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Tucker Combat Car and the Tucker Gun Turret 1940 Universal Newsreel
🕑 Added 2019-05-05 01:46:45 +0000 UTCmore at http://quickfound.net/
Originally a public domain film, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Tucker
Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Preston Thomas Tucker (September 21, 1903 – December 26, 1956) was an American automobile entrepreneur.
He is most remembered for his Tucker 48 sedan, initially nicknamed the "Tucker Torpedo", an automobile which introduced many features that have since become widely used in modern cars. Production of the Tucker '48 was shut down amidst scandal and controversial accusations of stock fraud on March 3, 1949. The 1988 movie Tucker: The Man and His Dream is based on Tucker's spirit and the saga surrounding the car's production...
In late 1937, while recovering in an Indianapolis hospital from an appendectomy, Tucker was reading the news about war looming on the horizon in Europe. He got the idea of developing a high-speed armored combat vehicle. In 1939, Tucker moved his family back to Michigan and bought a house and property in Ypsilanti. He remodeled an old barn on his property and began and operated a machine shop called the Ypsilanti Machine and Tool Company, planning to use the facility to develop various automotive products.
Opportunity arose for Tucker from the Dutch government, who wanted a combat vehicle suited to the muddy Dutch terrain. Continuing his working relationship with Harry Miller, Tucker began designing a narrow-wheelbase armored combat car powered by a Miller-modified Packard V-12 engine. The car was nicknamed the "Tucker Tiger".
At least one prototype of the combat car was built. Production of the car was to be done at the Rahway, New Jersey, factory owned by the American Armament Corporation. The Germans invaded the Netherlands in the spring of 1940 before Tucker could complete the deal, and the Dutch government lost interest, so he completed the prototypes and opted to try to sell the vehicle to the U.S. government. The car is said to reach 100 mph (161 km/h), far in excess of the design specifications. The U.S. military felt the vehicle was too fast and had already committed to other combat vehicles. The highly mobile, power-operated gun turret featured on the Tucker combat car, which became known as the "Tucker Turret", earned the interest of the U.S. Navy. Harry Miller would later take some of the designs from the Tucker Combat Car to American Bantam, where he was involved in the development of the first Jeep.
The Tucker Turret was soon in production (initially at Tucker's Ypsilanti machine shop). While the turret is often reported to have been used widely on bombers, like the B-17 and B-29, it was actually developed for a different bomber, the Douglas B-18 Bolo. In the end no Tucker turrets equipped any bombers. Tucker's patent and royalty rights were confiscated by the US and Tucker was embroiled in lawsuits for years trying to recoup royalties for use of his patents on the turret...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucker_gun_turret
he Tucker gun turret was a fast-traversing electrically powered gun turret widely described as having been mounted on World War II bombers and on some ground vehicles and small naval vessels like US Navy PT boats. American industrialist Preston Tucker first developed the turret for the experimental Tucker armored car in 1938.
Steve Lehto and Jay Leno, in their biography of Tucker assert that it is a misconception that Tucker's turret was widely used on US bombers during the war. They assert that different manufacturers were each assigned contracts to develop different turrets for different planes, and that Tucker's firm was to build turrets for the Douglas B-18 Bolo. In the end no Tucker turrets equipped any bombers.
When Tucker was under investigation by the Security and Exchange Commission a half-hour film, Tucker: The Man and his Car was prepared and shown to the Commission members. Lehto and Leno described the film's narrator "gushing" over Tucker and noted: "A short section on his wartime efforts to create the Tucker Combat Car introduced the Tucker Turret and may have been the source of the myth that his turrets were widely used during the war."
A Hollywood biopic of Tucker covered Tucker's production of the turret, prompting reviewers to characterize the turret design as "incredibly ergonomic, effective and convenient".
