the independent is absolutely unique
they only ever built the one and never
could afford to build a second one so
from that point of view the fact that it
survived at all is interesting it weighs
about 28 tons of together and is
something like 25 feet long but we'll
come to that in a minute it's armored up
to about one of the half inches on the
front but even that's not very much
really and it's got five turrets there's
a central one with a forty seven
millimeter three pounder gun and then
for satellite turrets each further
because machine gun in it the turret and
the left behind me was actually also
arranged to fire up an aircraft you
could fold the roof back and lift the
machine gun up and shoot up an aircraft
whether you'd ever see an aircraft from
inside the turret is another matter but
that's how it was done
there's no coaxial machine gun in the
main turret just the 47 millimeter gun
and in the originally in the prototype
it was a dummy it's only lately they
fitted a correct three pounder in here
just to make it more interesting now the
thing is with this tank it was well done
on speculation it was designed in 1922
built in 1926 and actually a ruse to be
a little white elephant its main problem
is the fact that the length of track
touching the ground is longer than it
ought to be for the given width of the
vehicle the rule says that you make a
tank wider as you make the track in
touch with the ground longer and that
enables it to steer if you do it this
way it won't well of course they
couldn't make it any wider because he
had to travel by rail and therefore that
sort of dictated how long the track
could be but it was a difficult tank to
steer and in fact when they started when
it first appeared it had clutch and
brake steering on the rear sprocket and
what they found was that after a while
the tank at the back was beginning to
peel apart a bit like a banana every
time it tried to go around a corner so
they got in WG Wilson and got him to
sort of modified them transmission and
he came up with an epicyclic steering
system so the tank as you see it now has
got the rear sprocket with the epicyclic
gear in it instead of the original
clutch and brake and that was changed
during the production process due course
things that the track began to wear out
and because the track was unique to the
tank and because they couldn't afford
anymore track they decided not to
develop it any further
it has Box bogie suspension as on the
Vickers medium but originally with
rubber tires on the rollers they
couldn't take the weight so they did
away with the rubber tires and just went
for steel rollers that was the only way
they could support the tank at all and
the other feature was that the the Royal
Tank Corps supplied some advice said she
sent some officers up to look at the
tank in Sheffield when it was being
built and the only thing that these
chaps could come up with was the idea of
an escape hatch big enough to
accommodate an opened our army stretcher
which doesn't sound to me like a great
deal of confidence in the tank but
that's why it's this size and that's why
it's here in the side so it could push a
stretcher in and lift the casualty out
without having to put him on the
stretcher when you got him out now the
other thing or the other things really
concern the inside of the tank which you
can't see but I can tell you having been
in it that the rumor that it had a
rotating basket with the turret or a
rotating floor to carry the command
around in there's a load of nonsense
it's got a fixed floor it's square in
fact it's not even round the other thing
they'll tell you is that the Coppola at
the top of the turret was designed for
two people one was the tank commander
the other was an observer now there
isn't room I've I've been in themself
and there's no room in that Coppola for
two people and you can't have one or the
other that would be more ridiculous so
there's no truth in that probably they
never had an observer the tank had a
crew of eight it's the same number of
people as a first floor
war tank and that consisted of four
machine gunners a driver and three men
in the turret in the turret you had a
gunner a loader and the tank commander
and that was the way it was arranged the
turret could be turned but only by hand
and you didn't have a floor anything
else going round with it the men had to
trot around after the gun and fire it in
any direction it didn't much matter this
particular tank never got as far as
gonna me trials it was used for
automotive trials and was a disaster the
tanks powered by a 350 horsepower v12
air-cooled engine and this engine is
said to have drunk oil for a past time
so you couldn't really afford to run it
very far that was in order to try and
keep the engine cool enough to run at
all and it was all experimental from the
word go and really they didn't know what
they were trying to produce in the first
place what the idea of this tank was
besides calling it independent nobody
knew where it fitted into the tanked
development program so it's a bit of a
one-off in that sense as well now the
tank was only built experimental II
there was only ever the one of it it
never entered service it never went into
action or anything like that in any
sense at all and it never actually got
issued to a Italian it was used only for
experimental purposes so that really
sums it up