The Soviets called the Lee “A grave for 6 brothers”, but it did good work for the British 8th Army in 1942, and later in Burma.
The Matilda did very well until the 88 was used against it. Later German AT weapons were also capable of defeating it, obviously. Again, it did well in the Pacific, with the Australians.
I read of a Japanese tank that took out two of three Shermans on one island. It wasn’t a Chi-ha, it was, I think, its predecessor, with the 37mm. It was an ambush, obviously, and it got away.
During the Battle of France there was a penetration of the German lines by a combined British and French armor force called “Frankforce” during the Battle of Arras. Here the 88mm AA guns were used in the AT role to stop the Matilda II’s which helped stop the penetration. Again a HE shell for the 2pdr gun would have been valuable in the action. To have an infantry tank without HE capability was short sighted. Also, the narrow turret ring of the Matilda II limited its ability to be upgraded.
With the Lee and Grant tanks, they came at a time the British needed vehicles with better armament. The US 37mm was roughly equal to the 2pdr (40mm), but had an HE shell. The later cannister shell was used well against infantry and soft skinned vehicles. The sponson mounted 75mm gave alot more flexiblity in North Africa, but not as much if it was turret mounted. Having both an AP and HE capability was important. Remember the Pz IV’s in North Africa were still primarily armed with the short version of the 75mm and the major tank carried gun of the Afrika Korps was the long 50mm. Copying the STG from the Germans, the Italians came up with the Semovente in 1942 to enable a 75mm gun to be carried by an AFV to combat the Lee/Grants and later Shermans. The tall silhouettes of these tanks were a major problem. The Valentine tank could go hull down very easily and be protected from attack.
Ah Yes! The zone sweep! We used to do three guns shooting HE and three guns shooting WP a lot of the time. I remember doing a six round zone sweep once, and thought I was gonna die after loading 54 rounds weighing in at 98lb. a piece as fast as you could. I’d be dead in six rounds if I had to do that now! Did you ever shoot the carge three greenbag from an M110? A real window breaker! Somewhere I have a picture of me standing next to a zone three charge for an M107. That charge was a big as I was!
…still think it was suicide to put men in those Japanese tankettes and send them to battle…wait a minute, suicide was part of their battle doctrine—never mind…
There is a very interesting point that my small mind is chasing after in this forum- great by the way- and I had formed this opinion before:
Tank technology is kind of straight forward.
Infantry support gets us all the way from the beginning of the 1900’s thru the middle of 1941, except that Guderian goes creative and discovers that you can win battles by simply running over people at 30 miles an hour. And shooting a small caliber gun a lot.
Exit the first generation of sponson mounted rolling forts.
Then the race begins: 20 mm vs. 20 mm armor, 37 mm vs. thicker, 50 mm vs. applied armor, high velocity 50s vs. KV’s and so forth, which is the MBT era.
So what gets left by the wayside are under armed, under powered, overweight, under protected or inflexible ie. unable to be upgraded designs.
I still think British Cruiser tanks are not a good thing. I’ll give the Japanese a pass under the theory that these were armored cars. The Italians seemed to have settled on weapons carriers, and hey, they lost.
Obviously the Germans were the vanguard of innovation and excellence, and the Russians created a nearly perfect answer to the above parameters if you were willing to suffer terrible losses.
The worst “Tank”?.. The movie with James Garner helping his son escape from prison.
Manny, there seems to be a problem with quoting you???
Nobody is using this old girl anymore. This vehicle and the Sheridan M551 used the Shillelagh (sic) missile system left over from the cancelled MBT 70. Only 500 A2’s were built. The main gun would fire a guided (sometimes) missile or a conventional HEAT, WP or CANNISTER (152mm) round . The basic load was 13 missiles and 33 main gun rounds.
The missile system was unreliable, sending many of us hunting for bunkers on table 7 at Graf. Target designate, stabilization systems were unreliable and dangerous, laser range finder and fire control were unreliable, etc. Most of the Battalion was ESC red for my entire tour. But, when it worked, it was awesome.
These tanks were withdrawn from USAEUR in the late 70’s, stateside units were disolved by 1980 I believe. The idea was our units would pick off Ivan at long range (missiles) when the Warsaw Pact streamed thru the Fulda Gap, sitting in overwatch positions, while the A1’s would slug it out inside normal engagement ranges. This was the Jimmy Carter Army…no money in the budget, weapons were worn out and non functional, morale was low, equipment and training was dismal. A very tough time in our military history.
…If you take the apostrophe out of “Manstein’s Revenge” you should be able to quote me…didn’t some American units use a later model of the M60 w/ applique armor in the first Gulf War?
I believe the Marines used A3’s with addon armor and some other goodies into the 90’s?
The A2 was the real lemon. I crewed A1’s and A3’s as well, they were excellent shooters and were very reliable. The A3 had the excellent Texas Instruments thermal sight, which IMHO, was a far superior system compared to the Hughes TIS fielded in the Abrams (I’ve shot off of both systems as a gunner). We did some complaining about this during the XM1 prototype test, but, the contract had apparently already been awarded to Hughes based on …? (price and/or political influence)??? i dunno…
…based on a lot of pics and footage I have seen during both Gulf Wars…one could make the argument that the T-54/55 or T-62 was one of the worst tanks ever fielded in combat based on how it fared against Allied armor (kill/loss ratio)…and who cares if the M1 was superior in every aspect; that wasn’t the question…lol…
never really looked an an “A-2” up close and personal, but auumed that they used the same gun launcher as the Sheridan did. Am I correct? I could tell you a lot of bad stories about the gun launcher system, and even more about the manufactureer processes. The guy that designed this thing ought to have been shot.
I will have to say the A7V Battle Tank, fielded by the germans during WWI.
It was a rushed into production way to soon. Everything was basicly how much firepower can we get without worrying about anything else.
It had a 5.7 cm gun and 6 or 7 machine guns a crew of 18.
a road speed of aprox 5mph and could basicly travel only on flat hard surfaces because it had a very limited ground clearance and tended to belly down and stick in the mud. No lift at the front idler which caused its nose to dig in if it got into a trench or hole.
I think its the worse because it was pretty much incapable of doing the job it was suppose to do. break through the no mans land and through the trenches…
I know of one M88 that was turned into a cinder by that missile! Only problem was that they were locked on a dead still M4 Sherman. The viewing public thought that that was what was supposed to happen and nobody ever told them different. Wonder who got to pay for that one?
At one time there was some experimentation with a new low recoil 90mm gun built by Rhinemetal on the M551’s. Korea was seriously thinking about buying a bunch of used ones from us and building a new turret. But that 90mm gun wouldn’t fix the other problems. The hull was weak up front, and there were issues in the drive train that just were not an easy fix. The tank was seriously down on horsepower, and the transmission was never designed to take on another 200 horsepower let alone 300 more. The XM 250 gearbox just wasn’t up to heavy armor even though it was a solid desin. There is a gearbox on the shelf that could easilly be adapted to this aplication, but alas the hull is the real weak spot here.
The gun launcher itself was a poor design, and believe it or not nobody knew about this till the mid seventies! Talk about communication! The making of spare parts for it just didn’t work out due all the hand fitting that had to be done. The solution was to completely change out the main gun instead of just fixing it. Then the main gun would be completely rebuilt in the states. Still there isn’t much of anything more dramatic than watching a Sheridan let go of a can round into a street front two yards out. An absolute attention getter.
