SUBMARINE JEEP

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 90, 5 February 1947, Page 5

SUBMARINE JEEP

“RELUCTANT TURTLE” TRIALS IN AMERICA The United States Navy recently unveiled the Relucatant Turtle, a submarine jeep that adds one new talent to the versatile vehicle of World War II fame. Experts said the depth to which the seagoing jeep may submerge “seems to be limited only to the length of the neck of the driver, whose head must stick out of water.”

Marine Sergeant Roy Harmon of Washington, veteran of Pacific fighting and driver of the Turtle, wore a diving suit, minus headpiece. The waves lepped over his collar and wet him to the waist.

Hitting the water at 18 miles an hour, in a demonstration for newspapermen, the Turtle threw a spray 20 feet into the air and slowed to a walk. The impact snapped Sergeant Harmon’s neck forward until he almost cracked the windshield.

But the Turtle, using four-wheel power, churned on and the wheels submerged. Then the fenders and finally the windshield disappeared. Nothing remained but Sergeant Harmon’s beaming smile and two pipes, like periscopes, sticking out of the water, Sergeant Harmon rode the waves like a duck. The demonstration lasted more than an hour.

The Turtle is an ordinary jeep equipped with a “submarine” kit. Marine and Navy men at the demonstration said the seagoing jeep might have saved men and equipment in wartime beach invasions. It also will permit jeep-borne soldiers to ford rivers. “We’ve had them under water for as long as lg hours, but of course they aren’t intended to be submerged that long,” said a representative of the firm that constructs the kits for the Navy.