More Tanks

The War Department last week let a whopping batch of orders ($100,000,000) for tanks, set up a new organization to see that they are made well and fast.

Boss of Army tank design and procurement is big, blue-eyed Lieut. Colonel John Kay ("Jack") Christmas, whom Army Ordnance rates tops among U.S. tank experts. No West Pointer, Jack Christmas is a mechanical engineer (Lafayette College) who got interested in tanks while he was an artilleryman in France during World War I. From tank testing at the Army's Aberdeen (Md.) Proving Ground, last week he was shifted to Washington, given charge of a new Ordnance section. The new section's province: tanks, other armored vehicles, and the all-important development of self-propelled "tank chasers" (mobile artillery which travels in constant readiness to fire from wheeled mounts).

Jack Christmas wants tanks which can get there first, hit hardest. Says he: "A tank isn't a defensive weapon except perhaps against another tank. If you want to go in for passive defense, ring the point to be defended with anti-tank guns, sure. But you'll never win a-war that way." He further believes that U.S. tanks are the best in over-all design, armor and guns, thinks the Germans have the edge only in numbers.

Rolling Out. The U.S. Army had about 500 tanks in service a year ago, now has some 1,500. Its immediate aim (in addition to production-for-Britain): some 880 medium tanks, 2,300 light tanks, 1,096 scout cars for eight armored divisions (plus equipment for 15 separate tank battalions, equal to about five more divisions).

Bulk of present tank production is coming from American Car & Foundry Co.'s light ( 13-ton) tank plant at Berwick, Pa. This week, with its rate up to 200 a month, A.C.F. delivers its 1,000th tank. Almost ready for production is an improved, 18-ton model with more armor, more punch. A.C.F. last week received a $12,500,000 Army order--presumably for these new light tanks.

Medium-tank production got started late, is still far behind wartime requirements but growing fast. The medium-tank producer the public has heard most about is Chrysler Corp. To a $53,200,000 order for 1,000 heavily armed, 28-ton tanks which Chrysler got last August, the War Department last week added another $74,568,000 for some 1,600 more tanks of later design. First to begin actual production of mediums was American Locomotive Co. (Schenectady, N.Y.). Also building mediums is Baldwin Locomotive Works at Eddystone, Pa., which is now turning out three tanks a day, expects to be up to twelve a day by fall.

A highly secret Army project is the development of a heavy tank (about 60 tons). The Army has no heavies in service, long doubted that it would ever need any. Where & when the new heavies will be produced in service quantities, the Army does not say. Neither is it saying anything about the tanks' armament. But land-battleships of that size could carry perhaps two six-inch guns, a 75-mm. (approximately three-inch) gun, four .50-caliber machine guns. Army men once thought that they had something when they got their first new medium, with less than a third that much fire power.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.