Tyres Helped to Beat Rommel
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EXPERIMENTS with 4-in, model .1.--Atyres, carried out in the Midlands on trays of fine sand, resulted in the design and construction of a Dunlop type particularly suitable for desert
transport. Its use proved of great value to the Eighth Army in its sweep across North Africa.
The first designs were produced after consultation with the Officer Commanding the Camel Corps and the Car Patrols of the Egyptian Frontiers Administration who had asked Dunlop for a tyre which would be to the motor vehicle what its broad, spreading feet are to the camel. Thern aim was to obtain a tyre with a maximum ground contact which would permit minimum and even pressure, and the tyre now in use was designed by Mr. W. E. Hardeman, of the Product Design Division of that company. It was found during tests that for a driven wheel a fiat tread is better than one of normal section. ,
The new sand tyre was tested both in this country (on the black sands at Port Maddock) and on a circular trip of 910 miles from the Pyramids.
Many of General Montgomery's vehicles were, of course, ordiaary transport lorries running on standard tyres; these, in the main, had to employ the roads made by the Italians, but the sand tyres permitted fast work across the desei-t.
It must not be thought that these experiments are only recent. The first request was made to Fort Dunlop in
1935. PrevioUs to that time many
Army experiments had been carried out with oversize tyres in which the pressure was greatly reduced, but, naturally, these would not have the same life as could be given by those in which the carcase and tread were properly constructed for the work.
Development work was much helped by the building of the pipe line in
Arabia, near the Red Sea, where it was found that, on the new tyres, a journey which used to take 94 days by camel could be performed in six hours.
All kinds and conditions of service were encountered. On the Quattara Depression was found fine, soft, dry sand which flowed. Elsewhere there was sand with a thin, hard crust, on which the going is good so long as the
crust is intact; wet sand with a crust of dried salt, into which vehicles often
sink down to the chassis; sand covered with big stones and pebbles, mud flats, etc.
Sand tyres are now used on tractors, ambulances, water carts and lorries up to 3-ton load capacity. It is claimed that Rommel would not have reached El Alamein if he had not captured
enough British tyres for his journey, and whenever he took any British vehicleshe used them in preference to. his own, whic'h is very flattering to British design and our manufacturers.