I genuinely believe British Tanks are, in some ways, worse than the crap over in Italy. They’re so damn slow, not to mention the ammunition rack placement looks like a child’s idea. Seriously, why put a massive rack smack bang in the Centurion’s Hull, with no ATTEMPT to add armour.
Not to mention the Solid Shot problems. Or the Sabot. I think the STRV 81(Centurion) may have driven me clinically insane with the APCBC. I Dunno how the ballistics work on that shell, but it’s truly stupid. APDS is APDS, I’m not gonna mention that.
My final rant is the Chieftain. Gaijin can’t save this one, nor could the Brits. Seriously, I’m sick of playing 8.0 and seeing Chieftain MK 10’s getting full down tiers every time. I mean, the Chieftain is bad, but it doesn’t belong against other 8.0s
The majority of British tanks are relatively slow, particularly infantry tanks and modern main battle tanks, is closely related to the tactical employment of tanks by British Army. A friend has already explained the reasons why British tanks during World War II were slow, so I’ll focus on the issues with modern British tanks.
Firstly, the British place significant emphasis on tank protection. While their NATO contemporaries were advocating the obsolescence of armour and the supremacy of missiles, the British continued to prioritise armour and traditional direct firepower. The British Chieftain main battle tank boasted the highest level of protection among Western tanks of the 1960s. It was the only Western tank capable of withstanding the Soviet 3BM3 armour-piercing round. However, you might not fully appreciate this in War Thunder, as even at 8.7, you may encounter newer main battle tanks that are a decade ahead of you, such as the AMX-30B2 and T-55M, not to mention the unfortunate situation of running into the monstrous 9.7 vehicles.
Another issue is the British focus on tank reliability, which has led to a conservative approach in engine design. They have a penchant for modifying engines from previous generations of tanks. For instance, the Chieftain Mk3/5’s engine is still based on modifications from the Centurion series, and the Challenger 1/2 engines have been in use since the 1980s, only now being replaced by a German engine in the Challenger 3. This excessive conservatism in power system design has effectively thwarted any ambitions for high mobility in British tanks.
Unfortunately, Challenger 3 did not use the Rolls-Royce MTU engine and continued to use the Perkins CV12 engine. The Minister of Defense Purchasing clearly replied that the horsepower was still 1200HP.
I’m afraid that replacing the new high-power engine needs to wait until a brand-new tank instead of the old guy “upgrade” Xdddd
I’m sorry, what? The guys who went with a revolutionary flat-pack two-stroke for the Chieftain were conservative with their engine design? You know, the notoriously unreliable one that foreign buyers replaced with more traditional diesel engines with increased output.
