Tank Goodness: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

In large modern warfare engagements, infantry may as well be [[Cannon Fodder]]. You want something that can [[Hold the Line]]. Something with a [[BFG]], crawler treads and tons of armor. You want a tank.

 

 

 

Related to [[Cool Car]], [[Cool Bike]], [[Cool Train]], [[Base On Wheels]], and other vehicle/warfare tropes--this is basically [[Cool Tank]]. Has nothing to do with [[Shorttank]], which makes you say [[Tank Goodness]] in a completely different way. Also has nothing to do with playing a damage-sponge character in an [[MMORPG]], or with the oxygen storage unit strapped to the back of a SCUBA diver.

For armed tank-like vehicles, which have legs instead of good ol' treads, see [[Spider Tank]]. For ones which [[Power Floats|float]], see [[Hover Tank]]. For ones that can travel underground, see [[Drill Tank]]. When the military geniuses of the world finally realize there is no firepower like battleship firepower, one may witnesses the ultimate tanks: [[Military Mashup Machine|Land Battleships.]]

 

 

If you looked up Mechanized Infantry and expected to see a giant robot with a gun, try looking up [[Real Robot]] instead.

* ''[[Desert Punk (Manga)|Desert Punk]]'' features the massive tank Fire Dragon Kong. It was the most dangerous machine in the desert, but Desert Punk managed to beat it by shooting a rock structure down on it, then the Machine Gun Brothers shot it until they hit the gas tank and it exploded. Until then, it was pretty freaking deadly.

* During {{spoiler|Mustang's coup d'etat}} in the manga version of ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'', one of the military men, while commenting on the opposition's fighting power, remarks that it's not like they have ''tanks''. [[Tempting Fate|Guess what shows up a few panels later.]]

* At the beginning of ''[[Venus Wars]]'', Ishtar invades the Aphrodian capital, Io, using parachuting Superheavy tanks.

* ''[[Future War 198 X]]'' has an awesome (and fairly accurate) huge tank battles on the North German Plains.

* When the [[Thememobile|Batmobile]] in ''[[Batman Begins]]'' was first revealed to the world, fan opinion was mixed. Then the movie came out. Gordon wants one.

{{quote| "It's a black... tank."}}

* ''[[The Beast of War]]'' is about a Soviet tank in Afghanistan that becomes separated from the rest of the army. As the lone tank battles through mujahadeen guerrilla attacks, its crew slowly [[A House Divided|tears itself apart]].

* The ''[[Sgt Bilko]]'' movie had a hover-tank which didn't work because firing the gun produced so much force that it couldn't be controlled. They faked it with some fireworks.

* In ''[[Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (Film)|Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade]]'', the Sultan of a fictional Arab nation lends support to the Nazi Grail expedition by providing them with transportation including tanks. The film shows one modified WWI tank, a Mark VIII with a turret dropped on top with the [[Rule of Cool]].

** Hatay was not a fictional nation (nor was it Arab). It merely existed for one year before willingly being absorbed into Turkey.

* ''[[Ultra Series|UltraSeven]]'' featured the Dinosaur Tank as an antagonist. This was [[Exactly What It Says On the Tin|Exactly What It Says]] [http://pulog1.exblog.jp/1424309/ On The Tin].

* ''[[Rambo]]'' used one in Part 3 to play chicken with a gunship.

* Michael Moorcock's ''The Land Leviathan''

* ''[[Discworld]]'' featured a steam tank of sorts in ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Small Gods|Small Gods]]'' -- notably, because its existence was enough to shift the balance of power and change history, Lu Tze of the [[Time Police|History Monks]] sabotaged its construction.

** [[Bun Bun]] (and the rest of the [[She Va]] vehicles) are self-propelled artillery, not tanks. It may be ridiculously big, but it carries a battleship's gun and very little armor for its size.

* Averted in the [[Starfist]] military sci-fi series, thanks to the development of highly effective and extremely light man-portable anti-armor weapons making heavily armored vehicles obsolete. This actually drives the plot of one of the novels - a megalomaniac manages to conquer a world with tanks, which nobody has seen for literally centuries, and the anti-armor weapons are now museum pieces. The military is forced to use said museum pieces to manufacture new copies, and have to have history professors instruct the Marines in their use. They do put a permanent order to maintain the anti-armor capability as well. [[Hollywood Tactics|How precisely these weapons are supposed to be effective when you're engaging a combined arms force where the tanks are firing from multiple kilometers away is not addressed]].

** Epitomized by the Demolisher series of tanks. Massive tanks ranging from 80 to 100 tons carrying [[More Dakka|dual Autocannon-20s]], some of the largest ballistic weapons in the game, and with enough armor to weather assaults. In the canon, it was specifically designed to hunt and kill BattleMechs, which it could do readily--few units, even in the assault weight class like the Demolisher, can carry two AC/20s, and even fewer can shake off a hit from just one of those cannons.

