Bottom 5 Tanks with Squire

I'm Lance Geiger, the History Guy, and I'm here at Tank Fest. You know, in 2019, the world-famous Tank Museum invited me to come out and talk about my top five tanks, and despite that, they let me come back to talk about my bottom five tanks. Bottom five tanks is really hard for the History Guy, because, you know, I love forgotten history, which means I love the history of even miserable, useless little rubbish tanks. So how do I talk about bottom five tanks? Well, when I talked about the top five tanks, I chose tanks like support tanks and test beds that were tanks that had great stories, but you never heard those stories because they weren't as sexy as the tanks that were in main combat. So what I decided to do for my bottom five tanks is to pick out some tanks who just the opposite. They never got great stories because they came at the wrong time, and they never got developed, and that's my line for the bottom five tanks. Please remember to like, subscribe, or click the little notification bell if you don't want to miss out on these videos, and I'd just like to say thank you to all our patrons for making this possible. Please join them if you can. So the first tank, or rather number five on my list of bottom five tanks is this, the L1E3 Light Amphibious Tank. This was a product of the Vickers Corporation and the culmination of a project between the wars to develop amphibious tanks that could provide heavy weapons support for infantry that were, say, doing a contested river crossing. It's essentially a Vickers light tank that has pontoons strapped on the sides so that it would float. To be fair, there's an awful lot wrong with this tank. David Fletcher in his bottom five tanks called it rubbish, and it really is, and part of that has to do with the nature of amphibious tanks. For it to be able to float, it has to be relatively light, and for it to be useful as a tank, it has to be relatively heavy. So in terms of the important elements of armored combat, that is protection and mobility and firepower, the problem with the L1E3 is that it lacks everything. Its armor protection was only at its strongest 11 millimeters, which means that it could have been penetrated by heavy machine guns. It only carried a machine gun itself, and in terms of mobility, it apparently could float, but the problem with amphibious tanks is you can get them in the water, but unless you have a nice smooth beach on the other side, they have trouble getting over a lump to get out of the water, so this might have been swimming forever. But unlike David Fletcher, I didn't pick this in my bottom five tanks merely because it is clearly rubbish, but because this is an example of a tank that simply came at the wrong time. This prototype was developed in 1939, and of course in 1939, the British went to war with the Germans, and they had much bigger fish to fry than this pathetic little guppy here, and what it means is they didn't even evaluate it. They simply said, we don't have time for this now, we're going to set it aside and do the evaluation after the war's over. By the time the war was over, this was just so hopelessly outclassed and outdated that it wasn't even worth testing, and so we really don't know what this might have turned into. Amphibious tanks did find their niche in the Second World War, for example in the Russian steppes where there's swamplands that weren't passable to normal tanks, or maybe in the Pacific. If this had come just a little bit earlier, it might have turned into something, well, I don't know, at least useful, but we'll never really know because it came out in 1939, which means we never got to test it, and as a guy that loves to tell stories of forgotten history, nothing is more painful because you can't tell a story when the story itself was never written, and that's why this is number five on my list of bottom five tanks. Number four on my list of bottom five tanks is this, the T-14. When the United States entered the war in 1941, the British and the Americans got together and they talked about where the priorities would be for new armor development, and one of the things that the British asked for was what would end up being called a heavy assault tank, or maybe a medium heavy tank, and that had to do with British tank doctrine. With tanks, the three important elements are your protection, your mobility, and your firepower, and the way that the British had addressed that was to create different kinds of tanks. Cruiser tanks sacrificed protection for mobility, whereas infantry tanks sacrificed mobility for protection. The idea is that the cruiser tanks would do the normal role of cavalry used to play, where they would exploit gaps in the line, whereas the infantry tanks were essentially moving pillboxes that would move along with the infantry, but what turned out from that is kind of what you would expect. The cruiser tanks were so lightly armored that they could be penetrated by virtually any anti-tank weapon of the day, whereas the infantry tanks were these big, plodding vehicles, and so what the British really wanted was something that had the armor of an infantry tank, but had the mobility of a cruiser tank, and that probably would have been called an infantry tank, but the Americans didn't like that term, and so they called it an assault tank, and what they decided is that the British and the Americans would both develop prototypes and then would test to see which one of those would be the best prototype, and this is the American version. It's called the T-14, and as you can tell looking at it, it has a lot in common with the American mainstay, the M4 medium tank, the Sherman. In fact, to make it simple to build, the Americans wanted to have as much in common with a Sherman as they possibly could. It's got the same turret ring as a Sherman, and a similar turret, but you see the turret had an extra four inches of armor added, so it gives it this kind of strange bulbous look. The armor on the front is the same thickness as on an M4, but it was given a greater slope, which gave it more effective armor. It was a little bit too heavy for the Sherman suspension, and so they used the suspension from the American heavy M6 tank, and so this all seems like a great idea, an up-armored Sherman. I mean, if you play World of Tanks, your complaint is that Shermans don't have enough armor, so what happened to the T-14? Well, there were only two of these built, and this is the only one left in existence, another testament to the collection in the Tank Museum, so why did they never build the T-14? Well, it did have some problems. The suspension was simply wholly inadequate and would have had to have been replaced, but really the problem was that it just wasn't priority at a time when they're developing lots and lots of different things. The Americans never saw a use for it. They wanted to design their doctrine around the M4 medium tank, and the British, as they originally asked for this, eventually became satisfied with their new cruiser and their new infantry tank designs. The initial troubles that they had with the Churchill worked out pretty quickly, and they were happy with the Churchill tank, and so they never saw the need for it either, and so this is a very interesting design that could have been a very interesting tank, but it just turned out that by