NZ's TWO Tank Designs of WWII:

Did you know that we Kiwis have a long history in military design? - Well that's not wholly true - military activity yes .. BUT I just learned that we did design and prototype two separate expedient WW2 tanks.

The SCHOFIELD TANK was designed by a Wellington motor vehicle dealer E J Schofield in 1940 based on a Chevrolet 6 hundredweight petrol truck and 'Bren Gun Carrier' suspension.

This Light Tank carried a 3-man crew mounting a 40 mm 'two pounder' gun and a belt-fed Besa 7.97 mm machine gun - with the option of using either it's wheels or tracks on suitable surfaces.

It had 6-10 mm thick armor and could manage 45 mph on it's wheels and 27 mph using its tracks.The prototype was sent to England in 1943 for evaluation .. where it was stored for a while before being scrapped.

The BOB SEMPLE TANK was an even finer example of "kiwi ingenuity" being designed by the Minister of Works using  corrugated manganese-steel plate armor that looked much like the "corrugated-iron" that covers most homes from the elements down here.

Built onto Caterpiller D8 crawler tractors from Temuka  & at the Addington Railway works in Christchurch South Island - using 'local' materials, as there were some 100x D8 tractors in New Zealand at that time - they were slow and ungainly .. but they did mount six or seven Bren guns as armament.

Two (maybe three?) were built - but sadly they basically were laughed out of existence and died of shame - being scrapped when the war ended without Japan invading us. - At the time they were a bloody good idea if you bear in mind that we had no other 'armour' down here until the first Valentine Tanks were shipped in October 1941.

NZ Valentine Tank In 1949.

- I'd say that a big source of the ridicule heaped on the 'Bob Semple' was from folk who presumed that the corrugated surface of the manganese-steel top layer of armor was "roofing iron" ripped off of roofs.

Marty K.

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