Why were the British so bad at making tanks during WW2? After the war ended they were really good at it

Why were the British so bad at making tanks during WW2? After the war ended they were really good at it.

they were alright, it was the whole cruiser and infantry tank thing that screwed them up.

This
The Centurion showed they'd finally got their heads out of their collective ass

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Because British tank *doctrine* was utter crap for most of the war. They absurdly over-specialized their tanks, and then often didn't actually suit them to the roles they found themselves in.
>The Matilda is supposed to be an infantry support tank
>So we'll not give it any armor-piercing ammunition, because the enemy will be considerate enough to not attack with tanks where our Matildas will be
>And I mean, it's not like it's fast enough to get out of an engagement that it's not suited for.

They pretty much got the tanks that their top brass wanted. It's just that what their top brass wanted wasn't actually very practical, and badly misunderstood the most effective use of armor in WW2 style warfare.

Firefly was legit however.

i thought British early tanks had the problem of not having any HE ammo because 2 pdr was a shit gun

It wasn't a shit gun. It was pretty good at anti armor combat for its time, the reason British early war tanks didn't carry much HE was because the 2pdr was too small to be effective using an HE round. It's only a 40mm gun, and combined with its relatively high velocity shells, it couldn't lob much HE filler per shell.

I don't think any of the top brass knew their asses from their elbows regarding armor during the war, the US blowing Christie off and letting him sell his suspension to the Russians instead comes to mind

But the Christie suspension was inferior.

>Cromwell
>Bad

>it was the whole cruiser and infantry tank thing that screwed them up.
Everyone, including Germany, did this early on because engine tech was not good enough for a tank that could do everything.

Not in the late pre-war and early war period when no one had really figured out to make torsion bar suspensions that didn't suck dick. It was easy to make, reliable and fairly effective. Torsion bars as a concept are better, mostly due to ride stability and interior space efficiency, but a good, well developed Christie suspension is better than a brand new, untested and unreliable torsion bar system.

Good thing the US didn't participate in the early war.

Over two years of war had passed before they joined, and then some more until they started deploying armored units to Africa. The US didn't perfect their suspensions until the M4a2E4, or better yet the E8.

The Sherman's suspension was hardly lacking. The biggest issue was not the suspension itself but the track width, which just gave it really high ground pressure.
The Sherman's suspension was far better than the T-34s, and the advantages the T-34 had, lower ground pressure and faster acceleration, can be attributed to its wide tracks and high power to weight ratio coming off the engine.
HVSS was a significant step up either way.

>falling for this meme

ITT: People use video games to inform their understanding of history

Crusaders were fine for their time
Churchills were useful
Cromwells were fine
Comets were great

Never said it was bad, and by the time the Sherman had rolled out it was more than adequate.

So if British tanks were "infantry tanks" and Soviet doctrine often saw rifle corps supported by tanks, did they shine that role or were they too slow?

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>2805335

It was though, the T-34 showed that. And the T-34 was a shit show. Imagine if Germany had the concept of a unified medium tank when they originally designed the Pz IV instead of shoehorning it into the role.

Its not fair to say that British tanks were inherently bad, they were often let down by poor tactics and reliability issues from their construction. When the Crusader was introduced in early 1941 most of the Axis forces had tanks that had no more than about 50mm of armour at the maximum, the 40mm and 57mm guns on those tanks could easily penetrate such armour, and they were highly mobile

What the fuck are you talking about? Germany never had an "infantry tank". And they only had "cruiser" tanks in the sense that the PZ1 and 2 and the ones they stole from the Czechs were light and fast, but weren't doctrinally cruiser tanks at all, being primarily exploitation elements and not counterattack elements.

>Germany never had an infantry tank

Are you seriously claiming the Panzer 4 is an infantry tank? I just want to be sure I'm understanding you correctly, before I start tearing that idea apart.

I read that the panzer III were used against enemy tanks, while pz 4 with short cannon was used against infantry

Well, for starters, that isn't even the main characteristic of an infantry tank, namely that it's worked into an infantry formation's organization (usually at battalion level) and directly coordinates under an infantry commander, which is most definitively NOT something the Germans did on any sort of regular basis. The closest they get are with the Stugs late war, and even those were usually under artillery commanders and aren't usually considered tanks to boot.

Secondly, just because the Pz4f usually wasn't used in an anti-tank role, doesn't mean that it was an infantry tank; like most other German early-mid war armor, their main role was in exploitation, not in creating breaches. Sure, they'd roll up infantry if they could catch them in favorable circumstances, but they weren't to be used charging headlong at an infantry trench, that was artillery's job. If they were engaging infantry, it was probably well behind the line of battle.

Thirdly, they did usually carry some AP ammunition, and would use it if circumstances dictated. It was about as much of an infantry tank as the M4 Sherman was, not at all.