And what about British tanks?

We regularly have debates on how awesome/shit the Sherman was and how it was all about doctrine, bla, bla, bla, retch!

But what about how awesome/shit the British tanks were, and how the British had the infantry/cruiser doctrine. Could the British have built a good all-round tank considering the limitation of railway loading gauges in Britain, the tightest in the world? http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/loadgauge/loadgauge.htm

There's this little Brit tank you may have heard of? Goes by the name of Centurian....

Best tank ever, but didn't fight in WW2, indeed development didn't even start until 1943 when all the hard lessons had been learned.

It wasn't the loading gauges that were the problem for the British, it was partly that godawful Nuffield Liberty engine, and partly the unreliable transmissions (also by Nuffield). Not that the US can claim much, those Newport torpedoes were pathetic as well.

I just learned that the Sherman could mount the bigger guns because the hull height meant that the turret ring overhung the tracks to an extent. However the British had to use low loader train trucks where the tank sat low between the bogies because of the Sherman's height. In contrast the British could load 2 tanks on a single normal flatcar because the turret sat flat on the hull-deck and the turret ring had to fit between the width of the tracks.

They probably could have. The Matilda was one of the best early-war tanks to see combat - no, stop laughing, it's true. Excellent armour for the time and although somewhat slow still fast enough to operate effectively with the infantry who made up the bulk of all armies. The weaponry was also not bad - the 2-pounder gun was somewhat underwhelming, true, but it was no worse than what the Germans were putting on their panzers at the time. If I recall correctly there were versions armed with a 75mm howitzer for close-support, and with a larger turret ring it could have taken a 6-pounder when they came into service.

So the basis for a better tank was there. Unfortunately there was always some pesky industrial problem with combining good protection with good speed, which played into the doctrinal gap between I-tanks and cruiser tanks. The latter had been helpful to persuade the "horsey" cavalry units that their new role would not be so far removed from what they were used to, but in North Africa it was quickly revealed that they fell well short of the mark.
The inter-war armour theorists - Fuller and Hobart et al - had struggled to persuade the army of the merits of the new technology, and as a result had considerably overstated what the new armoured units would be capable of. British armoured divisions had masses of tanks and very little else and coordination with infantry units was poor, leading to a decidedly sub-par performance.

I don't want to monologue about British armoured doctrine too much, but I think the essential problem lies there: once the will to produce a decent "universal" tank exists British industry can start to make steps towards it, but I think it'll be critical to have something which removes the division between cruiser tanks and infantry support.

A decent engine to start with would go a long way towards bridging the gap.

The Cromwell was a good tank to start with and of course you have the Comet which finally gave us a tank that could stand up to the Germans but it arrived far too late really.

Gunn was right the UKs doctrine would really need to change earlier on to try and get away from the Cruiser/Infantry tank ideas and go for a more universal tank. One thing that would need to be done is recognising that the 2lb 40mm gun whilst good would be quickly rendered obsolete and that a tank would need a HE round so going for something like the 6lb gun from the 30s onwards as a british tank gun would be a step in the right direction.

With the UKs heavy tanks the Churchill was a good machine once its kinks were worked out but again it was initially hamstrung by the 2lber, later models were exceptionally well armoured (if pig slow) but could go up rough terrain that would make a mountain goat think 'now wait just a minute...'

Until the Meteor, the British had no decent engine for their tanks, which meant that even if they had want to break out of the doctrinal dead-end, they couldn't have earlier than 1941.

Thats assuming that doctrine does not change earlier. What screwed the UKs arms industry over was the post Dunkirk panic. We needed weapons and we needed them NOW if not sooner. Development of new equipment was halted in favour of producing what we already could, it delayed the introduction of tanks, weapons and guns.

Is it bad that I only consider British tanks cool because they look cool and I have no idea how good they actually were?

We was seemingly always at the end of the curve of learning when it came to tanks in WW2, always playing catch up. British tanks were adequate but no way excellent until the Comet came along and finally gave us something that could go against Panthers and Tigers.

People tend to forget that the 2pdr DID have a HE round, and it was used with the few 2pdr tanks that got to France 1940. The British considerid it too light to be very useful and quit production of it after the Fall of France to prioritise getting more AP rounds out.

There still was a stock, but none of them were shipped to North Africa, and in the desert, no British 2pdr had HE rounds (this is where the myth that there never were any 2pdr HE rounds come from). The British re-started HE round production in late 1942, and all 2pdr:s after that (some tanks and above all a lot of armoured cars) had HE rounds after that.

The 6pdr had a HE round from the start.

The Australians continued to produce HE rounds for their tanks and AT guns throughout the war - but none were shipped to the Western Desert. Australian HE rounds were used in the Pacific.

MattII said:

Until the Meteor, the British had no decent engine for their tanks, which meant that even if they had want to break out of the doctrinal dead-end, they couldn't have earlier than 1941.

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Would a Napier Lion derivative do anything towards that? The Sea Lion's a pretty compact engine, puts out 500/600bhp in normal tune at fairly low speeds, and was available in 1933. It's a hell of a lot better than the Liberty engine in the Christie Cruisers, and could give some serious motivation to the Matilda II, Valentine and Churchill.

As for the exact size, Wiki has the Lion mkII as being 1460x1067x1105mm, while the Nullfield Liberty is 1711x686x1054mm, so you'd save ~250mm in length, with a significantly wider and slightly taller engine. Admittedly it's got 50 kilos on the Liberty, but the performance should offset that, and it's easier to package.
It's not as good as say a Jumo 204/Culverin modified to lay on it's side, but it'll be available sooner, and doesn't simplify enemy logistics.

Does this have anything to do with the introduction of British Tanks to WoT?

MattII said:

Until the Meteor, the British had no decent engine for their tanks

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Could they have gone the multibank route? Or are there drawbacks I'm unaware of? I'm thinking of a multibank based not on a Cad engine, but the big 800+ci Hall-Scott truck engines. Five of those on a common crankcase...

I don't know why the British get slated for the whole cruiser/infantry tank idea, when in reality this kind of two-tier system was the norm. The US had tank-destroyers which were supposed to deal with tanks, while the tanks did everything else - as if you could arrange such things on the battlefield. The Germans produced two very similar designs - the PzIII as the battle-tank and the PzIV as a close-suppport tank (losing economy of scale), whereas it would have been better to have a single design which could accept different armaments.

In all three cases, once in combat it was found that you really needed a tank that could do everything.

LeoXiao said:

Does this have anything to do with the introduction of British Tanks to WoT?

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Of course, I'm getting flogged in an A13MkII, although I do like the double shot 2pdr.