An Illustrated History of Landships, 1858-2008
All Rights Reserved, 2023. Publication possible. See author's note.
Author’s note: As far as we are aware, all images are taken from public domain sources; please inform the author of any mistakes in this regard. In terms of any original sketches, these are amateur attempts based on the author’s own archival research. He welcomes improvement from any professional illustrators interested in enhancing this work. ~ CAH, 2023
In memory of Dad, who taught me a love for all things historical, and in homage to William Pène du Bois, who opened up my imagination.
PART ONE: INTRODUCTION
Often dismissed as impractical fancies of ambitious engineers and military planners, few have undertaken a comprehensive survey of the impact of landships upon human history, much less at a popular level. While some of the blame for this can be laid upon poor archivists and lost blueprints, surely much of the fault is with those who look to study only those inventions which succeed and thus capture the human imagination, machines such as the aeroplane and automobile. But what makes for human success if not multiple attempts at invention? No one today honors the early Sumerian attempts at a triangular wheel, but if not for ancient ziggarota, appreciation for roundness may have never grown to its current level of popularity.
We thought it useful, therefore, to present a brief survey of the most influential landships in the 150 year span in which they most roamed the earth. It’s true that more comprehensive studies have been produced in recent years, but most are geared towards the more technical elements - helium density, bulkhead drag, propulsion system fatigue, and the like. While useful, our fear is that these volumes have lost the romance of it all. We wish to make the history of landships accessible again, and thus to return a certain joie de vivre to the field, of remembering what it once meant to be a proud Landshipper.
But first, a few definitions are in order. Landships are not to be mistaken for those fanciful, fictional creations made popular by the likes of Jules Verne, or later machines described by contemporary science fiction enthusiasts as “steam punk.”
Examples of such fictional landships are Verne’s enormous steam elephant from his 1880 novel, “The Steam House” or the “Land Ironclads” from the eponymous short story by HG Wells (1903). Contemporary steampunk examples are too numerous and too ridiculous to cite in a serious survey of historical landships. Our point is simple - landships are a real, if neglected, part of both military and civilian history and should be treated with the respect they deserve. This survey attempts to do just that.
What then is a landship? Scholars differ on a precise definition, but all are agreed upon the general parameters. They are to be distinguished on the one hand from their smaller (if more effective) cousins, the Tank. (Here we must not be confused by the misappropriation of the landship term for what are properly called “super tanks” such as the five-turreted Soviet T-35.)
But on the other hand, a distinctive feature of landships is that they remain on land, hence their name. Attempts, therefore, to classify low-flying zeppelins or hovercraft as landships violate this principle and do violence to the entire field of terranavisology.
For the purposes of this survey, we may take the concise definition offered by Dr. Eliot Stunberry of Marquette University as our standard: “Landships are wheeled or tracked vehicles of not less than 52’ length and 18’ wide, equipped by a buoying system to offset their weight and assist their land navigation.” It is hard to argue with the simplicity, and dare we say, the beauty, of this definition.
Note what is absent from Dr. Stunberry’s eloquent definition: any exclusion of otherwise qualified landships by the type of propulsion system they employ, as the Cramsfield school shamefully attempts to do. Included in our survey, therefore, are the full range of landships from sail-powered to nuclear. It makes no difference, for once a landship, always a landship. Here, at least, all terranavisologists may unite.
Predecessors to Landships
It is likely that Europeans were first introduced to the possibility of landships by the tales brought back by Marco Polo from China upon the Silk Road. He may well have learned of great land sailing craft created for Emperor Yuan of Liang in the sixth century.
These reports may have added to the imaginations of inventors who knew of reported late Roman Empire amphibious machines, powered by onboard oxen.
In terms of the modern development of landships, one might say that it originated in Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks, especially his sketch of a French galley with giant wheels rolling across lower Normandy. According to one source, when a young Henry VIII received a rendition of DaVinci’s sketch, he believed the galley to be real and immediately began plans to evacuate the Pale of Calais until his ministers convinced him otherwise. (This is where the catch phrase, “What is Calais?” came from, shortened from the original, “Devant tant d'absurdité, qu'est-ce que Calais?”)
Other early versions of landships were developed for recreational purposes in the Netherlands for use during low tide. These became known as wind chariots or land yachts (Zeilwagen), and were more widely popularized by Flemish inventor Simon Stevin in 1600 CE, after his commissioning by the Prince of Orange to design a new one for royal use. In time, land sailing became a sport with enthusiasts still today. However, the small size of these “chariots” do not merit further study in this work.
What soon became apparent to princes and inventors alike is that wind can only take a ship so far on land. By 1830, efforts shifted to sailing along rails, vehicles known as “Sail Bogeys.” The linear limitations of such transportation are too obvious to mention, and inventors soon began looking for alternatives.
The obvious problems of weight and gravity were major obstacles to overcome, ones which were not solved until the Great Gravitational Shift of 1855, an environmental event not seen since antediluvian times. Obviously, the massive scientific and economic impact upon human history of the Great Shift is beyond the scope of this humble volume. Suffice to be said, we are in general agreement with the conclusions reached in Dr. Gildred Müller’s seminal work, “Umfassende Auswirkungen der Gravitationsverschiebung auf die menschliche Wirtschaft.”
