There were several reasons Britain lagged behind in tank development. Tanks were a low priority, ships and aircraft were much more important for Britains survival. Older designs were kept in production as every tank was needed and they could not afford the time to retool for newer tanks. There had been no development of tank engines in the 1930s, most early WW2 tanks were powered by old truck engines, or WW1 aero engines. As designs got more armour, speed and agility declined, this was not solved until mid-1943 with the Rolls Royce Meteor engine. British tanks had size and weight limitations for rail transport, this too was not relaxed until 1943. The result of the changes was the A41 Centurion of 1944, one of the most successful battle tanks of the 20th Century.
To bad the tank you listed never saw action in ww2. Nice try. Try again. The British tanks were crap because they were crap moat of the war. They had years and years to plan development and keep up with the rest of the top tank countries. When they didn't field a 75mm tank, that everyone else had since at least 42, worth a dam until d day and by then it was not a front line tank.
@@theodoresmith5272 Still better than Japanese and Italian tanks. The Comet and the Firefly proved to be capable. And the Churchill Crocodile was enough to scare the Germans out of their trenches ( it was a Napalm tank)
@@theodoresmith5272 LOL What breathtaking logic, "they were crap because they were crap". Britain only began to rearm in 1938, that was 4 years behind the Germans. Then there was funding, both the Germans and Russians put the majority of their military budget on tank development and production. But despite this, the A12 Matilda was the best tank of the early war period, it was superior to German and Italian tanks up to 1942. You obviously know nothing about tank guns, the British 6 Pounder (57mm) was far superior in armour penetration to the US 75mm and equal to the German 7.5cm KwK.40. The A34 Comet was equal to the Panther and Tiger in terms of firepower, as was the Sherman Firefly conversion.
@@jiyuhong5853 Yeah the 25 pounder and 17 pounder guns were very powerful. Some of the best artillery in the Allied armies. The British armies anti tank capabilities by 1944 were formidable.
The video almost totally ignores the Comet, a design based on the Cromwell that mounted the 77-mm HV cannon. This 77-mm cannon was only slightly less powerful than the 17-pounder (it fired the same projectiles as the 17-pounder but used a cartridge case that held less propellant), and was more than capable of confronting the Tiger and the Panther. It was finally brought into front-line service in early 1945. It was quickly supplanted by the Centurion, but that tank was not brought into service until after the end of the war in Europe.
And you seam to miss the Fact all the Big Battles had been fought , and at The End there was Very little Armor Left , out numbering them 10 to 1 Only meant you had the odds in your Favour , BRITSH Tanks No Armor , No Gun , Bolts instead of Welds they We're a Heap of Rubbish , how many Poor men died because of this
@@markjones464there is certainly merit in what you say, but the Churchill tank, which was the most numerous British tank in the Italian and North West Europe campaigns had extremely thick armour and could absorb many hits from anti tank guns. Riveting, albeit an old technology, was very familiar to British industry, whereas the welding of thick plates was not. Also, remember that the welded joints were softer than the surrounding steel and German anti tank gunners were trained to aim at the welds of Russian tanks because the armour there could be penetrated more easily. However, it is lamentable that the Cromwell and Comet tanks were not available at least a year earlier, as they were quite effective tanks.
British tank design and doctrine was all wrong based on fast moving lightly armed and armoured crusader ranks and slow moving thick armoured infantry tanks, both these designs feature the 2pdr gun in the early stages which meant British tanks were far outranged by German tanks and antitank guns, they couldn't fire HE rounds and if they got within range their 2pdr armour pirecing shells bounced off German tanks or failed to knock out German anti tank guns. Eventually they got the 6pdr but it would a while before they got them in numbers. The Cromwell and Comet were exactly what British needed in 1941-44 but had to make do with what they had. The British vastly out produced the Germans in tank production but it was all a long series of poor tank designs.
@@bobsyeruncle5557 That was one of the problems that the British faced: they were well behind the Germans on the tank-development curve. It was if they were always playing catch-up, trying to match what the Germans already had, rather than trying to jump ahead of them. They were also somewhat inflexible in their tank designs, selecting a particular main armament and requiring the tank (and especially the turret) to be designed to fit that particular cannon and nothing larger. This generally made it very difficult to upgrade that tank to take a larger weapon. The German Panzer Mk. III and Mk. IV were much more easily upgradeable; the Mk. IV entered service in 1936 and was still capable of effective front-line service in 1945.
great video although It really needs to be stressed that the reliance on Shermans to fill armoured divisions by late 1942 came after three years of conflict with Germany AFTER Britain had lost nearly all of its armoured assets in France and its industrial centres had been bombarded by the luftwaffe. It is unfair to call it a shortfall of British industry which had been very resilient.
IWM "From late 1942, US tanks were required in increasing numbers to make up for the deficiencies of home-grown products. Only in 1944 was British industry able to deliver a tank reasonably fit for a fast-moving battlefield, and even then it was scarcely a match for its opponents." Britain's Struggle To Build Effective Tanks During The Second World War page
@@nickdanger3802 LIE-beral DRIVEL ON OFFER as Brit industry ran flat out through out the war -playing CATCH UP as a natural result of TWO DECADES OF LIE-beral NEGLECT of all things military!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It is worth remembering that after the PRIVATELY SPONSORED Supermarine Spitfire experimental aircraft won the Schneider Cup race in 1936 - an aristocrat - Lady Astor - WENT OUT AND BOUGHT THE world beating Spitfire and GAVE IT TO THE ROYAL AIR FORCE so they would know - as she said: "WHAT A MODERN AIRCRAFT LOOKED LIKE"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That same LADY PAID out of her own pocket to make sure that HALF the British Hurricane fighter force had their old, two blade, fixed pitch wooden propellers REPLACED with steel three blade propellers with modern pitch adjustment that GREATLY IMPROVED BOTH SPEED AND RANGE of the aircraft!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@@Arltratlo well let's see, Britain won the War of the Spanish Succession, the seven years war, the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War and World War One (american involvement was not substantial). Thats 5 victories to America's one world war victory which was mostly won by Russia. There's a reason America was in a position to help by WWII, it had been protected by Britain for the past two centuries.
@@thescarletpumpernel3305 i cant remember if the Brits fought at Leipzig, but who exactly rescued Wellington from the French... at Waterloo???? btw: in the Crimean war, the numbers of Brit troops been the 2 nd lowest from the 4 countries who fought Russia! and everybody remembers the war, because the Brits blunder greatly in it, its in our history books...maybe not in the British history books, like many things...
I think the biggest issue was this; Britain had to put more money into the Navy, then the Air Force. They saw the Army as the least important bit of the armed forces early on. The Navy would be doing the lion's share of the fighting, and the air forces were there to back them up. In reality, Germany screwed these plans up by going in faster than the British or the French could imagine.
Not really, they rested on their past successes like America and fell behind due to being too cheap to invest like Hitler. It was a pretty arranged war anyway. To bring the world out of the economic depression. My uncles served in both European and Far East.
British tank doctrine prior to the war wasn't much different from other countries. France, Germany and the Soviet Union all had infantry and cruiser tank equivalents. One of the major reasons the T-34 was successful was its V-2 engine, which was very powerful. Britain didn't have a good tank engine for most of the war, so were limited in what they could achieve in terms of weight and manoeuvrability. Still the Matilda II was a good tank in the early war. The Cromwell was a decent medium tank, if a bit late.
I think the sloping front armour, which could not be penetrated by the German 37mm PAK or tank guns, and the 76mm gun had a lot to do with its success between 1941 and 1942.
@@klackon1 Yes, but the reason it could carry enough armour to provide all round protection, as well as a larger gun than other medium tanks of the time, while still being quite mobile, was the powerful engine.
Nobody listened to Percy Cleghorn Hobart and the General Staff passed him over. Churchill had to get him out of the Home Guard, LCPL, and TELL Ismay to take him back into the General Staff. Hobart was not a Sandhurst graduate, he graduated from RMA Woolwich as an Engineer...note the 17pr was first fitted into an Australian tank the ACIV Sentinal...
First! And I have to disagree. Sherman Firefly was very effective. It had a very good gun maybe better than Panter. Matilda was feared by the enemy at the start of the war. Comet was very effective at the end. They prepared Centurion but the war ended. And Cromwell was serving in our Czechoslovak army well into 50s. Greetings from Czech Republic!
Matildas were super slow and got picked off easily by anti air craft guns even in france 1940 and the firefly was an american tank only the canon was british, the cromwell was inferior to most other standart tanks of the other nations doesnt matter how long it served, the t34 served in china until the 90s
@@PrvnCoke You missed out the Valentine. Very popular with the Soviets who demanded production continue when it was being discontinued in Europe and took every one we could send them since its high reliability, low maintenance and good ground clearance as well as decent gun made it a useful scout as well as good for flanking attacks. They were still serving in the attack on Berlin in 1945. The Mathilda 2 also became outdated in europe but became exemplary against the Japanese, its small size meant it could be loaded on infantry landing craft for advances in Borneo and New Guinea and its thick armour made it proof against anything the Japanese had, there are records of Mathilda getting hit by 75mm artillery/AT rounds at fifty yards and shrugging it off during bunker busting runs with the Australians.
The "funnys" were awesome tanks that did their particular jobs well, the flame thrower variation in particular had a great effect in encouraging germans to surrender.
You are referring to the Churchill Crocodile and yes it was particularly good at encouraging enemies to surrender. On look at that awesome stream of fire was usually enough. The Churchill tank was slow, but heavily armoured. It could manoeuvre over very difficult ground and it took a lot, to knock it out. Arm it with a flamethrower and it was a battle winner.
Honestly I must disagree with the framing of British tanks being ineffective. Some designs were more flawed than others and there are plenty of examples of British tanks being used in a tactically ineffective way, but from a design standpoint a lot of them held up based on the capabilities of the time. The Matilda II performed admirably in the desert - impressive considering it wasn't designed for the purpose of desert warfare at all. The Churchill - initially undergunned, yes, but with high crew survivability rates and astonishing hill-climbing ability that really put the fright up the Germans in Tunisia and Sicily. The Sherman Firefly, though a modification of an American design, could go toe to toe alright with the Tiger and Panther. Plus think of all the innovative ways the Brits repurposed their designs with the AVREs and 'Hobart's Funnies' and their key contribution to D-Day/Normandy. The history of British tanks honestly just shows an interesting 'learning curve' from the somewhat ropey Matilda I (though it did have one significant bright spot - Arras) to the Centurion.
IWM "From late 1942, US tanks were required in increasing numbers to make up for the deficiencies of home-grown products. Only in 1944 was British industry able to deliver a tank reasonably fit for a fast-moving battlefield, and even then it was scarcely a match for its opponents." Britain's Struggle To Build Effective Tanks During The Second World War page
A somewhat simplistic appreciation, leaving much out. Others have mentioned the railway gauge issue being common to all tanks, the lack of Cromwell and Comet mentions. I will explain how 1941 was the year that stalled British Tank design for reasons you don't mention at all. Before 1941 British tanks were certainly a match for any anti-tank gun and tank out there. The Crusader was an attempt at a medium tank, officially a heavy Cruiser, capable of both infantry support and chasing. It was supposed to equip 18 Armoured divisions by the end of 1941, with improved developments following on as new guns became available. A 6pdr Crusader development (Cromwell and Cavalier) was due in late 1941, along with a 25pdr Support tank (Centaur) and a 17pdr heavy tank (Clan) for late 1942. These later tanks would be used to spearhead an invasion of the continent in 1942/43. This was the Army plan, but it was cut back massively in early 1941, to nine and then six armoured divisions, using cheaper 2pdr armed tanks, in order to pay for an increase in RAF Bomber Command funding to reach the vaunted 1,000 bomber raid target. This reduction in development money, kept the 2pdr Crusader in production long past it's obsolescence. The German's had re-equipped with 5cm guns by mid 1941 for both ATG and tank armaments. In the big open spaces of the desert the 2pdr armed British tanks were simply outranged and outmatched. 6pdr was there for the taking in mid 1941, but we had to wait a year for the production lines to match demand. All because of that lost year. 6pdr armed tanks were delayed, and the 17pdr A29 Clan was dropped altogether. Cromwell soon got its own 75mm gun equivalent to Sherman and equipped half the British tank regiments in NW Europe by 1944. It being followed by the 77mm armed Comet which was every bit as good as the latest German medium tanks in late 1944. Still all a bit too late because of that missed year. There was significant waste of effort in British production. We had a very good 76mm field gun from 1907 in the shape of the Royal Horse Artillery 13pdr. Designed to give fast moving cavalry its own fire support. The larger 18pdr was developed into the excellent 25pdr, but the 13pdr was dropped without further development. No good explanation has ever been given for this. We had 13pdr armed SPG on trials in 1931, but the idea of dual purpose guns in medium tanks fell away as 2pdr and 25pdr took all the available development money. British tank engines failed to meet demand in the late 30s despite several useful aero engines becoming available like Kestrel and Mercury. Instead bus engines were cobbled together, a purpose built flat 12 engine was developed that was too big to fit what it could power, with not enough power to drive the tanks it could fit. An ageing WW1 aero engine was put back into production at great expense, the Liberty, which proved to be Crusader's downfall. Despite all this it wouldn't be until mid 1941 that Germany had an advantage over us in design, thanks to our decision to concentrate on heavy bombers - eventually to claim upwards of 40% of our entire defence budget. This was the gap filled by Sherman, a British inspired development of the M3 Lee, they agreed to buy thousands on lease lend if the main armament was put in a 360deg turret, as the Canadian's were doing with their Ram series of Sherman type tanks. This decision enabled tank development to be outsourced from British investment and factories to put those resources into building up Bomber Command. We were back with good designs from 1943, but that mid war period was managed on starvation rations.
In the 1930s when the various branches of the British army were competing for resources, the artillery were concerned that the tank forces would get large guns at their expense. So they drafted a letter that stated any tank with armor thick enough to withstand a hit by 2 pounder would be so heavy it would be immobile and sink into the mud, therefor no gun larger than a 2 pounder was required for either tanks or antitank guns, and the letter stuck. The other restriction was they had to fit on a flatcar that pass through a railroad tunnel.
F*CK what would the world be without the most outrageous, petulant inter-service hair pulling contests. Oh don't worry; we got it in spades on this side of the Atlantic. Worked for a giant defense contractor for 8 years, I've seen it and heard it with my own eyes and ears. Guarantee ya if I told you some of the stories you'd swear I was lyin'. 😎
Could mention that the Centurion only happened when they gave up the 40 ton and rail transport width limits. Abandoning the 40 ton limit imposed by the fact that this was the capacity of the existing British tank tansporters and the width limit imposed by British rail was what made Centurion viable. Those completely artificial limits were the real story of the failure of British tank design.
The panzer 4 even the Ausf J was below 40 tons and and was within width limit imposed by British rail. yet saw service and was made throughout the war weight and width wasn't the problem british tank design and production.
Defenders of the udiotic British 'establishment' always point to such external factors that 'could not be ignored'. The 100-foit limit on bomber wing spans was another. Meanwhile, every other country built the hangars to suit the planes. Tanks were the same. The Tank Corps was much hated during the interwar period, the British Army thus had no goid tank advocates. On the eve of war, the anti intellectual cavalry was mechanised. Another issue was letting companies produce what they could, rather than what was needed.
Ah yes, the British rail system. Considering it's abysmal state today, I'm not suprised to know it was screwing over this country back then too. At least it's consistant.
