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You need to get 500 tons of supplies from Fairbanks, Alaska to the Arctic Ocean—a journey of about 400 miles through pure wilderness. There are no roads, very few airstrips, and endless ice. You're going to have to withstand minus 68 degree temperatures. Also, nuclear armageddon is on the menu if you're not quick about it.
You,
my friend, need a LeTourneau land train.
The DEW Line
By
1954, with the Cold War well underway, the U.S. government realized
the quickest way to get a nuclear bomber from Russia to America was
to go right over the Arctic Circle. If we wanted any chance of
preventing a nuclear apocalypse, we needed to know if Soviet bombers
were crossing the North Pole as soon as possible. The Army planned to
build 63 manned radar stations in the high Arctic around the 69th
parallel (200 miles north of the Arctic circle) as a result. And to
transport all the necessary material that far north, it would have to
get creative.
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IKIMEDIA
The DEW Line
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Working
together, Canadian and American governments determined they would
need about 500 tons of materials to construct all of these outposts.
With no suitable runways or ports and heavy lift helicopters still in
their infancy, it would all have to be hauled in over land. The task
of figuring out how exactly to get that done fell to the same company
that had been chosen to build the stations themselves—The Western
Electric Company, a subsidiary of AT&T.
Solving
unsolvable logistics issues wasn't exactly its forte. But with the
help of TRADCOM (U.S. Army Transportation Research and Development
Command), it found the one company—more accurately, the one
man—that might be able to help.
That's R. G. LeTourneau To You
Born
in 1888, Robert Gilmore LeTourneau was an inventor of heavy
machinery. In WWII, 70 percent of the Allies' earthmoving equipment
was created by LeTourneau Technologies, Inc. Having very little
formal education, LeTourneau began his working career as an
ironmonger. By the time he died in 1969 he was tremendously wealthy
and personally held nearly 300 patents. He is buried on the campus of
the University he founded in his name, where his gravestone reads
"MOVER OF MEN AND MOUNTAINS." Just a little character
development for you.
LeTourneau
had spent the early 1950s perfecting a sort of diesel-electric
drivetrain for multi-wheeled heavy-machinery. The system—somewhat
similar in concept to the sort used on many locomotives—used a
combustion engine to spin an electric generator. This generator would
send its power to hub motors mounted to each wheel of the vehicle,
allowing for multi-wheel-drive without differentials, driveshafts, or
the drivetrain losses associated with them.
This
powertrain setup will sound familiar to anyone who read our story on
the doomed Antarctic Snow Cruiser earlier this month.
But LeTourneau's design was clearly a generation ahead of Thomas
Poulter's hub motors, which weren't geared properly to handle
anything beyond a gentle incline.
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ETOURNEAU TECHNOLOGIES INC.
The hub motor system
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The VC-12 Tournatrain
Developed
to haul lumber out of forests over rough terrain, the VC-12 had a
hauling capacity of 140 tons. A second version saw LeTourneau add
three more cargo trailers and another control cab out back with a
second Cummins diesel, much like a real train would be set up with
multiple locomotives. TRADCOM caught wind of the project and asked
for a demonstration.
TRADCOM
came away impressed. This would be the vehicle to help engineers
build up the DEW Line, or at least a version of it. The government
decided to pay for the construction of a prototype control cabin
built by LeTourneau and designed specifically for Arctic conditions.
The result? The TC-264 Sno-Buggy—and, incidentally, monster trucks.
Read and see more: https://www.thedrive.com/news/33645/the-incredible-story-of-the-us-armys-earth-shaking-off-road-land-trains?utm_source=pocket-newtab
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