so all it accomplished was a way to get an expensive metal box in the air

Second, The tank models used at America’s entry into the war where the result of cutbacks in military spending, Designers who viewed tanks as infantry support vehicles to be used in WWI style trench warfare and a general ignorance and inability to innovate within the Army.

Fourth, One of the major reasons the Army did not adopt a Christie design was that he was busy off selling unarmed variants as “Tractors” to the UK, Poland and the USSR, These where later developed into the Crusier, 10TP and BT models. (It was also used on some Italian prototypes) Some of the other reasons where that the tanks where mechanically unreliable (The engine was literally unaccessible in the field on his first design, The M1919) and the fact that he would not adapt the vehicles to Army requests (Ie, Armor that can stop bullets, Turrets).

Finally, The M1932 had at most 20mm of armor which was only sloped on the forward glacis plate, A .30 caliber machine gun or rifle loaded with armor-penetrating ammo could punch right through it, Not to mention the Bofors 37mm Anti-Tank gun which was in widespread service around the world at the time.

And a flying tank is generally a stupid idea, The Russians only flew their design once and later during the cold war they where only able to drop BMP armored personnel carriers with large parachutes and rocket assisted pallets, The crews had to be dropped separately due to the large number of injuries sustained during the first tests. (From what I remember, 10-20 wounded with injuries ranging from sprains to broken ribs and fractures)

Sadly, the US government failed to adopt the Christie tank and opted instead to use the Army’s own creations designed by the Bureau of Ordinance. The result of this decision would doom the United States to enter Wold War II with armored fighting vehicles that were a generation behind, and often horribly ill-matched to the German Army’s (Wehrmacht) tanks and combat vehicles. America’s first Medium tank used in the war, which deployed in North Africa in 1942, was the embarrassingly inferior M3 Lee; a turret-less tank that resembled a giant land tortoise. Its main gun, barrowed from the Navy, was hard mounted on the right side of the tank, and could only be turned in one direction, which made this tank an easy target against German tanks. The Lee featured all-rivet construction, and American tank crews soon learned a gruesome side effect of this design. When an M3 was hit by even a glancing shot from German shells, the rivet heads would be sheared off by the concussion, which would propel the bolt stems inside the tank like bullets, killing or injuring the crew.
The M3 Lee’s successor did little to improve matters. Early M4 Sherman models soon earned ominous nicknames by their crews like…“Purple Heart Boxes” and “Ronson” (named after a popular brand of Cigarette lighter that proudly boasted its slogan “Lights the first time”), due to the fact that it’s ammunition storage compartment had a tendency to easily catch fire and explode when hit by German artillery. Germans laughingly nicknamed the Sherman tank “Tommy Cookers” after a field stove carried by Wehrmacht soldiers. Oddly in many ways the relationship between the M4 Sherman and its more advanced German counterparts mirrors that of the battle between PalmOS and Windows Mobile. The Sherman, like PalmOS, was known for its simplicity, versatility, and easy of mass production. German Panzer models like the vaunted Tiger and Panzer IV were incredibly advanced, offering superior firepower, greater complexity, and total superiority over the Sherman. Panzers dominated the battlefield. GIs coined the phrase “Tiger phobia” to describe the typical reaction Sherman tank crews had upon encountering a German Tiger tank on the battlefield…”Get the hell out and run as fast as you can”.

Historians will never know how many brave young American soldiers needlessly lost their lives because of the inferior equipment they went into combat with, but I suspect many lives could have been saved if the United States had adopted Christie’s designs. Ironically, the US finally managed to catch up with the Germans by developing the M26 Pershing tank, which unfortunately didn’t arrive until the last days of the war. Too late to make a difference.

Christie’s innovations are still utilized even in today’s state of the art in fighting vehicles, like the advanced M1 Abrams battle tank used by the United States Army, which features the same suspension system first conceived by Walt.

Another long article about Christie and his tanks here:
http://www.geocities.com/firef.....story.html
And more + photos of Christie tanks here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christie_tank