British Tank design and philosophy

[Murph]

The British have historically gone their own way in tank design, ranging from really really bad ideas (cruiser vs "I" tank), the Churchill tank, the Valentine, to really really good tanks: Centurion.  Why is it that the British tank corps has had such a checkered history of mostly bad to mediocre tanks to world beating superb vehicles?  The US tank designs are much the same, and will be a different topic.  Just discuss the Limey tanks here please!

[Mike1158]

I think the Cent was pretty much in line with the latterday WW2 doctrine copied from German tanks. Pantehr etc.  Chieftain was very much in line with the phylosophy of defending in 'bounds' from pre-prepared positions with overwatch.  Possibly why Chieftain had such ludicrous side armour.

 

So, Centurion on offense and Chieftain on defence.

 

Being hobbled by politics is something most tanks, or anything else gets rafted.  I think rafted is perhaps the wrong word but you probably get what I mean.

[Stuart Galbraith]

I don't think there was anything seriously wrong with the Valentine, particularly  when it was upguned. Churchill was slow, but viewed as the British equivalent to the Stug, again, it was perfectly fine, particularly  when they got to the Mk7 and stuck a flamer on it.

As for Centurion, there was an excellent thread I was reading about it on Twitter. Basically, the driving hand behind Centurion was an Australian. A pleasing discovery, considering his countrymen got such fine service out of it in Vietnam.

https://x.com/FennellJW/status/1874445297344286969?t=ZGpeHvat2YmZaHoqw2Dqjg&s=19

[Murph]

Starting with the 5/2 model of the Centurion, I would argue that it was the equal of pretty much any tank in the world at the time.  

[Stuart Galbraith]

Id argue beginning with the Mk3. The 20 pounder had superior anti armour capability than even the American 90mm at the time, at least in APDS IIRC.

 

Edited January 7 by Stuart Galbraith

[Mighty_Zuk]

On 1/5/2025 at 7:03 PM, Murph said:

The British have historically gone their own way in tank design, ranging from really really bad ideas (cruiser vs "I" tank), the Churchill tank, the Valentine, to really really good tanks: Centurion.  Why is it that the British tank corps has had such a checkered history of mostly bad to mediocre tanks to world beating superb vehicles?  The US tank designs are much the same, and will be a different topic.  Just discuss the Limey tanks here please!

Don't know. Never used any British tank. Or any tank at all, let alone for warfare. But I always assume that the engineering work is good, and flaws come from either poor development management (how you work your engineers), or what's asked the product to be.

[Stuart Galbraith]

In WW2 it was a 'lets fire it out the door because we need as many as possible' attitude. You can see how many we expended on our war in North Africa to see this was the intent. It was only later when we started getting American product, there was a determination to also make the damn things reliable, which ours suffered in comparison. Which by and large Comet and Centurion were, at least when new and driven in temperate regions.

Chieftain gets a lot of grief about reliablity, but there were certain circumstances that are seldom discussed. For example, I know of one Chieftain parked in open storage at Bovington for 20 years, that was reactivated in a few hours and proved reliable enough. Mr Hewes seems to do it all the time. With a good mechanic, there is little seemingly that cant be solved with them (other than not filling the governor, which allows everything to run away and blow up).

The real problem I think was they were over maintained and underdriven. There is a story related to me by someone from the 4/7th Dragoons, that the C/O was of private means, and was utterly dissatisfied with the track mileage given to him by the Socialists. So he paid for extra fuel to keep his tanks as active as possible. And remarkably, it seemed to work. The more they were driven, the more reliable they seemed to be. What really seemed to kill the L60 was being left in a shed to deteriorate or accumulate oil in parts it shouldnt get any.

As for what its like now, we have no tank industry, its arguably predominantly German, and we import all the major bits from there. Like most of the rest of our industries, we all but threw it away for ideological reasons. That old killer, 'we can get it cheaper from abroad.'

[Interlinked]

Centurion reliability is good... compared to WW2 British standards. In all honesty Centurion engine and gearbox reliability was quite poor, and Chieftain reliability from exercises where they were run all the time, was also poor. It was a systemic problem inherent to the L60's design that can't be handwaved away, not with the "multifuel" excuse (it had no bearing on the L60's failure points), and certainly not with the "underdriven" excuse. The Meteor's reliability was also poor, in the Centurion at least, I don't have data for Comet.

Speaking of the Australians getting fine use of Centurions, this Australian logbook is representative of the level of reliability that late Centurions showed in Vietnam.

https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/blog/recent-acquisitions-centurion-tank-log-books

Quote

Clocked up 861 miles to June 1971;

Performed with 2 engine and 3 gearbox changes;

Underwent 132 individual modifications at 4 Base Workshop Battalion, Bandiana.