Interesting video, I wasn't aware of the railroad size constraints especially on turret size. I think you under emphasis the importance of losing virtually all the British equipment at Dunkirk. If not for the need to crank out tanks and guns as fast as possible after Dunkirk, the 6 pdr likely could hace come into service a year earlier. Also, the advantage of the American 75 wasn't increased firepower against German tanks. For that purpose the 6 pdr actually had higher armour penetration than the 75mm. The advantage of the 75 was that it had a much larger shell which meant it's HE round was more effective against infantry, unarmoured vehicles and guns. As you mentioned the lack of HE for the early tanks was a challenge, even the 6 pdr's HE round was barely acceptable. People always talk about the tank on tank aspects of combat, they forget that tanks spent a lot more time engaging infantry and guns than they did enemy armour. And by the time they were getting Shermans the Crusader reliability issues were solved, and they were putting out tanks like the Cromwell with the down rated Merlin engine which didn't have reliability issues. Taking on the Sherman was a necessity more due to a need for quantity than quality. Shermans were definitely better tanks than anything the British could field in N. Africa and of course no other WW2 tank could match it for reliability, so it delivered on both counts. Excellent video, great analysis, I look forward to more to follow.
Finally, the British designed an efficient and successful centurion tank ... which exported to several British vassals during the 50th year of the last century. Thank you. Wonderful ( factBytes) channel
There's another error, the issue of the diameter of the turret ring. The British school built the ring the same size as the basket, the part of the turret that runs inside the hull. The Germans extended the ring further out giving a stepped basket. Look at the Tank Chat videos from the Tank Museum, they show a lot of interiors.
Rommels 88mm guns at Arras picked up the Matildas from +2km, a range their guns couldnt aimed at a target... and a Matilda is realllllly slow to run away from danger!
The Boiling Vessel was a result of an enquiry into what was the biggest unnecessary cause of death, or injury, to tank crews. It was realised that tank crews going outside their tank to cook food, or make tea, were extremely vulnerable. Hence the Boiling Vessel, which incidentally does much more than make tea!
@@donyoung1384 In WWI the first tanks originally had an engine parts of which became extremely hot in service, crews would boil kettles and fry bacon on these. When they changed to another engine where this was not the case, the crews were displeased! Crew conditions were abysmal, they suffered extreme discomfort, poisoning by monoxide and cordite fumes, agonising small injuries from metal spall from bullet strikes, stifling heat, atrocious visibility, but they worried about making tea and frying bacon. The British way of life, which has almost disappeared, produced this kind of humour and spirit.
The biggest factor - engines, most tank engines of the time were aero engines, in Britain at the time they were all going to aircraft production, this left older, less powerful engines. Therefore you could have a fast tank or a tank resistant to medium AT fire, but not both.
Correct, although most were made from sub standard parts rejected for merlins as well as parts salvaged from crashed aircraft. In terms of the strategic picture merlins were more valuable than meteors, so unfortunately for British armour designers they were not produced in quantity until early 1944 although there was a small supply from mid 43
Same as always. Someone somewhere in the British arms industry wanted to make lots of money from misery rather than provide our nation with tanks that worked. Even now those in charge of procurement are a bigger threat than the enemy. We could do with listening to lads who fight on what they want.
Good video - but I have a couple of criticisms You should make note the light/infantry/ cruiser tank mentality was worldwide, as was the resistance to change, the US, France, Germany Russia all suffered from the same issue and similar resulting bad designs. The British also were stuck, even a bad tank in their mind was better than no tank so they used what they had to replace their losses in France, which you did note. Although the Sherman was a good tank based on reliability and numbers produced, it was very vulnerable to all German tank and AT guns generally beyond it's main gun range. Which is a little hard on the crews when you are on the advance against a dug-in enemy. And the T-34 was only a good tank based on numbers it was not reliable, crewing and ammo storage were awful. It had good armor, and a decent gun but as we know from later German designs that is not enough.
@@jaroslavpalecek4513That improved the crew situation in the turret a bit but did nothing for the other problems the T-34 had. Ammo storage was still terrible, armor was still thin, vision when buttoned up was still poor, basic maintenance was still difficult, it was exhausting to drive, and the interior was still very cramped.
@@jaroslavpalecek4513 But the underlying mechanical issues, ammo layout etc were never sorted out and the gun was so so. And the base tank had to be improved the original T-34 was getting over matched by German improvements. Tank development has always been a painful process though
Russian tank losses ran as high as 600 a day. Total for WWII has been put at 80,000 to 110,000 The U.S. lost 1,000 per month for the duration of the European campaign. These are official U.S. Army totals. @@RichGallant
@@thenevadadesertrat2713 thanks for the info so about 34 tanks a day, do know if those were all write off losses due to combat or both mechanical and combat losses ?
@@joelbilly1355 most German tanks didn't have any better guns either, so again for that time (1941) it was one of the best tank at that time And the Churchill was even better, almkst on the same level with the Soviet KV1
@@joelbilly1355 while it became under-gunned in 1940-41 it had arguably the best tank gun in the world British tanks often lacked stretch potential but when compared to the contemporary tank were often very good. While outclassed by later models the Crusader fared very favorably to the early Pz III and IVs and was only outclassed by the very last Pz IVs that were produced long after. People often bemoan the reliability of the Crusaders in the desert but ignore that contemporary German tanks were even less reliable hence why no Stugs in North Africa.
and the reason the 88mm Flak was so effective vs. the Matilda was in its gun - although the 88 was a very vulnerable target due to its height and complexity - the total lack of a HE shell for the 2-pounder gun meant that the Matilda had to close to 500m to use its machine guns and that - together with its slow speed - usually meant death for the Matilda. The 88-crews destroyed everything else first except the Matildas and if they accomplished that it was a turkey shoot ...
@@joelbilly1355it was not severely under gunned when you consider the opposition it was facing, the 2 pounder gun could destroy every single Axis tank from 1939-1942 frontally, its only in 1943 with the Tiger that the Germans had something that could fully brush off 2 pounders and by then the Matilda was already being put into use for secondary roles and theatres
The tank losses on both sides at the battle of El Alamein, were horrific. When the Germans withdrew, they did so with only about 35 tanks. Source : a German tank commander who survived the war.
The T 34 wasn't a wonderful tank. It had a good balance of armour and gun, but was knocked together so hurriedly and badly, that the majority of them suffered from serious reliability issues. It was their numbers that overwhelmed the Germans, not their quality. The Matilda II was a good tank in its day. Until the Germans encountered it and realised they had to seriously improve their game. The Tiger I was the result. The Valentine was a reliable tank. It's chassis was used for a lot of tasks during the war. The Churchill was good enough to be upgraded through 8 or 9 marks, and disconcerted the Germans on many occasions. It's adaptability proved useful, in particular the fearsome crocodile version, but also the AVRE. It's ability to to climb was also legendary, caching the Germans unawares several times. Cromwell, and the improved Comet were very good. Armour was sacrificed for speed and manoeuvrability, anot her Churchill wasn't needed. The Sherman was acquired in large numbers because it was available, and reliable not because of its superiority. Transportation was always a factor. 60 ton monsters such as the Germans built would have been a liability.
11:10 - The Valentine was the one piece of Western Allied frontline kit the Soviets genuinely rated. Because it was sturdy, reliable, and filled a niche as a light tank.
I've stood next to a Matilda II and thought "you'd have to be a friggin dwarf to fit five men in there." It was like a toy compared to a Centurion. I was absolutely horrified by the thought of sending men to their deaths in such pitiful machines.
At least their Cold War tanks were very good. Challenger 1 still holds the record for the longest shot at 5000m by destroying an Iraqi T-72 in the Gulf War.
Britain had great ships , great aircraft -- and the worst tanks . Each tank ( a dozen or more during the war , was obsolete right off the drawing board . Germany remained at least 2 years ahead in tank ( and anti tank ) weaponry throughout the entire war .
British submarines were pretty crap as well , which was really unnecessary,as the Admiralty knew about their shortcomings before the war . Chief of which was the riveted hulls which reduced the depth they could submerge , and because the riveted plates would move under pressure, releasing fuel oil which would float to the surface . Revealing the boat's position.
At the start of the war the 2 pounder out classed the german pak 36, when the Pak 38 was introduced the brits came back with the 6 pounder which again was a better anti tank gun then finally came the 17 pounder which speaks for itself I think
Actually, the worst tanks produced during WW2 came out of Japan and Italy. The quality of the steel was so poor in the Italian tanks that it would crack like ceramics after being hit by an AT gun. The Japanese tanks were slightly above WW1 technology.
Actually the US designed and mass produced the Liberty ship that got it done. To my utter shame I have to admit that the Wooden Wonder and the Lanc were best in class hands down. 😎
The T-34 only got the reputation it has for being tough because the German tank and anti-tank guns in 1941 were quite frankly garbage. The T-34 wasn’t that thickly armored, crew ergonomics and survivability were terrible, had poor vision, and wasn’t even all that mechanically reliable. The M4 Sherman that has a reputation for poor armor actually has better frontal armor than the things and even better sloping. Unlike the British while the Soviets did eventually upgrade the things to the T-34-85 that solved some of the problems they were able to flood the battlefield with numbers of tanks which made up for their general lack of quality.
Quite simple we didn't. EG Late mark Churchill Tanks. with the Crocodile scaring the crap out of the Germans. The Cromwell had the 17 pounder. That was considered to be the best gun of WWII on the allied side. Plus you seem to be forgetting that the UK was fighting well before the US got involved and things move fast in war. Look at the absolute heap the predecessor to the Sherman was.
IWM "From late 1942, US tanks were required in increasing numbers to make up for the deficiencies of home-grown products. Only in 1944 was British industry able to deliver a tank reasonably fit for a fast-moving battlefield, and even then it was scarcely a match for its opponents." Britain's Struggle To Build Effective Tanks During The Second World War page
Well you didn't take the engineers and the board and the bosses and make them fight in the tanks. You also didn't take the generals and put the in the frontlines. You would be surprised just how fast they could over come all these problems. Once the rich start dying then things will change.
@@snowflakemelter1172 No it is not, but please if there is another war don't call on the people that don't care anymore. Go fight it yourself. It's your money.
I believe the British armoured doctrine combined with the development pathways encumbered British armoured development. The Americans and Soviets arrived at the main battle tank concept, a single tank that combined protection, mobility and firepower, much sooner than the British who seemed to persist in subdividing tank roles into, light, cruiser and infantry support for too long. That and the fact that the British seemed to utilize their locomotive industrial base to expedite tank production whereas the Americans mobilized their automotive infrastructure which emphasized mass production, precise tolerances and interchangeable parts.
There is a serious error here in the first 5 minutes. Conformity with railway loading gauges was universal at this time, leading to some very narrow but very long tanks difficult to steer, the French 2C tank for instance. To carry the much later German Tiger by rail it was necessary to change its tracks for a narrower set, remove the outermost wheels and the mudguards. This had to be all put back once the tank arrived at its destination. All economies in the 1930's were coal-fired and dependant on railways for transport. Specific tank carriers appeared in quantity in North Africa later on, mainly due to the relatively sparse railway network there. Although the track gauge was the same in the UK or continental Europe (except the Iberian Peninsula and Russia) the loading gauge was different. This is the maximum width and height of cargo, that would allow circulation without bumping into oncoming traffic or tunnel walls, it was a little larger on the continent.
The problem was that it couldn't be upgunned, turret 's ring was so tight that they 'd to move forward the gun's mantlet to make space for a 3rd crewman, and with a 2pdr! Pratically it was impossible fit a 6pdr in it.
Not really, the real problem was that they did not have HE rounds to give infantry direct support, the CS versions had 3" howitzers but no HE and the 2 pdr only had solid shot. This was quite capable with dealing with any German tank of the period.
1942 they managed to install a “6 pound gun” gun in a tank because they didn’t want to interrupt the production of the 2 pounder. This is another example of criminal incompetence. The allied tankers were such heroes that they limited their criticism even after the war, many of them died, or were severely disabled.
@@davidandrew1078 I don’t not what “ WOT” means. And your right I don’t know much about tank cannons. I’m trying to learn what I can. I distinctly remember one British tank commander telling how he fired a round at a German tank, and he saw it skip off the front plates. The German tank returned fire, his tank blew up launched him out of the turret, killed 2 of his crew. He was angry about the six pounder, and said when they got the sixteen ? It wasn’t ever a problem. What I’ve read is”The 6-pounder first saw action in May 1942. 6-pounder guns of 2nd Battalion, with part of 239 Anti-Tank Battery Royal Artillery ,destroyed more than 15 Axis tanks in Gazala. the Germans introduced much heavier tanks and The standard 6-pounder shot became ineffective against them”
WOT is World of Tanks. Look up 6 Pounder APDS Round.@@peterparsons7141 I have not even mentioned the Firefly. German MK Vs and VIs were not all that great.
@@peterparsons7141 I don't think the issue was 'criminal incompetence' but more the realities of introducing new weapons onto the battlefield. You can't just slap new weapons into existing designs and expect them to work well (see the Sherman Firefly).
@@LoneWolf-rc4go makes sense. I know that Britain was in a very bad spot and I really would like to find out more about the details of how that entire thing evolved.
An excellent book on Italian tanks in North Africa is: “Iron Hulls and Iron Hearts, Mussolini’s Elite Armored Divisions in North Africa” by Ian W. Walker.
I'm sorry but I have to clear up some points. The 6-pounder was delayed into production because the British Army lost all its anti-tank guns in France (about 850 in Wiki: Battle of Dunkirk). With an invasion imminent there was no other option. The 3" 20 cwt gun (an early AA gun) was also mobilised as an AT gun to put in bunkers. One crucial issue with British Tank development was the absence of a suitable line of engines. There had been a committee for this, but apparently they would meet, spend the morning discussing what sort of tank would be built, go for a nice long lunch, write up the minutes in the afternoon and go home. When the balloon went up some rushed decisions were taken. Meadows put together (I don't think you can say developed...) a flat-12 engine for the Covenanter which was unreliable, had a disastrous cooling system and had no room for improvement. Vulcan Foundries put two engines in the Matilda II driving a common gearbox, it did work but was underpowered, complicated and very difficult to repair. Vauxhall stuck together two lorry engine blocks in another flat-12 for the Churchill, this was improved to an acceptable standard of reliability but the power output was about half of what was necessary for such a heavy vehicle. The Rotes group went for the American Liberty V-12 engine, a very well known engine which should not have held many surprises, however the method of construction was obsolete (this was a 1917 aero engine) and the result was a fragile engine with too many parts exposed to dirt and dust. To top it all the drive for the cooling fan was really bad and they put the engine (carburettor) air intakes where the tracks released all the dust and dirt when coming up into the drive sprocket, you couldn't have done it worse if you tried. A stew of unpreparedness, inadequate development, stupid ideas, incompetent engineering, fat-arsed civil servant amateurs not doing their jobs and no government body to properly regulate the process. The Covenanter was so bad the Army refused it for combat and some 2000 of this useless vehicle were built, used only for training. A lot of the footage in this video is of Covenanters showing off their good turn of speed for the Pathé newsreel cameras, for every one that you see running count three broken down. Even so men were injured by its spontaneously self-closing turret hatch or burst coolant pipes in the crew compartment squirting boiling water all over the place. Very few still exist, they were all melted down or shot to pieces in ranges, the one in the Tank Museum was dug up out of the ground, it may be the only one. The cherry on top of the cake is that 2-pdr HE ammunition was developed, and the tank crews were always clamouring for it as they could not deal with anti-tank guns with AP shot, 2-pdr HE is not much but better than nothing. Some HE was shipped to North Africa, but IT WAS NEVER DISTRIBUTED and nobody knows why. I can guess that the Royal Artillery, which was a very influential arm in the Army (after its pivotal role in WW1) blocked it under the pretext that firing HE is their preserve. This was also the reason why Close-Support tanks (about 1 in 10 were made with a 3" howitzer instead of the 2-pdr) only had smoke shells. It's surprising they actually won the war.
