Commonwealth of Australia (1912-1920s)
Tracked Vehicle – Scale Model Built
While the United Kingdom is usually credited with inventing tanks, there have been some people who have denied that claim. The most famous of these is probably Günther Burstyn, an Austro-Hungarian army officer who, for many years, claimed his ‘Motorgeschütz’ to be the first design for a vehicle that would be known as the tank. One year after Günther patented his design, another lesser-known design would come from another country not usually associated with tank development: Australia. This design, by a man called Lancelot de Mole, was not just special for being made immediately before the First World War. It also implemented a steering method of warping the tracks – a method only seen in a handful of other designs.
Development
Lancelot Eldin de Mole was born in Adelaide, South Australia on 13 March 1880 to William Frederick de Mole and Emily née Moulden. De Mole was the great-great-grandson of Henry Maudslay, a British innovator who invented the first practical industrial screw-cutting lathe in 1800, an integral part of manufacturing standardized parts. After leaving school, Lancelot de Mole became a draftsman. Before the First World War, he did many different kinds of engineering work around Australia. During this time, he patented a few of his ideas, like an automatic telephone and an ore concentrator, neither of which gathered any significant public interest.
When, in 1911, de Mole was surveying Western Australia in less than favorable ground conditions, he came up with an idea for a tracked vehicle that bore a striking resemblance to the tanks seen on the battlefields of Europe just a few years later. In 1912, he sent his design to the British War Office, from where he received news of his idea’s rejection a year later. It is interesting to note that this first design from 1912 was allegedly already armored. While some inventors got the idea to armor their pre-war designs only after the war had started, like Friedrich Goebel and his Landpanzerkreuzer, de Mole envisioned his vehicle as an armored one right from the start. It can only be speculated why de Mole decided on armoring his design, due to most of the information on the early development of his vehicle coming only from interviews given by him after the war to various newspapers. Some sources say that he first got the idea for just a tracked vehicle while out surveying and only later thought of adding armor to it. This makes any speculation on the origin of the armored vehicle idea nearly impossible due to the amount of places de Mole may have gotten inspiration from.
When the war started in 1914, de Mole tried to enlist in the army, but he was rejected due to health concerns. In 1916, he decided to re-submit the plans of his vehicle to the officials in the UK. He did this through a Mr. Cobbe, who sent a letter to the Munitions Office on behalf of de Mole. No other details of Cobbe are known, and the reason why de Mole’s design was submitted by him remains a mystery too. This newer design was an improved version of the 1912 one, but in which ways is not known, though an article from 1920 says that the designs were essentially the same. Unfortunately, his design was never passed on to the Landships Committee. The reason could be as simple as the person in charge of reading, replying to, and forwarding the letters not knowing of the existence of the Landships Committee, due to it still being a secret project. In any case, de Mole still received a letter telling him to build a model of the vehicle for any chance to get it approved by the War Office. Believing his design to benefit the British, were it ever put into full-scale production, he contacted the South Australian Inventions Board to fund this model, but without success. The official reason given for the rejection was that the vehicle might fall into a hole and get stuck, but the true reason was that the person in charge of going over de Mole’s design did not understand his plans.
When the British unveiled their first tanks on the battlefield at the end of 1916, de Mole saw the results they were yielding and became convinced that his design was superior to theirs, due to its different steering system. Alas, with no funds to build the model of his tank, he could not bring attention to his design. In 1917, Lieutenant Harold Leslie Boyce saw his design and gave him the funds to get the model built. The exact status of de Mole’s and Boyce’s relationship is unknown, but they were likely friends. This is evidenced by the fact that Boyce was the man who helped de Mole become fit enough for service when he finally succeeded in enlisting. The model of the vehicle was built by Melbourne-based company Messrs. Williams and Benwell.
It is interesting to note that de Mole’s story concerning the builder of the model was not consistent. In many interviews, for example, the one he gave to the Sydney Morning Herald in 1920, he mentions “a friend” who funded the model, but in other interviews, such as the one given to the Zeehan and Dundas Herald in 1919, de Mole claims that he had to build and fund the model by himself. It is unlikely he would have even mentioned Messrs. Williams and Benwell if he had built the model himself. Due to the conflicting accounts, it is not possible to reconcile the inconsistencies in the sources.
