Tanks that never should have entered service

Onkel Willie

I was inspired by Jukra's aircraft wank thread about planes that shouldn't have entered service and decided to do the same for tanks. What tanks should never have entered service in your opinion?

I nominate the Tiger II (aka the King Tiger). It was ridiculously heavy and its engine was too weak. Because it was underpowered it suffered from mechanical breakdowns and more were lost that way than due to enemy actions. Only about 500 were ever made, a waste of resources and man hours that could have been spent on another 1500 or so Panthers or 2000 upgraded Panzer IVs. The design has its merits in that no enemy tanks could really pierce its armour and its 88 mm gun could kock out any allied tank, but that did not influence the war.
 
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Kome

Kome

Panzer II could basically skip that cause you already got a panzer I
T-35, seriously its stupid
SMK tank
All the random soviet light tanks made before ww2 that im too lazy to list.
 
PhilKearny

PhilKearny

The Soviet KVII, with its HUGE turret and 152mm gun, seems like low hanging fruit. The KVII was incredibly unreliable mechanically, possessed a turret did not work well because of turret's weight, had limited mobility, an incredibly high profile, and was slow. (E.g., the turret had trouble rotating it the tank not on level ground.) While some of the KVIIs undoubtedly did scare and/or delay some of the Germans, these were exceptions. The KV series in general had little to commend them over the T-34s in use. Their existence is momument to political corruption in the USSR. The most useful thing the KV series did was give rise to the IS series.
 
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BlairWitch749

Banned
the panzer mark 1 the armor was so thin a 50 caliber machine gun bullet could punch right through.

panzer mark 2 10 tons of steel for a 20mm gun? stupid even by hitler standards

tiger 1 and tiger 2 tremendously expensive and complicated to produce with a gun that had worse ballistics than the high velocity 75mm. sucked fuel constantly... so heavy it couldnt go across bridges

all british tanks prior to the firefly except the matilda series... they were just trying to make the tank like a horse very poorly conceived vehicles.

the bradley fighting vehicle complete waste of money and poorly thought out.

the italian tankettes and m11 both were death traps
 

Markus

Banned
T-34/76: Come on, a two man turret requiring the commander to do the gunner´s job too? Everybody knows that does not work. Give the tank a decent three man turret or make KW-1 instead.
 

The Red

Most of the BT series along with the proved to be rubbish against western opponents (although superior to the Japanese) this was also the case with the T-26 which when it enetered service proved to be a good tank but quickly became outdated.

The German Tiger was a waste of resources when you consider how many Panthers could have been made out of it.

The Lee like the Soviet tanks was good for it's time but was bad against western opposition(like the Soviets again it wasnt too bad against the Japanese)
 

Jukra

First prize: BT-42. Finnish assault gun produced in 1942-1943 mating BT-7 with British Q.F. 4,5 inch howitzer Mark I. Even worse than the concept was the fact that these tanks were used in front line. Was used during Battle of Viipuri in 1944 when a BT-42 managed to hit a single T-34 eighteen times without an apparent effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BT-42

Arjun. A tank with 30 year design time and the Indians still could not make it right. Entering service now, but perhaps not really.

Swedish S-tank: An excellent idea for 1950's, too bad it entered service in late 1960's when new stabilizers and better fire control made the entire concept outdated. (S-tank couldn't fire when moving and the low signature became somewhat moot point.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-tank

AMX-30: Pork alternative to Leopard 1

M1: Pork alternative to Leopard II, not to mention very hard to supply in mobile operations. I wonder what kind of Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom had ensued if there was no need to have supertanker amount of fuel to go with the troops?

Challenger, Leclerc, Ariete: Pork alternatives to Leopard II. Why not a wrong-side drive for Leopard-II and call it a Challenger?

Bradley and Warrior: Pork alternatives to Marder. When a major NATO ally has designed fairly good vehicle why on earth design and produce your own version?

Dardo IFV: Italian industry-friendly incarnation of IFV. Why not go for CV-90 like everybody who holds a competition?

T-80: No major mechanical advantages over T-72, completely unnecessary, costly and hard to maintain tank.
 

Markus

Banned
mattep74 said:
The Grant?
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No, it was only build because nothing better could be made without considerable and intolerable delays. I´m not 100% sure but I think they did not have a turret big enough for the 75mm gun at the time.


@Jukra: Wuhaaa! That contraption even looks like a KV-2. :eek:
 

Markus

Banned
The Dean said:
All the British tanks between the Matilda II and the Centurion.
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Dude, don´t dare diss the venerable Valentine! ;)

It was mechanically reliable(really, it was, no kidding) and could even be upgunned(a miracle I know). :D

By the way, does anybody know if the chief engineer who designed the tank was from England? I would not be surprised to find out he was an Aussie or Canadian.
 

jaybird

IIRC, the Grant was well liked by the US Marine Corps, because the 75mm could fire ahead and take out Japanese fortifications while the 37mm fired canister left and right. Against the Wehrmacht, though...

Anyways, I'll say something people might not expect - the Firefly. Why? The Churchill could take multiple hits from almost any German gun short of the 12.8 cm, noted at El Alamein. Mate that to the 17 pounder to tear apart the panzers.
 

The Dean

Markus said:
Dude, don´t dare diss the venerable Valentine! ;)

It was mechanically reliable(really, it was, no kidding) and could even be upgunned(a miracle I know). :D

By the way, does anybody know if the chief engineer who designed the tank was from England? I would not be surprised to find out he was an Aussie or Canadian.
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It was Sir John Valentine Carden unfortunately he was British.
 

Polish Eagle

Panzer 1, Panzer II, Panzer 6 (both versions of Tiger), and the Maus and E-100 they were building before the end of the war.

KV-2.

M3 Lee/Grant.

Any Japanese tank. They didn't really do anything to influence a single battle. Better to use the metal for more planes.
 

Jukra

Polish Eagle said:
Any Japanese tank. They didn't really do anything to influence a single battle. Better to use the metal for more planes.
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I agree. Trucks, motorized construction equipment etc. would have been far more useful. If one clearly cannot match the challenge, why take it? Then again, the Japanese leadership did not consider that in larger matters...
 
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