right now this is the marked nine in
fact it's not a tank it looks like one
possibly but it isn't really it's a
supply carrier and a personnel carrier
which is why it's got those large doors
on the side and no sponsons or weapon
mountings on the side at all it's
totally different now the mark 9 was
again built at the very end of the war
too late to see service so it
they built a few and they were used
briefly around bovington after that they
fade away completely but it's again it's
an interesting vehicle and inside it's
got an amazing layout the engines at the
front moved as far forward as you can
get it and because of its cramped
position they have a very unusual method
of starting it the actual crank handle
works at 90 degrees to the main engine
it's quite incredible how they managed
to get it in but the thing had an
electric starter as well so you only
needed them crank handle if the active
starter failed otherwise it's this quite
a roomy inside but what they did
actually inside was make it as roomy as
possible it'll take up to ten tons of
stores or it would take thirty
infantryman now the only drawback from
the infantryman's point of view was that
they weren't allowed to sit they
couldn't sit down anywhere there was
nowhere to sit so a few of them could
actually stand and fire rifles through
holes in the side everybody else had to
mingle and stand around but they had to
watch it because although they got most
of the main control rods running along
the roof to try and get them clear of
the floor they couldn't do anything
about the prop shaft and the engine
being right at the front the prop shaft
runs all the way back through the middle
of the passenger compartment to the
gearbox at the rear and it meant that
they had to be careful not to catch
their feet on it because it wouldn't do
you any good to get the crank shaft
whizzing around by your boots or
catching your foot it's painted with the
letters IC which mean infantry carrier
well this is the only one left anywhere
there were no mark mines anywhere else
but they only built about a couple of
dozen of them anyway
it's quite a unique vehicle but not a
very pretty one unfortunately and the
track standard-type going round but the
formation of the hulls slightly
different it was called the pig and you
never really know whether that senate
thing to do with what it looked like or
how it difficult it was to drive but
that was what it was known as it's got a
commander's post up at the top above the
cab and the driver actually sits
slightly to the left and looks out
through a typical vision slot at the
front and that's you only really had
three crew a commander a driver and the
machine gunner who lived at the back and
could fires machine gun out on the back
if you wanted to if there was anything
to shoot at but otherwise it's normally
armored just to just enough to keep
small arms fire out it won't actually
stop a shell but it will keep the small
arms fire out and means that you can get
you can get men forward fairly safely
now to be honest with you I've always
thought as a supply tank it's a bit of a
waste of time because it takes about ten
tons of stores and that can be enough
for five ordinary service tanks and it
would take quite a time to go around the
battlefield looking for service tanks to
fill up it was probably better to use
ordinary supply tanks which were quite
common and could do the same job but
without quite so much of a load in them
and this thing seems to me to put in too
many eggs in one basket one way of
looking at it really but you know the
idea was there but Winston Churchill
when he was minister of munitions
actually said that he thought supply
tanks are more important than fighting
tanks which is about the silliest thing
I've ever heard since til if Winston
Churchill said it it must have been
right but that one of these tanks that
she used on Armistice Day in 1918 11th
November and it was used on Hendon
reservoir as an amphibian it didn't do
very well
they put huge things called camels on
the side to allow it to float they
fitted paddles to the tracks and they
fit in a sort of superstructure
the cab and it went out on Hendon
reservoir peddled a short way and broke
down and of course when it broke down it
meant that the bilge pump broke down as
well it started to fill with water so
the crew were waving their arms about
hoping to be towed back to shore before
it sank but that's the only sort of
conversion of the tank that I've ever
come across
and that was carried out on the
prototype so here it is their unusual
vehicles in that they were actually
built by one of the firms that wasn't a
normal builder of fighting tanks the
first the prototypes are built by
armstrong whitworth up in Newcastle then
they started producing them by firfer
main games were in Lincolnshire and
Marshalls I think they were in fact this
one's got a plate in the back it's hard
to see but there's natural plate of the
manufacturers in the back of the tank so
it they're quite unusual that they came
from a firm that wasn't renowned for
tank building at that time quite an
interesting sort of commentary on what
was happening in this country as we
tried to get more firms involved in tank
construction it's not perhaps the most
interesting tank you'll see but the idea
of it coming so early on in tank
development is quite interesting that
they actually thought they needed an APC
one of them was actually fitted out as a
traveling hospital it had a surgical
team in the back and the idea was that
you could carry out emergency operations
on people in the field but again these
are only ideas that they tossed around
and tried to make something of and get
very far with but still it's one of the
earliest of the supply tanks on the very
interesting vehicle in its own right
you