This tank did not require 2 engine and 3 gearbox changes to cover 861 miles (1,385 km) because of battle damage. Its only significant battle damage was an RPG strike... on its gun barrel. You can assume that other Centurions would need that many engine/gearbox changes in 3 times the distance covered and it would still be awful by postwar standards. Perhaps Centurion was at about the same level of reliability as a Sherman, which for a wartime tank when the Brits were operating them, was good. But wartime reliability in a postwar tank is not an achievement.

[Stuart Galbraith]

15 minutes ago, Interlinked said:

Centurion reliability is good... compared to WW2 British standards. In all honesty Centurion engine and gearbox reliability was quite poor, and Chieftain reliability from exercises where they were run all the time, was also poor. It was a systemic problem inherent to the L60's design that can't be handwaved away, not with the "multifuel" excuse (it had no bearing on the L60's failure points), and certainly not with the "underdriven" excuse. The Meteor's reliability was also poor, in the Centurion at least, I don't have data for Comet.

Speaking of the Australians getting fine use of Centurions, this Australian logbook is representative of the level of reliability that late Centurions showed in Vietnam.

https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/blog/recent-acquisitions-centurion-tank-log-books

This tank did not require 2 engine and 3 gearbox changes to cover 861 miles (1,385 km) because of battle damage. Its only significant battle damage was an RPG strike... on its gun barrel. You can assume that other Centurions would need that many engine/gearbox changes in 3 times the distance covered and it would still be awful by postwar standards. Perhaps Centurion was at about the same level of reliability as a Sherman, which for a wartime tank when the Brits were operating them, was good. But wartime reliability in a postwar tank is not an achievement.

What era are we talking about here? I didnt think the red top engines, the Mk13a's, were supposed to be  bad.

Well yes, for the time that WAS good. And I dont think even then anyone was defending a 65 mile operational range, but that was inherent with post WW2 petrol engined tanks. The M48A1 was reputedly only 70 miles itself.

[Interlinked]

By then, L60 was okay. Around the same level as the Leopard's engine in the 1960's, which should be considered respectable given the L60's congenital issues, but is otherwise uncompetitive internationally.

I only assume that Centurion must have eventually caught up to a late war Sherman in reliability if its typical MDBF was at least triple of that Australian Centurion, not stating it for a fact. Considering that that Australian Centurion went through its original engine and one replacement, and its original gearbox plus two replacements, the failure interval was worse than Panthers when they were at their most dire.

For a tank in the 1970's, late war Sherman reliability was not impressive. It was still not good in the '60s, or in the '50s, but it would at least be acceptable in 1945-1948 when the Centurion Mark 1 was first tested, but its reliability was even worse back then.

EDIT: To top it off, during the Centurion's glorious service in the 1950's and 1960's as Britain's biggest tank export success since the Vickers 6-ton, it was widely regarded as a maintenance hog and burdensome to operate. One might even go so far as to argue that Leopard's subsequent success on the export market was because Centurion operators got tired of the upkeep and wanted something dependable for once.

Edited January 7 by Interlinked

[Stuart Galbraith]

2 hours ago, Interlinked said:

By then, L60 was okay. Around the same level as the Leopard's engine in the 1960's, which should be considered respectable given the L60's congenital issues, but is otherwise uncompetitive internationally.

I only assume that Centurion must have eventually caught up to a late war Sherman in reliability if its typical MDBF was at least triple of that Australian Centurion, not stating it for a fact. Considering that that Australian Centurion went through its original engine and one replacement, and its original gearbox plus two replacements, the failure interval was worse than Panthers when they were at their most dire.

For a tank in the 1970's, late war Sherman reliability was not impressive. It was still not good in the '60s, or in the '50s, but it would at least be acceptable in 1945-1948 when the Centurion Mark 1 was first tested, but its reliability was even worse back then.

EDIT: To top it off, during the Centurion's glorious service in the 1950's and 1960's as Britain's biggest tank export success since the Vickers 6-ton, it was widely regarded as a maintenance hog and burdensome to operate. One might even go so far as to argue that Leopard's subsequent success on the export market was because Centurion operators got tired of the upkeep and wanted something dependable for once.

I certainly wouldnt claim L60 was worldbeating. I do think the claims about its reliablity have been over emphasised. As far as the track miles, I think we will have to beg to differ. Reading the memoirs of a British Chieftain crewman from the 1970's, its forgotten how dire Britains economic prospects were, and quite how savage the cuts to the allowance of training were.

Well again, you can look at the Mr Hewes videos. He loves Centurions, the other guys he works with are not so keen, because they are maintainance intensive, its true. On the other hand, they are some 70 years old now. That they are converting them all to modern electrical distributor caps from Jaguar cars points to the other issue, Lucas electric.   ive not read of it as a problem in the 1950's however. It would be interesting to learn if Merlins and Griffons have the same issue..

