Still using riveted construction, no attempt to slope it. The gun is jerryrigged to fire American ammunition. Meanwhile the Americans, Germans, and Soviets are producing cast and welded designs. The German tanks that didn't use sloped armor had their design origins in the 30s.
First, Cromwell was an okay tank.
Second, the UK did not have the industrial potential that the US or USSR or Germany had. At least, not the heavy industrial potential. Rivet = easier than casting.
>the UK did not have the industrial potential that the US or USSR or Germany had
Lolwut
Compare their naval tonnage to German, for example. Better guns, better armor, and more of it.
Forges for making naval shit not quite the same as forges for making tonks. It's not like the bongs didn't know how to forge tank armor, they just ran the numbers and in the grand scheme of things it's better to just rivet.
Industrial potential also involves trained people. War starts and suddenly we have to make loads of ships, planes, ammo, tanks, etc and don't have the people to do it as many joined the forces. Riveting was much easier than welding in those days, so any noob could be quickly trained to do it.
Riveting with a rivet gun is easy but hand riveting is not. That's why rosie the riveter used a gun while big tam on the clyde shipyard used a sledgehammer.
Anyway its not like the Russians didn't have these same issues its just their method was just to give a Babushka with no training a MMA welding machine and have her weld plates on a T-34. I used to be TA in a trade school and I've seen twinks in their first week weld better than Malyshev wartime T-34s
I meant Uralvagonzavod but whatever slavic grandmothers can't weld
>red hot rivet
>tosses it over
>hammered in
>zero fricks given
wow almost like they are a naval power or something being situated on an island
UK was outproducing the USSR in military materiel throughout the whole war and wasn't that far behind Germany either. Combined with US aid they can easily be considered the most productive industrial nation in Europe during ww2.
>UK was outproducing the USSR in military materiel throughout the whole war
How can one properly make this comparison
What's the conversion ratio of ships to tanks?
Tonnage, I would imagine. Whether that is a fair comparison and whether Britain actually comes out ahead when you do that, I don't know.
The UK outproduced Germany throughout the entire war. the USSR used loads of British equipment, at the siege of Moscow something like half of the USSR's tank were British.
matilda 2 was probably the best tank of the early war was was invincible frontally to all German tanks until tiger appeared, Matilda 2 is France is literally the reason the 88mm became an anti-tank gun.
>at the siege of Moscow something like half of the USSR's tank were British.
Technically it was 30-40% of medium and heavy tanks at that time, which is still a shit ton.
>siege of Moscow something like half of the USSR's tank were British
I see this stuff thrown around a lot, and it's very misleading. There were 90 British tanks, representing about one-third of heavy tanks, in a battle of up to 3,000 Allied tanks.
>3,000 Allied tanks.
almost all ms-1 tier garbage
>German tanks until tiger appeared
You mean Panzer IV lange?
I know, common misidentification to make
>You mean Panzer IV lange?
initial panzer IVs in north africa had the short 75 or the 50mm gun, which could only defeat the matilda at close range
panzer IVs with the long 75 and tigers arrived in tunisia at roughly the same time and at about the same numbers
Panzer IV ausf F2 started being built in March 1942 and the first 9 vehicles dispatched for the DAK arrived in May just in time for Operation Venezia. Tiger would not arrive in North Africa until the very end of 1942 in December
because they slowed down tank development mid-way through the war because it was obvious that M4 shermans would more than meet demand
once they werent rushing, they managed to produce the centurion, one of the best tanks
and they did have the churchill, which was not riveted and served pretty well
Internal political frickery that created an excessively matured train logistics production capability while having a wildly moronic truck logistics production capability.
So when the call for tanks came, all they had for the production of massive vehicles were riveting facilities since what welders they have were all put into the production base of the navy, and all they had for engine is taking their strongest car engine and putting those frickers in sequence while hoping for the best
In WW2 Britain thought that their air force was the most important branch of the Armed Forces, with the Navy being second. It's an unfair comparison to make, as while British armour was pretty shit, British aircraft, aerial doctrine and quality of servicemen in the RAF was (pound for pound) by far the best of WW2.
Okay but why would an emphasis on naval and aircraft production make them have poorer quality designs? Sure they would have less resources for the production but this shouldn't have made their tanks inferior in quality. The Americans also had to fight in Europe but they weren't using designs that look like they were made during the interwar period all the way to 1945.
>why would an emphasis on naval and aircraft production make them have poorer quality designs?
Funding for R&D.
Cromwells and Shermans are functionally very similar
Cromwells ad a vastly more powerful engine and much greater top speed. Which allowed them to exploit breakthroughs better in France and later on in Germant.
Bong armoured forces were travelling at 70mph on the autobahns in those.
If you have to ask why everyone except the Soviets were lagging behind the tank department you first have to understand the intensity of each fronts.
West front was very tactical and calculated
Africa was about good AT gun spots and speed
Eastern front was a all out Khornite Massacre
2 pounder ATG was good enough for the Tea Slurpers cause they faced light to medium armor like PZ 2/3/4 and very late on Tigers.
Tank was filling in really just a support role.
Now the brits go to Europe and meet the crazy heavy shit like Tigers, Panters and other Heavy TDs.
Really West front and Africa was not even a war but a small casual conflict while eastern front was the actual WW2.
If Germans fought as hard as they did against Soviets there would be Neu Berlin instead of New York.
I can't even tell whether these posts are jokes anymore
Stronger focus on ships and planes (which makes fricking sense) and their tanks having to be used far away for the most time in places like africa.
