TRIALS AND MANOEUVRES
Early Tests of Steam Lorries--Lord Kitchener’s Views on Motors in
the South African War--British W. D. Tractor Trials--The Carriage
of Troops by Car--The Army Manoeuvres of 1912--Recent Trials in
England, France, and Germany.
Naturally, the motor vehicle could not be entrusted with work of the
first importance in time of war without previously going through a
period of encouragement and probation. Some fourteen years ago, motor
cars and cycles began to be used in small numbers during military
manoeuvres in Great Britain and elsewhere.
In the French manoeuvres of 1901, cars and motor tricycles were
employed for transporting staff officers, and for scouting work. The
motorists who lent the cars were entrusted with the duty of driving
them, and were granted certain privileges on that account. Results
were on the whole satisfactory.
In the same year, the British War Office, as a result of experience
gained in South Africa, were encouraged to conduct trials of motor
lorries. The entrants were five in number. Four of these were steam
lorries, the makes represented being the Foden, Straker, and two types
of Thornycroft. There was only one entrant of an internal combustion
engined machine. This was a Milnes-Daimler modelled on the German
Daimler cars, and having a four-cylinder engine rated at 25 h.p., with
ignition by low-tension magneto. Fuel was supplied by pressure of the
exhaust, and the car had a channel steel frame and large built-up steel
wheels. Even at that comparatively early date, the Foden lorry was, in
general appearance, very similar to the standard steam lorry of to-day.
It was, of course, fitted with a locomotive-type boiler, this being
a practice which has since been adopted by almost all manufacturers
of this class of machine. The Thornycroft lorries had vertical
boilers, and the one type was representative of standard practice,
the other being rather a peculiar machine driven from the rear. The
Foden and standard Thornycroft were most successful in carrying out
the very arduous road tests imposed, which involved a large number of
particularly steep hills. The Foden was by far the most economical in
water and fuel. The trials ended by cross-country tests in the Long
Valley at Aldershot, and during these the Foden was unfortunately
driven by accident into a deep ditch, with the result that its front
axle was broken. Consequently, the standard Thornycroft received the
first award and the benefit of subsequent small orders from the War
Department, although at the time there was a rather strong feeling that
the Foden ought also to have been recognised.
It was not until about two years later that, in the publication of
evidence given before the commission appointed to inquire into the
conduct of the South African war, the opinion of Lord Kitchener on the
utility of motor transport in its then state of development was made
public. His views were expressed as follows:
“We had (in South Africa) about forty-five steam road transport
trains. As a rule they did useful work, but questions of weather,
roads, water and coal distinctly limited their employment as
compared with animal transport, to which they can only be regarded
as supplementary. The motor lorries sent to South Africa did
well. Thornycrofts are the best. They will in the future be found
superior to steam road trains as field transport.”
From this it will be seen that the main result of South African
experience was to indicate the superiority of the comparatively light
self-contained motor vehicle over the heavy traction engine.
In 1903, a considerable number of cars and cycles supplied by members
of the Motor Volunteer Corps were used in the British manoeuvres. The
cars employed numbered forty-three, and averaged about 12 h.p. They
were used mainly for staff work, and were very fairly effective.
The attempts to use them for the carriage of searchlights were not
very successful. Some thirty motor cycles were employed for carrying
despatches, and behaved on the whole splendidly. Mr. J. F. Ochs, in
describing, during a lecture at the Royal Automobile Club, the results
obtained, made a somewhat prophetic statement in his remark that, “If
Mr. Marconi could perfect his invention, how useful a car fitted with
it would be.”
While the undoubted utility of motors for staff work and for scouting
was recognised at least as a certainty of the future, progress in
comparatively heavy military transport was for some years after
this limited. The military authorities were averse to the use of
petrol-driven cars, on account of the supposed danger of employing so
inflammable a fuel. Efforts were made to use paraffin, but results
were not particularly satisfactory. The Mechanical Transport Companies
at Aldershot went on experimenting with and developing the use of
steam vehicles, and particularly of steam tractors, which came to
be regarded as, on the whole, more suitable for rough work than
self-contained lorries. By 1906, the mechanical transport sections
were in possession of adequate tractor-drawn workshops, to support
the varied fleet of mechanical vehicles available for a variety of
purposes, as well as the staff cars, a limited number of which had been
purchased by the War Department.
Arrangements had also been made for giving the drivers and mechanics
some theoretical as well as practical knowledge, and the movement had
in fact formed itself into the nucleus of what it was then supposed
would be required; namely, an organisation providing for military
service a large number of 5-ton steam tractors, and a limited number of
cars and motor cycles for staff and scouting duty.
