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Worst British vehicle of WWII?


Jack

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There's a Land Rover and a Ford Transit in bits of the back to back 633 Squadron and Mosquito Squadron.

 

We are getting off Topic...

 

Worst British vehicle? haven't a clue....interesting point about the Covenanter. See lots of them on Exercise Bumper in 1941...

 

M

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Here's my vote:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covenanter_tank

 

So bad they didn't let them out of the country.

 

Instead, troops trained on them in the UK, learning basic non-tank-specific skills then converted to decent tanks.

 

Seems as though the pace of war time developments over took it.

 

The original idea for a low profile seems good, less of a target than the more successful Sherman.

 

f there hadn't been the huge acceleration in armour thickness and gun power of the axis tanks it may have made it.

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Covenanter looked fantastic but had some 'interesting' design issues. It was not as bad as many accounts make out as most of its systems were used more or less succesfully in other vehicles.

 

It did have a propensity to overheat however and as, at the time, armoured warfare was being conducted in the desert, it was deemed sensible to keep it for training in the UK.

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For one reason or another, most British tanks were pretty dire during the second world war, but going from my fathers recollections the Guy Ant was apparantly quite a ghastly contraption. He used to say that a Morris CS8 felt like a Rolls Royce in comparison, which is really saying something.......

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Here's my vote:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covenanter_tank

 

So bad they didn't let them out of the country.

 

Instead, troops trained on them in the UK, learning basic non-tank-specific skills then converted to decent tanks.

I think I am with you on this one. No product of the Associated Equipment Company could be judged as the worst British vehicle of WW2...Conversley the Matador was probably the best British vehicle of WW2!!!

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The Rolls Royce pickup ever caught on - and far too expensive for the army :whistle:

 

A friend of mine, sadly no longer with us, used to tell us that whist constructing a grass airfield (Milton Street, Sussex) he and his pals commandeered a local bigwig's RR and gleefully hacked the back off to fit a water tank in it's place!

Edited by gritineye
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The Rolls Royce pickup ever caught on - and far too expensive for the army :whistle:

 

Stick a couple of aeroscreens on it and a set of trackgrips and nobody would know the difference from a CS8 :)

Edited by Stefano
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Which could be a contender for "Worst British Aircraft of WW2"

I'd put it a close second behind the Fairey Battle. A single-engined bomber with the same engine as a fighter? I don't think so.

 

At least the Defiant got a short reprieve as a night fighter.

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Could it not be argued that some of these vehicles mentioned were either built at the start of WW2 or were quickly put into service following the retreat from Dunkirk? The advance in technology over the next five years obviously brought with it the advance in vehicle design meaning those that had been in service at the start of the war could possibly have been the worst?

Hopefully you can see what I'm getting at :sweat::-D:yay:

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Could it not be argued that some of these vehicles mentioned were either built at the start of WW2 or were quickly put into service following the retreat from Dunkirk? The advance in technology over the next five years obviously brought with it the advance in vehicle design meaning those that had been in service at the start of the war could possibly have been the worst?

Hopefully you can see what I'm getting at :sweat::-D:yay:

 

:yay: my post made it on then before big crash last night, although it wasn't showing as the last post in this thread just as I checked the British Vehicles sub-forum?

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  • 1 year later...

 

.......if there hadn't been the huge acceleration in armour thickness and gun power of the axis tanks it may have made it.

 

mmmhhhh.:undecided:..now pardon me.......... but...isn't that a little like saying

"if gunpowder had never been invented, castles would still be worth having".........???????

 

those beastly Germans!...fancy doing something like that what?!?!...they've only gone and built a tank with thicker armour and a bigger gun than us! ..damn it all to harry I say !....it just isn't on you know !...that's simply not playing fair !..:D:D:D:D:D

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Could it not be argued that some of these vehicles mentioned were either built at the start of WW2 or were quickly put into service following the retreat from Dunkirk? The advance in technology over the next five years obviously brought with it the advance in vehicle design meaning those that had been in service at the start of the war could possibly have been the worst?

Hopefully you can see what I'm getting at :sweat::-D:yay:

 

Fair point. I read once, a long time ago (probably 1970s) and the source is long gone, that 20 years' peacetime development can be concluded in six months during wartime.

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Could it not be argued that some of these vehicles mentioned were either built at the start of WW2 or were quickly put into service following the retreat from Dunkirk? The advance in technology over the next five years obviously brought with it the advance in vehicle design meaning those that had been in service at the start of the war could possibly have been the worst?

Hopefully you can see what I'm getting at :sweat::-D:yay:

 

But then again, the PzKpfw 4 was in production before the war, and stayed in production until the bitter end.

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