Hatay Tank Driver

"…don't call me Junior!"

The title of this article is a nickname. This article is about a canonical subject that lacks a proper name, and is known only by a nickname, alias or other designation.

CHARACTER
Hatay Tank Driver
Gender	Male
Death	1938 Aboard Mark VII Tank, Canyon of the Crescent Moon, Republic of Hatay
Nationality	Hatayan
Profession(s)	Soldier Driver
Allegiance(s)	Hatay

The Hatay Tank Driver was one of several soldiers given to Walter Donovan for his quest to find the Holy Grail in 1938 by the Sultan of Hatay.

Biography

In 1938, this Hatayan drove the Mark VII Tank commanded by Colonel Ernst Vogel. One of the Turkish soldiers deployed by the Sultan of Hatay to assist the Nazis, the driver was instructed to obey all of Vogel's orders. When Henry Walton Jones, Senior sneaked into the tank, the driver was peering out through the front viewing port, so he didn't hear him before Vogel captured the elder Jones. He appeared to be fluent in German, as he understood the orders Vogel gave him in German. When Indiana Jones was hanging off the side of the tank following his first fight with Vogel, the driver tried to kill Jones by scraping him against the side of a mountain, laughing as he steered even closer to the rocky wall, narrowing the gap between Jones and the outcropt.

The driver leans onto the controls after he is accidentally shot.

As the tank headed toward a solid rock face, Henry Jones and a Nazi crewman were fighting over a Luger P08. The soldier gained the upper hand, but was bashed over the head by Marcus Brody with a shell. As he lost consciousness, the soldier reflexively fired the Luger. The bullet ricocheted inside the tank and hit the driver in the head, killing him. With the driver's body leaning onto the steering levers, the tank swerved away from the rock face (saving Jones just in time), and started moving toward a cliff. The driver's body was subsequently carried over a cliff along with Vogel and the entire tank.

Behind the scenes

The Hatay Tank Driver was portrayed by Peter Pacey in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The film's original script referred to the character as the "Turkish Tank Driver".

In the third revision of Jeffrey Boam's original script, the Hatay Tank Driver was originally going to tie a wire rope with a metal hook to one of the gears of the tank in an attempt to kill Indy, which would cause the tank to turn toward a steep cliff. However, this would cause the driver to be trapped under the hatch of the tank and therefore die along with Walter Chandler (Walter Donovan in the final film) went it over the cliff. The driver's fate would be changed when Tom Stoppard rewrote the script.

Despite his pivotal role in the film, neither he nor the Hatay Tank Gunner appear in Rob MacGregor's novelization. There, the tank's crew are (apparently) all Germans. In the comic book adaptation by Marvel Comics, the driver is absent as well, but so is the whole tank's crew minus the second tank crewman, though his absence doesn't explain then why the tank turns toward a cliff despite the crewman just being knocked out without firing his gun, possibly suggesting that the crewman filled in as driver too.

Similarly to the whole tank's crew, the Hatay Tank Driver does not appear in LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures or its sequel. Instead, Ernst Vogel controls the entire tank in both games.

Appearances

• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (First appearance)
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade 2008 junior novel