Lancelot Eldin de Mole's 'brilliant' World War I tank idea taken from Adelaide to the UK but overlooked and rejected
Lancelot Eldin de Mole and the model of his military tank design that he took to England and showed to the British authorities. The model later went on display at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
Images courtesy Australian War Memorial
Adelaide-born engineer Lancelot Eldin de Mole invented a “brilliant” military tank that was rejected and then overlooked by the British authorities, even though they conceded it had aspects that surpassed those used in World War I.
Born in the inner eastern Kent Town, de Mole was son of architect/ surveyor William Frederick de Mole and reputedly a great grandson of noted British engineer/inventor Henry Maudslay. When Lancelot was seven, the family moved to Victoria where he attended Melbourne Church of England and Berwick grammar schools.
As a draftsman before World War I, de Mole worked in mining, surveying and engineering in several states. His early inventions were claimed to include an automatic telephone, three years before the USA got a similar type.
Surveying difficult terrain near Geraldton, Western Australia, in 1911, de Mole hit on an idea for a tracked armoured vehicle and next year sent design sketches to the British war office. He was told in 1913 his idea had been rejected, though only some of his drawings were returned. He resisted urging from friends to sell the design to the German consul in Perth.
De Mole married Harriett Josephine Walter at St Matthew's Church, Kensington, Adelaide, in 1915 when he was a draftsman in the South Australian public service engineering department. That year he resubmitted tank drawings to the British war office but was told a working model had to be provided. De Mole also failed to interest the Australian inventions board. He had a model built and tried to get to England by enlisting in the Australian imperial force but was rejected as medically unfit.
When the first crude British tanks took the World War I field in 1916, de Mole realised his idea had been ignored and that his design was superior. Helped by Harold Leslie Boyce, then a 10th Battalion lieutenant, de Mole was accepted for active service in 1917. He left for England with his tank model and showed it to the British inventions committee that recommended it to the tank board. But the model was misplaced for six weeks and, before it could be shown to the board, de Mole was sent to France and the 10th Battalion in 1918.
In 1919, de Mole made claims with the British royal commission on awards to inventors but credit for designing the tanks used was given to two British inventors. The commission noted that de Mole “had made and reduced to practical shape, as far back as the year 1912, a brilliant invention which anticipated, and in some respects surpassed, that actually put into use in the year 1916”. But it found “a claimant must show a causal connection between the making of his invention and the user of any similar invention by the government”. The commission considered his designs that the war office had kept since 1912 had in no way been used.
De Mole was awarded £965 for expenses and made an honorary corporal. In 1920, he was appointed commander of the most excellent order of the British Empire. Back in Australia, he later patented a new style of motor-lorry chassis for heavy work. He also applied, but never follow up, patents on improved chain-rail vehicles (1912), an apparatus for destroying prickly pear (1913), and improved rotary engines (1913-14).
De Mole became an design engineer with Sydney Water Board but in 1940 he suggested to defence authorities a shell that would erect a fence or screen of suspended wires as a defence against enemy aircraft. The army headquarters invention board decided it had “possibilities” and prime minister Robert Menzies was favourable but British authorities responded that similar ideas had been examined and found “impracticable”.
