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Show JUGGERNAUT CARS ARE MADE IN U. S. & tf ARMAMENT IS PROVIDED IN ENGLAND rfflYPE of American caterpillar tractor around which the English have built an armored car which has wrought havoc among the Germans on the Somme battlefield. Caterpillar Tractors Transformed Trans-formed Into War Engines; Churchill Given Credit. WASHINGTON, Sept. 18. The , British tanks, the armored motor cars used in recent assaults on German trenches in northern France 60 successfully as to attract world-wide attention, were built for the most part in Peoria, 111., , in the form of caterpillar tractors designed many years before the war began to meet some of the difficult problems of modern farming. Except for their armor, their machine guns and their crews, thousands like them are in use today in the United States In plow-ug plow-ug digging ditches and other labors less heroic than war. M. M. Baker, vice-president of the Holt Manufacturing company, explained here today that it was machines made by his company at its Peoria plant that had hurdled German trenches, walked through forests and crawled over shell craters in the face of intense gunfire. "We have sold about 300Q caterpillar tractors to the British government' said Mr. Baker. ""We havo had nothing noth-ing to do with putting armor on them or placing machine guns, but some of our men at Aldershot, England, recently recent-ly were notified that the British gov ernment intended to armor some of the tractors and use them for work other than the usual towing of big guns. "Germany had some these tractors trac-tors before the war began, and although I do not understand just how it occurred, oc-curred, I believe- she may have got others since then. We have sent some to France and some to Russia. So far as I know, up until the recent appearance appear-ance of the motor cars the tractors were used only to tow big gung. I understand un-derstand that Germuny had about forty of them in this work before Liege early in the war and recent photographs show that the British are using soma of them now for the same purpose." Mr. Baker said hs did not know how ninny at the tractors sent to England had been armored and put in service, nor did he know what equipment the British war office had placed upon cars to be used in this work. "It is true," said Mr. Baker, "that these tractors can go ahead over almost anything or through almost anything. They can straddle a trench, go through swamp, roll over logs, or climb through shell craters like a car of Juggernaut. It looks uncanny to see them crawi along the ground just like a huge caterpillar. In a thick forest, if they encountered trees they could not brush out of their way, they could easily be used to uproot them" and clear their own pat hs. ' ' Mr. Baker paid the tractors sent to England weigh about 1S,000 pounds each, develop 120 horsepower, and are built of steel. The caterpillar feature, he explained, is of the utmost importance. import-ance. Speaking broadly the tractor crawls on two belts, with corrugated surfaces, on either side of the body. The corrugated snrfafe is on the ground! On the inside of the belts, on each side of the body, are two lines of steel rails, making four lines in all. These rails are in short sections, .iointed and operated over a cogged mechanism that actually lays them down with their belt attachment as tho tractor moves ahead and picks them up again so that the car runs on its self-made-track continuously. con-tinuously. The short joints in the rails make it easv to turn to right or left. The body is supported by "trucks with five wheels, something like small railroad trucks. These wheels never touch tho ground but run upon the steel rails. In the ordinnry tractor about seven feet (Continued on Page Four.) ENGLISH ARMORED US MM 1 0. S. (Continued from Page One.) of belt and rails is on the ground at one time. The width of the track used on the machines sent to England, Mr. Baker said, was 24 inches. He declared that the ground pressure is about three pounds per square inch where a thirty inch track is used, or. less than that of the foot of either man or hose. Although Air. Bakor would "not discuss dis-cuss the matter, it was understood the United States war department is experimenting ex-perimenting with motor tractors somewhat, some-what, like those now in use on the British Brit-ish battle line. |