Talk:Killen-Strait armoured tractor

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Name Problem.

" . . . a turretless Delaunay-Belleville armoured car hull . . ." Not strictly accurate. There was no such thing as a Delaunay-Belleville armoured car; the vehicle was the chassis of a Delaunay-Belleville touring car acquired by the (British) Royal Navy on which was built, from scratch, a steel body and revolving turret. There is doubt that the steel used was armour plate; it might have been mild steel or boilerplate. Hengistmate (talk) 22:18, 20 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There was a Delaunay-Belleville armoured car, all of the RNAS armoured cars were commercially built chassis with armoured bodywork fitted. I have amended the wording to say armoured bodywork, not hull. Cavalryman (talk) 00:12, 21 August 2021 (UTC).[reply]

There was, in fact, no such vehicle as a Delaunay-Belleville armoured car. Delaunay-Belleville built touring cars and did not build an armoured car. Nor did they play any part in the fitting of the superstructure suggested by Charles Samson and probably designed by Arthur Nickerson. What this vehicle should really be called would make an interesting discussion.

The fitting of the superstructure to the Killen-Strait was ordered by the commander of the RNAS Armoured Car Division, Wing Commander F.L.M. Boothby, with a view to sending it to Gallipoli, where conventional armoured cars had proved to be unsuitable for the terrain (and where his brother had been killed serving in them a few weeks earlier).

I haven't seen a reference to the Delaunay-Belleville-Samson-Nickerson-Killen-Strait-Boothby-Symes taking part in any trials, as claimed in the article on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaunay-Belleville_armoured_car#Design As far as I am aware, only the standard Killen-Strait was demonstrated.

The next problem is the claim that the vehicle was "the first tracked armoured vehicle." David Fletcher speculates that "the armoured bodywork of the Delaunay-Belleville (might have been) built and fitted by the firm Forges et Chantiers de France of Dunkirk, although that firm had no access to armour plate, so if that were the case they were built from boiler plate." If DF insists on making that distinction, then the "armoured tractor" might not have been the first tracked armoured vehicle, in fact not an armoured vehicle at all.

I've made some short-term changes until such time as the article can be overhauled.

Wikipedia also has two articles on the Killen-Strait in its various forms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killen-Strait

On a side note, there is evidence of at least one standard Killen-Strait serving with the French army.

Hengistmate (talk) 16:18, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hengistmate, for the purposes of Wikipedia, vehicles should be called whatever the sources call them, which in this case is the Delaunay-Belleville armoured car and the Killen-Strait armoured tractor. If you wish to have a discussion about possible alternate names, there are numerous forums elsewhere on the internet to do so. Cavalryman (talk) 05:22, 26 August 2021 (UTC).[reply]