The speed of each shell affects the steering of the vehicle, while the heavy driving motor on the cab floor provides stability and prevents the tank from rolling sideways.
Motordriven gears rotate the two outer shells, which roll the tank along the ground. The diagram clearly indicates how this deadly rolling tank would work: a hollow, spherical, steel driving-cab is enclosed within two rotating outer shells in the form of cup-shaped halves. At the outbreak of war, looking increasingly likely, America would be one step ahead of the game. Richardson was told to draw up prototype plans for his idea, and in the July 1936 edition of Popular Mechanics, a cutaway diagram of the tank was published along with an article discussing the future of war machines. What if, instead of blindly launching mortar-bombs and men in the direction of the enemy’s trench, one could send heavily armoured, motorised bunkers across No Man’s Land? Then, from inside enemy terrain, the Tumbleweed Tank could lay down suppressive fire as the infantry advanced. Texan inventor A J Richardson’s goal was to further mechanise the future of warfare after the bloody stalemate of the First World War’s ‘war of attrition’. And if the Tumbleweed Tank is anything to go by, it was also a year for bizarre weapons-invention.
1936 was a year of four-year plans, rearmament, and hasty statements of neutrality. Preparations for war were being made even as the horrors of the last war were still fresh in the mind.
We and all nations have a sense that we have come to the turning-point of an age,’ said Adolf Hitler in a speech regarding the re-occupation of the Rhineland in 1936.
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