Tank Development in a No WW2 TL

[DuQuense]

I was reading Eurofed's ASB thread about a Modern [1950's Tech] Roman Empire being Isoted to OTL in 1941.
It appears Roma will be fighting the German Army as it retreats out of Russia into Poland, and I began wondering what kind of Tanks Roma would have given no WW2.

So with out WW2 ?would whe have the T-34/54, the Pershing/Patton, the Crusader/Centurion, or Panzer 3/Tiger rapid Upgrades?

 

[Dan Reilly The Great]

well the Pershing, Crusader, and T-34 were all in development before their respective nations entry into WWII, so it is technically possible that those tanks would have been developed without WWII occurring. The other tanks however were influenced, and later german tank designs were a direct result of direct involvment with the Nazi's, so chances are you would have no Tiger or King Tiger tanks without the Nazi's. The real question is how far back your POD is, if it is something that gets rid of fascism in europe alltogether, then who knows, butterflies would change quite a bit.

 

[MacCaulay]

The Centurion was a development of the British experience with the Comet and Cromwell tanks' deficincies when facing the Panther. Armour historian Simon Dunstan once went so far as to say that the Centurion was built "to counter the Panther."

If there's no WWII, the Centurion may well not be built. Also, the British went away from their misguided "cruiser, etc." tank philosophy after WWII.

Until the mid-50s, there wasn't what we know of today as a Main Battle Tank. There were only Infantry Tanks, Cruiser tanks, etc. The entire doctrine of armoured warfare was changed between the late 30s and 1945.

In Normandy, Canadian troops moving inland kept up with their armoured units by using Priest self-propelled guns with the howitzers taken out as proto-APCs, almost like M113s without a top. This was, too many tacticians, the beginning of the mechanized offensive: the infantry was able to mount up on a vehicle which had at least nearly the same armour as the tanks it was keeping up with.
With no WWII and thus no Normandy, the Canadian army would have no armoured corps, and no tanks at all.

Also, up to and during the Second World War, the British used guns measured by the size of the round: 17 pdr and 20 pdr. It wasn't until afterwards that they switched to a metric system of measurement, such as the L7 105mm and the L22 120mm. Lord knows how long it would take them to stop that.

 

[Dan Reilly The Great]

After some extra thought, I have come to the conclusion that the biggest change to tank doctrine from no WWII will be on Heavy tanks. As Macaulay already said, the centurion was built to counter the panther, the same can be said for the Joseph Stalin tanks which were built to counter German Heavies, american heavy tanks didn't really show up until after the war, but they were mainly produced to counter Russian Heavies which were merely a response to the german ones. As such, you will probably see no heavy tanks getting past the prototype stage.

 

[ComradeTovarich]

The world will be looking towards likes of the Maus and the Ratte to supplement their armed forces, true to the tank originally being a landship. But then again, the scourge that was the Great Depression may just downsize armoured formations of the world to the likes of the the Centurion as suggested by Reiley