That Time John Deere Tried to Make a “Tank”
Yea, THAT John Deere.
For those of you who don’t know, John Deere is a major builder and supplier of industrial farming equipment based in the United States. They have been around for a really long time and a lot of farmers either love or hate their offerings.
John Deere’s Unlikely Military Proposal
But what most people don’t know is that right before the U.S. entered WW2, the company approached the government with a rather… interesting proposal. C.D. Wiman, the great-grandson of John Deere himself, proposed his tractors (specifically, the A1 model) be fitted with armor and be used as machine gun carriers/Armored Prime Movers.
Oddly enough, the U.S. Army was willing to give Wiman a chance and ordered two prototypes for evaluation at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in 1941. The testing went as well as you would expect.
The Trials and Tribulations of the A1 Armored Tractor
Despite being fantastic farm tractors, the A1 Armored Tractor was just not suited for Army life. They would constantly get bogged down in mud and sand due to the narrow front end. Even with modifications, the A1 just was not suited for Army life and eventually, the project was canceled. It just was not suited for military life.
John Deere’s Modern-Day Wartime Role
Though almost 80 years later, John Deere would become a war hero in its own right. They have been used by Ukrainian farmers to appropriate abandoned Russian Armored vehicles at the start of that conflict. So there is that.
~NC
