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Okay so the first can't really be anything else. The matilda mk 2, literally boasted 65mm on the rear plate. Its small and compact, not really well armed but damn its well armoured, a solid tank all round, literally. Been around these things in museums since I little. Look how tiny it is!


So the centurion, does stand up to its name, a cold war gladiator that did well against its contemporaries if ever there was one.
The earliest version, I love the first model that little blister with a 20mm, they were ike 90% to having a modern looking tank, and then...
The latest version, even if its more a prototype. Essentially the same thing under all that spaced armour.

Next up


Essentially the English designing the same thing, but in different times.

Churchills, those big heavy hill climbers.Here's one of the first mk3s deployed in Africa, in colour!
Its actually highly likely those holes in the side were punched by British 6 pounders.


Marder


Never thought it too remarkable until i saw one of these for the first time in a museum only last year. Really really made an impression, parked next to a T72, a centurion and 2 leopard 1s(an old Australian welded one and a Bundeswheir cast) and the cheiftan really just stood out.


And the Lynx it just seems to me the epithimy of a large armoured car. Amphibious, all terrain. really cool vehicle.


and lastly
becasue its a novel new(or MK1 female style, old) idea designed after tough experiences in urban warfare, yeah gun tanks and anti infantry, anti light and anti material tanks, really really interesting

Valentine would have been my next choice, but my list was already burgeoning
Anyone here know that the Kiwis deployed them during the invasion of 3 islands in the Solomons?(Yeah its little known but the New Zealand army actually had a limited participation in the east pacific) They performed quite well.

Well my guess is you're not going to be worried about wear to the gun or vehicle as there is a nuclear echange taking place, although something possibly more concerning for the crew would be the US developed Honest Abe mobile missile launcher, an unarmored heavy truck capable of launching a nuclear warhead not really far enough to clear the vehicle from the blast radius.

Have not seen a jagdpanther in the steel yet. (The local tank museum is expanding quite rapidly and they are aquiring one (and an ISU 152!)Maybe next year.

Saw a panther there, right beast of a thing.
Especially when you consider its got thick armour, an excellent gun, a good turn of speed, decent agility, really good ground pressure and a heap of torque. Really can see why the French adopted them after the war. Really was a good thing for the allies that Germanys limited industrial capacity was being crippled day and night by heavy bombing and that most of its good tank crews were being chewed up on the eastern front when this thing came out.
And that allied air superiority meant that supplies to the frontlines were effectively crippled and the Germans were forced to often abandon vehicles they could not supply with fuel or repair.

Hell you can say the same about the tiger 2. Say what you like about the issues they had(everything that is in early production, let alone rushed into production, has issues; the first cromwells to be tested were super unreliable, and this is a tank that would later drive 5000km without issue, let alone a full engine rebuild as was kinda expected of a tank driving a quarter of that distance.) A King Tiger could climb a hill a panzer 4 was not capable of because of ground pressure and torque it could cross mud a mk 4 would find itself trapped in. It gets a bad rapp these days for being big and impractical, I'm just kinda glad Germany was never in a position to have used them effectively.


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The main issue i see in the US's devlopmemt of armour in WW2 was their unwillingness to upgrade their equipment and their complete willingness to take losses.

Most of the upgrades that went into later model shermans were literally put forwards in 1942 and 1943, when the sherman was by all rights an excellent medium tank. If they implented better suspension and wet ammo storage, and better armour on the sides at this point it could have stayed a decent medium tank, if the US decided to go to 76mm on some of their fleet(or all later production vehicles) before Dday, it would again stayed as a decent medium tank till the end of the war. Any other nation would have swiftly implemented these upgrades to all following production vehicles, and started to upgrade their current fleets. I would, when comparing Britain's war time mentality with that of the US take it back to WW1, through doing stupid stuff the British(also Germans, and Commonwealth) were shocked to lose hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and decided to minimise losses where they could in the future. The Soviets learnt this at the outset of operation Barbarossa very proactively developed their armoured vehicles and implemented upgeades really quite swiftly look no further than the E and S model KV1(E had a heap of extra armour bolted on, S had armour stripped off to make it faster(or in other words to reinvent the T34, it was not very sucsessful but they were trying something based on information coming from the field), the Red army was in a pretty intense furnace of armour evolution, quite the opposite situation to the US army. The Americans, coming late to the party in WW1 and seemingly never were forced into this insight, what is more they really did not take well to other nations trying to impart such lessons upon them.
Even in WW2 being accused of being an anglophile in America was a big insult. And actually listening to the hard won advice of the British army from its campaign in NAfrica and implementing changes was seemingly seen as politcally dangerously Anglophilic(which makes a bit of sense, the British did invade them the previous century(the war of 1812 and DID favour the Confedercy in the civil war). So inferior models stayed in production and that cost lives.