After the model was finished, de Mole tried enlisting in the army again. This time he was accepted for service. He served as a private in the 10th Australian Infantry Battalion under the command of Lieutenant Boyce, the man who funded the building of the model. By this point in the war, the battalion was fighting in the trenches in France. When de Mole’s ship arrived in England in January 1918, he went straight to the War Office to show his model to the officials. De Mole held a demonstration before War Office personnel, which went well, and he was promised another one. After this, de Mole did not hear back from the War Office for six weeks. When he investigated the matter in March 1918, he found that his model had been put in the War Office basement and the project pigeonholed. The timing proved to be very unfortunate though, because at the end of March, the Germans started their Spring Offensive and the Allies needed all the soldiers they could get, meaning that de Mole was called to the front in France, never getting to show his vehicle to the officials again.
De Mole fought in France until the war ended, whilst the model stayed in London. After the war ended, while still in London awaiting to be sent back to Australia, he put in a claim with the British government to earn back some of the money he spent on the design. De Mole received £987 (about £42,000 in 2023 values) as remuneration for his expenses. That same year, 1919, the British Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors (BRCAI) was investigating and giving an award to the person who had, in their opinion, invented the tank. De Mole didn’t receive the prize due to the Landships Committee being unaware of his design when designing their first tanks, although the BRCAI did comment positively on his design. In 1920, he was appointed Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for his invention.
After the war, de Mole worked for the Sydney Water Board (currently known as the Sydney Water Corporation), where he was an engineer working for the design office. During this time, he lived on Brierley Street in the suburb of Cremorne in Sydney. At some point after the war, de Mole was asked by the Australian War Memorial to donate his model to the newly built museum. De Mole agreed, and his model is still on display at the Memorial. The British would revisit the concept of warping the tracks on a tank to steer the vehicle with the Universal Carrier, the A.17 Tetrarch, and the A.25 Harry Hopkins in WW2, but the concept of turning the tracks by warping them died off quickly.
Design
Sadly, de Mole’s original design is not available anywhere, so all the information available on his design is based on his model, later interviews with him, and a few images copied from the design in the past. The vehicle’s shape was very simple. It had a pair of tracks that would rise to about half the height of the whole machine, on top of which rested the armored body. The armored body was basically a box on top of the tracks, and the body would slant downwards at the front and rear of the vehicle. In addition to this, the armored body would go over the tops of the tracks on the sides to protect them. The vehicle’s floor would be at about the same height as the bottom of the drive sprockets, which were at the front, unlike the British designs at the time. De Mole did not add a roof to his model to show off the mechanism that moved the track, so it can only be speculated whether he planned to add turrets or something else on top of the vehicle. It is clear that de Mole wanted to focus on the tracks in his design, and he probably made the rest of the tank devoid of details because of this.
Both of the tracks had four bogies with two road wheels in each of them. These wheels would ensure the track would stay connected to the wheels, even when driving over uneven ground. At both ends of the track were three larger wheels that would guide the track upwards toward the sprockets. Each of the tracks had two return rollers as well as a perpendicularly placed wheel to guide the top of the tracks. De Mole’s vehicle had two drive sprockets on both tracks, one in each end, which were powered not by a chain, but by a rotating drive shaft from which the rotating motion would be transmitted with bevel gears to the axle which connected to both of the sprockets. The tops of the track links were shaped like crescents, which would make bending the tracks significantly easier than with rectangular tracks. Neither de Mole’s model nor his design drawings show any suspension, which would make being inside the vehicle very uncomfortable unless he planned for the vehicle to move at a very low speed. De Mole also patented a suspension system for a vehicle in 1920, and although there isn’t a clear link between the two designs, it could be speculated that he wanted to use a similar suspension in his armored vehicle.
The piece of technology that sets the design by de Mole apart from other tanks of the time is the mechanism used to steer the vehicle. Most of the tanks in use during the war used a very simple mechanism to steer them: when the crew wanted to turn in either direction, they would slow down the track on that side while keeping the other track driving forward at the same speed. This was not a very effective way to steer the vehicle, since it applied significant stress to the tracks, brakes, clutch, and transmission while also slowing down the vehicle for every turn. De Mole proposed a different mechanism, one which would allow the tank to turn while in motion. By moving the front and back bogies laterally, the tracks of the vehicle would also curve, this, in turn, would cause the entire vehicle to turn. This mechanism worked on the principle of turning a single part of the track, and the rest of the track following the movements. Although the exact type of steering mechanism has not been used on any full-size tanks, a similar track warping system was used on the Universal Carrier, and the A.17 and A.25 tanks in WW2 with reasonable success. De Mole explained multiple times that, because of the steering method of his vehicle, it could be made as long as needed by just adding more bogies, with no limit to the hypothetical length.
