Civil War Tank — The Confederate Railway Gun “Little Merrimack”, 1862In the spring

Civil War Tank — The Confederate Railway Gun “Little Merrimack”, 1862In the spring of 1862 the Union Army occupied a railway stop called Savage Station on the Richmond and York River railroad.  In light of this, Gen. Robert E. Lee came up with an interesting, yet unorthodox idea.  He first consulted with the Confederate Chief of Ordnance Colonel Josiah Gorgas if a heavy gun could be mounted on a railway car.  Gorgas said it was impossible, so he turned to Capt. George Minor of the Confederate Navy.  Capt. Minor assembled a crew that built a war machine the likes of which had never been used in warfare before.The navy men mounted a 32 pound naval cannon weighing over 6,000 pounds on an open rail car.  The men then built a thick wooden angled structure around the gun, which was covered with a layer of iron for protection.  Nicknamed the “Land Merrimack” after the famous ironclad warship, it was pushed by a locomotive and could travel the speed of marching infantry.  On June 29th, 1862 the Land Merrimack was pushed into battle against Union lines at Savage Station.  Accompanied by a detachment of Confederate infantry who used the car for cover, the advance of the armored car was part of a larger assault against Savage Station by 14,000 men led by Gen. John P. MacGruder.  The car and gun itself was manned by a crew of navy sailors. In battle the Land Merrimack was invulnerable to Union cannon fire.  However the armored car had several tactical disadvantages that led to its downfall.  The cars mobility was limited by its track.  The 32 pound gun did not have a complex traversing mechanism, it could only point in the direction of the track. Thus it could only fire on another target if that target was directly in front of it.  While many Union guns fired on the Land Merrimack, the armored car never had the opportunity to acquire a target and fire back.  Furthermore Union soldiers dismantled the railway leading into Savage Station, preventing the car from advancing forward.  Eventually the Land Merrimack was forced to withdraw.  General MacGruder troops were forced to retreat when counterattacked by a superior 26,000 man Union force.  In 1865 after the surrender of Gen. Lee the Land Merrimack was supposedly captured by Union forces (pictured above), though historians are unsure if it was the original Land Merrimack.  -- source link

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