Going to add some more to the roster.
A movie tank, technically it was armed with 3x functioning 6pdrs, and constructed to handle some pretty rough ground, so it actually had to be made like a tank to hold tegether, and not just be shaken apart in the Spanish desert. Its probably the spiritual father of the leman russ too. I mean look at its gun toting beastliness. You'd never want to go into battle in it, but they did a good job of making it look impressive!



The first ever serious wheeled IFV, the South African Ratel(Afrikaans for honey badger I think?) The South Africans made some pretty neat stuff

 Irbis wrote:

 OldMate wrote:
The first ever serious wheeled IFV, the South African Ratel

Wouldn't that be WW2 era Sd Kfz 234 Puma, actually?

Thank you for giving me the oppotunity to put this up

So the 8x8 Rooikat(Afrikaans for Red cat or Cascarvel(the red furred African equivalent of a Lynx) if I am not mistaken) is actually quite comparable to the puma, although doctrinally different, as well as performing recon(and basically being a wheeled tank)its quite well mine protected and a very long range vehicle that in the case that another state tried to invade South Africa, the idea was that it'd raid and threaten convoys that were limited to only a few highways across the vastness of the svelt, the first model was armed with a fast firing 76mm cannon, that would essentially annhilate anything you expect in a supply convoy pretty quick and sharp, and you could carry much more ammo than a much larger and more redudant cannon, "and what if they use MBTs for convoy protection?" Well that is ideal, you are limiting the enemy tank pressence on the front lines AND slowing their suppl lines down to a crawl, two victories in one and all the Rooikat crews have to do is put a brew on and wait till the enemy drop the stupid MBT escort idea. BRDM is a recon vehicle, I'd say more comparable to a Rooikat than a Ratel, the Ratel makes up the rosters of the South African military's mechanised infantry corp in the same way the BMP does in the Soviet/Russian mechanised infantry corp.

The BTR series like all other similar vehicles were designed as APCs rather than IFVs. Armoured personnel carrier vs infantry fighting vehicle.
Here we tread the interesting, thin and fuzzy line between an IFV and an APC. History affords context which is vital to understanding the difference, so what is accredited as the worlds first IFV was the BMP1(although it must be said the A7V could fall into this definition, literally carrying a section of storm troopers, with their own flamethrower(sounds like a fun idea inside an AFV!), in its boxyness (in case you were wondering what business any land vehicle has with a crew of 18, yeah half of them were able to be dismounts) and doctrinally at least the German halftracks of ww2 as of a memo from around early 1942 states infantry should remain in the halftracks and fire out of the back of them, so clearly the idea was evolving during the world wars but the halftrack was still relatively lightly armoured and armed), the BMP was revolutionary and changed how mechanised warfare was to be fought. Instead of your vehicle being a glorified battle taxi that was proof against shell fragments, was designed to afford mobility and protection for the infantry from being flayed alive by shrapnel from artillery bombardment when moving to the front line and armed generally with a machinegun or 2 for suppressing the enemy whilst infantry disembarked(at least in theory, of course they were pressed into fire support roles when tanks were not avaliable, or as gun trucks when the enemy lacked the firepower to tackle an armoured vehicle), now every specialised mechanised infantry section(generally considered more elite and heavier infantry than those kitted with APCs (at least in the Red army)) would have a form of light tank that they could fight from mounted (utilising top hatches over the infantry compartmemt, and/or firing ports along the side of the infantry compartment(although this idea has waned in favor in recent years in favor of putting more protection on the sides of the vehicle) or dismounted from with the vehicle being able to back them up should they encounter a strong point or such and the vehicle generally enjoying better protection than the APCs that were contemporary(at least on the frontal arc). That is the 1st generation anyway, the line is quite blurry nowdays, or even back then when the west started slapping light tank turrets onto APCs in response to the BMP, although they were never designed as actual IFVs and were an interm measure till their own purpose desinged IFVs could be produced.