You are absolutely correct! What we should be doing is investigating the members of these amateur clown committees for treason and PUBLISHING THEIR NAMES! They want to take the position and paycheck and not actually do anything, they should be held accountable!
@@AKUJIVALDO The British supplied the Russians. One of its key supplies was to do with an ingredient needed in explosives. The Russians would have done very little without it. We put everything we had into that war. So no we were not carried by either.
@@dulls8475 truth is, without US resources and USSR manpower, GB would be smacked senseless into either peace treaty or surrendering, depending on Germany's mood.
I disagree with you. The American tanks were not used because British tanks were not good enough. The Matilda II was fairly effective in 1940, the Valentine, Churchill after some early problems (there were more than 6 main marks, much like the American M3/M4), the later British tanks like the Cromwell and Comet were actually starting to replace the !M4… The T34 was not as good as you claim rushed production and poor quality steel earned it the nickname coffin from the Soviets
Because accountants got involved. In the days before accountants, a team of highly innovative men made up the landship committee and invented the worlds first tank. They quipped it with two long barrelled 6 pounder guns. Then the accountants got involved by saving some money by shortening the guns making them cheaper and less powerful. They justified the decision by stating it was to stop the guns from getting dirty. Then they reduced the number of guns to 1 and reduced the size to a less powerful 3 pounder gun when Adolf Hitler got to power. Then they reduced the gun size again to an even lower power 2 pounders when everyone else was making 75mm guns for their tanks. Then when the Germans were designing Tiger and Panther tanks, the British kept using the 2 pounder gun and even tried to buy a 1 pounder from the French. Once the war was over, the British introduced the Centurion tank which was arguably the best WW2 era tank. I think the war office was trying to help Adolf.
Your video starts showing the Matilda II which was the most efficient tank in 1940. The German army received a rude shock at Arras and it was only due to Rommel improvising and pressing 88mm flak guns into the role that they weren't designed for that gave the germans the advantage. For a history focused channel and an opinion based episode of WWII tanks, you are in dire need of further research on the subject. Oh, the Churchill Crocodile Flamethrower tank was probably the most effective tank/weapon in the later part of WWII. Stop making videos and go and watch some from The Tank Museum
This seems to be a hate video towards Britain during the Second World War, forgetting that the Uk is a small island that managed to hold off nazi Germany by itself until the US joined the war. Tanks were not at the top of its to do list. Also Russia would have struggled to fight the nazis if it wasn’t for the money the US poured into the country.
Unwavering in their design lol. The British designed tanks with a whole host of capabilities. British tank design across the war years went on a pretty amazing journey of progression from starting with the Matilda I to ending with the Centurion
@@cybertronian2005 there are literally books written on how bad the British tank development was. Throughout the war it subsequently developed tanks that range from the bad to barely adequate.
Not at all in the inter-war periop Britain produced some outstanding tank designs that were widely exported and coppied, like the Vicker 6 Ton sold to 15 countries.
Plus the Germans were inspired by the experimental mechanized board's work, whose doctrine was closely taken up. British doctrine was a massive issue after the fall of France as it made Hobartian doctrine (tanks beat everything) seem justified. Unfortunately the officers who knew better were killed, captured or disliked by Churchill and replaced.
The biggest problem British tanks faced was design by committee. Peppered with generous dose patronage. Producing compromise after compromise instead of a solid ground up design.
As a former owner of a new 1966 BMC Mini, I do understand why!!! It was an absolutely and absurdly bad made, production disaster! Even from the corners of the - front screen, water came in, as well from the sliding windows in the doors, into the boxes below. And I had to bend in the "window frames" with my knee in between, to make them meet the rubber sealing on the body! And don't drive after a car during rain, as it will cut the engine! The seats had only the three holes in the bottom for adjustment, forward and backwards (The swingarm just changed the angle of the seat, not the distance!). And the outside hinges, still with acid from the cleaning before painting, in the gaskets on the doors, so the paint started peeling off after some time, around those! And You ask craftsmen like this to construct a much more complicated Tank!!! 🤣
And also look at the elderly English motorbikes, with their constant loss of oil! And the chainwheel outside a maybe very warm brake-drum, to make sure that the chain-lubricant eventually made braking impossible! Smart! Plus it became expensive, when the teeth and chain had been worn down!
My mother had one of those, perhaps from 1961 or so. The windows were ok but the engine did cut if it went into a puddle. This was because the distributor was on the side of the engine that now pointed to the front and was inadequately shielded. My father fixed it. The workers in 1966 were mostly so imbued with union propaganda that it was impossible to get anything well made. There were some bad design elements in the Mini, but all design is compromise. Your rant fails to take into consideration that it was British workers that built the first tanks ever.
@@ricardodavidson3813 I'm sure that even cars built in Britain, now mostly under German Control, may be fine, quality wise though I have seen an engine from a new MINI being taken apart and not for being brilliant, on UA-cam. But the construction of the original Mini was at best, strange, I suppose mostly for production reasons! But the outside door-hinges being mounted before being dipped in acid for cleaning before being painted, wasn't exactly a good idea. And the outside bent plate-connections in the corners, giving it the "Streamlining of a Barndoor", wasn't that smart either. Having the gear-shifter in the bottom instead of by the wheel, as a SAAB, now the gearbox was below the engine, may have been made more functional. The idea of a car with a wheel in each corner and the turned round engine for optimum room inside was so brilliant that it was difficult to ruin it, but the British managed to make a really good try!!
@@finncarlbomholtsrensen1188 Have you ever been in a Mini? They are minute, only two steps. beyond a matchbox... The spot-weld seams were put on the outside I guess to gain a few cm inside. Had they been inside they would have required padding and the whole thing would become even more cramped. The driving position was really bad, it improved in later models with an articulated break in the steering column. The gear shift was fine where it was, it went directly into the GB mechanicals, column shifts are prone to linkage troubles. The Mini was fine for small people... like the Fiat Topolino that was even smaller, you could get 4 people in the 4-seat version if they were short, slim and you used a shoe-horn. The gear link issues also apply to tanks, having the transmission at the rear makes good mechanical sense but linking the gear shift all the way back can be a problem. In the Cromwell and others it was done by compressed air. Having the transmission at the front means a huge drive-shaft which from a radial engine (Grant, Sherman and others) is a stupid solution. Maintenance of the gearbox means you either have removable panels that will weaken the frontal armour or you provide space for some poor soul to do it from inside. The Pz. 4 had removable panels that were angled very flat so their contribution to the frontal armour was reduced, it was mainly the end glacis plate and the brick wall in fromt of the driver. Still dodgy though. Modern tanks generally follow British/Russian practice of having the transmission at the back except when the engine is also at the front (Scorpion series, Merkava).
@@snowflakemelter1172exactly if they was the mean oppressors and subjugationist that the world makes them out to be then their equipment would have been more deadlier in it evolution as things are designed and evolve as needed..
In N. Africa, it wasn't so much a failure of British tanks as British antitank guns. The Germans had 50mm, 75mm and 88mm antitank guns while for the longest time the British only had 40mm 2 pounders.
This video makes some pretty wild claims, there were several very successful British tank designs, Crusader, Matilda II, Valentine, Churchill, Cromwell, Comet and all of them had a big impact on the war, some of them may have become outdated as the war went on but that doesn't mean they weren't a good tank for their day. If the M4 had been designed in 1940 it may also have been outdated by 1942, same as some of the early British tanks. To suggest that the Centurion was the only successful design and that it came too late to contribute is really off. The issue with British tank production was that there were too many variants and because production was being done on an emergency basis sometimes 4000 units of a poor design had been ordered and were in build before they corrected the issues or abandoned the design, at that point its better to have 4000 average tanks than none. Britian produced around 30,000 tanks in WW2, and about 18,000 of them were of the successful design type (Crusader, Matilda, Valentine, Churchill, Cromwell, Comet)
M3 medium was designed in 1940 and in service with British forces Asia to the end of the war. M4 was designed but there were not sufficient machine tools available to make a turret to fit a 75mm gun in quantity.
IMHO two bad decisions and an unlucky event greatly hampered British tank decisions: The first bad decision was the insistence on having the turretring inside the tracks and not to some degree having it overhang the tracks like in most other designs. Low silhuette was given priority over forepower. Second bad decision was insisting on the gun trunnion being inside the bturret ring, mainly to having the gun being balanced in the cradle so it could be elevated by the gunners shoulder. That severely limited the size of the gun being able to be fitted inside a given turret ring. Other designs, most notably the T34/85 pushed the trunnion outside of the turretring and made it possible to mount a very big gun in a turret with a relatively small ring. The unlucky event was the fall of France in 1940 and the following rush to get tanks into the field. this was a main reason behind the scandaluos unreliability of designs like Covenanter and Crusader, but also on the the formidable 6 pounder not being in widespread service until 1942. From this alos folloows however that ithe British tank industry had the inherrent potential to build a relatively reliable tank armed with a 6 pounder and having it in widespread service by mid 1941. That would have been the no 1 on the battlefield.
Mistake made was to design all tanks to be transportible by train which restricted the wirth of the tanks which in turn restricted turret ring which restricted size of gun , most obviously seen in Churchill which could have been a British Tiger if slightly wider , Germans when transporting tanks removed their tracks and refitted them when delivered to front.
IWM "From late 1942, US tanks were required in increasing numbers to make up for the deficiencies of home-grown products. Only in 1944 was British industry able to deliver a tank reasonably fit for a fast-moving battlefield, and even then it was scarcely a match for its opponents." Britain's Struggle To Build Effective Tanks During The Second World War page
The Sherman Firefly was a specialized Tank Destroyer. Not as a general purpose tank. It had a good antitank gun, good mobility, good reliability, with good enough armor protection. It was distributed one to a tank squad to be there whenever panzers was encountered.
Tank Production Volume 396: debated on Tuesday 8 February 1944 Mr. Stokes asked the Prime Minister whether, in view of the waste of many millions of pounds on the production of ineffective tanks, he will cause a special inquiry to be made into the reasons for such waste. The Prime Minister (Mr. Churchill) No, Sir. Mr. Stokes May I ask the Prime Minister whether he considers it as the duty of this House to inquire into waste of public funds; and is it not about time, in view of the scores of millions wasted in this manner, that the Select Committee made a report to the House? The Prime Minister I think that my answer covers that aspect. Mr. Stokes In view of the most unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I will raise the matter again at the earliest possible moment.
Well the British kept thinking ww1 style trench warfare would return and also thought speed was more valuable than armor or firepower, basically it required them to fail in the face of Germany to learn. Prior to that their designers and engineers sucked at tank design... but eventually they learned.
This is balderdash. UK had the Matilda 2 at the start of the war. It had a gun that at the time was also used in anti-tank guns. It was at that moment probably the best tank in the world. The matilda 2 was still in use at the end of the war. It biggest problem was lack of firepower.
IWM "From late 1942, US tanks were required in increasing numbers to make up for the deficiencies of home-grown products. Only in 1944 was British industry able to deliver a tank reasonably fit for a fast-moving battlefield, and even then it was scarcely a match for its opponents." Britain's Struggle To Build Effective Tanks During The Second World War page
@@tomhenry897 Stuart was not in service until 1942. The Matilda 2 served from 1939 to 1945. The 2 pdr gun was state of the art anti-tank weapon in 1939. The tank's performance at Arras stopped the German advance and allowed Dunkirk to be so successful. Initially in the desert, it was equally successful, but improvements in tank engines allowed heavier armour, and the 2 pdr was inadequate fairly quickly except in the far east. The Valentine tank was in service 1940-1960. More than 8000 were built and Russia demanded as many as they could get hold off. The Sherman didn't arrive until 1942, and was also inadequately weaponed. The 76mm was arriving in UK before D day, but was not deployed until later. The only tank capable of knocking out German armour was the Firefly. The Cromwell was a cruiser tank that did sterling service through to the Korean War. The Churchill had some features that were better than most other tanks at the time, and was the basis for many of the funnies - the specials that were a major feature of the breakout from Normandy. And don't forget the Centurion, a tank that was the closest precursor to all modern tanks and was 1 month too late for WW2, but soldiered on around the world at least until the 1990s.
The "disadvantages" of being rail and ship portable and able to traverse European bridges seem more like advantages to me. Tigers had to have transport tracks for rail transport and combat tracks for the real world, and were too heavy to cross many bridges at the time. And Tiger 131 at the Tank Museum was disabled after a shot from a 6 Pounder, nothing more. Not much wrong with the RR Meteor engine either, and even the Churchill had its good points. M4 was reliable, although also outgunned, had a high sillouette and was under armoured, but there were more of them. That's its saving grace.
One reason the Ardennes offensive in 1944 failed when the one in 1940 succeeded (apart from the fact that there were almost no defensive forces there in 1940) was that the 1944 tanks were too heavy to get across the bridges on some rivers without time-consuming engineer work, whereas the 1940 ones could, being much lighter. Bigger is not always better-just usually.
well 131`s turret ws jammed but carry on,the brits keep131 in running condition so the can state with pride: we`re in the posession of a proven reliable feared tank!
The Matilda and Churchill despite despite their shortcomings were effective tanks with a reasonable WWII record. The Comet was an excellent tank, great mobility, improved turret and frontal armour and a very effective gun but came a little to late to make a big impact. The Sherman was far from perfect and unable to take on German heavy armour until a British 17pdr gun was fitted, what it did have in its favour was numbers the US could churn them out faster than the British could their own, the main reason the British combined them into their own tank battalions.
IWM "From late 1942, US tanks were required in increasing numbers to make up for the deficiencies of home-grown products. Only in 1944 was British industry able to deliver a tank reasonably fit for a fast-moving battlefield, and even then it was scarcely a match for its opponents." Britain's Struggle To Build Effective Tanks During The Second World War page
Simple the upper class officers thought tanks were only to support infantry and not to go out and do battle independently as the Germans had come to realise was the opposite with mechanised infantry to support the tanks.
They had the Matilda, which outclassed any German tank at the time. Though it was slow and had a small caliber gun, the armor protection was superb! They should have figured out a way to upgrade it!!
British material resources and engineering talent went to their navy and air force. Not into British tank development and production. When the desert army got the M4 Sherman at the time they had the best tank in the world.
So many misconceptions and omissions in this video... Example: 0:52 Video claims the British adopted Shermans in 1943 even though it was often outmatched by its adversaries. Reality is that the M4 Sherman far outclasses the Panzer III. And depending on model, Shermans often outclass Panzer IVs, too, though they are generally roughly equivalent. Reliability is where it diverges drastically. Reliability makes the Sherman far superior than a Panzer IV.
2 pounder was adequate till almost 42...people see the words 'two pounder' and think it must have been a pop gun but it had good muzzle velocity and better pen. than guns with a larger caliber. At 40mm it was more powerful than the Italian 47mm and at least comparable to the Russian 45mm. As for 6 pounder it was viable to the end of the war with the right ammo. It was a better anti-tank gun than 75mm QF. Again, you can't just look at the size of the gun. 6 pounder was compact and portable and with an apcr round was quite capable of killing late war tanks at short to medium range.
1 important thing to add to this, poor tactics. If they had used better tactics during the early war, it could mitigated some of those short comings. Like what the Germans did with their tanks during the early war.
