Mechanical Robot, Land Torpedo or Explosive Tankette 'Jeffrey the robot': Corporal Harold Edward Jeffery, RAAF

Electrically driven, fully tracked, mechanical robot. The vehicle is painted overall in dark olive drab. The interior of the front section contains two electric starter motors which provide power, via a chain drive to the forward mounted cast steel drive sprockets. The power is provided by a car battery. Mounted to each side of the vehicle and secured with a cruciform shaped steel brace are two road wheels, a return roller, drive sprocket and large, four holed rear idler wheels, which also doubles as the third road wheel. With the exception of the cast drive sprockets, all the wheels have been manufactured from pressed sheet steel. The body work has been pre fabricated from folded sheet steel and bolted to the chassis. The track links are narrow, and have sheet metal plates welded between each track tread. The vehicle was originally operated and controlled from a three switch steel control box and reeled electrical cable.

This fully tracked machine was invented and built by Corporal Harold Edward Jeffery, a fitter with the RAAF, during the early 1940s. The purpose of the vehicle was to deliver a demolition charge to targets such as barbed wire entanglements, bunkers and fortifications via remote cable control. The machine has been referred to as a 'Land Torpedo', an 'Exploding Tankette' and a 'Mechanical Robot'.

Corporal Jeffery submitted his design to the Australian Army Inventions Directorate and a full scale version was tested successfully at Fisherman's Bend in Melbourne on 9 December 1941. As a result of this trial, three additional prototypes were built by Bryant Brothers Engineers of St Leonards in Sydney. The results were noted as being impressive, but after careful consideration the Australian Army rejected the vehicle on the grounds that it was vulnerable to enemy fire and too heavy and expensive to build for a one shot, disposable weapon. Alternative uses for the mechanical robot were sought from the defence forces, but the proposed uses (cable laying, towing targets) were deemed too trivial to invest money in the robot.

In 1946 Jeffery's vehicle was donated to the Australian War Memorial as part of a larger mixed donation from the Army Inventions Directorate. Similar vehicles known as 'Goliath' were built by Germany during the Second World War.

Harold Jeffery noted that he was encouraged to develop the prototype and take out a nine-month provisional patent (1416/41) by Mr Peter Tait, the managing director of the Tate Publishing Company and one of the partners of the Tait Book Company of Melbourne. Tait financed the construction of the original prototype and bore the cost of the provisional patent. By 1941, Tait Publishing had been publishing technical manuals for close on 30 years.

After the war Harold Jeffery continued to invent, devoting his energies to working on inventions to help the many disabled servicemen achieve mobility with such devices as an electric wheelchair. His designs for these are held by his family. He died in February 1968, aged 71.