A great example of definitely not an IFV but something possibly lost in translation is the BMPT terminator. Often mistranslated(IMHO anyway) as a heavy IFV. It does not fight with the infantry and it does not carry them therefore its not an IFV, it is a tank that was designed to fight alongside conventional MBTs to combat hostile infantry and light targets. Like a MK1 female in WW1. The BMPT also has 4 ATGMs because if you have what is essentially the investment of an MBT, you don't just want it defenselessly being picked apart by enemy MBTS.
Back to the Ratel

Clearly can be seen here the intention of the vehicle to be fought from both in a mounted and dismounted manner by the mechanised infantry and the design features for such(hatches along the top open in a manner to provide cover against incoming small arms fire to those frining from behind them, and you can see the cluster of firing ports just above the gentleman in the centre's helmet). The IFV concept is essentially the midway between a light tank and an APC, sometimes with a bit of gun truck mixed in.

The Ratel is in design and purpose comparable to its counterparts the BMP series, Bradley, Marder, Warrior etc. It carries troops and uses its cannon to give them fire support. Its just wheeled and has better mine protection. Because it is expected to drive very long distances, and there is mines everywhere in Africa apparently.

I might have been a bit hard to follow.
The ratel, honey badger is the ifv
The rooikat, red cat is the 8x8 armoured car.

But yeah an MBT that can carry infantry is a bit weird, but in the context of the 1982 war, makes a heap of sense, as the Iseralis were effectively using their tanks to medievac injured(and rather grisily, their dead, they had no intention of letting hostile militias mutilate their fallen)from active battle zones.

 Pyroalchi wrote:
I'm very greatful that the mines that were placed at the inner German border in the cold war had a kind of "time defuse" and disarmed themselves after some years.

The same thing happened with the land mines that were deployed by the Australian Army during the Vietnam war, the fields were designed to stop the Viet Cong's proliferation of weapons and supplies from the North into the province under Australian responsibility, unfortunately a massive minefield is a terrible idea and having badly motivated South Vietnamese troops looking over the minefield meant for the rest of the war it was a great source of explosives for the Viet Cong, anti-lift devices were installed under the mines(hand grenade booby traps) but this just meant the Viet Cong could get more explosives each time they dug a mine out once they got the knack, although these mines had a trigger mechanism made from cast iron, that in the tropical ground lasted around 7 months. Unfortuantley 'improved' versions of this particular model of mine were later employed in Cambodia (both by the Khemer Rouge and the Vietnamese army) where the cast iron trigger mechanism was replaced with plastic, making them seemingly dangerous till this day.

 Vulcan wrote:

 OldMate wrote:
...and there is mines everywhere in Africa apparently.

Yeah, in a way.

There have been a lot of brushfire wars, insurgencies, rebellions, and revolutions in Africa. And land mines are VERY cheap area denial weapons that last a long, long time once emplaced. Worse, they're easy to lose track of. You send a platoon of engineers out to lay some mines, those engineers get ambushed and wiped out... where did the mines wind up? The only people who know are now dead. Makes it difficult to go back and retrieve them once the conflict is over.

And even if you're trying to be good and clean up after yourself, it's easy to miss a couple in the process of clearing an area. Even modern mines designed to be remote detonated by radio as an easy means of clearing your own minefields, the radio can fail and leave the mine intact.

Of course, most of the forces involved in those aformentioned conflicts either lack the capability or the desire to clean up stray minefields. If they know mines are in an area, they might post signs to warn civilians. Or they might just note it on the map and move on.

So... yeah. There are mines pretty much all over Africa. It's a real problem not just for the military, but for civilians as well.

Another great danger with land mines is that the ground moves, so after a decade any minefield charts can be basically useless. Mines can slowly migrate into areas once thought safe.