The T34 story actually demonstrates the exact problems the British had, but from a different position. In 1941 it outclassed Panzer III's and IV's but the only response to Panther and Tiger was a new turret and gun. New tanks were designed, but it was more important to keep churning out T34's than switch. The Americans thought the same way about the Sherman. Of course its easier to do this if your current model isn't seriously outdated. Also as mentioned in 1940/41 Britain's primary concern was German invasion, and being an island nation the RN and the RAF would be much more important in that role. Even if the Germans had landed and established a beachhead in southern England, naval and air interdiction of their supply lines would have been a better solution than meeting the Panzers head on. This is illustrated in the Meteor engine, based off the Merlin. Merlins were already being used in torpedo boats but were not realised for tank production until invasion fears subsided in late 41.
Experience of building wrong tank designs certainly helped them to create one of the best post-ww2 tank : the Centurion, which remained in service for many years
Why build tanks when U.S. build 57000! The a Brits figure out how to turn the 76mm upside down to fit in the Sherman, that gun round went thru anything the Germans had. Brits build the Merlin for the P51. They built the radar, which Americans used on everything. They didn’t build Liberty ships either, because the U.S. built those in mass. Technology and their servicemen were what was the most important thing Britain could give. What an embarrassing statement in the video.
So much wrong in this video. It perpetuates quite a few myths, Tigers and Panthers dominating the battlefield is an example. The most available German tank in France in 1944 was the Panzer4 which was more than able to be defeated by a Cromwell or 75mm armed Sherman. The British built over 2000 Fireflies and and so it wasn't uncommon. When the Sherman was introduced in 1942 it was arguably the best tank in the world, and certainly the best tank in North Africa. The Valentine was a decent tank, capable of taking the 6 pounder and the Russians really valued them. The Cromwell was amazingly fast abd enabled a British advance that out that of German in 1940 to shame.
The Cromwell was a good tank. It had a fantastic engine, transmission and suspension, better than its German or American contemporaries. The armour was adequate but built on the obsolescent "brick wall" principle, thick vertical slabs of armour. The Tiger was also built like this, the Panther showed the lessons learnt from the Soviets. The gun however was still the 75 mm medium (in fact a 6-pdr breech with a 75 mm barrel firing the same ammunition as the Sherman) which was no longer fit for purpose, good against anti-tank guns which represented the major threat, but incapable of dealing with the Tiger or Panther. The Comet was basically a modified Cromwell with a wider hull and a down-rated 17 pdr called the 77 mm to avoid confusion, but the projectiles were the same as the 17-pdr with a shorter cartridge. Accuracy was better than the 17-pdr and the loss of penetration power was about 15% lower but still ample. The top AT gun of all I think was the 32-pdr, made in small numbers. It never entered service as an AT gun because basically it was impossible to move in the terrain. It was used in the Tortoise assault gun. For some strange reason it was not used to up gun the Centurion when the 17-pdr was deemed inadequate to deal with the heaviest Soviet tanks, instead a 90 mm gun was installed with lower performance. Perhaps the 32-pdr cartridge was too big to handle even inside the Centurion's turret. In a trial after the war ended, the 32-pdr fired at the front of a Panther at about 1000 metres. The projectile pierced the frontal armour, traversed the crew space, wrecked the engine and burst out of the rear. That's something....
Even before the war the Brits along with most countries knew that slopping armour was the way to go, It was just quicker and easier to build it in slabs.
@@ricardodavidson3813 The other thing is that sloped armour decreased the size inside leading to very cramped tanks. It was all choices to be made fir production etc and compromises were made.
In 1940 the Vickers light tank was as good as a Panzer I or II; the A9 cruiser was not as good as a Panzer III; and the Matilda II was better than the Panzer IV. In the early years of the war Britain's biggest problems were: A) lack of an HE round for the 2 pounder; B) lack of production capacity which affected quality as it rapidly expanded; and C) lack of officers who understood mobile warfare. The Valentine was a value engineered replacement for the Matilda and was good enough that the USSR asked for them to be kept in production and used them in combat until September '45. When it was introduced the Churchill was as well armed and better armoured than anything the Germans had at the time. And successfully took on T34/85s in Korea. Not to mention it's rough terrain ability coming as a shock to the Germans. The Crusader was a rushed design and suffered from reliability issues; as did the Panther and Tigers. The Cromwell was as good as a Panzer IV, the Comet was better. Britains armour suffered more from poor tactical usage than quality of design.
Wrong. The British automotive industry was quite substantial and skilled. Germany had limitations in that field which they made up for by using factories in occupied countries. British military trucks were the best during the whole war, American trucks also were very good and available in huge numbers. Germany had a permanent problem of lack of motor transport, later on lack of fuel as well. In 1939 the only European army to be 100% mechanised was the British Army.
@@ricardodavidson3813 substantial, not really. England produce approximately 500,000 vehicles a year, pre war. 25% of those numbers were from Ford and Vauxhall (AKA GM). In the US, Chevrolet produced 3/4 of a million per year, total numbers were around 2.5 million per year for all manufacturers.
@@carlosspiceyweiner3305 I said substantial, not enormous like the US auto industry, but the US was not at war, it was reaping the profits from someone else's war much like they do now with Ukraine and Israel. Who owns the factories is not important, if Ford (UK) or Vauxhall had objected to contributing to the war effort they would have been nationalised immediately and farmed out to some other group to manage. More relevant are the close ties of GM with Opel that extended beyond the entry of the US in the war, also DuPont and I. G. Farben, Standard Oil and whoever was making synthetic petrol in Germany... that's real promiscuity, close to treason but it kept the profits flowing.
Also, the design input of GM into Vauxhall and Bedford was minimal if any at all. Ford (UK) was producing Ford designs, and a lot of its stuff found its way into armoured vehicles. The Universal Carrier (aka Bren Cariier) was the most manufactured armoured vehicle of the world, ever, over 130,000 made. The trick was that the power plant, gearbox and rear axle were standard Ford commercial products, a little fragile for military use but with careful maintenance they help out very well. As Ford had factories everywhere you got essentially the same vehicle made in Australia, Canada, Argentina (supposedly) and the US under contract. There were minor differences but the main mechanicals were identical.
Japan mirrored Britain's problems when it comes to its land armies however Britain enjoys the privilege of having an ally that can supply you with anything you need. If Germany had tried and was actually cooperative with its Japanese allies, we would probably see the IJA equip its tank units with German heavies or even free up the lighter Chi-Nus for Home Defense so these lightly armored but very potent guns wouldve proved deadly to US tanks as by 1943, they still fielded the M3 Stuarts as the main tank of the Pacific.
I totally agree. The Mathilda looked better then it was, because other tanks (from France and Italy) were worse. The Churchill was outdated the moment it became operational. When the Germans first saw it at Dieppe, they thought that they were being fooled with a fake design. The Churchill became useful later on as an anti anti tank gun vehicle, a kind of driving bunker that gave excellent infantry support once the Germans had run out of tanks. The Cromwell was a reconaissance tank, that complemented the Sherman, which in itself was an older design that could hardly keep up with the German tanks. So in the end, the only descent British tank of WW2 was the Comet.
So what your saying is that the Churchill was an excellent tank....it was designed as an infantry tank form the start. Tank on tank was not as common as people think.
@@dulls8475 You know that this is not what I am saying. If it would have been a good tank, it would have served on after the war. Like the Sherman and the T34, which were used even decades later. The Sherman also encountered relatively few German tanks and it was also developed primarily as an infantry support tank, but that did not make it unfit to fight other tanks.
@@retepeyahaled2961 It did serve on after the war. It went to Korea. It was a very good tank once all its flaws were ironed out. Loved by the crews because they could keep the crews well protected. Its x country capability was legendary. It was a very successful camp. A Churchill disabled the first ever tiger tank that was captured.
@@dulls8475 Please do keep in mind that it is not my intention to deny the Churchill the respect that it deserves, although I do not appreciate all it's qualities. But if there is one British tank to be proud of, it would be the Centurion, which was arguably the best tank immediately after the war.
@@retepeyahaled2961 you could have fooled me! The Churchill was very popular with the men who manned them, they knew they were safer in them, than most other tanks. Churchills were slow, but heavily armoured, and they could, with ease, cross difficult ground. A Churchill Crocodile was a fearsome tank, it was without doubt the most effective flamethrower tank of the war.
This is rubbish. The Valentine saw service throughout the war and on nearly every front. The Matilda could and did destroy all German armour in 1940 and 1941 and was in service until the end of WW2 and was used in the Pacific by the Australians as a preferred tank. The Churchill was a brilliant tank which had the highest crew survivability rate of all Allied tanks and could operate where other tanks couldn’t. Plus it was the basis of most AVRE. The Cromwell was a fast tank which outstripped all other armour in the exploitation battles of NW Europe. Then there was the Sherman Firefly which with its 17pdr gun was the only armour capable of stopping the Tiger in NW Europe in 1944. Yes the Brits had some lemons like the Covenantor and Crusader but to condemn all British armour is just rubbish. Plus you have to remember British doctrine was based around three types of tanks - infantry support which were slow moving but heavily armoured; cruiser tanks which were fast and designed to exploit gaps in enemy lines; and light or reconnaissance vehicles. No one had a universal tank concept at the outset of WW2. The US had the luxury of watching mistakes made in France and N Africa to develop their armour and doctrines. In 1939 the US couldn’t field any tanks to speak of and in 1941 had to rush into production the M3 Grant. The US placed more emphasis on the tank destroyer doctrine which later emerged as less than ideal and the M4 filled all roles of infantry support, exploration and tank on tank killing but not until 1942 in North Africa.
British tank development was retarded because so much resources were squandered on the essentially pointless strategic bombers. The Lancaster alone was taking up 10% of British industrial production.
I read several places that when the Germans recovered examples of the new Churchill's at Dieppe, they were so unimpressed they thought the British sent obsolete throwaway tanks that would not need to be evacuated.
Between their flawed doctrine and low quality, Brit tankers were screwed for most of the War with their domestic offerings. But, Boy, they more than made up for it with the Centurion.
Started the war with the (excellent for its day) Matilda, ended with the brilliant Comet and Centurion, most in the middle were extremely poor. Excellent description as to the combined factors behind the poor design, mainly logistics, in the video.
Well presented video. Good over view. I like this channel. The Brit tanks greatest defect was their leadership. the German early war tanks were hardly better, but had the best maneuver/combined arms leadership in the World. The one time the Brits got it right was Op Compass. It was just dismal plodding and slogging after that. constantly being out Generalled by the enemy.
Not true. From 1943 the British used the tanks in very imaginative ways from Hobsons funnies. They also had very good tactics from then on. Remember tank on tank was never the main aim of the British.
Trouble is your video ignores the 25pdr , 6pdr and 17pdr all penetrated the German and Italian Tanks fair enough. The 2pdr was fastly made outdated Furthermore the Tanks had to be shipped on a ship over water to European combat . A big Supply and Logistical problem you cannot get around
Let us not forget, the USA also refused to sell us enough steel to make enough Churchill tanks etc saying instead "nah buddy you can buy our shermans instead".
ARTICLE V The Government of the United Kingdom will return to the United States of America at the end of the present emergency, as determined by the President, such defense articles transferred under this Agreement as shall not have been destroyed, lost or consumed and as shall be determined by the President to be useful in the defense of the United States of America or of the Western Hemisphere or to be otherwise of use to the United States of America.
"Over the whole period from March 1941 to September 1945, the balance in favour of the United States in the mutual aid books24 was in round terms about $21,000 millions. But by the settlement of 1945 Britain was required to pay no more than $650 millions, or £162 millions sterling." page 547 Hyperwar British War Economy
@@chriswoods7452 I have not read anything that indicated the USA refused to sell anything to Britain as long as it could be paid for. After Britain stiffed the USA for 4.4 billion 1934 USD in WW I debt, legislation was passed banning loans and the sale of anything to any nation in a declared war. The Neutrality Act in effect in 1939 was amended Nov. 39 to allow Cash and Carry. Lend Lease was approved for Britain and Greece March 41 and per Art V everything Lend Leased remained the property of the US until lost consumed or destroyed. In 1945 the USA wrote off over 2/3 of Britains LL debt so the M4 tanks actually purchased by Britain were less than 1/3 of M4's lost by Britain.
There were several reasons Britain lagged behind in tank development. Tanks were a low priority, ships and aircraft were much more important for Britains survival. Older designs were kept in production as every tank was needed and they could not afford the time to retool for newer tanks. There had been no development of tank engines in the 1930s, most early WW2 tanks were powered by old truck engines, or WW1 aero engines. As designs got more armour, speed and agility declined, this was not solved until mid-1943 with the Rolls Royce Meteor engine. British tanks had size and weight limitations for rail transport, this too was not relaxed until 1943. The result of the changes was the A41 Centurion of 1944, one of the most successful battle tanks of the 20th Century.
To bad the tank you listed never saw action in ww2.
Nice try. Try again. The British tanks were crap because they were crap moat of the war. They had years and years to plan development and keep up with the rest of the top tank countries. When they didn't field a 75mm tank, that everyone else had since at least 42, worth a dam until d day and by then it was not a front line tank.
@@theodoresmith5272 Still better than Japanese and Italian tanks. The Comet and the Firefly proved to be capable. And the Churchill Crocodile was enough to scare the Germans out of their trenches ( it was a Napalm tank)
@@theodoresmith5272 LOL What breathtaking logic, "they were crap because they were crap". Britain only began to rearm in 1938, that was 4 years behind the Germans. Then there was funding, both the Germans and Russians put the majority of their military budget on tank development and production. But despite this, the A12 Matilda was the best tank of the early war period, it was superior to German and Italian tanks up to 1942. You obviously know nothing about tank guns, the British 6 Pounder (57mm) was far superior in armour penetration to the US 75mm and equal to the German 7.5cm KwK.40. The A34 Comet was equal to the Panther and Tiger in terms of firepower, as was the Sherman Firefly conversion.
they had an excellent AT-gun, no need for a good tank when your AT gun can take out tanks just as effectivly
@@jiyuhong5853 Yeah the 25 pounder and 17 pounder guns were very powerful. Some of the best artillery in the Allied armies. The British armies anti tank capabilities by 1944 were formidable.
The video almost totally ignores the Comet, a design based on the Cromwell that mounted the 77-mm HV cannon. This 77-mm cannon was only slightly less powerful than the 17-pounder (it fired the same projectiles as the 17-pounder but used a cartridge case that held less propellant), and was more than capable of confronting the Tiger and the Panther. It was finally brought into front-line service in early 1945. It was quickly supplanted by the Centurion, but that tank was not brought into service until after the end of the war in Europe.
And you seam to miss the Fact all the
Big Battles had been fought , and at
The End there was Very little Armor
Left , out numbering them 10 to 1
Only meant you had the odds in your
Favour , BRITSH Tanks No Armor , No
Gun , Bolts instead of Welds they
We're a Heap of Rubbish , how many
Poor men died because of this
@@markjones464there is certainly merit in what you say, but the Churchill tank, which was the most numerous British tank in the Italian and North West Europe campaigns had extremely thick armour and could absorb many hits from anti tank guns. Riveting, albeit an old technology, was very familiar to British industry, whereas the welding of thick plates was not. Also, remember that the welded joints were softer than the surrounding steel and German anti tank gunners were trained to aim at the welds of Russian tanks because the armour there could be penetrated more easily. However, it is lamentable that the Cromwell and Comet tanks were not available at least a year earlier, as they were quite effective tanks.
