modern day landships modern day tank destroyers

He was back on the family sugar plantations in the years before the outbreak of war and it was there that he became acquainted with the Holt agricultural tractor. His attempts at getting into the aviation business, however, were not a success. It was during his endeavors in the then-brand-new field of aviation that he met Thomas Hetherington, a man later connected with landships in his own right. After this, he went back to help with the family’s sugar business before settling in Chicago in 1902.Īround this time, he began an interest in aviation and was back in Britain by 1909 building his own aircraft and testing it at Fambridge in Essex. Aged just 17 or 18 years old, he enrolled in the Royal Naval Engineering College, at Davenport, England, studying naval design. The Manīorn on 11th November 1881 in San Francisco, the American-born son of a sugar baron with financial interests in the Caribbean and Hawaii, Macfie took an interest in military matters outside of the family sugar business.

A strong advocate for tracked armored vehicles even before the existence of the Landships Committee, Macfie was to design a series of landships for the British war effort, although post-war these were almost completely forgotten.

Robert Macfie is a virtually unknown name even to people with an extensive reading or knowledge of armored warfare, yet he fills in a gap in the evolution of tracked warfare at a time before tanks even existed in anything like the form we know them today. Several men were to receive scant attention and credit for their part in the process and one of them was Robert Macfie. When it was all done, some names, like Tritton, d’Eyncourt, Churchill, and Swinton became very well known for their part. This, of course, included the question over who invented the ‘tank’ and involved dozens of separate claimants to the title. In the immediate aftermath of this war, one of the things done to return to normality for the British was to assign credit to the designers, inventors, and engineers who invented, designed and built many of the key weapons which had led to ultimate victory over Germany.

A war best known for mostly static trench warfare on the Western Front in France and Belgium as the great Empires of Britain, France, and German slugged out a 4 year-long brutal slaughter. It has been over a century since the guns of WW1 fell silent.

Modern day landships modern day tank destroyers