 Frazzled wrote:

Most of the upgrades that went into later model shermans were literally put forwards in 1942 and 1943, when the sherman was by all rights an excellent medium tank. If they implented better suspension and wet ammo storage, and better armour on the sides at this point it could have stayed a decent medium tank, if the US decided to go to 76mm on some of their fleet(or all later production vehicles) before Dday, it would again stayed as a decent medium tank till the end of the war. Any other nation would have swiftly implemented these upgrades to all following production vehicles, and started to upgrade their current fleets. I would, when comparing Britain's war time mentality with that of the US take it back to WW1, through doing stupid stuff the British(also Germans, and Commonwealth) were shocked to lose hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and decided to minimise losses where they could in the future. The Soviets learnt this at the outset of operation Barbarossa very proactively developed their armoured vehicles and implemented upgeades really quite swiftly look no further than the E and S model KV1(E had a heap of extra armour bolted on, S had armour stripped off to make it faster(or in other words to reinvent the T34, it was not very sucsessful but they were trying something based on information coming from the field), the Red army was in a pretty intense furnace of armour evolution, quite the opposite situation to the US army. The Americans, coming late to the party in WW1 and seemingly never were forced into this insight, what is more they really did not take well to other nations trying to impart such lessons upon them.
Even in WW2 being accused of being an anglophile in America was a big insult. And actually listening to the hard won advice of the British army from its campaign in NAfrica and implementing changes was seemingly seen as politcally dangerously Anglophilic(which makes a bit of sense, the British did invade them the previous century(the war of 1812 and DID favour the Confedercy in the civil war). So inferior models stayed in production and that cost lives.

Going to have to disagree with this.

Not seeing where the Americans kept "inferior" vehicles.
* They continuously experimented with other vehicles. Those other vehicles didn't work or didn't meet the needs of the US in WW2.
* Batch upgrades to the M4 were made throughout the war. In comparison the Soviets didn't do anything until they absolutely had to with the T34 and KV1, both of which were inferior designs in terms of crew visibility and laying a weapon on a target in real time. Plus they were utter crap that broke down immediately.
* They had 76mms far earlier than were pushed out in ETO. They were not desired as the 75 had higher explosive fill and the 75 was good against most vehicles it came across in real life. Like the Soviet choice of the 122 for the IS instead of a 100mm, their primary opponents needed a thorough application of HE, and the gun was good enough against anything else. Even before that they had M10s with 3in guns.
*What they didn't do was constantly push out new crap because no one controlled the engineers or arms companies. While cool, there's no use for a Jagd panther, Jagd tiger, Tiger II, Elefant etc. etc. Thats just juicy contracts for companies.

I'm going to have to agree to disagree

The fact that the Red Army literally fought 3/4 of the German army does not in my book make allied tanks better, it just meant they never had to be better. That of course goes for the British tanks that I love as well. Eastern front is a whole different ball game and both German and Soviet vehicles often could not count on support from elsewhere for their own reasons.

Everyone experimented with other vehicles, and plenty of them did not turn out to fit the needs of the military, some of them even yielded useful results(Like Australia's sentinel lending research that led to the firefly). But do you consider that many of the projects were ended becasue the current model, the Sherman, was seen as good enough for the job, and that this might have stymied the development process of things like the Perishing. US command was totally willing to take casualties.

As I said earlier, many of the upgrades such as wet ammo storage, better armour on the sides(which started as a breezy 50mm vertical plate) and more actually functional suspension(the horizontal spring as seen on the easy8) done throughout the war were first put forwards straight after their first deployments in North Africa. Batch upgrades might be all well and good, but if its not half the stuff you specifically asked for to begin with, its sorta missing the point. Many patterns were, with anything that undergoes such mass production, simplification of the manufacturing process or to suit different plants.

76 did not need to be a fleetwide upgrade. Also the British were keeping one eye ahead, unlike the Americans and actually developed and produced the firefly before DDay, becasue they expected to fight stronger enemy tanks, this is exactly what I am talking about in the American unwillingness to adapt to battlefield experience and wanting to minimalise casualties. Keep 2-3 tanks in a squadron with 75s obviously(Although given they gave the Jumbo, or was the easy 8 that was the assault tank? IDK a 76 and it was intended to engage fortification and AT positions I can't help but think the argument is disengenuious). The British even offered to let the Americans make the 17pounder under license in late 1942 when it first came out, like they did earlier with the 6pdr(which became the foremost medium AT gun in the US military during 1943). But aforementioned Anglophobia meant they decided their 76 was better, despite it really not being the case. British artillery expertise and US manufacturing capacity? Could you imagine, if prior to D-Day the allies had a few thousand fireflies and were manufacturing more?