Because it came to late in the war to be of any real impact. Like the US M26 Pershing. Too little too late.
British tank design and doctrine was all wrong based on fast moving lightly armed and armoured crusader ranks and slow moving thick armoured infantry tanks, both these designs feature the 2pdr gun in the early stages which meant British tanks were far outranged by German tanks and antitank guns, they couldn't fire HE rounds and if they got within range their 2pdr armour pirecing shells bounced off German tanks or failed to knock out German anti tank guns. Eventually they got the 6pdr but it would a while before they got them in numbers. The Cromwell and Comet were exactly what British needed in 1941-44 but had to make do with what they had. The British vastly out produced the Germans in tank production but it was all a long series of poor tank designs.
@@bobsyeruncle5557 That was one of the problems that the British faced: they were well behind the Germans on the tank-development curve. It was if they were always playing catch-up, trying to match what the Germans already had, rather than trying to jump ahead of them. They were also somewhat inflexible in their tank designs, selecting a particular main armament and requiring the tank (and especially the turret) to be designed to fit that particular cannon and nothing larger. This generally made it very difficult to upgrade that tank to take a larger weapon. The German Panzer Mk. III and Mk. IV were much more easily upgradeable; the Mk. IV entered service in 1936 and was still capable of effective front-line service in 1945.
great video although It really needs to be stressed that the reliance on Shermans to fill armoured divisions by late 1942 came after three years of conflict with Germany AFTER Britain had lost nearly all of its armoured assets in France and its industrial centres had been bombarded by the luftwaffe. It is unfair to call it a shortfall of British industry which had been very resilient.
IWM "From late 1942, US tanks were required in increasing numbers to make up for the deficiencies of home-grown products. Only in 1944 was British industry able to deliver a tank reasonably fit for a fast-moving battlefield, and even then it was scarcely a match for its opponents."
Britain's Struggle To Build Effective Tanks During The Second World War page
@@nickdanger3802 LIE-beral DRIVEL ON OFFER as Brit industry ran flat out through out the war -playing CATCH UP as a natural result of TWO DECADES OF LIE-beral NEGLECT of all things military!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It is worth remembering that after the PRIVATELY SPONSORED Supermarine Spitfire experimental aircraft won the Schneider Cup race in 1936 - an aristocrat - Lady Astor - WENT OUT AND BOUGHT THE world beating Spitfire and GAVE IT TO THE ROYAL AIR FORCE so they would know - as she said: "WHAT A MODERN AIRCRAFT LOOKED LIKE"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That same LADY PAID out of her own pocket to make sure that HALF the British Hurricane fighter force had their old, two blade, fixed pitch wooden propellers REPLACED with steel three blade propellers with modern pitch adjustment that GREATLY IMPROVED BOTH SPEED AND RANGE of the aircraft!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
if you have only a few tanks you can loose, you need US help...
i wonder how many times the Brits had won a world war without US help???
@@Arltratlo well let's see, Britain won the War of the Spanish Succession, the seven years war, the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War and World War One (american involvement was not substantial). Thats 5 victories to America's one world war victory which was mostly won by Russia. There's a reason America was in a position to help by WWII, it had been protected by Britain for the past two centuries.
@@thescarletpumpernel3305 i cant remember if the Brits fought at Leipzig, but who exactly rescued Wellington from the French... at Waterloo????
btw: in the Crimean war, the numbers of Brit troops been the 2 nd lowest from the 4 countries who fought Russia!
and everybody remembers the war, because the Brits blunder greatly in it, its in our history books...maybe not in the British history books, like many things...
I think the biggest issue was this; Britain had to put more money into the Navy, then the Air Force. They saw the Army as the least important bit of the armed forces early on. The Navy would be doing the lion's share of the fighting, and the air forces were there to back them up. In reality, Germany screwed these plans up by going in faster than the British or the French could imagine.
good argument! for my ancestors it was exactly the other way around!
Not really, they rested on their past successes like America and fell behind due to being too cheap to invest like Hitler. It was a pretty arranged war anyway. To bring the world out of the economic depression. My uncles served in both European and Far East.
I guess not having the word "royal" in their name didn't help!
that always buffled me! why was the army not royal?@@DeltaEchoGolf
@@MrPHAELAN The royalty is forbidden to have an army by the parliament. But I remember saw some battalions with royal names.
British tank doctrine prior to the war wasn't much different from other countries. France, Germany and the Soviet Union all had infantry and cruiser tank equivalents. One of the major reasons the T-34 was successful was its V-2 engine, which was very powerful. Britain didn't have a good tank engine for most of the war, so were limited in what they could achieve in terms of weight and manoeuvrability. Still the Matilda II was a good tank in the early war. The Cromwell was a decent medium tank, if a bit late.
The meteor engine was very effective and plenty powerful enough and was used extensively during the war and many years after.
I think the sloping front armour, which could not be penetrated by the German 37mm PAK or tank guns, and the 76mm gun had a lot to do with its success between 1941 and 1942.
@@klackon1 Yes, but the reason it could carry enough armour to provide all round protection, as well as a larger gun than other medium tanks of the time, while still being quite mobile, was the powerful engine.
Nobody listened to Percy Cleghorn Hobart and the General Staff passed him over. Churchill had to get him out of the Home Guard, LCPL, and TELL Ismay to take him back into the General Staff. Hobart was not a Sandhurst graduate, he graduated from RMA Woolwich as an Engineer...note the 17pr was first fitted into an Australian tank the ACIV Sentinal...
First! And I have to disagree. Sherman Firefly was very effective. It had a very good gun maybe better than Panter. Matilda was feared by the enemy at the start of the war. Comet was very effective at the end. They prepared Centurion but the war ended. And Cromwell was serving in our Czechoslovak army well into 50s. Greetings from Czech Republic!
All of this have been discussed in the video👍
Matildas were super slow and got picked off easily by anti air craft guns even in france 1940 and the firefly was an american tank only the canon was british, the cromwell was inferior to most other standart tanks of the other nations doesnt matter how long it served, the t34 served in china until the 90s
The British Firefly was a U.S. M4 most likely M4A2 Sherman armed with a British 17 pounder.
Firefly was an American tank with British gun
@@PrvnCoke You missed out the Valentine. Very popular with the Soviets who demanded production continue when it was being discontinued in Europe and took every one we could send them since its high reliability, low maintenance and good ground clearance as well as decent gun made it a useful scout as well as good for flanking attacks. They were still serving in the attack on Berlin in 1945.
The Mathilda 2 also became outdated in europe but became exemplary against the Japanese, its small size meant it could be loaded on infantry landing craft for advances in Borneo and New Guinea and its thick armour made it proof against anything the Japanese had, there are records of Mathilda getting hit by 75mm artillery/AT rounds at fifty yards and shrugging it off during bunker busting runs with the Australians.
The "funnys" were awesome tanks that did their particular jobs well, the flame thrower variation in particular had a great effect in encouraging germans to surrender.
You are referring to the Churchill Crocodile and yes it was particularly good at encouraging enemies to surrender. On look at that awesome stream of fire was usually enough.
The Churchill tank was slow, but heavily armoured. It could manoeuvre over very difficult ground and it took a lot, to knock it out. Arm it with a flamethrower and it was a battle winner.
Honestly I must disagree with the framing of British tanks being ineffective. Some designs were more flawed than others and there are plenty of examples of British tanks being used in a tactically ineffective way, but from a design standpoint a lot of them held up based on the capabilities of the time.
The Matilda II performed admirably in the desert - impressive considering it wasn't designed for the purpose of desert warfare at all. The Churchill - initially undergunned, yes, but with high crew survivability rates and astonishing hill-climbing ability that really put the fright up the Germans in Tunisia and Sicily. The Sherman Firefly, though a modification of an American design, could go toe to toe alright with the Tiger and Panther. Plus think of all the innovative ways the Brits repurposed their designs with the AVREs and 'Hobart's Funnies' and their key contribution to D-Day/Normandy. The history of British tanks honestly just shows an interesting 'learning curve' from the somewhat ropey Matilda I (though it did have one significant bright spot - Arras) to the Centurion.
IWM "From late 1942, US tanks were required in increasing numbers to make up for the deficiencies of home-grown products. Only in 1944 was British industry able to deliver a tank reasonably fit for a fast-moving battlefield, and even then it was scarcely a match for its opponents."
Britain's Struggle To Build Effective Tanks During The Second World War page
A somewhat simplistic appreciation, leaving much out. Others have mentioned the railway gauge issue being common to all tanks, the lack of Cromwell and Comet mentions. I will explain how 1941 was the year that stalled British Tank design for reasons you don't mention at all.
Before 1941 British tanks were certainly a match for any anti-tank gun and tank out there. The Crusader was an attempt at a medium tank, officially a heavy Cruiser, capable of both infantry support and chasing. It was supposed to equip 18 Armoured divisions by the end of 1941, with improved developments following on as new guns became available. A 6pdr Crusader development (Cromwell and Cavalier) was due in late 1941, along with a 25pdr Support tank (Centaur) and a 17pdr heavy tank (Clan) for late 1942. These later tanks would be used to spearhead an invasion of the continent in 1942/43.
This was the Army plan, but it was cut back massively in early 1941, to nine and then six armoured divisions, using cheaper 2pdr armed tanks, in order to pay for an increase in RAF Bomber Command funding to reach the vaunted 1,000 bomber raid target. This reduction in development money, kept the 2pdr Crusader in production long past it's obsolescence.
The German's had re-equipped with 5cm guns by mid 1941 for both ATG and tank armaments. In the big open spaces of the desert the 2pdr armed British tanks were simply outranged and outmatched. 6pdr was there for the taking in mid 1941, but we had to wait a year for the production lines to match demand. All because of that lost year.
6pdr armed tanks were delayed, and the 17pdr A29 Clan was dropped altogether. Cromwell soon got its own 75mm gun equivalent to Sherman and equipped half the British tank regiments in NW Europe by 1944. It being followed by the 77mm armed Comet which was every bit as good as the latest German medium tanks in late 1944. Still all a bit too late because of that missed year.
There was significant waste of effort in British production. We had a very good 76mm field gun from 1907 in the shape of the Royal Horse Artillery 13pdr. Designed to give fast moving cavalry its own fire support. The larger 18pdr was developed into the excellent 25pdr, but the 13pdr was dropped without further development. No good explanation has ever been given for this. We had 13pdr armed SPG on trials in 1931, but the idea of dual purpose guns in medium tanks fell away as 2pdr and 25pdr took all the available development money.
British tank engines failed to meet demand in the late 30s despite several useful aero engines becoming available like Kestrel and Mercury. Instead bus engines were cobbled together, a purpose built flat 12 engine was developed that was too big to fit what it could power, with not enough power to drive the tanks it could fit. An ageing WW1 aero engine was put back into production at great expense, the Liberty, which proved to be Crusader's downfall.
Despite all this it wouldn't be until mid 1941 that Germany had an advantage over us in design, thanks to our decision to concentrate on heavy bombers - eventually to claim upwards of 40% of our entire defence budget.
This was the gap filled by Sherman, a British inspired development of the M3 Lee, they agreed to buy thousands on lease lend if the main armament was put in a 360deg turret, as the Canadian's were doing with their Ram series of Sherman type tanks. This decision enabled tank development to be outsourced from British investment and factories to put those resources into building up Bomber Command.
We were back with good designs from 1943, but that mid war period was managed on starvation rations.
In the 1930s when the various branches of the British army were competing for resources, the artillery were concerned that the tank forces would get large guns at their expense. So they drafted a letter that stated any tank with armor thick enough to withstand a hit by 2 pounder would be so heavy it would be immobile and sink into the mud, therefor no gun larger than a 2 pounder was required for either tanks or antitank guns, and the letter stuck. The other restriction was they had to fit on a flatcar that pass through a railroad tunnel.
F*CK what would the world be without the most outrageous, petulant inter-service hair pulling contests. Oh don't worry; we got it in spades on this side of the Atlantic.
Worked for a giant defense contractor for 8 years, I've seen it and heard it with my own eyes and ears. Guarantee ya if I told you some of the stories you'd swear I was lyin'. 😎
Could mention that the Centurion only happened when they gave up the 40 ton and rail transport width limits. Abandoning the 40 ton limit imposed by the fact that this was the capacity of the existing British tank tansporters and the width limit imposed by British rail was what made Centurion viable. Those completely artificial limits were the real story of the failure of British tank design.
The panzer 4 even the Ausf J was below 40 tons and and was within width limit imposed by British rail. yet saw service and was made throughout the war weight and width wasn't the problem british tank design and production.
Defenders of the udiotic British 'establishment' always point to such external factors that 'could not be ignored'. The 100-foit limit on bomber wing spans was another.
Meanwhile, every other country built the hangars to suit the planes.
Tanks were the same. The Tank Corps was much hated during the interwar period, the British Army thus had no goid tank advocates. On the eve of war, the anti intellectual cavalry was mechanised.
Another issue was letting companies produce what they could, rather than what was needed.
@@lllordllloyd you need to edit your post there are too many errors of spelling.
Ah yes, the British rail system. Considering it's abysmal state today, I'm not suprised to know it was screwing over this country back then too. At least it's consistant.
Interesting video, I wasn't aware of the railroad size constraints especially on turret size.
I think you under emphasis the importance of losing virtually all the British equipment at Dunkirk. If not for the need to crank out tanks and guns as fast as possible after Dunkirk, the 6 pdr likely could hace come into service a year earlier.
Also, the advantage of the American 75 wasn't increased firepower against German tanks. For that purpose the 6 pdr actually had higher armour penetration than the 75mm. The advantage of the 75 was that it had a much larger shell which meant it's HE round was more effective against infantry, unarmoured vehicles and guns. As you mentioned the lack of HE for the early tanks was a challenge, even the 6 pdr's HE round was barely acceptable.
People always talk about the tank on tank aspects of combat, they forget that tanks spent a lot more time engaging infantry and guns than they did enemy armour.
And by the time they were getting Shermans the Crusader reliability issues were solved, and they were putting out tanks like the Cromwell with the down rated Merlin engine which didn't have reliability issues. Taking on the Sherman was a necessity more due to a need for quantity than quality.
Shermans were definitely better tanks than anything the British could field in N. Africa and of course no other WW2 tank could match it for reliability, so it delivered on both counts.
Excellent video, great analysis, I look forward to more to follow.
all used rail to move tanks and they needed fit in railcars. which is why germans had to change tracks on tigers to transport on rail.
Finally, the British designed an efficient and successful centurion tank ... which exported to several British vassals during the 50th year of the last century. Thank you. Wonderful ( factBytes) channel
Isreal also used Centurions
I think you mean decade and not year.
Do we still have foreign “vassals?” How quaint!
There's another error, the issue of the diameter of the turret ring. The British school built the ring the same size as the basket, the part of the turret that runs inside the hull. The Germans extended the ring further out giving a stepped basket. Look at the Tank Chat videos from the Tank Museum, they show a lot of interiors.
Rommels 88mm guns at Arras picked up the Matildas from +2km, a range their guns couldnt aimed at a target...
and a Matilda is realllllly slow to run away from danger!
Simple there focus was on creating the perfect tea boiling vessel, tanks were a secondary tea transportation vehicle.
No tea , no war.
The Boiling Vessel was a result of an enquiry into what was the biggest unnecessary cause of death, or injury, to tank crews.
It was realised that tank crews going outside their tank to cook food, or make tea, were extremely vulnerable. Hence the Boiling Vessel, which incidentally does much more than make tea!
