Swimming Tractor

One day last week seven tons of Duralumin "tractor," driven by a twelve-cylinder automobile engine, chugged into the surf of Guantanamo Bay and set out to sea. Instead of sinking, the Buck Rogersian vehicle paddled to & fro at ten miles an hour, turned, charged the beach and landed a party of U. S. Marines.*

The occasion marked the latest tests of the Marines' newest fighting machine, no screwball toy but the result of seven years of trial & error by 325-pound Sportsman-Inventor Donald Roebling. Originally conceived by Wire Ropeman John A. Roebling as a vessel of mercy and rescue in time of flood, the Roebling-dubbed "Alligator" caught the eye of the Marines, ever watchful for inventions likely to simplify the basic (and most dangerous) maneuver of the Corps, i.e., landing on hostile shores.

The "Alligator" used in recent tests is unfinished, unarmed. But the Navy has notified John David Crummey's Food Machinery Corp., which will manufacture them (they also make spray pumps, peach pitters, fruit cookers), of its intention to buy 200 amphibians (cost: $3,500,000), to be armed and armored against the day when the Marines may again have to take a situation in hand.

*In real action, the Marines' amphibian will be hoisted over ship's side with sling and boom.

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