The KV1 E(which was literally upgraded in 1941, when it very much maintained material surprise over the Germans) and a few months later KV1S which was rolled out in 1942 when the KV1 regular was still giving the Germans a heap of trouble, sure they might have been unreliable, but there is literally accounts of these tanks coming back to life(or more likely surviving crew coming back around) hours after being hit by 88mm flak cannons, things that were turning allied tanks into burning craters four years later. The IS heavy tanks are a direct descendant of the KV-1(KV-2 is a specialist variant, rather than a new model/replacement of the main line heavy tank). All of these upgrades were proactive, the Soviets always attempting to get the upper hand even when their tanks were 'decent enough.' The IS tanks were kitted with an 122mm gun for better HE performance, sure, but this went with a strategy of aggressive recon via T34s and T34 borne troops. If they encountered heavy fortifications IS tanks, which were part of Guards Breakthrough tank units were sent in, with their own brand of shock troops, to uh breakthrough. Huge gun is good against all targets, I agree, pity no-one told the Allies.
If they came up against enemy tanks, why'd you send in the breakthrough tanks, send more T34 85s or maybe some self propelled gun.
The soviets had a bit of a formula for it, they did a lot of the fighting.

The T34, it has a bad look for its losses, but honestly its hard to find a better medium tank during the war. Panther is where i'd start(which also gets an unfair rap these days as well). Why did so many of them get blown up? Because the Soviets were throwing them at 3/4 of the German Army, which itself was rapidly evolving to face the wall of soviet iron. And also because a chronic lack of communication equipment meant that crews and units were severely handicapped, such as the common means of the commander communicating with his vehicle's driver by kicking him/her in the shoulders or back. It also severely hampered their ability to commence combined arms warfare. So essentially where American and British troops could quickly and effectively call in artillery support and coordinate with their infantry, or call in tank destroyer units if they were nested with something they could not handle(in the case of the Americans and the British heavy tank units, or their squadron vehicles in fireflys or challengers in British tank units) Soviet tankers were effectively on their own. T34s were notoriously reliable, in the worst conditions in the war, with some of the least trained crews in the war, KVs were unreliable becasue they had the same engine and it was overburdened by the extra couple of tons of armour, but the T34 engine was phenomenally good, rough ready and reliable. It was the first powerful and reliable tank engine made during the war and it did not require really any development(asside from being made more simple for mass manufacture). So i'm not sure where you're pulling that from.

Well the elephant, everyone's favorite punching bag, 91 of them made, 90 of them deployed during the battle of the Kursk in 2 squadrons of 45, the largest tank battle of the entire war, is credited with destroying 320 enemy vehicles for the loss of just 13 of their own, (quoted as being an average 10:1 kill ratio, so I imagine some particular vehicles were getting a lot of kills becasue 320:1 translates to 1:24.66 kills each), most losses were due to enemy infantry action, as the elephants outstripped their own supporting infantry, as they advanced too quickly. I'd be signing that juicy contract for more of the things, maybe be put infantry telephones on them or some such. As shown in modern day Iraq(where they literally lost tanks to hand grenades being thrown into the hatches), Turkey or Yemen you can have a really good tank (Like an M1A2 Abrams or Leopard 2 A4) but if you have no infantry support you're a rolling pyre.

But this whole thing is completely off topic. Favorite is not necessarily great in the circumstances it was designed for, let alone found itself it.

Just to clarify some points
By 76 I mean the US 76 not the 17pdr(which I will only adress as such). The British did adopt the 17pdr as organic anti tank power within tank squadrons(running fireflys with cromwells or regular shermans) prior to Dday, and heavy tank units were basically partnered with mobile AT units(that good old Churchill Archillies synergy), the Americans would adopt the 76 in the Jumbo Sherman(and the easy 8, but more in a heavy assault role, but still armed with a 76, for some reason)) after the lessons learnt during the war in Normandy.

Anglophobia(or fear of being accused an Anglophile on the other hand) was a real political element in America during the war and it coloured many decisions. It was a weird atmosphere that decisions were made in, looking back it seems ridiculous but it seemed to be present.

