Among the initiatives of American industrialist Preston Tucker during World War II was the Tucker armored car (also known as the Tucker Tiger Tank even though it was not a tank).[1]
Some prototypes of the high-speed armored car were tested, but no operational models were ordered.[1] The vehicle was designed with a very powerful V12 engine, so it could travel at 114 miles per hour (183 km/h) on road and 78 miles per hour (126 km/h) off road.[2] The vehicle was conceived as being armed with a primary armament of a 37-millimetre (1.5 in) anti-aircraft gun capable of firing 120 rounds per minute, mounted in an aircraft-style spherical gun turret.[3] The turret would have been supplemented by hull-mounted machine guns on production vehicles. The vehicle was promoted as being so fast it would chase aircraft, allowing it to hit them with more rounds than fixed gun batteries or slower vehicles.
Long after the war, when Tucker faced the Securities and Exchange Commission, Tucker's press agents produced a highly-colored half-hour film entitled Tucker: The Man and his Car for the Commission members.[1] This film implied that the Tucker armored car and the Tucker gun turret, which were never operational weapons, had been important weapons in World War II. Steve Lehto and Jay Leno, who worked to debunk misconceptions about Tucker's career and importance during World War II, attribute the misconceptions to Tucker's promotional movie.[1]
References
edit- ^ a b c d Steve Lehto; Jay Leno (2016). Preston Tucker and His Battle to Build the Car of Tomorrow. Chicago Review Press. ISBN 9781613749562. Archived from the original on 2017-11-07. Retrieved 2017-02-01.
The chief of the air corps called the turret "ingenious" and invited Tucker to a conference at Wright Field to discuss the needs of gun turrets with the military.
- ^ Steve Lehto (2017-03-13). "The Missing V12-Powered Tank Tucker Built to Dominate World War II". Road & Track magazine. Archived from the original on 2019-07-14. Retrieved 2019-07-14.
Tucker explored the possibility of furnishing goods to the military as the war approached, and he imagined an armored vehicle driven by a powerful engine, racing around a battlefield faster than the lumbering army tanks of the day. He developed a prototype which he called the Tucker Tiger Tank. The vehicle was wheeled, not tracked, so it would more properly be considered not a tank but an armored car. It was also fast, powered by a Packard V12 engine famed engine builder Harry Miller had modified for the application.
- ^ "Tucker 48: The Car of Tomorrow" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2019-07-14. Retrieved 2019-07-14.