Expertise was called in from Stanley Motor Carriage Company in Watertown, Massachusetts, that produced steam cars.

Each track frame carried mud clearing spikes, sometimes mistaken for battering rams.

There was to have been a crew of eight, on the assumption there were a commander, a driver, an operator of the flame thrower, a mechanic and four machine gunners.

Only one was completed in Boston and demonstrated in April 1918, in several parades also, on one occasion breaking down in front of the public.

The prototype was in June shipped to France to be tested — with much publicity to bolster allied morale — and was named America.