Britain At War – Tanks

For me, tanks are a big turn on. Britain invented and developed them circa 1916 so, this year is the centenary of British tank development. With that depth of background, one would have thought that the history of the British tank would be one of continuous and sometimes dramatic improvement.

Not so. We did little to nothing between the wars to produce anything like an effective tank. Effective that is in terms of a reliable engine with reliable rolling gear and above all, armour of a thickness sufficient to withstand the impact of at least some battlefield artillery used by European armies and, equally as important; an effective high velocity cannon.

By the start of WW2, the Germans were not much better off, altho’ they had numbers of fairly inferior tanks – inferior that is to the French army who at that time had some of the best tanks in the world and plenty of them. They just did not use them with any serious intent.

As the war developed, one of the better tanks on the Allied side was the Sherman – altho’ with severe limitations. This was an American tank equipped with a petrol engine which because of its readiness to set the tank and its fuel alight, inspired the Germans to refer to it as the ‘Tommy Cooker’. A ‘Tommy’ being the German soubriquet for a British soldier.

The Sherman wasn’t good enough to take on a German panzer Mk4 or, a Tiger until the British replaced it’s standard 75mm gun with a high velocity 17 pounder weapon and renamed the tank, the Sherman Firefly. The ordinary Sherman and the Firefly looked identical and identifying which was which, for the Germans, led to serious and very often fatal mistakes.

The British began eventually to catch up with the Germans with ever more efficient and capable tank designs like the Churchill and its successor the Comet, which came into service rather too late in the war to be a decisive weapon.