The Tank Museum

Eighty years separate the Mark V from the Challenger 2.

On the face of it they couldn’t be more different. The Challenger is twice as heavy, near enough 10 times faster, can see and shoot accurately maybe 10 times further, and shrug off attacks that would reduce the Mark V to a pile of scrap.


One thing though, hasn’t changed. All of this would be for nothing without the human beings inside.

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The Tank Museum

This ability to swim was the main driver of the design of the Soviet PT-76, but also proved the vehicle’s main drawback when pressed into service in other roles.

It had to be buoyant enough to float, meaning it was larger, and so harder to hide, than other reconnaissance vehicles.

For the same reason it had to be light, therefore its armour was thinner than would be desired on a combat vehicle.

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The Tank Museum

Caption this!

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The Tank Museum

The Stridsvagn 103 was specifically designed to fight in Swedish conditions.



Southern Sweden has a large number of lakes, and having to go around them rather than being able to swim across would require armoured units to take predictable paths and make them more vulnerable to attack. Its flotation screen, therefore, proved extremely useful.



🔗Find out more: https://youtu.be/bghfug5B590

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The Tank Museum

The Bishop self-propelled gun fitted a 25-pounder artillery piece to the hull of a Valentine II.

The resulting vehicle had a huge turret that greatly limited the gun’s elevation, causing the crews to build ramps for the Bishop to try to squeeze out more range.

The Bishop was a crude design, rushed out to fight in the Second Battle of El-Alamein and was rapidly replaced by the M7 Priest and Sexton.

To hear more about the Bishop’s replacements, see here: https://youtu.be/kCf-sMkd4ks

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The Tank Museum

Entering service in 1972, the Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance (Tracked), or CVR(T), family of vehicles is one of the most successful armoured platforms devised by the United Kingdom.

Specifications date to the 1960s, when Britain was looking for a replacement for Saracen, their previous reconnaissance vehicle. The CVR(T) was intended for use in both the reconnaissance and anti-infantry and anti-armour roles.

The thinking at the time was that with its light weight of eight tonnes, the vehicle could be airlifted quickly across the globe.

For more, watch our Tank Chat on the CVR(T) Scorpion: https://youtu.be/5qdaONEDRIo

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The Tank Museum

The Tank Museum's Black Prince is the only surviving example of its kind.

Black Prince was designed in 1943, the idea being to create a heavier version of the Churchill tank mounting the 17 pounder anti-tank gun. Designed, like the Churchill, by Vauxhall Motors, Black Prince was wider in the hull to accommodate a larger turret to house the big gun, but in most other respects the two tanks had a lot in common. Armour thickness was the same, as was the suspension system, but the strangest similarity of all was that both tanks had the same engine, the horizontally opposed, 12 cylinder Bedford.

Later models of the Churchill tank, which weighed around 40 tons, were generally regarded as under-powered, yet the designers elected to use the same engine in Black Prince which weighed ten tons more. Many experts believed that it would have been wiser to fit the 600hp Rolls-Royce Meteor but there is no evidence that this was ever done. The 6 prototypes did not appear until 1945, by which time there was no further use for them and the project ended.

The Tank Museum’s exhibit is the fourth prototype and is the only survivor.
Learn more - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERH8w...

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3 days ago (edited) | [YT] | 5,769

The Tank Museum

This time two years ago - on 09 January 2024, the FV4005 turret first came off as part of our restoration project.

Find out more about this quirky British prototype - tankmuseum.org/tank-nuts/tank-collection/fv4005

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The Tank Museum

January 1945, Malmedy Belgium. These pictures show an American M10 tank destroyer… or do they?

Look closer and you will see that these are in fact German Panther tanks with a quite convincing disguise. Tin work has been applied around the turret, gun mantlet and the front on the tank to change its profile and the co-drivers machine gun removed.

To complete the subterfuge, the familiar five-pointed star markings of the Allies has been added, and the vehicle (we assume) has been painted in green.

On the launch of the Ardennes Offensive, which led to the Battle of the Bulge, English-speaking German soldiers were recruited to form a special unit which dressed in American uniform in order to cause confusion amongst the Allied lines and maintain the element of surprise. These troops were also issued with captured and disguised vehicles, although we don’t know for certain what part these particular tanks played in the battle.

According to Tom Jentz, five Panthers were converted into `M10’s` for the offensive and issued to Panzer-Brigade 150. These pictures came from an after-action Allied intelligence report.

For more on Panzer-Brigade 150 -
tankmuseum.org/article/bulge-german-panzer-forces

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The Tank Museum

🚨NEW VIDEO TOMORROW🚨

Films like We Were Soldiers and Platoon make the Vietnam War look all helicopters and infantry - but tanks played a bigger role than most people realise.

Join us as we explore the story of Armour in Vietnam in our new YouTube video – TOMORROW at 13:00 GMT🗓️


Patreon & YouTube Members get early access, so are enjoying the video right now - please join them if you can.

patreon.com/c/tankmuseum
youtube.com/@thetankmuseum

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