Cunningham Light Tank

In the nineteen-twenties a small group of officers in the Cavalry branch of the Army foresaw that the next war would be mechanized and, unlike the First World War, one of maneuver. Chaffee, Patton, and Levin Campbell are the most familiar names.

In 1927, members of this group, armed with a small appropriation, arranged with Cunningham to produce experimental tanks and other armored vehicles. What they wanted most was a fast light tank. The lumbering Christies of the First World War had been suited to trench warfare, but they were too slow for a war of maneuver. Their function had been to batter holes in a heavily held line. Light tanks, in contrast, would make rapid encirclements. They would have to travel long distances rapidly and without breaking down.

NINE-TON CALVARY TANK, MOUNTING A 37mm CANNON AND 30 CAL. MACHINE GUN
Cunningham went to work, and in March, 1928, its first tank was tested at Aberdeen, Maryland. Equipped with a revolving turret and armed with a 37 millimeter cannon and a .30 caliber machine gun, it traveled twenty miles an hour, more than three times as fast as any tank that had been produced up to that time.

This was only a beginning. By 1933, Cunningham had developed a tank track, with light-weight rubber-block treads that allowed for greater speeds. In 1935 one of its tanks attained a cross-country speed of fifty miles an hour.

FOUR-WHEEL DRIVE T4 ARMOURED CAR, 1930
Cunningham also developed experimental half-tracks, cargo-carriers, armored cars, and a weapons carrier for a 75 millimeter howitzer. Then appropriations for this purpose ceased, and when the firm resumed defense production five years later, it was no longer equipped to make vehicles.