For some time, efforts to procure for army service some really reliable
internal combustion tractors running on paraffin were continued. In
February, 1909, trials were held at Aldershot, in connection with
which a considerable premium and valuable prospective orders were
offered as an inducement to manufacturers to turn their attention to
this class of machine. The entrants, however, only numbered three.
One of these was a substantial four-cylinder Thornycroft paraffin
tractor, which performed well throughout and was ultimately successful
in obtaining an award, though it does not appear that the type has
since been adopted in any quantity. A very singular machine which did
wonderful work for its power was a Broom and Wade single-cylinder
paraffin tractor of about 20 h.p. The work of hauling a heavy
military trailer with a load of about 6 tons was, on occasions, too
much for this machine under the sometimes very arduous conditions
under which the trials were carried out. The third entry hardly came
within the scope of what the War Department wished to encourage. It
was a Stewart-Crosbie steam tractor with a two-cylinder compound
double-acting engine giving 40 b.h.p. at 600 r.p.m. It was able to meet
the stipulations as to capacity for carrying fuel and water supplies,
since the boiler was of the vertical central-fired water-tube type
working at 200 lbs. pressure, and supplying to the engine superheated
steam which had been passed through coiled tubes in the furnace.
During the greater part of the trials the roads round Aldershot were
covered with a thick coating of snow, which constituted a serious
difficulty for iron-tyred tractors when using public thoroughfares in
time of peace. In emergency, it would of course have been possible to
fit spikes, or grips of some kind, to the wheels to prevent skidding
and slipping, but this could only be done at the risk of great injury
to the roads which did not appear justifiable under the circumstances.
All three tractors were provided with means for employing their engine
power through the medium of a wire rope, and this had to be utilised
in some cases to get the loads up some of the very steep gradients
encountered. The trials terminated in an extraordinarily difficult
test across the Long Valley. Here much loose sand was negotiated
successfully, and afterwards the engines were required to get their
loads across a deep swamp. The Thornycroft was the most successful,
but even the little Broom & Wade machine managed to carry out the work
by means of a system of pulleys applied to its wire rope gear. It was
curious to watch this little engine dragging its big load in a trailer
which had sunk almost to the wheel tops in mud and water. Occasionally,
turf and mud had to be dug away from the front of the trailer, and when
it was in motion the wheels were actually rotating slowly in the wrong
direction under the influence of the pressure of a continuous supply of
weed-bound mud surging over their tops.
These trials, if not satisfactory in attaining their main object, at
least helped to demonstrate that practically nothing is impossible to
a soundly constructed motor vehicle, if properly equipped for rough
work. Intermittently, experiments have been made at Aldershot with
various machines of more or less peculiar construction. Among these may
be remembered the Pedrail tractor, the wheels of which carry a number
of articulated feet which, as the machine progresses, plant themselves
one after another squarely upon the ground. The necessary mechanism
was, however, too complex to render anything of the sort suitable for
extensive military use, and the same trouble probably applies to the
Caterpillar type of tractor, in which the wheels are surrounded by a
track in the form of a sort of endless chain, which lays itself as the
machine moves upon the ground, and distributes the weight over a large
area. Passing over rough country, a tractor of this sort rolls like
a ship at sea, but is very seldom in any real difficulty, even when
traversing ditches or fairly low hedges. Steering has to be effected by
allowing the wheels on one side to over-run those upon the other, with
the result that the engine turns with a sort of skidding motion.
An interesting test of the value of the motor car in war was carried
out by the Automobile Association on March 17th, 1909. The Association
made an offer to Lord Haldane, then Secretary of State for War, to
transport a battalion by motor vehicles to any coast town that the
War Office might consider a possible scene of invasion. The point
ultimately selected was Hastings. For the purpose of the scheme it was
assumed that a sudden concentration of troops at Hastings had become
necessary, and that a battalion of the Guards was about to entrain in
London, when information was received that a portion of the railway
line had been destroyed by spies or agents working on behalf of the
enemy. Under such circumstances, the battalion could only be sent by
road. On the date named, a battalion of infantry at full war strength,
over 1,000 officers and men, with machine guns, ammunition, medical
stores, tools, food, water, baggage, blankets, and other impedimenta
amounting to some 30 tons, was distributed among 286 touring cars and
about 50 motor lorries.
The cars were lent and driven by members of the Automobile Association,
and several manufacturers of heavy motor vehicles provided the
necessary number of lorries for carrying the guns and stores.
