Copyright 2010 by Brandon Cope 

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Christie M-1932 flying tank

J. Walter Christie was an eccentric American tank designer of the inter-war period. In addition to rather fanciful concepts, he also tended to have short attention spans for designs, rapidly moving on to new ideas before fully developing an existing one. His most famous invention was a simple and reliable suspension system, made famous on the Soviet T-34. His most bizarre invention was the M-1932 flying tank.

The basic idea was laudable: a way to break static trench warfare by delivering armored forces behind the enemy's front lines. The M-1932 was a turretless tracked vehicle equipped with jettisonable wings and propeller – once the tank had flown deep within enemy territory, landed and shed it's wings, it was envisioned it would zip around rear areas at 70 mph, disrupting the enemy's ability to fight. It was even postulated that such a machine would end warfare! Like most of Christie's designs, it was 'convertible' and could run on tracks or the large road wheels alone.

Only a wingless prototype was built, with only half the speeds hoped for. Christie abandoned the design in his typical manner and moved on to other projects. The design below is based on the extremely optimistic article in Modern Mechanics magazine (July 1932). The only significant change is the addition of a third crewman. In a Cliffhangers or mad science WWII campaign, the M-1932 would fit in well.

The M-1932 has a crew of three: commander, driver and gunner. The M-1932 uses 33.6 gallons of aviation per hour at routine usage in flight, 15.8 gph on the ground.

Subassemblies: Medium Tank chassis +3, Light FB Wings with biplane option +4, tracks +3.
Powertrain: 746-kW aerial HP gas engine w/ 350-kW tracked drive train, 746-kw prop and 60 gallons fuel in standard fuel tank [body]; 16,000-kWs batteries.
Occupancy: 3 CS  Cargo: 5

Armor

Body: F: 4/75, RLB 4/40, TU 4/20
Tracks: 4/35

Wings: 2/2C

Weaponry
75mm Short TG [Body:F] (64).
Ground LMG/M-1919A4 [Body:F] (1,000).

Statistics

HT: 10
HP: 375 [Body], 135 [Each Track], 125 [each wing]
 

Design Notes
Chassis cost, weight and HP were divided by four and wing numbers divided by two to represent the light design. Chassis cost was not multiplied by 10 as is normal for an aircraft chassis, since it really wasn't any better streamlined than any other Christie tank.

The M-1932 was expected to run at 100 mph on the road wheels with the tracks removed. The removable wing assembly weighs 0.7 tons; it is included under loaded weight but not Payload. An alternate main armament could be a 37mm Medium TG with 180 rounds. Earlier in the decade, it would be armed with something more similar in performance to a 76.2mm Very Short Howitzer or 37mm Infantry Gun.

The prototype could only manage 36 mph on tracks and 50 mph off, too slow to allow takeoff. Given the quality of tracks and tracked transmissions at the time, a sustained speed of 70 mph is perhaps more unrealistic than flying (and a crew in such a vehicle would be beaten to a bloody pulp going at top speed across country).