Tankery, The Thread

[CoffeeGrunt]

Oh don't get me wrong, they were damn cool. Just impractical as all-heck.

The US Lend-Lease program was a stroke of genius. That program, plus war reparations and the massive wartime investment in industry is almost definitely what made America a superpower during the 50s. Well, that and the A-bomb, but Lend-Lease got them a sweet load of money.

[Psychosplodge]

They wanted to win the war without fighting it

[grimmas]

Oh yeah, they neatly impoverished all their "allies" In the process leaving themselves as the preeminent power, weaponised capitalism. Worked very well too.

I was just looking a British tank production figures. We were no slouches on that front just that they were many different types so one tends to look how many in total were made. I suspect not too far behind the Germans really. There wasn't much capability to upgrade the British designs though even the mid war designs could only have a 6lb or mid length 75mm squeezed into them (the Matilda 2 could only manage a 2lb gun) so we kept having to ditch whole lines rather than keep and upgrade.

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They wanted to win the war without fighting it

In Europe definitely and they would have gotten away with it, if it wasn't for those pesky Germans declaring war on them. Not that I blame them it's probably best staying out of that sort of thing for as long as possible (it worked for Britain during the Nepoleonic Wars)

[CoffeeGrunt]

Yeah, to be fair I can understand the view of, "it's a European war, let them sort it out among themselves. We'll help our allies, but we don't want to spend any lives fighting it directly." America was pretty much the only thing that kept this country alive, though it's an unpopular thing to say. People here like to say how America jumped in at the end to steal the glory, but that's ignoring the essential trade that America kept open for us despite millions of tons of shipping being destroyed every year by the U-boats. Without that oil, food and other supplies, we wouldn't have been able to hold out much longer. No fuel means no Spitfires.

Don't get me wrong, we certainly displayed the sheer power of the British will to tell outsiders to f*ck off and dig our heels in when a problem persists, and we managed to hold ground and push the attack in other areas, but there's no doubt that Britain itself was on the ropes as it was. If we hadn't had America's help, we'd have been overwhelmed.

At least we managed to finally get tanks right with the Chally II. :P

[Psychosplodge]

You can't deny they helped, but at same time they took advantage off the situation, but so did everyone at the time if they could. Sweden did the same in how it supplied Germany.

[grimmas]

Wasn't just us either to be fair, if it wasn't for the stuff shipped to Russia they'd have not held out either. I read an analysis that showed that without the Tanks shipped in from the UK and US there was a point that the Russian would have had nothing left befote they managed to get there production up to speed.

I think the saying goes "Britain provided the time, Russia provided the blood and the USA provided the money". It should probably be material for the USA but everyone was pretty essential.

Well the Comet and Centurion were pretty good we caught on in the end.

[CoffeeGrunt]

Gotta consider how terrifying it is that Germany held out for so long against all that was pressed against it.

Centurion was a beast with a properly-trained crew, as the Israelis proved in the Six Day War.

[Psychosplodge]

I think I saw something on quest or yesterday where the one that led the charge at suez was was actually the first tank into iraq in the first gulf war.

[grimmas]

In refelction might be being a little hard on British WWII tanks. The Infantry tank line were all pretty good, designed for a war that finished 20 odd years previously but they did perform well operationally and as mentioned before the whole concept has been ressurected more recently in the form of (not tanks) IFVs

[Haighus]

Yeah, it is selling British tanks a bit short to say we've only got it right with the Challenger II- pretty much every tank from the Comet onwards was decent, if not the best in the world during it's time. The Centurion was certainly an amazing tank at the time it was built, it just came a bit too late to hit WWII.

Regarding British tanks not being terribly upgradeable during WWII, both the Cromwell and the Churchill did prove adaptable, but they did arrive quite late in the war. The Churchill especially had a hell of a lot of variants, mostly combat engineering forms like the AVRE, ARK and Crocodile. The Crocodile was one of the most feared tanks in the war too, although not by other tank crews. It is worth mentioning that a Churchill was the first Allied tank to capture a Tiger I (admittedly a fluke), and was one of the few Allied tanks that could withstand hits from the 88mm gun (although it couldn't adequately fight back, more operated as a bullet sponge whilst other units made the kill).