The main thing ive read about them were they were hard to drive. Which with tiller suspension and a manual crash gearbox, I cannot wonder at it. But its a mistake I think to regard Centurion as a modern tank, its a WW2 one.  That it was able to compete with M48 says something about it being a good design, but nobody I ever read said it was fun to drive, certianly compared to postwar American tanks. It would be an  interesting experience to drive one back to back with a T54.

Well tbh, Im not buying the idea that it was an insurmountable problem as far as reliability. The Swedes and the Israelis successfully modified them to take a 'modern' powerpack and transmission without any real problems. The netherlands looked at it, and kept the tanks in service without updating them, and were also operating the Leopard 1 and the leopard 2 latterly at the same time. The Danes were using Centurion Mk5's till the end of the cold war, and im sure availablity wasnt impressive, but then it doesnt seem to have been regarded as bad enough to do something about it.

That the Canadians replaced theirs with Leopard 1a3 was regarded as suspect at the time according to some of the people ive talked on here, and I dont think anyone has made a good case that their Centurions couldnt have been similarly updated as the Israeli ones were to last out the 1980's. At least the Australians could plausibly claim to have thrashed theirs in vietnam, and had to go as far as to source new hulls from New Zealand for some of them damaged by mines and RPG's. Replacing theirs was probably unavoidable.

If there is a mistake here, its that we didnt offer an upgrade path of our own with L60, which proved perfectly adequate pushing Vickers MkIII around. Perhaps they regarded it as shooting themselves in the foot as they were trying to sell Chieftain and Vickers Main Battle Tanks.

Edited January 7 by Stuart Galbraith

[Interlinked]

I can see that nothing can be done.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Nothing there I havent posted that I havent gotten from the works of Simon Dunstan or Rob Griffin.

[Markus Becker]

I'd just like to give a shout out to the Valentine:

- same powerful gun as the Matilda 

- de facto same excellent armor as the Matilda

- easier to make than the Matilda

- faster, ok less slow than the Matilda

- very reliable(very unusual for UK early war tanks)

- very improvable unlike the Matilda 

 

Unfortunately the improvements came just a bit too late. The 3 men turret became available when the 2pdr was past his shelf life and the 6pdr/75mm reduced the turret crew back to two men. Then came the M4 and the Cromwell and it was the end of the Valentine as a tank. 

[Stuart Galbraith]

I think Valentine perhaps benefitted from A9 and A10 arriving first with the same suspension and drive train, and which broke down so often, even the Germans refused to used captured examples.

For me, my first love is Matilda II. I think it was the most battle worthy tank in France in 1940. Unfortunately we only had 14 there...

[Stuart Galbraith]

Official British MOD report on the 6 Day war.

https://archive.org/details/the-arab-israeli-war/page/50/mode/2up?q=centurion

The Centurion Tanks - The Centurion tank came out of this encounter with flying colours. While insufficient details are available of both the range, calibre and type of anti-tank fire encountered and also

the ranges at which enemy tanks were destroyed for an analysis of its effectiveness, its armour kept out most anti-tank fire, its gun

and ammunition destroyed enemy tanks and its mobility was adequate.

Its reliability - particularly under harsh desert conditions - was better than expected, The main criticism levelled against it was its lack of range of operation. The vay the Israelis used the tank opens up a new concept in the accurate use of the gun at long ranges. Very few caught fire when hit.

 

What's most remarkable, in 1967, these were all Meteor engined ones.

[old_goat]

Arab-Israeli war experience is not a good indicator of how good a tank or any other weapon is. Even in the 1973 war, Centurions performed better than T-62s despite that in this war, technically the T-62 was far better than it. 

[Stuart Galbraith]

2 minutes ago, old_goat said:

Arab-Israeli war experience is not a good indicator of how good a tank or any other weapon is. Even in the 1973 war, Centurions performed better than T-62s despite that in this war, technically the T-62 was far better than it. 

Considering the dearth of training the Soviets gave on their tanks took (It was something like 3 shots a year per gunner in East Germany, even in the 1980's), im far from convinced the exact same results wouldnt have been repeated in 1973 across the Inner German Border, at least in the early stages before the reserves got called up.

The Soviets always had two options when their clients fell on their ass. In 1973 they blamed the training and tactics that were inadequately applied. In the case of the Syrians they might have had a point, because the Syrians reputedly were using their BMP's like tanks, and suffered the consequences. In 1986 they went the other way. The Libyan air defence system comprehensively failed, ergo they lied completely about it. 'The Libyans shot down 27 Americanski's' the report to moscow replied. Instead they might have bagged one, or possibly it was an F111 that went out of control dodging a missile. Slight exaggeration then.