The battalion was a composite one, consisting of officers and men
of the Grenadier and Scots Guards from Chelsea Barracks, Wellington
Barracks, and the Tower. The programme, which entailed picking up the
men at their respective barracks, joining up the three columns at the
Crystal Palace at 10 a.m. and arriving at Hastings soon after 1 p.m.
was carried through successfully, and within half an hour of arrival
the battalion with its full equipment was marched along the sea-front.
The experiment aroused considerable interest in military circles in
this country and abroad, particularly so in Germany, where a number of
newspapers published full particulars and a plan of the route taken.
In 1908 the German Army Department adopted the scheme which it has
since enforced for securing military transport, and from that time
onwards annual trials have been held, generally in the late autumn,
and over heavy and mountainous roads. In this they have differed from
the majority of the annual trials held in France, first of all under
the auspices of the Automobile Club of France, and later directly by
the military authorities. Our neighbours have shown a tendency to
make the routes selected somewhat easy, and not to test the vehicles
over unduly severe gradients. The German scheme was re-considered at
the end of 1912 as a result of the experience obtained up to that
time. The trials of 1912 were over a distance of about 1,300 miles,
including roads through the mountains of central Germany. The distance
covered each day by the 4-ton lorries drawing additional 2-ton loads
on trailers was about 60 miles. Subsequently, the newer regulations
prescribed more strict limits of axle weight, in view of uncertainty
as to the strength of the roads and bridges which would have to be
negotiated. A minimum engine power of 35 h.p. was prescribed, and
gradients of one in seven had to be taken with full load and equipment.
An interesting point of the new German regulations is the provision
of a belt pulley somewhere on the driving shaft for the purpose of
operating machine tools. Another point is the stipulation that the
brakes of the trailing vehicle shall be capable of being operated from
the driving seat of the lorry. A certain degree of standardisation was
at the same time introduced.
In the same year, a big step towards the proper utilisation of motor
transport for military work was taken by an extensive experiment made
in this direction during the British Army manoeuvres. The use of
mechanical transport was subsequently referred to by the King as one
of the special features on that occasion, and the opinion was very
generally expressed that the rather sudden and early termination of
the manoeuvres was due to the unexpected effect of motor transport
in increasing the mobility of the troops, and bringing the opposing
forces into contact with one another with startling rapidity. Even
so late as 1912, a certain number of military authorities were still
very doubtful as to the advisability of relying on the motor vehicle
in active service, but the manoeuvres in question undoubtedly proved
the case, although the difficulties of operating mechanical transport
for the first time on an extensive scale were increased by the fact
that the machines available were of all sorts of makes and types, no
attempts at standardisation having been possible. Many of the machines
hired for the occasion were in very poor condition, and did not compare
favourably with those owned by the Government. Consequently, the
difficulties of working in convoy at short intervals were accentuated.
All the motor transport was concentrated on one side, and the armies
dependent upon it were kept well supplied daily with fresh meat, the
opposing forces being dependent on horsed transport and chilled meat.
Motor buses were on one or two occasions during the manoeuvres utilised
with great success for the rapid movement of fairly large bodies of
men. These manoeuvres probably represented the last appearance of
traction engines for any military use other than the haulage of very
heavy guns, or other kinds of quite abnormal work, not forming any part
of the regular system of supply and transport.
During the last few years trials have been held at irregular intervals
by the War Department for the purpose of testing the suitability of
various specially constructed motor lorries for recognition under the
subsidy scheme, the nature of which is explained in detail in a later
chapter. The last trials of this kind took place early in 1914. An
official report published in June stated that results had been very
successful as regards both the number of entrants, and the general
standard of excellence of the vehicles submitted. The average speeds
both on easy and on hilly routes were well above those specified.
Radiators were found to be amply large to be effective even in the
hottest weather. The Mechanical Transport Committee reiterated their
opinion that one of the two systems of brakes should act upon the
propeller shaft. The average fuel consumption of the competing cars
was exceedingly good, working out at 52 gross ton miles per gallon.
The best result was about 63 gross ton miles per gallon over a distance
of about 200 miles. On the whole, it is evident that the cars were
very satisfactory, since it was stated that there appeared to be no
necessity to make any serious alterations in specifying for future
requirements.
The most recent French trials were hardly completed when war broke out.
They were as usual well patronised, but not calculated on the whole to
try the machines to the utmost. It was intended in subsequent years
to introduce new and more stringent regulations, but the opinion was
fairly generally expressed among manufacturers that the Government in
doing so were differentiating their own needs too far from ordinary
business requirements, and that it would be impossible to find a market
for the types indicated. Early in the year, another series of trials
of considerable importance was held in France, for the purpose of
testing new types of four-wheel driven tractors. These machines are
needed particularly for the haulage of artillery, and further reference
to them will therefore be deferred until that subject comes up for
consideration.