Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 90.djvu/542

 �Why spend great sums in bombarding the enemy's entrenched position with artillery when a fleet of torpedo automobiles, each carrying a charge of high explosive, could be launched with

The Torpedo Car— It Destroys Trenches

Also it takes the place of artillery in preparing the way for infantry attack

��MOTOR

PROTECTION

SHIELD

��CONTROL LEVER

��A WELL-DIRECTED bombardment ("artillery preparation" is the polite military term) preceding an infantry attack obliterates breastworks and barbed- wire entanglements, and literally blasts the enemy from his entrenched position. From experience under such a hail has come the fighting man's dic- tum, "Better to face a whole regi- ment than brave an hour's artil- lery fire!"

But even though the use of modern artillery has worked a rev- olu tion in battle prac-

��CONTBOL AND

RECOVERY

CABLE

���What the torpedo car looks like. Note that the control cable regulates the speed of the machine and that the firing wire sets off the explosive

��tice, preparing the way for an infantry charge entails a staggering cost. For that reason inventors have tried, and indeed still are trying, to substitute some agency which will replace the big guns and do their work cheaper but no less efficiently.

The device illustrated, which may be

called a tor- pedo car, be- cause it is nothing more than a tor- pedo mount- ed on an auto- mobile chassis, is an attempt to relegate artil- lery to the scrap heap and substi- tute in its stead a cheap.

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