Development
There was a lack of British-developed four-wheel-drive vehicles developed during the war and no commercial demand for them afterwards. As a result, the Army, under the time's general assumption of indigenous sourcing, was forced to develop its own vehicle. The Hathi prototype was developed in 1922 by a team of P Company under Professor (honorary Colonel) Herbert Niblett of the Royal Army Service Corps Training College, Aldershot, using parts of a German Erhardt tractor. Production models were built by Thornycroft, 25 being built in 1924.
Although capable for its day, the Hathi was a complex and expensive vehicle that required regular maintenance if the front axle was to remain reliable. For most purposes it was soon replaced by 6×4 lorries with just as many driven wheels, but without the need for the complex combined driving and steering axle. Even half-tracks, particularly the Kégresse system, were more popular in this period.
Read more about this topic: Thornycroft Hathi
Famous quotes containing the word development:
“Ive always been impressed by the different paths babies take in their physical development on the way to walking. Its rare to see a behavior that starts out with such wide natural variation, yet becomes so uniform after only a few months.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality.
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (17881824)
“I could not undertake to form a nucleus of an institution for the development of infant minds, where none already existed. It would be too cruel.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)