the 1,000-tonne vehicle to speeds of up to 60kph.

When Grote took a step back to have a look at his finished blueprints, he was pretty chuffed with what he saw, somehow, and so he confidently marched into the office of Soviet Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, slapped them down on the desk, and uttered words to the extent of: “What do you reckon to that bad boy then, comrade?”

Unfortunately for Grote, however, Tukhachevsky’s answer to that was that he thought it looked utterly ridiculous, and so, dejected by yet another rejection, Grote left the Soviet Union and returned to Germany, where he continued plying his trade as a tank engineer.

Bizarrely, and in stark contrast to how you no doubt are imagining this went however, he actually proved to be rather competent, and built up quite the list of innovate patents to his name, for everything from transmissions and hydraulic couplings to track designs. It seems like he was an absolute champion at designing the smaller minutia of tanks, but the second he was let loose to combine it all into a single design; madness ensued.

4. Hafner Rotabuggy

There has probably never been a more ‘do it all’ vehicle than the original Jeep, or to use its proper name, the Willys MB. Just in WWII alone, the venerable little 4x4 was used as a personnel carrier, a self-propelled gun, an ambulance, a meteorological vehicle, a radio car, and a very light artillery tractor – and they’re just the tip of the iceberg.

Its most peculiar iteration of all however saw it used as a helicopter. Yes, you heard us right there, a helicopter… allow us to explain.

It all began in 1942, when British Air Ministry specification 10/42 called for a ‘Special Rotating Wing Glider,’ essentially, a ‘kit’ of sorts that could be used to make regular ground vehicles capable of aerial insertion through temporarily, and above all else, cheaply, converting them into rotary wing gliders.

Many vehicles were considered for use as the testbed, but the tiny Jeep, which weighed a little over 1,000kg fully road ready, and was known to be able to survive drops of up to 2.35 meters and be able keep on driving, soon became the obvious, and really, only, choice.

With that foundational choice made, the project was handed to Raoul Hafner of the Airborne Forces Experimental Establishment, who immediately contracted the help of R. Malcolm & Co. Ltd, who specialised in making miscellaneous aircraft components, and later, would become pioneers in ejector seats, to help bring the idea into fruition.

The result of their co-operation was the Rotabuggy, an otherwise normal Jeep made abnormal through the addition of a 12.4 metre diameter rotor, a tail fairing, and fins, although it lacked rudders, and any sort of power for the rotor, which instead operated purely on autorotation.

The first trial occurred on the 16th of November 1943, and involved towing the Rotabuggy behind a Diamond T lorry. This did not go well at all, as said lorry just didn’t have enough go to get the Rotabuggy off the ground by even an inch.

Not to worry however, because from there, one of the very well-heeled RAF types assisting with the project lent his own Bentley to the effort, which, thanks to its whopping great 4.5 litre supercharged engine, had more than enough power to get the Rotabuggy into the sky.

It only went a few feet up however, as this was just a basic test of its aerodynamics and stability; nice and low – so that the pilot wouldn’t be killed if the test ended up going a tad whoopsie daisy.

This proved promising enough however, not a flyaway success do note, but not an abject disaster, and so, soon enough, the Rotabuggy was hooked up behind proper aircraft, and towed at ever greater heights and ever higher speeds. This revealed that it suffered from excessive and dangerous vibrations at speeds over 72kph, but with slow and steady tinkering, as well as ever more tests, its performance was soon deemed “highly satisfactory,” with it being figured out that it could withstand a maximum speed of 241kph, and achieve a nice and steady descent rate of 5-10 metres per second, although some of this was only figured out on paper, with its peak speed during testing being only being 113kph.

Despite how promising things were looking for the Rotabuggy however, it would never get the opportunity to be pushed to the max, as come September 1944, it was all over, and the project was cancelled. The reason why? That would be because the successful development of vehicle-carrying gliders such as the General Aircraft Hamilcar had rendered it totally obsolete; as the Hamilcar could carry everything from a Jeep, right the way up to a Tetrarch light tank, and since it just chucked them in the hold, it was obviously the far superior choice.

5. The Kettenkrad

A question, dear readers. What happens when a half-track and a motorbike decide that they love each other very much? Well, they have a special hug, and create this, a Sd.Kfz.2 Kettenkrad.

Developed by Germany during WWII, this bizarre motorbike halftrack was designed as a very light artillery tractor for airborne units – as it could happily be chucked in the hold of a Junkers 52 transporter, or a Gotha 242 glider.

It was designed by Heinrich Kniepkamp, one of the leading technical big wigs in the Army Weapons Office, with production being handled by NSU Motorenwerke, a forerunner to the modern Audi brand that had a long established history of making quality motorcycles. As for when all of that happened, it was designed in 1939, and was mostly produced from that same year through to 1945 – with a few more being cranked out after the war for agricultural used.

And all in all, despite its utterly bizarre looks, the Kettenkrad was actually a properly clever bit of kit. Take its steering, for example, small adjustments could be made purely through input from the handlebars, but for sharper turns, it used the same Cletrac Differential Steering System as most German half-tracks, which automatically responds to steering input, and in hard turns applies the brakes to the corresponding side of the tracks, allowing anything fitted with it to make really sharp turns.

As for the rest of its design, it was absolutely tiny, being the smallest half-track ever made, with its specific dimensions being a length of exactly 3 metres, and a width of exactly a single metre. Power came from a pretty normal water-cooled four-cylinder petrol engine that produced 36 horsepower. This afforded the Kettenkrad a top speed of 70kph on the road, and a towing capacity of 450kg – not bad at all for a small little thing that was meant to be chucked in the back of a glider as a ‘something is better than nothing’ type vehicle.

In terms of service, despite being designed for airborne troops, it was actually mostly used by the regular infantry, because it turned out, that the need for an artillery tractor among airborne troops, while by no means nil, wasn’t exactly pressing, but the need for a handy little thing that could laugh off thick mud as though it was barely even there was very pressing among regular troops… especially when fighting in the Soviet Union. As a result of this, it ended up being used as everything from an artillery tractor, as originally intended, to a personnel transporter, scout vehicle, cable layer, and medivac vehicle. Some were even used by the Luftwaffe as an airplane tug.

All in all, come the war’s end, at least 8,300 of them had been produced, with a further 550 of them being made by 1949 for that later agricultural use which we earlier mentioned.

Key Takeaways

• Simms’ Land Torpedo was an early remote-controlled bomb concept, designed by Frederick Simms during WWI.
• The 40RBL78 MA Field Gun was a WWII British attempt to repurpose an industrial crane into a mobile artillery piece.
• The P.1000 Landkreuzer was an interwar German design for a massive, 1,000-tonne tank, never built due to impracticality.
• The Hafner Rotabuggy was a WWII British experiment to convert a Jeep into a rotary-wing glider for aerial insertion.
• The Kettenkrad was a German WWII half-track motorbike, used for various roles including artillery traction and personnel transport.

Sources

• Original Side Projects video: 5 of History’s Weirdest Military Vehicles
• Hero image source by Alan Wilson from Stilton, Peterborough, Cambs, UK / openverse, by-sa.

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