The Tank Museum
Published on 3 Feb 2017The thirty first in a series of short films about some of the vehicles in our collection, presented by The Tank Museum’s historian David Fletcher MBE. The First World War Mark IX, the first armoured personnel carrier, was designed to solve the problem of moving infantry across the battlefield with the fighting tanks.
June 20, 2018
Tank Chats #31 Mark IX | The Tank Museum
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June 10, 2018
D-Day – Lies – Extra History
Extra Credits
Published on 1 Aug 2017D-Day is too vast and important a topic to be completely covered by four short videos, but we hope our series offered some new insights into the massive effort that went into the Normandy beach landings. James Portnow and Richard Cutland, Wargaming’s Head of Military Relations, take some time to chat about some more important D-Day stories.
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May 28, 2018
Leopard tanks in Afghanistan – “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend”
There’s a story that’s been told for more than a decade and — given the Canadian government’s legendary unwillingness to spend money on the military — widely believed. David Pugliese does his best to debunk it here:
Canadian Leopard 1A3 (Leopard C1) at the Bovington Tank Museum.
Photo by Chris Parfeniuk, via Flickr.
As stories go it’s a pretty good one.
The Canadian Army was up against a tough enemy – the Taliban – in Afghanistan. Commanders called for Leopard tanks to join the battle but those armored vehicles had been mothballed and made into monuments.
So the ever resourceful Canadian Army crews jumped in the Leopard tanks mounted on concrete pads outside bases as monuments and drove them off those platforms, making sure they were shipped to their comrades in Afghanistan.
This myth has been around since 2007 and has once again resurfaced in a new book by retired Maj.-Gen. David Fraser about Operation Medusa.
Fraser also repeated the story in a recent CBC interview with Anna-Maria Tremonti, noting that he knew of at least one Leopard tank pulled off its concrete pad and brought back to serviceability and then shipped to Afghanistan.
In the 2008 book Kandahar Tour by Lee Windsor, David Charters and Brent Wilson the story gets even better. The tanks were driven off the concrete pads and then sent to Afghanistan, according to those authors.
A similar claim is made at the museum devoted to telling the story of the “Essex Regiment (Tank).” On its website the museum claims multiple numbers of Canadian Leopard tanks were taken from monuments (“A mad scramble to retrieve tanks from monuments and prepare them for war,” it claims).
Again, a great story.
But the Canadian Army says it never happened.
The Army points out that Leopard tanks, positioned on the concrete pads as monuments, had already been demilitarized so no one was driving them anywhere.
So what did happen?
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May 24, 2018
Tank Chats #30 M3 Grant | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published on 27 Jan 2017The thirtieth in a series of short films about some of the vehicles in our collection presented by The Tank Museum’s historian David Fletcher MBE.
Tanks of this type were first used in Western Desert in 1942. The M3’s were mechanically reliable, but soon superseded by Sherman.
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May 16, 2018
Crusader Tank | Animated History
The Armchair Historian
Published on 25 Jun 2016
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May 6, 2018
Tank Chats #29 Daimler Dingo Scout Car | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published on 21 Dec 2016The wheeled armoured scout car was the British Army’s principal reconnaissance vehicle from the beginning of World War II until the 1980s.
Scout cars were small and much quieter than a tracked vehicle; units equipped with scout cars relied on stealth to obtain information, rather than fighting for it. The Daimler Dingo entered service with the British Army in 1939 and served until the middle 1960s as a reconnaissance and liaison vehicle used by armoured and infantry divisions.
It was so versatile that a multitude of uses were found for it: medical officers used them to search for casualties in the battle field while one unit even issued a Dingo to its chaplain!
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April 30, 2018
The Ferdinand: What Not To Do When Building a Tank
Potential History
Published on 11 Mar 2018A brief history of the VK 45.01 (P), or the Porsche Tiger, and the disaster it later became.
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April 29, 2018
Tank Crew Training – More German Tank Prototypes I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
The Great War
Published on 28 Apr 2018Chair of Wisdom Time!
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April 27, 2018
The First Tank-on-Tank Battle in History – The Zeebrugge Raid I THE GREAT WAR Week 196
The Great War
Published on 26 Apr 2018At Villers-Bretonneux, German and British tanks clash marking the first tank-on-tank battle in history. In the same week, the most successful flying ace of World War 1 is shot down over France: Manfred von Richthofen dies after scoring 80 victories. Meanwhile, the British Navy attempts to eliminate the German U-Boat threat with a daring raid on Zeebrugge and Ostende.
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April 25, 2018
Tank vs. Tank: Villers-Bretonneux, April 1918 | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published on 20 Apr 2018100 years ago, during the First World War, tank fought tank for the first time in history, at Villers-Bretonneux on 24 April 1918.
It was an engagement that foreshadowed one hundred years of tanks fighting tanks on the battlefield, stories told by The Tank Museum.
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April 24, 2018
“Brilliant” plans to win WWII: How France planned to win the war?
Eastory
Published on 12 May 2017In these series we will examine several “brilliant” plans to win World War II and see why they failed. This video shows how France planned to win the upcoming confrontation with Germany and how it all went wrong.
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April 23, 2018
Tank Chats #28 Char B-1 Bis | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published on 3 Nov 2016A French heavy tank from 1940.
In its day the Char B was regarded as one of the most powerful tanks in the world, yet still had many features which harked back to the First World War. The Char B was issued to tank battalions in armoured divisions and saw extensive combat in the summer of 1940.
Of the 365 Char B-1 bis built, large numbers were captured intact by the Germans in France in 1940. Those tanks that survived were later incorporated into the German Army and modified in various ways.
http://www.tankmuseum.org/museum-online/vehicles/object-e1951-40
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April 16, 2018
Tank Chats #27 Light Tank Mark IIA | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published on 17 Oct 2016A British two-man light tank from the early thirties.
The first British light tank, the Mark I, evolved from the Carden-Loyd Carrier. The Mark II was produced in larger numbers and issued for service. Light tanks were regarded as an alternative to armoured cars with a better cross-country performance.
http://tankmuseum.org/museum-online/vehicles/object-e1952-27
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April 9, 2018
Tank Chats #26 Peerless Armoured Car | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published on 23 Sep 2016In 1919 the British Army found itself short of armoured cars when many were needed quickly to police various trouble spots around the world.
In reality it did not make a very good armoured car. It was too big, too unwieldy and slow while the crew got a rough ride on solid tyres. However it was durable and quite a few were still in service when the Second World War began.
http://tankmuseum.org/museum-online/vehicles/object-e1949-321
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April 8, 2018
Tank design: two overlooked aspects
Lindybeige
Published on 6 Apr 2018I discuss a trait of tank armament that deserves more attention, and The Chieftain contributes his own tank design aspect that gets underestimated.
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