British tanks were nothing special but ultimately they never lost a tank battle solely because they were completely outclassed, they weren't fielding tankettes like poles or italians and even their garbage cruiser tanks could fight the panzers as they proved in North Africa.
They were the ones who mounted the excellent 17 pounder on a Sherman and turned it into a big cat killer at a time when not even the Americans had anything to deal with them besides lucky side shots.
Ultimately their tanks just worked despite being objectively inferior until they got american ones and they just went with those.
>From Matildas to MBTs – British Tank Development in World War II
https://wordpress.aber.ac.uk/british-armys-image/from-matildas-to-mbts-britains-armoured-forces-in-world-war-ii/
Cromwell is a welded tank moron. Those big bolts for the armour are not rivets and don't penetrate the hull.
You're a moron that knows nothing about the Cromwell.
>"why was british armor so behind"
>posts best tank of the war
What did he mean by this
It's a good tank, but nobody in any discussion ever claims it's the best
No but Britain did build the actual best tank of WW2. the Centurion.
Right, the same tank that never actually served in WW2
>Designed, tested and ordered into full production during WW2.
Counts.
Great, it comes first place in "best tanks of WW2 that never served"
It existed, and was deployed. You dont tell people who were in the military but didnt see action that they never served.
I get that it'd be cool if we had a historical tank duel between a centurion and a Tiger II, but Germany had basically collapsed by that stage. Whats a greater shame is there was no air duel between Britain's jet fighters and Germany's, people often forget that Britain was the first allied power to invent and deploy jet fighters (gloster meteor).
Didn't you know, soldiers have to dump a bloody corpse on their superior officer's desk at least once a year to renew their "soldier's license"
>You dont tell people who were in the military but didnt see action that they never served.
Those people were part of a unit and did serve in the military
The centurion was not assigned to any military unit until December 1946, hence it never served
Centurion served in many places after ww2, and was the best tank of it's time.
>why rivets
The bongs knew how to weld, just look at their ships and planes at the time. The problem during the early years of the war was that they had only so many skilled welders, and all of their efforts were being directed to air and ship assembly as it was viewed as a higher priority than tanks, which is kind of sensible when you consider the fact they're an island nation. Something that the bongs did have in vast quantities was skilled riveters due to their large and well developed boiler and steam locomotive industries, so they designed tanks that could be easily assembled using the spare capacity of those industries. Lendlease tanks from the burgers meant that the development of homegrown welded tanks was given even lower priority; after all, why waste welders on building tanks when you can just import Shermans by the shipload and use the welders for maintaining your naval and air strength?
Good posts. People in this place don't appreciate good informative posts enough, so I try to when I see them.
Riveting because they were producing the cromwells from factories used to making trains. Not sloped (aside from part of ufp) for structural strength, Tiger I is similar.
The 6pdr was a british gun, some were bored out to 75mm for anti infantry but not all. Many cromwell chasis were used for the Avenger, Comet and Challenger, which didnt use riveted turrets.
The Churchill wasnt riveted and saw use into the 1950s as an AVRE.
Mid-war Britain is focusing on developing the centurion, producing churchills, cromwells and comets, and Black person rigging M4s with the 17pdr. The centurion is developed from 1943 but it isnt given top priority and it isnt fielded until mid 1945, by then its too late for WW2, but it is the first MBT, the first stabilised tank (from '47), and the best NATO tank up to the 60s, especially as Britain develops the 105mm gun for the Centurion, which the rest of NATO copies, even the first abrams had a 105, actually you can still find copies/derivatives of the L7-105 in use today, America's new M10 tank is using one.
British tanks were perfectly cromulent. The Matilda and Crusader were effective vs anything but a Tiger in north africa and their AT guns and artillery were much more effective than they ever should have been due to the flat open terrain(the 25 pounder with solid shot was basically the extreme line of sight version of Ukraine busting tanks with 155mm direct hits). its just Britain took a long time to work out the kinks of combined operations and when they started actually doing operational planning instead of embracing pure chaos energy and somehow winning like Operation Crusader (combined with the Shitalian navy getting all their oil tankers sunk by British carriers and subs) Rommel was doomed.
In Europe the Sherman firefly and their tank destroyers could take out big kots good enough to win the war. Then they made the Centurion which was the FN FAL of tanks or the T-55 of NATO.
>jerryrigged
jury-rigged
Crocodile
It is partly true that navy and air force were more important to British. In addition automotive industy was jamming the engine upgrade. The Liberty engine in most early war British tanks was simply far too weak for proper medium or heavy tank. However that wasn't all of the things stagnating their tank industry. During interwar British thought it was simply too expensive to produce universal medium tanks, thus they started the separation to infantry tanks and cruisers. Neither of those were supposed to be good in the usual three things; mobility, armor and firepower, but just one or two of them.
It's important to consider how and why some other countries were slightly ahead. In my view the lead wasn't very big and that's at most three countries.
One can say many things about German tank industry, but at the end they managed pretty good. Only thing they really lacked was casting to produce cheaper and slightly lighter turrets.
American interwar tank development may not look very spectacular, but they certainly learned important lessons from various designs and M2 medium was good enough to base heavier designs on. Similarly Japanese pretty much just build big Chi-Ha, although it was very late.
Even before the war USSR had enormous tank production quotas. Their own tanks like T-24 and T-28 totally sucked, so the most produced tanks were nearly direct copies of foreign designs: BT based on American Christie and T-26 on Vickers 6-ton. Slowly they were getting some experience for designing their own and they also had the secret tech share with Germany. This included the purchase of brand new Panzer III and supposedly advanced knowledge about welding. They also moved rather early on to big V-12 engines, which other countries still considered too expensive and fuel thirsty.