The model and the few bits and pieces available of his original design do not show any engine or armament for the tank, and the armor thickness or material are not specified. De Mole felt like those details should be worked out by experts, who had more knowledge of warfare and engines than him. A hint of the potential armament of the vehicle can be found in the London Illustrated News which states that the vehicle “could have carried guns mounted in small turrets, as in the Whippet type”. Of course, the Whippet was not unveiled to the public until 1918, 7 years after de Mole first thought of his design. This means that the London Illustrated News was likely just speculating on the armament of the vehicle. Another possibility is that from the beginning, de Mole had envisioned his vehicle to carry its weapons in turrets and the reference to the Whippet was simply added later by the writers of the London Illustrated News. G.W.D Breadon, a resident of Perth, Australia, wrote a letter in 1914 to the British War Office recommending de Mole’s design. In this letter he states that the vehicle would be armed with “small quick-firing guns and maxims”, pointing to a similar armament as the London Illustrated News’ description. While neither of these descriptions comes from de Mole himself, they hint at the idea that he never envisioned his vehicle to carry a large weapon, instead choosing to wield multiple smaller guns, such as machine guns or small cannons.
The wheelbase of the vehicle was 25 feet (7.62 m) and the minimum turning radius was one full length of the track, which was about 20 meters or 65 feet. (1 chain = 66 feet = 20.12 m). The wheelbase in this instance refers to the length between the two wheels closest to the bogies. The vehicle could cross a 16-foot (4.88 m) gap with ease, which would mean that, at least theoretically, it could even cross anti-tank trenches specifically designed to stop vehicles like it, since those trenches were usually about 12 feet (3.66 m) wide. It is highly unlikely that de Mole could have predicted trench warfare two years before the war even started, and while the exact reason for the vehicle’s purported trench-crossing ability is unknown, de Mole often advertised his design by saying it could theoretically be made as long as needed due to its steering system. It is plausible that he made his design as long as it was to emphasize this aspect, and the trench-crossing ability improved when the vehicle was lengthened
The full-size vehicle would have been 37 feet (11.28 m) long, which would have made it the largest tank ever in operational service if it was ever used. De Mole did not explicitly state the width or height of his vehicle, but extrapolating from images of the model reveals the vehicle to be about 10.5 feet (3.20 m) wide with a height of around 8 feet (2.44 m), notwithstanding any additional height from turrets or other features which would have to be added for military purposes.
| Size comparison between de Mole’s vehicle and the British Mk. IV Male | ||
|---|---|---|
| De Mole’s vehicle | Mk.IV Male | |
| Length | 37 ft (11.28 m) | 26 ft 4 in (8.05 m) |
| Width | 10.5 ft (3.20 m) | 13 ft 6 in (4.12 m) (over sponsons) |
| Height | 8 ft (2.44 m) | 8 ft 2 in (2.49 m) |
Due to de Mole leaving out important details, such as the armament and the mode of propulsion, it is impossible to know how large of a crew he was thinking of for the vehicle. At the bare minimum, the vehicle would require at least one person to drive it and a commanding officer watching over the driver, but the number of crew members would heavily depend on the weaponry of the vehicle. However, de Mole mentioned a specific crew member in a letter from 1919. The Steersman-driver was the person who laid out the curve for the track to follow, or, in other words, steered the vehicle. It is worth noting that using the word “steersman” as well as another part of the same letter in which de Mole calls the sloped underside of his vehicle a “schooner bow”, both suggest that de Mole considered his vehicle, at least after the war, a warship on land, in the same way the British authorities did at that time, as could be seen from the name of the Landships Committee.
It should be noted that de Mole’s vehicle had multiple names throughout its life. De Mole called the vehicle a “traveling fort”, a “caterpillar fort”, and a “mobile fort” and after the war, he retroactively applied the name “tank” to it. In this article, it is simply called “the vehicle” for consistency. Although the vehicle had multiple names before the war, they all shared the word “fort” with each other. This could suggest that de Mole saw his design as nothing more than a fortification that could move from place to place. The role of his vehicle would be very different from other tanks on the battlefield if it was used in the same way that a fortification would. For example, his vehicle would not be driving over no-man’s-land to the enemy trenches or have significant built-in armament, instead focusing on being a defensive position from wherein troops could harass the enemy without the fear of being shot.
