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In
June 1915 Bremer was given the go-ahead. The Marienwagen
cross-country lorry, produced in the Daimler factory at
Berlin-Marienfelde, was a pretty complicated vehicle, that went
through several re-designs and test (not all successful), and which
appeared in several forms, some semi-tracked, others full-tracked,
although the basis of them all was the Daimler four-ton lorry. After the first British tanks had appeared during the later stages of the Battle of The Somme in 1916, the chocked Germans searched meet this new and unexpected threat with vehicles of the same kind. One of the first ideas was to turn the Marienwagen into a sort of tank, and an order was issued to convert ten lorries into AFV:s. The result of this work was the armoured Marienwagen. This can be seen as the first German tank, since it was completed by the early Spring of 1917. But it was not a tank technically speaking, only tactically. It was, in fact, more of an armoured personnel carrier: it had no fixed armament, although ports were provided for the use of the crew's weapons. A Marienwagen
with a mock-up armoured superstructure was to members of the General Staff
in March 1917.
It was a disaster. It was underpowered, and because of its height
it also had a very high centre of gravity, of course making it very
prone to toppling over. The generals were very disappointed with what
they saw, and as a result, lost all interest in further
German tank development. And the whole plan of using the
Marienwagen as a AFV was finally scrapped. My model is made from MGM:s kit, built virtually straight out of the box, save for additional interior details - including a driver. Click on the thumbnails to see more views of the model: |
Already before the war
had
the German Army started investigating the possibility of introducing
a cross country truck, to be used as a carrier for a anti-balloon gun or simply as a tractor for heavy artillery
pieces.
Consequently they were much interested when they heard of such a
design, the Marienwagen, made by the engineer Hugo G. Bremer.
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