@@donyoung1384 In WWI the first tanks originally had an engine parts of which became extremely hot in service, crews would boil kettles and fry bacon on these. When they changed to another engine where this was not the case, the crews were displeased! Crew conditions were abysmal, they suffered extreme discomfort, poisoning by monoxide and cordite fumes, agonising small injuries from metal spall from bullet strikes, stifling heat, atrocious visibility, but they worried about making tea and frying bacon. The British way of life, which has almost disappeared, produced this kind of humour and spirit.
The biggest factor - engines, most tank engines of the time were aero engines, in Britain at the time they were all going to aircraft production, this left older, less powerful engines. Therefore you could have a fast tank or a tank resistant to medium AT fire, but not both.
The Meteor engine for British tanks arrived (I think) in 1942. It was a down-tuned Merlin engine.
Correct, although most were made from sub standard parts rejected for merlins as well as parts salvaged from crashed aircraft. In terms of the strategic picture merlins were more valuable than meteors, so unfortunately for British armour designers they were not produced in quantity until early 1944 although there was a small supply from mid 43
Ya gotta work with what ya got mate. Everyone had restrictions.
Same as always.
Someone somewhere in the British arms industry wanted to make lots of money from misery rather than provide our nation with tanks that worked.
Even now those in charge of procurement are a bigger threat than the enemy.
We could do with listening to lads who fight on what they want.
Good video - but I have a couple of criticisms
You should make note the light/infantry/ cruiser tank mentality was worldwide, as was the resistance to change, the US, France, Germany Russia all suffered from the same issue and similar resulting bad designs. The British also were stuck, even a bad tank in their mind was better than no tank so they used what they had to replace their losses in France, which you did note.
Although the Sherman was a good tank based on reliability and numbers produced, it was very vulnerable to all German tank and AT guns generally beyond it's main gun range. Which is a little hard on the crews when you are on the advance against a dug-in enemy.
And the T-34 was only a good tank based on numbers it was not reliable, crewing and ammo storage were awful. It had good armor, and a decent gun but as we know from later German designs that is not enough.
But Soviet developed T-34 into T-34/85 with better crew lay out.
@@jaroslavpalecek4513That improved the crew situation in the turret a bit but did nothing for the other problems the T-34 had. Ammo storage was still terrible, armor was still thin, vision when buttoned up was still poor, basic maintenance was still difficult, it was exhausting to drive, and the interior was still very cramped.
@@jaroslavpalecek4513 But the underlying mechanical issues, ammo layout etc were never sorted out and the gun was so so. And the base tank had to be improved the original T-34 was getting over matched by German improvements.
Tank development has always been a painful process though
Russian tank losses ran as high as 600 a day. Total for WWII has been put at 80,000 to 110,000
The U.S. lost 1,000 per month for the duration of the European campaign. These are official U.S. Army totals. @@RichGallant
@@thenevadadesertrat2713 thanks for the info so about 34 tanks a day, do know if those were all write off losses due to combat or both mechanical and combat losses ?
At the beginning of the war, the Mathilda II was a very good tank.
It was very effective against the early German tanks.
It was severly under gunned, like all early British ww2 tsnks and couldn't take on anti tank positions
@@joelbilly1355 most German tanks didn't have any better guns either, so again for that time (1941) it was one of the best tank at that time
And the Churchill was even better, almkst on the same level with the Soviet KV1
@@joelbilly1355 while it became under-gunned in 1940-41 it had arguably the best tank gun in the world British tanks often lacked stretch potential but when compared to the contemporary tank were often very good. While outclassed by later models the Crusader fared very favorably to the early Pz III and IVs and was only outclassed by the very last Pz IVs that were produced long after. People often bemoan the reliability of the Crusaders in the desert but ignore that contemporary German tanks were even less reliable hence why no Stugs in North Africa.
and the reason the 88mm Flak was so effective vs. the Matilda was in its gun - although the 88 was a very vulnerable target due to its height and complexity - the total lack of a HE shell for the 2-pounder gun meant that the Matilda had to close to 500m to use its machine guns and that - together with its slow speed - usually meant death for the Matilda. The 88-crews destroyed everything else first except the Matildas and if they accomplished that it was a turkey shoot ...
@@joelbilly1355it was not severely under gunned when you consider the opposition it was facing, the 2 pounder gun could destroy every single Axis tank from 1939-1942 frontally, its only in 1943 with the Tiger that the Germans had something that could fully brush off 2 pounders and by then the Matilda was already being put into use for secondary roles and theatres
The tank losses on both sides at the battle of El Alamein, were horrific. When the Germans withdrew, they did so with only about 35 tanks. Source : a German tank commander who survived the war.
The T 34 wasn't a wonderful tank. It had a good balance of armour and gun, but was knocked together so hurriedly and badly, that the majority of them suffered from serious reliability issues. It was their numbers that overwhelmed the Germans, not their quality.
The Matilda II was a good tank in its day. Until the Germans encountered it and realised they had to seriously improve their game. The Tiger I was the result.
The Valentine was a reliable tank. It's chassis was used for a lot of tasks during the war.
The Churchill was good enough to be upgraded through 8 or 9 marks, and disconcerted the Germans on many occasions. It's adaptability proved useful, in particular the fearsome crocodile version, but also the AVRE. It's ability to to climb was also legendary, caching the Germans unawares several times.
Cromwell, and the improved Comet were very good. Armour was sacrificed for speed and manoeuvrability, anot her Churchill wasn't needed.
The Sherman was acquired in large numbers because it was available, and reliable not because of its superiority.
Transportation was always a factor. 60 ton monsters such as the Germans built would have been a liability.
The Tiger was a respons to the KV series.
11:10 - The Valentine was the one piece of Western Allied frontline kit the Soviets genuinely rated. Because it was sturdy, reliable, and filled a niche as a light tank.
I've stood next to a Matilda II and thought "you'd have to be a friggin dwarf to fit five men in there." It was like a toy compared to a Centurion. I was absolutely horrified by the thought of sending men to their deaths in such pitiful machines.
You are not comparing like with like, though. The Matilda was up against Panzer 2s and3s, and in 1940 it matched them very well.
At least their Cold War tanks were very good. Challenger 1 still holds the record for the longest shot at 5000m by destroying an Iraqi T-72 in the Gulf War.
Impressive, only 50 years after Tiger hits from 4000 mtrs!!
Britain had great ships , great aircraft -- and the worst tanks . Each tank ( a dozen or more during the war , was obsolete right off the drawing board . Germany remained at least 2 years ahead in tank ( and anti tank ) weaponry throughout the entire war .
British submarines were pretty crap as well , which was really unnecessary,as the Admiralty knew about their shortcomings before the war . Chief of which was the riveted hulls which reduced the depth they could submerge , and because the riveted plates would move under pressure, releasing fuel oil which would float to the surface . Revealing the boat's position.
At the start of the war the 2 pounder out classed the german pak 36, when the Pak 38 was introduced the brits came back with the 6 pounder which again was a better anti tank gun then finally came the 17 pounder which speaks for itself I think
Actually, the worst tanks produced during WW2 came out of Japan and Italy.
The quality of the steel was so poor in the Italian tanks that it would crack like ceramics after being hit by an AT gun.
The Japanese tanks were slightly above WW1 technology.
Yet British submarines sunk quite a few Uboats in WW2.@@StevenBrown-w5b
Actually the US designed and mass produced the Liberty ship that got it done.
To my utter shame I have to admit that the Wooden Wonder and the Lanc were best in class hands down. 😎
The Valentine, Matilda, Churchill and Cromwell were all all good tanks, Comet, Firefly and Centurion were excellent.
The T-34 only got the reputation it has for being tough because the German tank and anti-tank guns in 1941 were quite frankly garbage. The T-34 wasn’t that thickly armored, crew ergonomics and survivability were terrible, had poor vision, and wasn’t even all that mechanically reliable. The M4 Sherman that has a reputation for poor armor actually has better frontal armor than the things and even better sloping. Unlike the British while the Soviets did eventually upgrade the things to the T-34-85 that solved some of the problems they were able to flood the battlefield with numbers of tanks which made up for their general lack of quality.
Quite simple we didn't. EG Late mark Churchill Tanks. with the Crocodile scaring the crap out of the Germans. The Cromwell had the 17 pounder. That was considered to be the best gun of WWII on the allied side. Plus you seem to be forgetting that the UK was fighting well before the US got involved and things move fast in war. Look at the absolute heap the predecessor to the Sherman was.
IWM "From late 1942, US tanks were required in increasing numbers to make up for the deficiencies of home-grown products. Only in 1944 was British industry able to deliver a tank reasonably fit for a fast-moving battlefield, and even then it was scarcely a match for its opponents."
Britain's Struggle To Build Effective Tanks During The Second World War page
Hmmmmmmm. The Brits slurpped up those Lee's or whatever you called them faster'n you could shake a stick at.
Well you didn't take the engineers and the board and the bosses and make them fight in the tanks. You also didn't take the generals and put the in the frontlines. You would be surprised just how fast they could over come all these problems. Once the rich start dying then things will change.
Moronic nonsense.
@@snowflakemelter1172 No it is not, but please if there is another war don't call on the people that don't care anymore. Go fight it yourself. It's your money.
@@donaldgrant9067 who do you think we're the flying officers that won the battle of Britain, working class 🤣
@@snowflakemelter1172 That was the battle of Britian. during the war it was college educated that flew planes and officers.
@@snowflakemelter1172 You know a little bit of an emergency there in the battle of Britain?
I believe the British armoured doctrine combined with the development pathways encumbered British armoured development. The Americans and Soviets arrived at the main battle tank concept, a single tank that combined protection, mobility and firepower, much sooner than the British who seemed to persist in subdividing tank roles into, light, cruiser and infantry support for too long. That and the fact that the British seemed to utilize their locomotive industrial base to expedite tank production whereas the Americans mobilized their automotive infrastructure which emphasized mass production, precise tolerances and interchangeable parts.
@Chiller11 To be fair the British had the concepts of armoured doctrine down quite well during Operation Compass.
There is a serious error here in the first 5 minutes. Conformity with railway loading gauges was universal at this time, leading to some very narrow but very long tanks difficult to steer, the French 2C tank for instance. To carry the much later German Tiger by rail it was necessary to change its tracks for a narrower set, remove the outermost wheels and the mudguards. This had to be all put back once the tank arrived at its destination. All economies in the 1930's were coal-fired and dependant on railways for transport. Specific tank carriers appeared in quantity in North Africa later on, mainly due to the relatively sparse railway network there.
Although the track gauge was the same in the UK or continental Europe (except the Iberian Peninsula and Russia) the loading gauge was different. This is the maximum width and height of cargo, that would allow circulation without bumping into oncoming traffic or tunnel walls, it was a little larger on the continent.
I blame George Stevenson
Excellent technical analysis. God I wish we had more of this on the internet.
Excellent. First rate.
Inconvenient truth for the disingenuous ignoramuses
The Matilda was a solid tank just needed a bigger gun
The problem was that it couldn't be upgunned, turret 's ring was so tight that they 'd to move forward the gun's mantlet to make space for a 3rd crewman, and with a 2pdr! Pratically it was impossible fit a 6pdr in it.
probabely a 8" naval gun.
Part of the problem was the reliance on infantry tanks in the earlier years and that the guns didn't have APDS rounds.
Not really, the real problem was that they did not have HE rounds to give infantry direct support, the CS versions had 3" howitzers but no HE and the 2 pdr only had solid shot. This was quite capable with dealing with any German tank of the period.
1942 they managed to install a “6 pound gun” gun in a tank because they didn’t want to interrupt the production of the 2 pounder.
This is another example of criminal incompetence.
The allied tankers were such heroes that they limited their criticism even after the war, many of them died, or were severely disabled.
I see you know very little about 6 Pounder Ammunition. WOT is not real.
@@davidandrew1078 I don’t not what “ WOT” means. And your right I don’t know much about tank cannons. I’m trying to learn what I can.
I distinctly remember one British tank commander telling how he fired a round at a German tank, and he saw it skip off the front plates.
The German tank returned fire, his tank blew up launched him out of the turret, killed 2 of his crew.
He was angry about the six pounder, and said when they got the sixteen ? It wasn’t ever a problem.
What I’ve read is”The 6-pounder first saw action in May 1942.
6-pounder guns of 2nd Battalion, with part of 239 Anti-Tank Battery Royal Artillery ,destroyed more than 15 Axis tanks in Gazala. the Germans introduced much heavier tanks and The standard 6-pounder shot became ineffective against them”
WOT is World of Tanks. Look up 6 Pounder APDS Round.@@peterparsons7141 I have not even mentioned the Firefly. German MK Vs and VIs were not all that great.
@@peterparsons7141 I don't think the issue was 'criminal incompetence' but more the realities of introducing new weapons onto the battlefield. You can't just slap new weapons into existing designs and expect them to work well (see the Sherman Firefly).
@@LoneWolf-rc4go makes sense. I know that Britain was in a very bad spot and I really would like to find out more about the details of how that entire thing evolved.
Again , the restrictions imposed on British tank design by the need to conform with railway transport requirements is totally ignored !
An inconvenient truth for the ignoramuses
why couldn't British engineers build usable trucks or cars
Moronic.
An excellent book on Italian tanks in North Africa is: “Iron Hulls and Iron Hearts, Mussolini’s Elite Armored Divisions in North Africa” by Ian W. Walker.
I'm sorry but I have to clear up some points. The 6-pounder was delayed into production because the British Army lost all its anti-tank guns in France (about 850 in Wiki: Battle of Dunkirk). With an invasion imminent there was no other option. The 3" 20 cwt gun (an early AA gun) was also mobilised as an AT gun to put in bunkers.
One crucial issue with British Tank development was the absence of a suitable line of engines. There had been a committee for this, but apparently they would meet, spend the morning discussing what sort of tank would be built, go for a nice long lunch, write up the minutes in the afternoon and go home. When the balloon went up some rushed decisions were taken. Meadows put together (I don't think you can say developed...) a flat-12 engine for the Covenanter which was unreliable, had a disastrous cooling system and had no room for improvement. Vulcan Foundries put two engines in the Matilda II driving a common gearbox, it did work but was underpowered, complicated and very difficult to repair. Vauxhall stuck together two lorry engine blocks in another flat-12 for the Churchill, this was improved to an acceptable standard of reliability but the power output was about half of what was necessary for such a heavy vehicle. The Rotes group went for the American Liberty V-12 engine, a very well known engine which should not have held many surprises, however the method of construction was obsolete (this was a 1917 aero engine) and the result was a fragile engine with too many parts exposed to dirt and dust. To top it all the drive for the cooling fan was really bad and they put the engine (carburettor) air intakes where the tracks released all the dust and dirt when coming up into the drive sprocket, you couldn't have done it worse if you tried. A stew of unpreparedness, inadequate development, stupid ideas, incompetent engineering, fat-arsed civil servant amateurs not doing their jobs and no government body to properly regulate the process. The Covenanter was so bad the Army refused it for combat and some 2000 of this useless vehicle were built, used only for training. A lot of the footage in this video is of Covenanters showing off their good turn of speed for the Pathé newsreel cameras, for every one that you see running count three broken down. Even so men were injured by its spontaneously self-closing turret hatch or burst coolant pipes in the crew compartment squirting boiling water all over the place. Very few still exist, they were all melted down or shot to pieces in ranges, the one in the Tank Museum was dug up out of the ground, it may be the only one.