However else human life changed due to the Great Shift, military engineers across the globe took note, and saw new opportunities for the projection of power.
Early Attempts to Weaponize Buoyancy
Balloons and airships have a long pedigree of military usage, dating back to 1794 with the founding of the French Aerostatic Corps. But until the First War War, their use was almost entirely limited to reconnaissance and the directing of ground fire.
Various 19th century attempts to use balloons as weapon platforms or as troop transports met with failure. Napoleon’s threatened scheme to invade England by air, underland and sea never came to fruition. Almost a decade later, Russian attempts to weaponize air met with no greater success.
To counter Napoleon’s threat to Russia in 1812, Alexander I employed the German engineer, Franz Leppich, to build a large airship which would mount guns and drop bombs on the French. Leppich’s ship was indeed built, but several design flaws kept it from seeing combat. If one listens carefully to the “1812 Overture,” one can hear Tchaikovsky’s nod to this disappointment with several minor notes just before the first notes of the “Marseilles” are heard, signalling the French attack.
Less well known in this period was Napoleon’s plan to raise a “grande batterie de l'air” at Leipzig. This scheme was foiled at the last minute when the Saxon ballooners switched sides mid-battle, holing their balloons before rushing to join Bernadotte and the Allies.
The most successful 19th century effort to weaponize the skies was achieved by the Canton of Fribourg in 1847 during the brief Swiss Civil War. Colonel Philippe de Maillardoz placed four Chasseurs in a coal-gas balloon and armed them with an early version of the Minié rifle. During the siege of Fribourg, this squad of riflemen were able to harass the supply lines of the besieging Federal troops, holing several kegs of beer in the Swiss army commissary before their city surrendered the next day.
Much more infamous than all these early efforts was the idea pawned upon the British by Samuel Alfred Warner during the Crimean War in 1854. “Professor” Warner, as he called himself, proposed to General Lord Raglan that he allocate a troop of Congreve rockets to the Aeronautical Observation Corps attached to the Royal Engineers under the command of General Sir John William Gordon.
Raglan embraced the idea vigorously, and over the objections of both Gordon and Colonel Dacres of the Royal Horse Artillery, ordered four balloons to take two rockets apiece. They were ordered to fire them into the Russian lines as soon as they saw the Light Brigade begin to charge.
The results of “Professor” Warner’s ill-advised experiment are well known to school children everywhere, thanks to Lord Tennyson:
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:Rockets to right of them,
Rockets to left of them,
Balloons above them lit afire, apluming and plunging.When can their glory fade?
O the wild fall they made!
All of these failed efforts at armed buoyancy caused mid-century political and military leaders to look to something else - landships, now made plausible by the Great Gravitational Shift. It is to their theory we now turn.
Theory and Practice of Military Landships
One great misconception about landships is that generals and military planners intended them to serve primarily as direct fire platforms. Hence, their relative failure in this regard in comparison to Tanks is assumed to be a matter of embarrassment and shame. Some in the Cramsfield school have even gone so far as to call landships “the Maginot Line of military vehicles.”
Such a negative assessment of the historic value of landships makes a fatal mistake of scholarship. In short, it gives too much weight to the more ambitious landship designers such as General Pierre Surcouf. Surcouf (and his German counterpoints) tended to overload their designs with large caliber guns, leading to the great Land Dreadnought arms race of the early 20th century. The guns of August 1914 would soon show the foolhardiness of their unscientific designs. What is important to note is that these heavy Dreadnoughts were the outliers of landships, not the mainstay. The majority of landships have been flat and utilitarian, more like skiffs, not the towering, gilded luxuries of the early 20th century.
Indeed, a more thorough study reveals that the vast majority of military planners, from 1858 to 1945, saw the value of landships as logistical, or to provide fire support, rather than as front line battle units. This was due to their size and limited maneuverability, even with the new possibilities of buoyancy brought about by the Great Shift. In a word, the best landships were a quartermaster’s dream. As many have said, logistics wins wars, and if so, landships played their part for more than a century.
After the Second World War, the value of landships was assessed to be more strategic than tactical, with the US Army Landship Corps shifting away from a Combat Support role to a Strategic Command role beginning in 1958. Suitable credit to landships’ role during the Cold War was given by no less than Ronald Reagan at his famous Berlin Wall speech in 1987. To loud cheers, Reagan demanded that Gorbachev “decommission your armeyskiye korabli!” a phrase that soon entered the popular imagination.
It is true that weight and buoyancy limitations made landships something more common among the plains nations of Europe, Asia and North America than regions with more mountainous topography. Contrary to Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Gravity, the differences had everything to do with land features, and nothing else. This is why one rarely reads, for instance, of exploits accomplished by landships in Italy or the Balkans, although a few aborted attempts were made to construct so called “mountain hoppers.” In the end, it was discovered that mules were the wiser choice.
COMING UP IN FUTURE INSTALLMENTS: EIGHTEEN SEMINAL LANDSHIPS from 1858-2008 - their histories, specifications, and impact
Dear esteemed Professor H,
Have you attended any of the 14 Nov gatherings in Fribourg to share a pint and remember the Fribourgouis rifle skills? Not sure we could get travel arranged in time, but perhaps we should discuss. I’m sure Dr L would be interested.