| |
ANOTHER MYSTERY !
|
|
| |
Our 'quiz' section has moved here for the present to try
and solve a little puzzle that is baffling everyone. The
picture shown here was published, for a number of years,
in 'The Wonder Book of Soldiers', one of that marvellous
range of books by Ward, Lock and Co. The picture
was credited to Central News and certainly appeared in the
eighth and ninth editions of the Wonder Book, shortly before
the war. The original caption reads 'An Anti-Tank Gun
Mounted on a Trolley with Pneumatic Tyres; These guns
fire a shell a little over two inches (57mm?) in diameter
and capable of piercing the armour of a tank'.
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
This is not terribly
informative, but it is misleading because by 1938 the gun
must have been at least ten years old. We know this because
the same photograph appeared in The Oak Leaf,
the Journal of the Cheshire Regiment in 1927. This
was at a time when 2nd Battalion, The Cheshires was
part of the Experimental Armoured Force on Salisbury Plain
and according to them the gun was being operated by the Royal
Scots Fusiliers, which is itself unusual.
What clues are there? Well the gun doesn't look 57mm for a
start, more like 37mm perhaps, like the little French Puteaux
gun of WWI which was used as an anti-tank gun by the Americans.
It also appears to be a different colour from the gun carriage
and possibly rather too small for it. What about the registration
plate on the carriage (military trailers in Britain at this
time carried civil registrations of their own, not related
to the towing vehicle)? If it is OI then it would be Belfast,
if OT Portsmouth. We have tried the Royal Scots Fusiliers
Museum in Glasgow and in case it was manufactured by Harland
& Wolff in Belfast we have also asked the Ulster Folk
& Transport Museum to look. No result in either case so
far but it is an obscure subject.
We have also checked the files of the Mechanical Warfare
Experimental Establishment, MWEE, who tested all military
vehicles at the time but there is no record of this registration
and nothing that sounds like this gun carriage.
One suggestion, which makes sense, is that the gun carriage
is a private design, perhaps one of the first to be fitted
with pneumatic tyres for haulage by mechanical tractors, and
that this was a private trial organised by the manufacturers
to gain publicity. This might explain the use of a non-standard
weapon, the pose of the Royal Scots (who may simply have been
borrowed for the shot) and the lack of any official record.
However that is a guess and guessing is not what Museums or
historians are supposed to do. Which is why we ask, does
anyone actually know the answer? |
To view previous article(s) in this series, click here |
