MECHANISED ARMY

Hokitika Guardian, 30 June 1928, Page 4

MECHANISED ARMY

DEVELOPMENTS IN BRITAIN

A highly interesting and instructive lecture upon the “ Development. of .Mechanisation in the British Army since the Great A\ ar ” was delivered by -Major AV. T. K. Jennings. 0.5.0., New Zealand Stnfl Corps, to .members at the United Services Club at the Government Publicity Department’s cinema theatre in Wellington. Colonel Carebry, president of the club, presided, and among those present was Major-General It. Young (..M.G.. D. 5.0.. General Officer Commanding the New Zealand Military Forces. Major .Jennings, who recently returned to New eZainnd after having graduated at Staff College, Camberley. and n't the Imperial War College, was exceptionally well qualified to deal with his subject, having participated in last year’s manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain, in which mechanisation was so coin spicuous a feature, and he illustrated his lecture with a line series of lantern slides of the latest tanks and a remarkable film revealing the latest developments in military transport. He clearly demonstrated how. as the result of developments in mechanisation, the radius of action by a modern army had been much increased, and described in clear terms the changes that had taken place and were still being made. Jle said it was in meeting the problems of transport that the principal change had taken place, the transport vehicles now being aide to go much faster and across hilly and bro Ken country which they Juul not been able to cross before. This had been largely brought about by the introduction of six-wheeled motor vehicles which did not skid, and caterpillar tractors with snrings upon which the chassis rested. The result in supply, he said, was revolutionary as compared with what existed at tile end of the Great War.

At the conclusion of his lecture he showed a startling film of six-wheeled motor cars and general service wagons singly and in convoy, negotiating the most difficulty country with ease, crossing deep ditches, climbing and descending hillsides with grades as steep as 1. in 2. crossing streams and doing nil sorts of unbelievable thifigs in roadless count ry. This nil Urn- was one which plainly showed that by the introduction of such motor wagons into this country much of the problems of transputt on larmx and in the backblocks could ho solved, and as stub could be shown with advantage to the farming community.