Problems
The vehicle was simply huge. Its size would have made it a giant target on the battlefield, a problem that would have been made even worse if the vehicle was lengthened. The sheer size of this vehicle, along with the relatively narrow tracks, could have caused problems when traversing the muddy battlefields of WW1. The tank’s size was comparable to the British-American Mark VIII tank. That tank had over half its width occupied by its tracks, while, in comparison, the tracks of de Mole’s vehicle were much thinner. This would have been a significant problem due to the pressure exerted by the tracks onto the ground. Although the vehicle could cross anti-tank trenches in theory, it is an entirely different question if the vehicle could do it in practice, since, going over a trench, its weight would be spread on an even smaller surface.
The turn radius of 1 length of the track was also too optimistic. The British A.17 Tetrarch, which utilized the same type of steering, had a turning radius of 90 feet (27.43 m), and that tank was only 13 feet 6 inches (4.11 m) long, only a little over a third of de Mole’s vehicle’s length. Those later British vehicles would be the only ones to date to use the track warping steering system, although the tracks on those vehicles were very different from de Mole’s design, and both the Universal Carrier and the A.17 only used track warping in smaller turns, instead reverting to the classic design of braking one track to steer in tighter turns. The reason for the limited usage of track warping in designs was due to it making the vehicles’ turning radius larger and adding complexity to the design whilst only having some small benefits over more commonplace designs.
Conclusion
Despite multiple attempts to gain interest for his invention, Lancelot de Mole’s vehicle would not go further than a scale model. When he got the attention of the right people, the Allies had already been using tanks for over a year. There was very little incentive for the British to switch from their existing design to a completely new one. Even so, British officials acknowledged that some parts of his design were better than existing tanks, and they commented on his vehicle after the war, admitting that his design “anticipated and in some respects surpassed [the tanks] put into use in the year 1916”. For a design for an armored tracked vehicle made before World War 1, de Mole’s design was ahead of its time. It is hard to give an accurate judgment on the vehicle since de Mole left a lot of details out and provided contradictory statements post-war, and it could be said that his design is more a design for the tracks and steering system rather than for an actual complete vehicle. Nevertheless, since de Mole’s design never saw any significant interest, it stayed as a footnote in the early development of tanks.
Lancelot de Mole would continue to create inventions after the war, acquiring a few patents in the UK, Canada, France, Germany, and the United States. Although he didn’t continue pursuing his idea of the armored vehicle after the war ended, some of his later patents regarding unarmored vehicles were at least conceptually similar to the armored one. For example, his patent CA200262 shows a steering method where multiple pairs of wheels are turned at different angles to turn a vehicle, not entirely unlike his armored vehicle design, in which multiple bogies move laterally to affect the turning. While there isn’t a definitive link between de Mole’s unarmored designs and his armored one, it is entirely possible that he wanted to refine his idea for the steering system further after the war and simply dropped the concept of it being on an armored vehicle. None of de Mole’s later designs gained any significant interest, and he lived the rest of his life in Sydney. Lancelot de Mole died on the 6th of May 1950 in Sydney from an illness at the age of 70.
De Mole Armoured Vehicle Spacifications |
|
|---|---|
| Dimensions (L-W-H) | 37 x ~10.5 x ~8 ft (~11.3 x ~3.2 x ~2.4 m) |
| Turning radius | 1 length of the track |
| Wheelbase | 25 feet (7.62 m) |
| Trench crossing ability | At least 16 feet (4.88 m) |
| Total production | 1 scale model built |
| Engine | Unknown |
| Armament | Unknown |
| Armor | Unknown |
| Crew | Unknown |
| Weight | Unknown |
| Speed | Unknown |
Sources
Lancelot Eldin de Mole – Australian Dictionary of Biography
https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/awm-media/collection/RCDIG1069848/document/5519324.PDF
page 251 & 252
https://www.samemory.sa.gov.au/site/page.cfm?c=5368
https://net.lib.byu.edu/estu/wwi/comment/DeMole/designnotpassedon.htm
Australian war memorial
https://digital.collections.slsa.sa.gov.au/nodes/view/36
The Times, 28 November 1919
The Argus, 3 April 1920
The Richmond River Express and Casino and Kyogle Advertiser, 21 November 1919
The West Australian, 11 August 1924
The Daily Mail (Brisbane), 23 March 1921
The Register (Adelaide) 12 February 1920
Zeehan and Dundas Herald, 19 December 1919
Illustrated London News, 29 November 1919
Wikitree.com
https://www.campbelltown.sa.gov.au/library/collections-and-resources/local-history-room/localhistoryarticles/local-history-articles-people/de-mole,-lancelot-eldin-engineer-and-inventor