The Americans adopted the 57 because their 37s were totally inadequate when they entered the war and it was a quick and convenient fix to the light AT problem(it was the same reason the British adopted the US 75mm too, their shells were essentially the same size, so the Americans could use the same equipment to make barrels and the British literally just had to re-bore 6pdr barrels up to 75mm). It was a no brainer, not really comparable to the bigger AT problem.

The 76 was in development and the Americans were loathe to drop it as it was essentially very different to the 17pdr. The 90(modeled off an obselete AA gun) was in the works later and for a very long time, and only became available in limited numbers by late 44, likewise with the perishing's development.

I do not have a problem with the sherman, its just that it could have been better. At the end of the day its the apes in the tank and not the steel shell that makes all the difference. A Canadian guy knocked out 6 panthers in a row with a regular 75 armed sherman. Tigers had a fearsome reputation, but as they were heavy tanks they were often given to the best crews, so its sort of intuative that they got that reputation. Saying that if you park one in plain sight of the enemy(as in an account from Tunisia, it was in a hull down position(firing position), but not turret down(ie completely obscured, as it should have been, as it was not firing or seemingly aware of a troop of churchills bumbling around in front of it)) the enemy will bring something up to destroy it(17pdr in that case).

I'd suggest for some light reading
'The Business of Tanks' By G. Macleod Ross-- In collaboration with Major General Sir Cambell Clark
If you can get your hands on it, I think my copy was published in 1976,

Also this handy document: Could not find an online access but it is a completely free download. Its the overview of a massive study on Allied tank losses during ww2 and was completed in the 50s, breaks everything down quite well.
https://payhip.com/b/DO4I


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 Pyroalchi wrote:
A short backtrack regarding why I like the last two tanks: I like the VT-1 for it's simple crazyness and how uncommon the setup was. Shows that the responsible engineers where not afraid to think outside the box.

Regarding the Begleitpanzer 57 I just think a fast firing 57mm could really be an asset, especially when it likely would be able to also do some light to medium anti air fire. Apart from that I also just really like light tanks and think even today they could have a role in assisting "real" MBTs. Especially when they can be produced much cheaper. You could most likely get the 57 turret out of the drawer, make it remote controlled, slap it on a GTK Boxer and immediatly have something useful.

Very much outside the box! I love the idea of it screaming around firing, and engaging multiple targets, a wild wild machine.

Begleitpanzer 57, I agree, a 57mm cannon is going to cause hell to any unit that is not an MBT, and it might work to relieve the pressure from other components of the battlegroup. It might also unburdeon MBTs from having to provide fire support to infantry when engaging hardened positions etc. Considering the BMP 3 has a 100m cannon and 30mm cannon, I really think someting like a 57mm automatic cannon really treads the happy medium.

On a 57mm modern system; with the advent of modern active kill systems(chiefly the Iserali 'iron fist') being capable of intercepting APFDS projectiles I think something like a 57mm auto cannon should be able to quickly overwhelm and blow a system like this off an MBT, along with any additional armour modules. Leaving it open for an ATGM. So the TOW is a nice touch, and should counter any laser dazzlers etc.

 FrozenDwarf wrote:
M51 super sherman, prolly one of the more sucessful storys of how to retrofit a completely inferior and outdated tank into a (at the times) modern fighting machine.

A fixer upper if ever there was one! They performed well, fought pretty much unmodified Syrian Panzer MkIVs and T34s.

The Argentinians did the same, but with former fireflys(they got a lot of British hardware in the 50s) rather than Jumbos, must have been pretty cozy in the turret, with a 105 breech to squeeze in with.


On the subject of WW2 tank retrofits, here's a pint sized one from Brazil.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LordofHats wrote:

 aphyon wrote:

If you can get your hands on it, I think my copy was published in 1976,

50 years is a long time to be behind on scholarship, especially tank scholarship which is a pretty active and enthusiastic field. Charles Baily's Faint Praise was published in 1983 and changed a lot about Ordnance Department history.

Well General MacLeod Ross, was essentially the British liaison within America and handled the British interests in the development of tanks in America. Also had a hand in designing the Mk2 Matilda. So as books on the matter go it is old, but its as close to a primary source, I mean it was literally written by the guys who were involved with armour and gun development at the time(and includes many private memorandums etc from the time) So yeah, its a oldin but a goodin. Would not have suggested it elsewise.