RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

A Cromwell or Centurion would be a great addition to any ones tank collection

what about the comet with its 17 pounder and the Churchill did get stuck on the beaches of diepe they could not move in the loose gravel costing many canadian lives

What about the Matilda, gave the Germans a run for their money at Arras and early in the desert?

wargar wrote: What about the Matilda, gave the Germans a run for their money at Arras and early in the desert?

The Matidla was good in that the German tanks couldn't penetrate its armour, unfortunatly it had a gun that couldn't penetrate a paper bag. Once the Germans started using their 88's as antitank guns then the Matidas armour was no longer a problem.

Come to think of it the 88's were still knocking out our tanks with ease by the end of the war.

Says a lot about UK tank design during the war -

Hmmmm our  best tank (Matilda) is useless against German armour and is getting knocked out by those 88's. I know we'll give them less armour and another useless gun.

I do like the Churchill and Comet tanks but i could never understand why they didnt have sloped frontal armour instead of that "bullet trap" step arrangement?  If the armour sloped on the front wouldnt it have great protection for the weight of armour and allow more room inside the tanke for the driver, radio/hull gunner and ammo storage?

Crispy wrote: I do like the Churchill and Comet tanks but i could never understand why they didnt have sloped frontal armour instead of that "bullet trap" step arrangement?  If the armour sloped on the front wouldnt it have great protection for the weight of armour and allow more room inside the tanke for the driver, radio/hull gunner and ammo storage?

Good point crispy. I'm always puzzled as to why it was the Russians that recognized the advantages of sloped armour before the Germans.

John

At the time it was thought that there was little chance of a shot hitting the armour at 90 degrees so in effect the armour will always be sloped to incoming shots.

If all the experts at the time thought that there was no benifit in having sloped armour then you'd have to be a bit mad to go against the experts. Fortunatly there was a madman in Russia and people were prepared to listen to him. The Germans didn't see the benifit in sloped armour until they ran into the T-34. The Western Allies only encounted sloped armour in 1944 when they came up against the Panther.

unfortunatly it had a gun that couldn't penetrate a paper bag

That's not true, the 40mm 2pdr was one of the best AT guns in the world in 1940. In a fair fight between British and German Armour, the Matilda had the edge over the Panzer IIIF and Panzer IV D/E/F1
Its biggest downfall was that it was too small a gun to fire a HE round (the 57mm 6pdr suffered from poor HE perfomance also) and the BESA co-axial mg was massively out-ranged by the 88, so the Matilda's crew had to score a direct hit on the 88 (ie not just the gun shield!) in order to knock it out.

A12 Matilda, 6 of them held off Rommel's DAK in Libya or Egypt for day to cover a retreat.  The 3 left behind suffered track damage and weren't destroyed.  The Churchill's appeared to be an improved version of it to me. 

I still cannot understand why we didn`t improve on the Crusader.Everything was there! Just look at its profile,its bodyshape,its speed.It just needed a bigger gun,thicker armour and uprated engine,but no,and the Germans kept using them for target practice.Mind you the Crusader would be good in 1/16,along with a bit of artistic licence!