The cherry on top of the cake is that 2-pdr HE ammunition was developed, and the tank crews were always clamouring for it as they could not deal with anti-tank guns with AP shot, 2-pdr HE is not much but better than nothing. Some HE was shipped to North Africa, but IT WAS NEVER DISTRIBUTED and nobody knows why. I can guess that the Royal Artillery, which was a very influential arm in the Army (after its pivotal role in WW1) blocked it under the pretext that firing HE is their preserve. This was also the reason why Close-Support tanks (about 1 in 10 were made with a 3" howitzer instead of the 2-pdr) only had smoke shells.
It's surprising they actually won the war.
They haven't, Soviets and Americans carried British to war end.
You are absolutely correct! What we should be doing is investigating the members of these amateur clown committees for treason and PUBLISHING THEIR NAMES! They want to take the position and paycheck and not actually do anything, they should be held accountable!
Bollocks.@@AKUJIVALDO
@@AKUJIVALDO The British supplied the Russians. One of its key supplies was to do with an ingredient needed in explosives. The Russians would have done very little without it. We put everything we had into that war. So no we were not carried by either.
@@dulls8475 truth is, without US resources and USSR manpower, GB would be smacked senseless into either peace treaty or surrendering, depending on Germany's mood.
I disagree with you. The American tanks were not used because British tanks were not good enough. The Matilda II was fairly effective in 1940, the Valentine, Churchill after some early problems (there were more than 6 main marks, much like the American M3/M4), the later British tanks like the Cromwell and Comet were actually starting to replace the !M4…
The T34 was not as good as you claim rushed production and poor quality steel earned it the nickname coffin from the Soviets
Because accountants got involved. In the days before accountants, a team of highly innovative men made up the landship committee and invented the worlds first tank. They quipped it with two long barrelled 6 pounder guns. Then the accountants got involved by saving some money by shortening the guns making them cheaper and less powerful. They justified the decision by stating it was to stop the guns from getting dirty. Then they reduced the number of guns to 1 and reduced the size to a less powerful 3 pounder gun when Adolf Hitler got to power. Then they reduced the gun size again to an even lower power 2 pounders when everyone else was making 75mm guns for their tanks. Then when the Germans were designing Tiger and Panther tanks, the British kept using the 2 pounder gun and even tried to buy a 1 pounder from the French. Once the war was over, the British introduced the Centurion tank which was arguably the best WW2 era tank. I think the war office was trying to help Adolf.
Your video starts showing the Matilda II which was the most efficient tank in 1940. The German army received a rude shock at Arras and it was only due to Rommel improvising and pressing 88mm flak guns into the role that they weren't designed for that gave the germans the advantage.
For a history focused channel and an opinion based episode of WWII tanks, you are in dire need of further research on the subject.
Oh, the Churchill Crocodile Flamethrower tank was probably the most effective tank/weapon in the later part of WWII.
Stop making videos and go and watch some from The Tank Museum
This seems to be a hate video towards Britain during the Second World War, forgetting that the Uk is a small island that managed to hold off nazi Germany by itself until the US joined the war.
Tanks were not at the top of its to do list.
Also Russia would have struggled to fight the nazis if it wasn’t for the money the US poured into the country.
a small island with a Empire and a big brother coming to help early in the war (:-)
They were stuck in the WW1 mentality. They were unwavering in their design.
Unwavering in their design lol. The British designed tanks with a whole host of capabilities. British tank design across the war years went on a pretty amazing journey of progression from starting with the Matilda I to ending with the Centurion
@@cybertronian2005 there are literally books written on how bad the British tank development was. Throughout the war it subsequently developed tanks that range from the bad to barely adequate.
Not at all in the inter-war periop Britain produced some outstanding tank designs that were widely exported and coppied, like the Vicker 6 Ton sold to 15 countries.
Plus the Germans were inspired by the experimental mechanized board's work, whose doctrine was closely taken up. British doctrine was a massive issue after the fall of France as it made Hobartian doctrine (tanks beat everything) seem justified. Unfortunately the officers who knew better were killed, captured or disliked by Churchill and replaced.
The biggest problem British tanks faced was design by committee. Peppered with generous dose patronage. Producing compromise after compromise instead of a solid ground up design.
Don't forget The Grant ! (:
By far, the tank that the British used the most and had the most of in WW2, was the American made Sherman.
Their tanks had short comings during the war but, the Centurion when emerged was the best.
Yes in 1945.
but when it emerged war was over (:-) germans could be so mean!
As a former owner of a new 1966 BMC Mini, I do understand why!!! It was an absolutely and absurdly bad made, production disaster! Even from the corners of the - front screen, water came in, as well from the sliding windows in the doors, into the boxes below. And I had to bend in the "window frames" with my knee in between, to make them meet the rubber sealing on the body! And don't drive after a car during rain, as it will cut the engine! The seats had only the three holes in the bottom for adjustment, forward and backwards (The swingarm just changed the angle of the seat, not the distance!). And the outside hinges, still with acid from the cleaning before painting, in the gaskets on the doors, so the paint started peeling off after some time, around those!
And You ask craftsmen like this to construct a much more complicated Tank!!! 🤣
And also look at the elderly English motorbikes, with their constant loss of oil! And the chainwheel outside a maybe very warm brake-drum, to make sure that the chain-lubricant eventually made braking impossible! Smart! Plus it became expensive, when the teeth and chain had been worn down!
Go to the tank museum in Bevington and touch those tanks. They are bloody well made.
My mother had one of those, perhaps from 1961 or so. The windows were ok but the engine did cut if it went into a puddle. This was because the distributor was on the side of the engine that now pointed to the front and was inadequately shielded. My father fixed it. The workers in 1966 were mostly so imbued with union propaganda that it was impossible to get anything well made. There were some bad design elements in the Mini, but all design is compromise.
Your rant fails to take into consideration that it was British workers that built the first tanks ever.
@@ricardodavidson3813 I'm sure that even cars built in Britain, now mostly under German Control, may be fine, quality wise though I have seen an engine from a new MINI being taken apart and not for being brilliant, on UA-cam.
But the construction of the original Mini was at best, strange, I suppose mostly for production reasons! But the outside door-hinges being mounted before being dipped in acid for cleaning before being painted, wasn't exactly a good idea. And the outside bent plate-connections in the corners, giving it the "Streamlining of a Barndoor", wasn't that smart either. Having the gear-shifter in the bottom instead of by the wheel, as a SAAB, now the gearbox was below the engine, may have been made more functional. The idea of a car with a wheel in each corner and the turned round engine for optimum room inside was so brilliant that it was difficult to ruin it, but the British managed to make a really good try!!
@@finncarlbomholtsrensen1188 Have you ever been in a Mini? They are minute, only two steps. beyond a matchbox... The spot-weld seams were put on the outside I guess to gain a few cm inside. Had they been inside they would have required padding and the whole thing would become even more cramped. The driving position was really bad, it improved in later models with an articulated break in the steering column. The gear shift was fine where it was, it went directly into the GB mechanicals, column shifts are prone to linkage troubles. The Mini was fine for small people... like the Fiat Topolino that was even smaller, you could get 4 people in the 4-seat version if they were short, slim and you used a shoe-horn.
The gear link issues also apply to tanks, having the transmission at the rear makes good mechanical sense but linking the gear shift all the way back can be a problem. In the Cromwell and others it was done by compressed air. Having the transmission at the front means a huge drive-shaft which from a radial engine (Grant, Sherman and others) is a stupid solution. Maintenance of the gearbox means you either have removable panels that will weaken the frontal armour or you provide space for some poor soul to do it from inside. The Pz. 4 had removable panels that were angled very flat so their contribution to the frontal armour was reduced, it was mainly the end glacis plate and the brick wall in fromt of the driver. Still dodgy though. Modern tanks generally follow British/Russian practice of having the transmission at the back except when the engine is also at the front (Scorpion series, Merkava).
0:48 - That's BS straight away. You have heard about the Matilda and how it was basically 'unkillable' in the early stages of the war.
UK is an insular state, had no interest to develop tank warfare and had a really inept view of how a tank should be used.
An "insular" state with the biggest empire in the world, I don't think so.
Yer, the Germans actually drew inspiration from British interwar tank doctrine….
@@snowflakemelter1172exactly if they was the mean oppressors and subjugationist that the world makes them out to be then their equipment would have been more deadlier in it evolution as things are designed and evolve as needed..
In N. Africa, it wasn't so much a failure of British tanks as British antitank guns. The Germans had 50mm, 75mm and 88mm antitank guns while for the longest time the British only had 40mm 2 pounders.
This video makes some pretty wild claims, there were several very successful British tank designs, Crusader, Matilda II, Valentine, Churchill, Cromwell, Comet and all of them had a big impact on the war, some of them may have become outdated as the war went on but that doesn't mean they weren't a good tank for their day. If the M4 had been designed in 1940 it may also have been outdated by 1942, same as some of the early British tanks.
To suggest that the Centurion was the only successful design and that it came too late to contribute is really off.
The issue with British tank production was that there were too many variants and because production was being done on an emergency basis sometimes 4000 units of a poor design had been ordered and were in build before they corrected the issues or abandoned the design, at that point its better to have 4000 average tanks than none.
Britian produced around 30,000 tanks in WW2, and about 18,000 of them were of the successful design type (Crusader, Matilda, Valentine, Churchill, Cromwell, Comet)
M3 medium was designed in 1940 and in service with British forces Asia to the end of the war. M4 was designed but there were not sufficient machine tools available to make a turret to fit a 75mm gun in quantity.
IMHO two bad decisions and an unlucky event greatly hampered British tank decisions: The first bad decision was the insistence on having the turretring inside the tracks and not to some degree having it overhang the tracks like in most other designs. Low silhuette was given priority over forepower. Second bad decision was insisting on the gun trunnion being inside the bturret ring, mainly to having the gun being balanced in the cradle so it could be elevated by the gunners shoulder. That severely limited the size of the gun being able to be fitted inside a given turret ring. Other designs, most notably the T34/85 pushed the trunnion outside of the turretring and made it possible to mount a very big gun in a turret with a relatively small ring. The unlucky event was the fall of France in 1940 and the following rush to get tanks into the field. this was a main reason behind the scandaluos unreliability of designs like Covenanter and Crusader, but also on the the formidable 6 pounder not being in widespread service until 1942. From this alos folloows however that ithe British tank industry had the inherrent potential to build a relatively reliable tank armed with a 6 pounder and having it in widespread service by mid 1941. That would have been the no 1 on the battlefield.
Mistake made was to design all tanks to be transportible by train which restricted the wirth of the tanks which in turn restricted turret ring which restricted size of gun , most obviously seen in Churchill which could have been a British Tiger if slightly wider , Germans when transporting tanks removed their tracks and refitted them when delivered to front.
Continental loading gauge larger than British the USA larger still. Also road transporters were rare until the war progressed
IWM "From late 1942, US tanks were required in increasing numbers to make up for the deficiencies of home-grown products. Only in 1944 was British industry able to deliver a tank reasonably fit for a fast-moving battlefield, and even then it was scarcely a match for its opponents."
Britain's Struggle To Build Effective Tanks During The Second World War page
The Sherman Firefly was a specialized Tank Destroyer. Not as a general purpose tank. It had a good antitank gun, good mobility, good reliability, with good enough armor protection. It was distributed one to a tank squad to be there whenever panzers was encountered.
It had the best anti-tank gun of WW2. Only the Tortoise, which never saw combat, had a better one, the 32 pdr.
They definitely produced some of the weirdest, ugliest tanks of WW2. I am not surprised that those early designs were scrapped.
We bad effective tanks, we had a doctrine malfunction.
Tank Production Volume 396: debated on Tuesday 8 February 1944
Mr. Stokes asked the Prime Minister whether, in view of the waste of many millions of pounds on the production of ineffective tanks, he will cause a special inquiry to be made into the reasons for such waste.
The Prime Minister (Mr. Churchill) No, Sir.
Mr. Stokes May I ask the Prime Minister whether he considers it as the duty of this House to inquire into waste of public funds; and is it not about time, in view of the scores of millions wasted in this manner, that the Select Committee made a report to the House?
The Prime Minister I think that my answer covers that aspect.
Mr. Stokes In view of the most unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I will raise the matter again at the earliest possible moment.
Well the British kept thinking ww1 style trench warfare would return and also thought speed was more valuable than armor or firepower, basically it required them to fail in the face of Germany to learn. Prior to that their designers and engineers sucked at tank design... but eventually they learned.
Fighting the last war
This is balderdash. UK had the Matilda 2 at the start of the war. It had a gun that at the time was also used in anti-tank guns. It was at that moment probably the best tank in the world. The matilda 2 was still in use at the end of the war. It biggest problem was lack of firepower.
So was the m3 Stuart
IWM "From late 1942, US tanks were required in increasing numbers to make up for the deficiencies of home-grown products. Only in 1944 was British industry able to deliver a tank reasonably fit for a fast-moving battlefield, and even then it was scarcely a match for its opponents."
Britain's Struggle To Build Effective Tanks During The Second World War page
@@tomhenry897 Stuart was not in service until 1942. The Matilda 2 served from 1939 to 1945. The 2 pdr gun was state of the art anti-tank weapon in 1939. The tank's performance at Arras stopped the German advance and allowed Dunkirk to be so successful. Initially in the desert, it was equally successful, but improvements in tank engines allowed heavier armour, and the 2 pdr was inadequate fairly quickly except in the far east. The Valentine tank was in service 1940-1960. More than 8000 were built and Russia demanded as many as they could get hold off. The Sherman didn't arrive until 1942, and was also inadequately weaponed. The 76mm was arriving in UK before D day, but was not deployed until later. The only tank capable of knocking out German armour was the Firefly. The Cromwell was a cruiser tank that did sterling service through to the Korean War. The Churchill had some features that were better than most other tanks at the time, and was the basis for many of the funnies - the specials that were a major feature of the breakout from Normandy. And don't forget the Centurion, a tank that was the closest precursor to all modern tanks and was 1 month too late for WW2, but soldiered on around the world at least until the 1990s.
Because they had old generals from WW1 IN CHARGE
There were only sixteen A12 Matilda II tanks avilable for the counterattack at Arras. Not enough to put a big dent in the German breakthrough
not enough to impress th germans, but enough to create a myth.
The "disadvantages" of being rail and ship portable and able to traverse European bridges seem more like advantages to me. Tigers had to have transport tracks for rail transport and combat tracks for the real world, and were too heavy to cross many bridges at the time. And Tiger 131 at the Tank Museum was disabled after a shot from a 6 Pounder, nothing more. Not much wrong with the RR Meteor engine either, and even the Churchill had its good points. M4 was reliable, although also outgunned, had a high sillouette and was under armoured, but there were more of them. That's its saving grace.
One reason the Ardennes offensive in 1944 failed when the one in 1940 succeeded (apart from the fact that there were almost no defensive forces there in 1940) was that the 1944 tanks were too heavy to get across the bridges on some rivers without time-consuming engineer work, whereas the 1940 ones could, being much lighter. Bigger is not always better-just usually.
well 131`s turret ws jammed but carry on,the brits keep131 in running condition so the can state with pride: we`re in the posession of a proven reliable feared tank!
The Matilda and Churchill despite despite their shortcomings were effective tanks with a reasonable WWII record. The Comet was an excellent tank, great mobility, improved turret and frontal armour and a very effective gun but came a little to late to make a big impact. The Sherman was far from perfect and unable to take on German heavy armour until a British 17pdr gun was fitted, what it did have in its favour was numbers the US could churn them out faster than the British could their own, the main reason the British combined them into their own tank battalions.