I recall that when the Brixmis head of mission was to report to the commander of GSFG in the early 1980's (I believe it was Zaytsev at the time), he was told to make himself memorable. So he raised how often Soviet equipment failed comprehensively in the hands of the Arabs, and he didnt have a lot of good excuses for it either.

[Stefan Kotsch]

36 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

(It was something like 3 shots a year per gunner in East Germany, even in the 1980's)

To avoid wear and tear, 100 mm ammunition was actually only fired once every six months. Instead, the shooting training was carried out with a 23 mm insert weapon (14,5 for T-72). Several shootings were carried out over the course of the six months ('training semester'). Most of the shooting took place while driving. General shooting training even took place two to three times a week on special training grounds and without movement with coax. At least once at night.

@Tactical military exercises with 'combat shooting' (life firing exercise) took place every six months. Day or night. Once every six months for a tank platoon or company or battalion or regiment. LFX by the battalion and regiment was usually carried out with 100/125 mm ammunition.

Edited January 9 by Stefan Kotsch

[Stuart Galbraith]

Just now, Stefan Kotsch said:

To avoid wear and tear, 100 mm ammunition was actually only fired once every six months. Instead, the shooting training was carried out with a 23 mm insert weapon (14,5 for T-72). Several shootings were carried out over the course of the six months ('training semester'). Most of the shooting took place while driving. General shooting training even took place two to three times a week on special training grounds and without movement with coax. At least once at night.

Yeah, ive read you did a lot of insert shooting to be fair. I remember the 1985 shooting of a USMLM member was on what I think was a sub calibre range at Ludwigslust.

Once again though, its not really life firing training, and its that which you really need to get a good drill going. Particularly for manually loaded tanks like the T55 and T62. For a later T series tank with an autoloader, yes, perhaps slightly less important.

[Stefan Kotsch]

2 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

need to get a good drill going. Particularly for manually loaded tanks like the T55 and T62. For a later T series tank with an autoloader, yes, perhaps slightly less important.

It makes no difference to the gunner whether an autoloader is installed. And shooting with 23/14.5 mm ammunition is very similar to shooting with 100/125 mm ammunition. Even if the shooting distance is only a maximum of 1300 m.

See also my added addition in the last post.

 

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

11 minutes ago, Stefan Kotsch said:

It makes no difference to the gunner whether an autoloader is installed. And shooting with 23/14.5 mm ammunition is very similar to shooting with 100/125 mm ammunition. Even if the shooting distance is only a maximum of 1300 m.

See also my added addition in the last post.

 

 

It may make no difference to the gunner, but it DOES make a difference to training the loader of a tank that is manually loaded. That plays a substantial role in the effectiveness of any manually loaded tank.

I idly wonder if the Soviet love of the autoloader was partly to remove the necessity to train loaders, a not insignificant burden in western tanks, particularly those with 2 part ammunition.

How many rounds were you firing on each platoon deployment, and was that any different from what the Soviets were doing?

Edited January 9 by Stuart Galbraith

[Stefan Kotsch]

32 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

make a difference to training the loader of a tank that is manually loaded

In my experience there was no real problem here. The loader was the least of all the problems. This could all be practiced in the 2-3 weekly general training sessions.

[old_goat]

1 hour ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Considering the dearth of training the Soviets gave on their tanks took (It was something like 3 shots a year per gunner in East Germany, even in the 1980's),

Sounds like a myth. Even here in hungary (most poorly trained army in WP) our tankists shot far more than that. For T-54/55, it was mostly with reduced charge HE. If they could hit their targets with that, they wouldnt have any problems with full charge ammo.

As for the arabs and their incompetence... Not a myth or excuse for soviets why their stuff perform badly. Some of them came here too for training for air defense equipment. I talked with a guy who trained them. He had very bad opinions. At first, it looked that they pay attention to training. But later when it was their turn to demonstrate what they learned, they failed utterly. They didnt even care about what the instructors said to them. 

[Stuart Galbraith]

Maybe in the East they didnt have the breadth of roles they had in NATO Armies, such as managing the radios, reloading the guns, making the tea, etc. Reading armoured farmer, the loader was I believe was regarded as a gateway role into learning all the other skills in the tank, including maintenance.

  I dont think a high rate of fire or making sure the right round is stowed correctly and put up the spout the right way, should be easily brushed away as insignificant myself. Particularly considering the high rate of fire Israeli tanks crews achieved with Centurion and Patton and Supersherman, which generally the Arabs did not seem to achieve in their tanks. In fact I think the report on the US Army evaulation of T62 pointed to significant problems with loading the gun with an arm opposite to how everyone else seemed to do it, and the gun with sight being taken off target every time the gun was reloaded, or indeed the exceptionally confined loaders position. Something that Centurion, for all its flaws, never had cited against it a roomy well laid out crew compartment.