My son and I recently went to Tankfest at The Tank Museum, Bovington, where they were celebrating the centenary of the world's first, and largest, tank museum. In many ways that museum owes its existence to two Nobel Prize Winners, Sir Winston Churchill – who ordered the invention of the 'landship', codenamed 'tank', at Bovington in 1915 while working for the Admiralty, he authorised spending money to set up the Landship Committee invent tanks for the army based on his experience visiting the trenches. The prototype tank, Little Willie¹ created in 1916, is still displayed at the Tank Museum today. Later, in 1923, Sir Rudyard Kipling was visiting Bovington where several Great War tank remains had been gathered when he remarked that they should be preserved for the nation and a tank museum established, and lo it came to pass.

Tankfest was a weekend event which involved examples of historic tanks from all around the world driving around an arena with displays of the evolution of tanks from the Great War onwards.

Mark IV (1917)

This is a replica Mark IV tank made for film War Horse (2011); the museum owns several Great War tanks but uses the replica for moving display as it is far less delicate than the originals. Several British Great War tanks ended up in Russia during the Russian Civil War when Britain was fighting against the Bolsheviks. If Russia keeps running out of its more recent tanks and keeps pressing older and older vehicles into service in the War of Putin's Ego, with T-54s first designed in 1945 confirmed as being used at present, how long will it be before they send some Great War tanks to the front lines? This is not as daft a proposition as it may first appear as Maxim machine guns, invented in 1884, have been pressed into use in the conflict on both sides².

M3 (1941)

If you think of the American Armed Forces, what immediately springs to mind? Their habit of waiting a couple of years and seeing who is winning before joining any World War³? Films containing training montages in which groups of cadets chant 'I don't know but I've been told' repeatedly⁴? Or the logistics department's lack of any imagination? During the Second World War the US Army named everything with a Model or 'M' number, including tanks. So their standard light tank was the M3, their (different) standard medium tank was the M3, their standard halftrack was the M3, their anti-tank gun was the M3, they also had an anti-aircraft gun called M3, a howitzer called M3, an autocannon called M3, a submachinegun named M3, a tripod called M3 and a knife called M3 and chances are their kitchen sink was also called M3⁵. Churchill thought that calling everything under the sun 'M3' was utterly ludicrous and, when the British army purchased and later lend-leased tanks from the US, decided to give them names to avoid confusion. The decision was made to name them after US Generals, particularly from the US Civil War (which is odd as these men are responsible for killing more Americans than anyone else). The idea stuck, and was quickly adopted by US armed forces who to this day still name tanks after US Generals – although the US Army's current light tank/infantry fighting vehicle is now the M3 Bradley – so some things never change...

At the start of the war, the US didn't have an existing tank industry and so had to learn how to make them, and initially struggled with making turrets, which is why the M3 Grant and M3 Lee had their main gun in a sponson rather than a turret. This, however, is the light tank M3 Stuart, also nicknamed the 'Honey' because it had air conditioning during the desert war. Incidentally if the Stuart went from the Tank Museum to London, it would need to travel along the M3.

Churchill (1942)

The aim of tank design is to find the right balance between armour, armament and mobility. British tanks have traditionally concentrated on being heavily armoured, with powerful guns⁶, sacrificing mobility. Especially if the engine was made by British Leyland. It was long said of Britain's Chieftain tank that it was the best tank in the world, provided it broke down in the right place on the battlefield.

Following the loss of virtually all of Britain's tanks on the beaches of Dunkirk, tanks to quickly re-equip the entire army were needed urgently and so tank development and production was rushed as an emergency stopgap. The Churchill tank initially had a very poor engine, leading Sir Winston Churchill to exclaim, 'Big, ugly and unreliable – so they named it after me.'

This is unfair as, when it was given a decent engine – a Rolls Royce Meteor engine, based on the Rolls Royce Merlin engine that all the best Second World War aircraft⁷ had - the Churchill was a good tank designed to be able to cope with difficult terrain and with a virtually unrivalled ability to climb.

AMX-13 (1952)

This AMX-13 is a French tank, which you can tell as it is flying the Tricolour of Blue, White and Red. The tank is heavily beweaponed but has sacrificed armour in order to make it faster. This enables it to surrender quicker than any other tank it is likely to encounter on the battlefield.

This probably would have been for the best as this tank wasn't very good, with its oscillating turret particularly vulnerable. Israel had about 400 AMX-13 tanks before the Six Day War in 1967 and, after seeing their battle effectiveness, promptly sold the surviving tanks to Singapore in 1968. That isn't to say that the tank hasn't had any military victories – it was reported in 2020 that in Indonesia one valiantly ran over a costermonger's cart when it accidentally crashed into street vendor's stall and some parked motorbikes.

Tanks – the bullies of the battlefield who, like all bullies, need to be laughed at. Next time I'll continue my look at tanks through the last century, starting with the Matilda II. This may look like an unremarkable tank, but it is in fact a little girl with telekinetic powers created by Roald Dahl^{[Citrus Fruit Needed]8}.

Bluebottle

17.07.23 Front Page

Back Issue Page