IWM "From late 1942, US tanks were required in increasing numbers to make up for the deficiencies of home-grown products. Only in 1944 was British industry able to deliver a tank reasonably fit for a fast-moving battlefield, and even then it was scarcely a match for its opponents."
Britain's Struggle To Build Effective Tanks During The Second World War page
Tank Chats #70 Sherman M4A4 | The Tank Museum
ua-cam.com/video/AetDM3fJVIE/v-deo.html
Over to the highly qualified tank experts who have been trained in gaming at the University of the Bedroom .
They would rather debate WW2 than guess modern warfare
Simple the upper class officers thought tanks were only to support infantry and not to go out and do battle independently as the Germans had come to realise was the opposite with mechanised infantry to support the tanks.
Where do you think German officers came from ?
They had the Matilda, which outclassed any German tank at the time. Though it was slow and had a small caliber gun, the armor protection was superb! They should have figured out a way to upgrade it!!
British material resources and engineering talent went to their navy and air force. Not into British tank development and production. When the desert army got the M4 Sherman at the time they had the best tank in the world.
So many misconceptions and omissions in this video...
Example: 0:52 Video claims the British adopted Shermans in 1943 even though it was often outmatched by its adversaries.
Reality is that the M4 Sherman far outclasses the Panzer III. And depending on model, Shermans often outclass Panzer IVs, too, though they are generally roughly equivalent.
Reliability is where it diverges drastically. Reliability makes the Sherman far superior than a Panzer IV.
The 2 pounder became ineffective very quickly in WW2. Even the 6 pounder wasn't powerful enough. The 17 pounder however was excellent.
2 pounder was adequate till almost 42...people see the words 'two pounder' and think it must have been a pop gun but it had good muzzle velocity and better pen. than guns with a larger caliber. At 40mm it was more powerful than the Italian 47mm and at least comparable to the Russian 45mm.
As for 6 pounder it was viable to the end of the war with the right ammo. It was a better anti-tank gun than 75mm QF. Again, you can't just look at the size of the gun. 6 pounder was compact and portable and with an apcr round was quite capable of killing late war tanks at short to medium range.
1 important thing to add to this, poor tactics. If they had used better tactics during the early war, it could mitigated some of those short comings. Like what the Germans did with their tanks during the early war.
The T34 story actually demonstrates the exact problems the British had, but from a different position. In 1941 it outclassed Panzer III's and IV's but the only response to Panther and Tiger was a new turret and gun. New tanks were designed, but it was more important to keep churning out T34's than switch. The Americans thought the same way about the Sherman. Of course its easier to do this if your current model isn't seriously outdated. Also as mentioned in 1940/41 Britain's primary concern was German invasion, and being an island nation the RN and the RAF would be much more important in that role. Even if the Germans had landed and established a beachhead in southern England, naval and air interdiction of their supply lines would have been a better solution than meeting the Panzers head on. This is illustrated in the Meteor engine, based off the Merlin. Merlins were already being used in torpedo boats but were not realised for tank production until invasion fears subsided in late 41.
Experience of building wrong tank designs certainly helped them to create one of the best post-ww2 tank : the Centurion, which remained in service for many years
Why build tanks when U.S. build 57000! The a Brits figure out how to turn the 76mm upside down to fit in the Sherman, that gun round went thru anything the Germans had.
Brits build the Merlin for the P51.
They built the radar, which Americans used on everything.
They didn’t build Liberty ships either, because the U.S. built those in mass.
Technology and their servicemen were what was the most important thing Britain could give.
What an embarrassing statement in the video.
So much wrong in this video. It perpetuates quite a few myths, Tigers and Panthers dominating the battlefield is an example. The most available German tank in France in 1944 was the Panzer4 which was more than able to be defeated by a Cromwell or 75mm armed Sherman. The British built over 2000 Fireflies and and so it wasn't uncommon.
When the Sherman was introduced in 1942 it was arguably the best tank in the world, and certainly the best tank in North Africa.
The Valentine was a decent tank, capable of taking the 6 pounder and the Russians really valued them.
The Cromwell was amazingly fast abd enabled a British advance that out that of German in 1940 to shame.
The Cromwell was a good tank. It had a fantastic engine, transmission and suspension, better than its German or American contemporaries. The armour was adequate but built on the obsolescent "brick wall" principle, thick vertical slabs of armour. The Tiger was also built like this, the Panther showed the lessons learnt from the Soviets. The gun however was still the 75 mm medium (in fact a 6-pdr breech with a 75 mm barrel firing the same ammunition as the Sherman) which was no longer fit for purpose, good against anti-tank guns which represented the major threat, but incapable of dealing with the Tiger or Panther. The Comet was basically a modified Cromwell with a wider hull and a down-rated 17 pdr called the 77 mm to avoid confusion, but the projectiles were the same as the 17-pdr with a shorter cartridge. Accuracy was better than the 17-pdr and the loss of penetration power was about 15% lower but still ample. The top AT gun of all I think was the 32-pdr, made in small numbers. It never entered service as an AT gun because basically it was impossible to move in the terrain. It was used in the Tortoise assault gun. For some strange reason it was not used to up gun the Centurion when the 17-pdr was deemed inadequate to deal with the heaviest Soviet tanks, instead a 90 mm gun was installed with lower performance. Perhaps the 32-pdr cartridge was too big to handle even inside the Centurion's turret. In a trial after the war ended, the 32-pdr fired at the front of a Panther at about 1000 metres. The projectile pierced the frontal armour, traversed the crew space, wrecked the engine and burst out of the rear. That's something....
Even before the war the Brits along with most countries knew that slopping armour was the way to go, It was just quicker and easier to build it in slabs.
@@dulls8475 You are right, if we look at the tanks with cast hulls you see good deflection angles built into the design.
@@ricardodavidson3813 The other thing is that sloped armour decreased the size inside leading to very cramped tanks. It was all choices to be made fir production etc and compromises were made.
In 1940 the Vickers light tank was as good as a Panzer I or II; the A9 cruiser was not as good as a Panzer III; and the Matilda II was better than the Panzer IV.
In the early years of the war Britain's biggest problems were:
A) lack of an HE round for the 2 pounder;
B) lack of production capacity which affected quality as it rapidly expanded; and
C) lack of officers who understood mobile warfare.
The Valentine was a value engineered replacement for the Matilda and was good enough that the USSR asked for them to be kept in production and used them in combat until September '45.
When it was introduced the Churchill was as well armed and better armoured than anything the Germans had at the time. And successfully took on T34/85s in Korea. Not to mention it's rough terrain ability coming as a shock to the Germans.
The Crusader was a rushed design and suffered from reliability issues; as did the Panther and Tigers.
The Cromwell was as good as a Panzer IV, the Comet was better.
Britains armour suffered more from poor tactical usage than quality of design.
Britain had a big issue because of their lack of a substantial automotive industry.
Wrong. The British automotive industry was quite substantial and skilled. Germany had limitations in that field which they made up for by using factories in occupied countries. British military trucks were the best during the whole war, American trucks also were very good and available in huge numbers. Germany had a permanent problem of lack of motor transport, later on lack of fuel as well. In 1939 the only European army to be 100% mechanised was the British Army.
@@ricardodavidson3813 substantial, not really. England produce approximately 500,000 vehicles a year, pre war. 25% of those numbers were from Ford and Vauxhall (AKA GM). In the US, Chevrolet produced 3/4 of a million per year, total numbers were around 2.5 million per year for all manufacturers.
@@carlosspiceyweiner3305 I said substantial, not enormous like the US auto industry, but the US was not at war, it was reaping the profits from someone else's war much like they do now with Ukraine and Israel.
Who owns the factories is not important, if Ford (UK) or Vauxhall had objected to contributing to the war effort they would have been nationalised immediately and farmed out to some other group to manage. More relevant are the close ties of GM with Opel that extended beyond the entry of the US in the war, also DuPont and I. G. Farben, Standard Oil and whoever was making synthetic petrol in Germany... that's real promiscuity, close to treason but it kept the profits flowing.
Also, the design input of GM into Vauxhall and Bedford was minimal if any at all. Ford (UK) was producing Ford designs, and a lot of its stuff found its way into armoured vehicles. The Universal Carrier (aka Bren Cariier) was the most manufactured armoured vehicle of the world, ever, over 130,000 made. The trick was that the power plant, gearbox and rear axle were standard Ford commercial products, a little fragile for military use but with careful maintenance they help out very well. As Ford had factories everywhere you got essentially the same vehicle made in Australia, Canada, Argentina (supposedly) and the US under contract. There were minor differences but the main mechanicals were identical.
The best ever British tank was Mark I because there was no other tank to compare it to!
Japan mirrored Britain's problems when it comes to its land armies however Britain enjoys the privilege of having an ally that can supply you with anything you need. If Germany had tried and was actually cooperative with its Japanese allies, we would probably see the IJA equip its tank units with German heavies or even free up the lighter Chi-Nus for Home Defense so these lightly armored but very potent guns wouldve proved deadly to US tanks as by 1943, they still fielded the M3 Stuarts as the main tank of the Pacific.
I totally agree. The Mathilda looked better then it was, because other tanks (from France and Italy) were worse. The Churchill was outdated the moment it became operational. When the Germans first saw it at Dieppe, they thought that they were being fooled with a fake design. The Churchill became useful later on as an anti anti tank gun vehicle, a kind of driving bunker that gave excellent infantry support once the Germans had run out of tanks. The Cromwell was a reconaissance tank, that complemented the Sherman, which in itself was an older design that could hardly keep up with the German tanks. So in the end, the only descent British tank of WW2 was the Comet.
So what your saying is that the Churchill was an excellent tank....it was designed as an infantry tank form the start. Tank on tank was not as common as people think.
@@dulls8475 You know that this is not what I am saying. If it would have been a good tank, it would have served on after the war. Like the Sherman and the T34, which were used even decades later. The Sherman also encountered relatively few German tanks and it was also developed primarily as an infantry support tank, but that did not make it unfit to fight other tanks.
@@retepeyahaled2961 It did serve on after the war. It went to Korea. It was a very good tank once all its flaws were ironed out. Loved by the crews because they could keep the crews well protected. Its x country capability was legendary. It was a very successful camp. A Churchill disabled the first ever tiger tank that was captured.
@@dulls8475 Please do keep in mind that it is not my intention to deny the Churchill the respect that it deserves, although I do not appreciate all it's qualities. But if there is one British tank to be proud of, it would be the Centurion, which was arguably the best tank immediately after the war.
@@retepeyahaled2961 you could have fooled me! The Churchill was very popular with the men who manned them, they knew they were safer in them, than most other tanks.
Churchills were slow, but heavily armoured, and they could, with ease, cross difficult ground.
A Churchill Crocodile was a fearsome tank, it was without doubt the most effective flamethrower tank of the war.
This is rubbish. The Valentine saw service throughout the war and on nearly every front. The Matilda could and did destroy all German armour in 1940 and 1941 and was in service until the end of WW2 and was used in the Pacific by the Australians as a preferred tank. The Churchill was a brilliant tank which had the highest crew survivability rate of all Allied tanks and could operate where other tanks couldn’t. Plus it was the basis of most AVRE. The Cromwell was a fast tank which outstripped all other armour in the exploitation battles of NW Europe. Then there was the Sherman Firefly which with its 17pdr gun was the only armour capable of stopping the Tiger in NW Europe in 1944.
Yes the Brits had some lemons like the Covenantor and Crusader but to condemn all British armour is just rubbish.
Plus you have to remember British doctrine was based around three types of tanks - infantry support which were slow moving but heavily armoured; cruiser tanks which were fast and designed to exploit gaps in enemy lines; and light or reconnaissance vehicles. No one had a universal tank concept at the outset of WW2.
The US had the luxury of watching mistakes made in France and N Africa to develop their armour and doctrines. In 1939 the US couldn’t field any tanks to speak of and in 1941 had to rush into production the M3 Grant. The US placed more emphasis on the tank destroyer doctrine which later emerged as less than ideal and the M4 filled all roles of infantry support, exploration and tank on tank killing but not until 1942 in North Africa.
British tank development was retarded because so much resources were squandered on the essentially pointless strategic bombers. The Lancaster alone was taking up 10% of British industrial production.
Laughable nonsense.
@@snowflakemelter1172 obviously you're not capable of responding with more than three words, sans punctuation. Are you Joe Biden using a pseudonym?
I read several places that when the Germans recovered examples of the new Churchill's at Dieppe, they were so unimpressed they thought the British sent obsolete throwaway tanks that would not need to be evacuated.
Yes the Churchill was loved by its crews and did its job.
Its quite simple why. The inter war years, the cav stopped main stream development on armour and doctrine, when the germans where all in on it.
It doesn't matter who had the worst tanks at the beginning. Britain had the best tank at the end in the Centurion.
Between their flawed doctrine and low quality, Brit tankers were screwed for most of the War with their domestic offerings. But, Boy, they more than made up for it with the Centurion.
Once again, a topnotch video by FB. Succinct yet comprehensive and accurate.
They came to ww2 to fight the last war. They needed tanks in numbers so continued on with poor designs and it took them time to catch up.
Very good, thanks.
Started the war with the (excellent for its day) Matilda, ended with the brilliant Comet and Centurion, most in the middle were extremely poor. Excellent description as to the combined factors behind the poor design, mainly logistics, in the video.
same reason they had trouble with computers ,they couldnt make there computers leak oil
Well presented video. Good over view. I like this channel. The Brit tanks greatest defect was their leadership. the German early war tanks were hardly better, but had the best maneuver/combined arms leadership in the World. The one time the Brits got it right was Op Compass. It was just dismal plodding and slogging after that. constantly being out Generalled by the enemy.
Not true. From 1943 the British used the tanks in very imaginative ways from Hobsons funnies. They also had very good tactics from then on. Remember tank on tank was never the main aim of the British.
The Churchill tank was most certainly not based on thw A10 chassis.
Trouble is your video ignores the 25pdr , 6pdr and 17pdr all penetrated the German and Italian Tanks fair enough. The 2pdr was fastly made outdated Furthermore the Tanks had to be shipped on a ship over water to European combat . A big Supply and Logistical problem you cannot get around
Let us not forget, the USA also refused to sell us enough steel to make enough Churchill tanks etc saying instead "nah buddy you can buy our shermans instead".
ARTICLE V The Government of the United Kingdom will return to the United States of America at the end of the present emergency, as determined by the President, such defense articles transferred under this Agreement as shall not have been destroyed, lost or consumed and as shall be determined by the President to be useful in the defense of the United States of America or of the Western Hemisphere or to be otherwise of use to the United States of America.
"Over the whole period from March 1941 to September 1945, the balance in favour of the United States in the mutual aid books24 was in round terms about $21,000 millions. But by the settlement of 1945 Britain was required to pay no more than $650 millions, or £162 millions sterling."
page 547
Hyperwar British War Economy
@nickdanger3802 right, that doesn't change what I said though does it
@@chriswoods7452 I have not read anything that indicated the USA refused to sell anything to Britain as long as it could be paid for. After Britain stiffed the USA for 4.4 billion 1934 USD in WW I debt, legislation was passed banning loans and the sale of anything to any nation in a declared war. The Neutrality Act in effect in 1939 was amended Nov. 39 to allow Cash and Carry.
Lend Lease was approved for Britain and Greece March 41 and per Art V everything Lend Leased remained the property of the US until lost consumed or destroyed.
In 1945 the USA wrote off over 2/3 of Britains LL debt so the M4 tanks actually purchased by Britain were less than 1/3 of M4's lost by Britain.
Moronic British designers rejected the concept of sloped armour.
the matilda 2's frontal armour has sloping..