the time they got a prototype together, they didn't think that they need it anymore, and so this is a tank that never got a story to tell, and that's why it is number four on my list of bottom five tanks. And number three on my bottom five tanks is this. This is the T-18 Borehound. In 1941, even before the U.S. entered the war in July, the British asked the Americans to start design for them a heavy armored car. They had learned the value of armored cars in the deserts of North Africa, and this one was going to be special for armored cars. At more than 26 tons, this is as big as a medium tank. It originally would have mounted the 36-millimeter gun, but by the time they were going to put it in production, it moved up to the 57-millimeter gun, which was quite an effective gun in 1942. So unlike most of the armored cars that were being used in Africa, this wouldn't just be used for reconnaissance. This was big enough to brush aside the enemy reconnaissance vehicles and actually threaten the flanks of the enemy tanks. So what happened to the Borehound? It seems like it's a really interesting idea, but really what happened is by 1942, so much was being built in the United States that there were production bottlenecks, and in this case, it had to do with the transmission, but it meant that delivery was coming kind of slow. From an initial order of 2,500 by late 1942, only 30 had been delivered, and the British decided to cancel the contract because it became clear that before they could deliver enough Borehounds and enough numbers to make a difference, that that part of the war would already be over. We were already driving Rommel back, and it didn't look like there were going to be any more of these wide-open battles out in the desert, and its cross-country capability simply wasn't good enough for them to think that it would be particularly useful in Europe. And so this was a great idea that came, well, just about a year too late, and once again, a great tank whose story never got to be told because it never got to be used in combat. It was used a little bit in static defense. It was used to do some convoy duty, but it never fired its guns at enemy tanks, and that's why this is the forgotten tank that is number three on my list of bottom five tanks. So number two on my bottom five tanks is the M103, and, you know, at first, this doesn't look like it fits with the other tanks on my list. Unlike the other tanks, this was built in respectable numbers. There were about 300 made. Unlike the other tanks on the list, this saw some significant service. It served from 1957 to 1974. But still, this is on my list. The M103 is a massive heavy tank. It's 15 tons heavier than the contemporary M48, and that weighs almost as much as an early M1 Abrams, and like an M1 Abrams, it has this massive 120-millimeter gun. So what's not to like about this tank? It seems like it was ahead of its time, but actually, the M103 was behind its time. See, the M103, like the British Conqueror, was built to counter the massive Soviet armor of the era, things like the JS-2. And the problem was, by the time the M103 was fielded, the Americans had decided that the next war would not be a slugfest, but would be a war of maneuver, and this was just too heavy a tank. They had moved to the main battle tank concept in the M60. And so, even though we built 300 of these great M103s, they saw very little service. A few were deployed briefly to Europe, but they were never seen in combat, and they were never seen in war. Now, the other tanks on my list, the Tank Museum has the only example, but that's not true of the M103. There's almost 40 of these around. If you go around the United States, you can find them. And the reason is because it was barely used. The problem with the M103, which otherwise is just an awesome tank, what's not to like about this? The problem is, this is the last of the heavy tanks as it ran into the era of the main battle tank. And so, the mighty M103, built to be the master of the battlefield, never got on a battlefield at all. And that is why it is my number two bottom five tanks. And number one on my list of bottom five tanks is this, well, I don't know, this thing. This is part of a 1960s project by the British military to see what the future of warfare was going to be. And to give you an idea, it was called Project Prodigal, to give you an idea how experimental they were being, Project Prodigal included an attempt to build a flying car that would be used for reconnaissance. And obviously, that didn't work out. So what this bit of Project Prodigal was, was the idea of a relatively light 20 to 30 ton tank that could be airdropped from a Beverly Transport aircraft. And it includes all sorts of very experimental ideas. So for example, you'll see that the main gun here is fixed, much like the Swedish S-tanks. This would have been entirely elevated and aimed using the hydraulics of the vehicle underneath. And that saved the weight of a turret. It would have had, although it never had mounted, something that they called ribbed armor that was supposed to disrupt anti-armor rounds with the idea that this was going to have the armor equivalent of a main battle tank, but with half the weight. And all that was going to be done with a crew of just two. And using some mock-ups, they found out that it was at least plausible that a tank this size could be delivered by the Beverly aircraft. So what happened to this interesting piece of equipment here? Well, not all crazy ideas work out. And essentially what this is, is a bunch of pie in the sky that never got baked. So this is a test bed. It's not even a prototype. It's a bunch of pieces that are put together to try to see how things work. And the bottom line is, not much of it did. The only thing that was really taken out of it was an early version of a muzzle reference system, which makes your fire a little bit more accurate. This was really trying to see what the future was, and it turned out that this is the future that wasn't. In fact, this doesn't even have a name. This isn't a prototype. The Tank Museum simply calls it contentious. So when you talk about tanks that never got a story to tell, well, heck, this particular story, the main character didn't even get a name. And that's why it pretty much had to be my number one bottom five tank. So to tell you the truth, my criteria is really a bit silly. It could apply to any number of tanks here at the Tank Museum. In fact, my criteria for bottom five tanks could apply to some of the tanks that I chose for my top five tanks. But it really was an excuse to talk about some of the weirdest and rarest tanks in this extraordinary museum's collection. One of the great things about the Tank Museum is it has a lot of oddballs, a lot of what-ifs and never-wheres that together tell as much of the story of the development of armored warfare as the tanks that you're more familiar with. And you might have liked it or preferred it if I talk about tanks you'd heard of. Well, you know, you can make your own video because I'm the History Guy and I love to tell forgotten stories, even stories that weren't really written. Hope you enjoyed my version of bottom five tanks. Make sure and support the Tank Museum. Subscribe to the Tank Museum's YouTube channel and their Patreon channel. And check out the History Guy on YouTube as well.