Guiness tank at the Eastern Rising? (no pun intended)

Kurt_Steiner · Post by **Kurt_Steiner** » 08 May 2007 23:07

I have found that Guiness brewery donated a copper breweing vessel to be used as an armoured vehicle against the rebells during the Eastern Rising.

Has anyone one any kind of info about this armoured vehicle?

ChristopherPerrien · Post by **ChristopherPerrien** » 09 May 2007 02:42

Interesting, sounds like someone pickled their brain drinking too much of that dirty beer or as a silly PR ploy to fool idiots. Copper has much more usefulness as artillery shell fuzes and a bunch of other uses, it is way too soft to provide ballistic protection, otherwise "hoplites" would have been still around.

Animal · Post by **Animal** » 09 May 2007 08:39

ChristopherPerrien wrote:Interesting, sounds like someone pickled their brain drinking too much of that dirty beer or as a silly PR ploy to fool idiots. Copper has much more usefulness as artillery shell fuzes and a bunch of other uses, it is way too soft to provide ballistic protection, otherwise "hoplites" would have been still around.

Guinness is good beer. I like the dark stuff.

ChristopherPerrien · Post by **ChristopherPerrien** » 09 May 2007 15:03

Animal wrote:
ChristopherPerrien wrote:Interesting, sounds like someone pickled their brain drinking too much of that dirty beer or as a silly PR ploy to fool idiots. Copper has much more usefulness as artillery shell fuzes and a bunch of other uses, it is way too soft to provide ballistic protection, otherwise "hoplites" would have been still around.
Guinness is good beer. I like the dark stuff.

Pour a cup of dirt in a glass of Budweiser, same difference.

cheaper too.

ChristopherPerrien · Post by **ChristopherPerrien** » 09 May 2007 15:34

On topic, IIRC, from one of my books which I can't get to at this time,

The brewing vessel was not meant to a be made into a tank, rather it was to be an armoured cabin on a railroad car. It might already be this in your picture , I can't really tell.

Terry Duncan · Post by **Terry Duncan** » 09 May 2007 19:47

I dont have the details to hand but the story is certainly true, the brewery bosses gave the army a large metal container of some form (some say it was a boiler?) that was fitted on the back of a lorry and used to provide rudimentary protection from small calibre rounds and allowed for the people inside to clear areas from relative safety. Its hard to assess the actual protection afforded by the vehicle, but I dont believe anyone in it was injured, so it would appear to have been not too bad.

There is some actual film of the vehicle held by the Imperial War Museum IIRC, and it has been used in one or two documentaries where the Easter Rising is mentioned. It looks pretty much like you would expect, an emergency contingency that wasnt ideal, but it was certainly an unusual site, so maybe a higher value for morale purposes then in actual effect.

Terry

Kurt_Steiner · Post by **Kurt_Steiner** » 09 May 2007 22:52

Thank you very much!

Peter H · Post by **Peter H** » 10 May 2007 13:12

http://mailer.fsu.edu/~akirk/tanks/ireland/ireland.html

This remarkable vehicle was constructed during the Irish Easter Rising of 1916. The vehicle was built for the British Army in Dublin. On the morning of 30th April 1916 authority was given to build an armored car for convoy and patrol work. Work was finished by 6:30pm the same day, being done at the Great Southern Railway works at Inchmore. The lorry was a 3-ton Daimler commandeered from the Guinness brewery. The armored body was assembled from locomotive smoke boxes; flat steel plates protected cab and radiator, with a locomotive cab roof as overhead cover. Many of the loopholes in the circular body are actually painted-on dummies, to confuse snipers. The armor was not actually bullet proof at close ranges, but the curve of the body did help deflect bullets. After the Rising, the armor was returned to the railway works and the Daimler returned to the brewery to deliver Guinness.

Carlos Marighela · Post by **Carlos Marighela** » 14 May 2007 12:28

If you consult a copy of Fletcher's 'War Cars', the HMSO published history of British armoured cars in the Great war you can see photos of the Guiness vehicle ad it's half sister, which was of was a flat plated construction, basically a rectangular steel box. Only the chassis came from Guiness, the rest as the above quote indicates was fabricated in the railway workshops. They had rear opening doors, the apparent intention was to reverse the vehicles up to a suitable entry point in a rebel held building and then storm in under a degree of cover.