Nicholas Straussler

Biography Short Stirling bomber being loaded with 250 lb bombs, carried on Alvis Straussler bomb trolleys. Between 1928 and 1933, Straussler ran Folding Boats and Structures Ltd and patented a number of flotation devices, including collapsible ones. In February 1933, he became a British citizen.

Throughout the 1930s, he worked with Alvis Cars, Vickers-Armstrong and Hungarian companies on a variety of projects. His first armoured car, the AC1, was only partially built by H Manfred Weiss RT of Budapest in 1933. His work for Alvis involved designing armoured cars such as the Alvis Straussler AC2 and the Alvis Straussler AC3. The prototypes were built by his own company Straussler Mechanisation Ltd, and the production vehicles by a new joint company, Alvis-Straussler. that was formed in July, 1936.

An AC2 was shown to the British Air Ministry in 1935 and it was tested in the Middle East. In 1937 Straussler linked with Alvis to form the Alvis-Straussler company. His LAC armoured car (and a field artillery tractor version of it) was shown to the British Army and tested in 1938. The LAC had two engines - one driving the nearside wheels and the other the offside ones. However the cooling system was inadequate for hot countries and the War Office rejected it. Straussler also designed a vehicle with an articulated chassis which was supplied to the RAF for use as tractors. In 1938 Alvis-Straussler was supplanted by Alvis Mechanisation Ltd and Straussler ended his connection with Alvis.

He later improved the AC2 design and it was built in Hungary by Manfred Weiss as the 39M Csaba. These saw service with the Royal Hungarian Army fighting against the USSR on the Eastern Front during the Second World War. As Hungary was allied to the Axis powers during much of the war, 39M Csabas were also used by the German Army. Another vehicle he was involved with that saw Axis use was the Garner-Straussler G.3, a four-wheel drive, off-road truck that was used in small numbers as an artillery tractor by the Germans. This truck had the unusual feature of being driven by two engines that were coupled together.

An amphibious tank, the Straussler V-4 (also known as Light Tank V-4), was built in Hungary to his design in the 1930s, but it never got past the prototype stage as the Hungarian Army chose instead to use the Toldi tank. One of his designs that did see widespread use was the Alvis Straussler Bomb Trolley. Around 10,000 were made for the Royal Air Force to transport bombs, mainly within airfields. Each carried four 250 pound bombs, although large versions were later produced.

Military flotation devices Sherman DD tank, with the flotation screen loweredStraussler's work for Vickers-Armstrong, included designing accessories for tanks. The engineering solutions he produced tended to be innovative, though sometimes at the expense of practicability. Instead, Straussler devised an alternative, the flotation screen. This was a folding canvas screen, supported by horizontal metal hoops and vertical rubber tubes filled with compressed air. The screen covered the top half of the tank and provided buoyancy in the water. When collapsed, it would not interfere with the tank's mobility or combat effectiveness.

Straussler was allocated a Tetrarch tank for experimentation and it was fitted with a screen together with a marine propeller that took its drive from the tank's engine. The two forms of propulsion - propeller and tracks - gave rise to the term Duplex Drive ("DD") for such tanks.

The first trial of the DD Tetrarch took place in June 1941 in Brent Reservoir (also known as Hendon Reservoir) in North London although none of these went into production. Post-war tanks were generally too heavy to be made amphibious with a flotation screen, The idea of equipping large artillery pieces with engines, to give a limited amount of independent mobility, would be eventually adopted post–war with guns like the FH-70.

Post-war work Straussler worked on a variety of automotive projects after the war. Although many were connected in some way with amphibious vehicles, they included the Lypsoid Tyre — a very low-pressure, off-road, run-flat tyre that saw some use with military and construction vehicles, including the Fabrique Nationale AS 24 lightweight transport vehicle. In October 1957, Straussler was charged with violating British export controls. A 'semi-military' truck fitted with his off-road wheels was sent, with permission, to the Netherlands for demonstration purposes. But it was then sent from there to Hungary - this was illegal as that country was behind the Iron Curtain. Straussler was given an absolute discharge (i.e. found guilty, but no punishment was imposed); his company was fined £500 and he and his company shared the costs of the prosecution.

He continued working into his old age — the last of his 30 patents was filed in 1964. He died on 3 June 1966 in London.