![]() Three rollers arranged two at the front and one at the back. The whole vehicle was to move on rollers 40 feet (12.192m) in diameter and 20 feet (6.096m) wide. The Land Battleship was projected to be big. Puckeridge had hoped in 1940 that this idea would be passed onto Great Britain and the USA, although presumably, this was in hindsight, as the USA did not enter the war until December 1941. Puckeridge, in his letter to the authrotities, claimed to have recently outlined his idea to the then Minister for the Navy W.M.Hughes on 8th November 1940, and that it was then sent on to technicians who did not approve of the idea as the vehicle was considered too large for Australian production. Puckeridge of Port Lincoln, Australia wrote to the Australian Army in March 1944 submitting his idea and a rough outline for a ‘Land Battleship’ with the intention that these new ‘tanks’ would work in conjunction with existing tanks. The critical weaknesses of current tanks were, according to Puckeridge, the exposed tracks and wheels, which were vulnerable to enemy fire, and Puckeridge had his own ideas for a new, war-winning weapon without these flaws. The rough sketch of Puckeridge’s Land Battleship from 1944. The Puckeridge Land Battleship assuredly falls into this latter category. Some of these inventions were reasonable, some not so reasonable, and many – the majority in fact – were totally unsuitable for modern warfare. Together, this provided all the armor that Australia needed, and yet, despite this, there were inventors who sought to get their own designs into the hands of the Australian Army. By 1944, Australia had its own indigenous tank production capability in addition to British and American supplied armour to use. Although the primary opponent for Australian forces was Japan and their its small and thinly armored vehicle in the Far East, Australian forces would also serve throughout North Africa and later in Europe. Australia entered the Second World War with very few tanks and an urgent need for armored fighting vehicles.
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