Talk:The Land Ironclads

Reference to H.G. Wells
This reference is confusing and needs to be explained. Is it that Wells felt he did not get sufficient credit for thinking up the idea of the tank?

Plot: Inconsistency in descriptions.
I reverted the comment: 'Wells is somewhat inconsistent in his descriptions of the two opposing sides, describing the countrymen as both "noble hearted soldiers" and "louts", and the townsmen as "of a type ... that prevails in His Majesty's Navy ... alert, intelligent, quiet" and "smart degenerates"'. The first in each pair of descriptions is in the words of Wells's impersonal narrator, the second in the thoughts given to the character of the War Correspondent. Also, the War Correspondent's assessment of the two sides changes as he realises the significance of what he has seen.--Mabzilla (talk) 23:15, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

The Da Vinci and Wells Myths
It is a considerable stretch of the imagination to say that da Vinci "designed a proto-tank." His much-reproduced drawings are of a muscle-powered vehicle on wheels. It had a system of gears that might or might not have been an innovation but was otherwise no different from machines that had been imagined or manufactured for centuries. It does not meet the criteria of a tank (tracks, off-road mobility) and would have been, at best, an armoured car, even if it had had an automotive power plant.

Wells' shortcoming is that he had heard of Bramah Diplock's Pedrail Wheel but does not seem to have been aware of the existence of what would later be called "caterpillar" tracks, various forms of which had also been in use for some decades before the Pedrail and which would eventually form the basis of the first true tanks.

Wells did, indeed, feel that he did not get sufficient credit for thinking up the idea of the Tank, even though his Ironclads were only another step in the process that led to the Tank. In 1940 he embarked upon a less than dignified campaign to claim the credit and ended up being threatened with legal action, along with the BBC, by Ernest Swinton. It is, though, suggested that Swinton (who could be accused of some self-importance) was inspired by The Land Ironclads rather more than he was prepared to admit. Source (apart from 30 years of studying the subject): Rumours of War and Infernal Machines; Charles E. Gannon, 2005.

Hengistmate (talk) 12:32, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

"Land Ironclads" and Wells's Influence on Tank Development.
I've removed the claim that The Land Ironclads "stimulated development of the tanks of World War I," because the primary evidence doesn't support it.

The principal secondary source seems to be H.G. Wells: Desperately Mortal by (the late) David C. Smith. This book is widely criticized as a hagiography, and Smith's explanation of Wells's influence on the development of the tank is vague and oversimplified. He is mistaken about the date of the tank's debut and the date of the Battle of Cambrai. The post-war "trial" at which "others attempted to take the credit" was not a trial but a civil suit in which Captain Bede Bentley sued the British Government for £300,000 (over £15m in 2014) for allegedly stealing his idea. The case was thrown out. More to the point, Churchill, who did give evidence, did not say that "the idea had originated with Wells." Transcripts of the hearing show no such statement (although Colonel Phillip Johnson, by then Superintendent of the Tank Design Department, did say something that amounted to that). But Churchill didn't, so we can remove the statement.

Churchill clearly came to know of The Land Ironclads - after the tanks became common knowledge, many sources commented on Wells's prescience and the apparent similarity between the Ironclads and the tank - but wrote in 1919, "There was no novelty about the idea of an armoured vehicle to travel across country and over trenches and other natural obstacles while carrying guns and fighting men. Mr. H.G. Wells, in an article written some years ago, practically exhausted the possibility of imagination in that sphere." (The World Crisis, 1911-1918 p309) He refers to it, but not to having read or been influenced by it.

The nearest Churchill comes to crediting Wells is in The First World War 1914-1918, Volume 1 (p340) by the war correspondent Charles à Court Repington. He dined with Churchill and others on Thursday September 21, 1916, six days after the tanks' debut at Flers. "We had a great discussion about the famous Tanks, which had made their first appearance in the field in last Friday's battle. Winston said that though he had in his mind H.G. Well's predictions about them, they really developed from the armoured motor car, which trench warfare had rendered useless. They were taken up by the Admiralty. He found that he had some money to spare, and he applied it to this purpose. To that extent the initiative and responsibility rested with him." Again, a reference but not enough to support Smith's claim for Wells.

Wells was not consulted at any point during the development of the tank. He was not among the twelve people considered for a cash award by the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors, which met to decide who should be considered the inventor of the tank. Smith's claims in his notes about Churchill thanking Wells "for the tank idea" do not support his contention. Hengistmate (talk) 01:39, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Caterpillar treads.
It's not just Moskowitz who mistakenly asserts that the Ironclads moved on caterpillar tracks. Somewhere I've got a list of such erroneous sources. Charles Gannon, for instance, actually quotes verbatim Wells's description of the Pedrails and then declares them to be caterpillar tracks. Extraordinary. There are plenty more. See what you think of the adjustment I've made. I'll try to dig out the list, if the Reference Nazis can hold their fire. I think the important thing is to make the point about the misinterpretations. Hengistmate (talk) 09:23, 9 May 2018 (UTC)