* In ''Weird War Two'', a dice and paper WWII RPG which basically mixes myth, horror, and WWII, there are demonically possessed Nazi tanks from hell. There are also super haunted ghost tank hunters for the allies. These tanks can have special abilities and Special Ammo. Tanks in this game are downright deadly to anyone not sporting big guns or lots of infantry with AT weapons. So having a tank on your side is [[Tank Goodness]].

* The Tank form in ''[[Mekton]]'' gets you a 2pt bonus to your armour and lets you appoint either the 'head' or the 'torso' to have a 360 degree arc of fire as the turret. Of course, you can also build a mecha that [[Transforming Mecha|turns INTO a tank]], thereby getting [[Humongous Mecha]] and [[Tank Goodness]] bonuses at the same time.

* ''[[Rifts]]'' first introduced tanks to the game in the ''Traix and the NGR'' [[Sourcebook]], and has pretty much made a point in outfitting nearly every country on the planet since with outrageous tanks to go along with their [[Powered Armor]] and [[Humongous Mecha]]. The standout examples include the Karthum-Terek, a massive tank with guns capable of harming starships and enough redundancy built in that it literally has to be blown to pieces in order to destroy it, and the Neo-Abrams, which manages to combine both realistic practicality (by real-world standards, no less!) and [[Game Breaker|overwhelming munchkinism]] [[Awesome but Practical|in the same package]].

** For the 1998 Activision ''[[Battlezone 1998 (Video Game)|Battlezone 1998]]'', these are hovering tanks thanks to [[Applied Phlebotinum|Bio-Metal]]

* [[Act of War]] RTS brings all kind of cool tanks including [[Real Life]] the T-80 and Abrams, along with the more exotic stealth tank Akula and the S.P.I.N.N.E.R, a drone vehicle also capable to convert into an AA platform or a suicide bomb drone factory.

** The double-barreled Mammoth Tank is one of the series' mascots, [[Fan Nickname|lovingly referred to]] as the "Mammy" by fans. It appears in some form or fashion in just about every title:

*** In the ''Tiberium'' universe, it's first built by GDI in the First Tiberium War. Almost every ''Tiberium'' RTS featured a new iteration of the tank, except for ''Tiberian Sun'', in which Mammoth Tanks from ''Tiberian Dawn'' were bonus or recoverable units.

* The Landmaster from ''[[Star Fox (Video Game)|Star Fox]]''. In ''[[Super Smash Bros Brawl]]'', The Landmaster is available as part of Fox, Wolf, and Falco's Final Smashes.

* The ''[[Battlefield (Video Game)|Battlefield 2]]'' mod ''[[Project Reality]]'' gives the player no less than ''eight'' different playable tanks, ranging from the rustbucket T62 & T72 all the way up to the cutting edge, hell on treads M1A2 Abrams and Challenger 2.

** They get even better in the sequel with MORE range, MORE firepower (against most units) and an even cooler transform.

** ''[[Starcraft II]]: Wings of Liberty'''s campaign has giant tanks as well, which you can get as mercenaries.

** ''[[Valkyria Chronicles II (Video Game)|Valkyria Chronicles II]]'' gives you a fully customizable tank, as all classes get a tank, and you even get to name it. Different kinds of tank and APC chassis, choice from three turret types, various armor, shoulder and back parts and decal and sticker options.

** ''[[Valkyria Chronicles III (Video Game)|Valkyria Chronicles III]]'' uses the same mechanic as ''II'', but further refines it and adds more customization options, as well as making the heavy tank easier to move around.

** Also, ''Armored Core 4'' has regular modern tanks. [[Tanks for Nothing|They might as well be plushies for all the good they do.]]

*** AC 4A allows tank legs to store oversized backup weapons, like, oh, another set of Chain Guns. Or Bazookas. ''Or damn near anything else in the game.'' It's possible to make a mech that has [[More Dakka|6 Chain guns]], two of which are actually 4 rifles attached to each other. Said mech is usually very hard to kill, but can run out of ammo in about 2 minutes of concentrated fire. I've yet to see something stand up to a full 30 seconds though, as most NEXTs only have around 60K HP, tops.

* Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron had a 40 ft. invincible (sort of) purple Nazi tank in World War I! Of course, that game doesn't care about real life anyway..

* In ''[[Psychonauts (Video Game)|Psychonauts]]'', the [[Big Bad]] plans to take over the world via {{spoiler|tanks controlled by psychic brains, which are extracted from young children}}.

** Said tank is a steam-powered bloated wooden barrel with a dozen cannons sticking out in all directions. You can fire only one at a time, though. Also, the cannons appear to be breech-loaded. The entire beast can be operated by three people, which is pretty impressive.

* ''[[Warzone 2100]]'': The vast majority of the units in this game are [[Design It Yourself Equipment|modular, customised tanks]] of some description.

** As of 2010, the Merkavas are being outfitted with [http://defense-update.com/products/t/trophy.htm 'Trophy' Active Protection Systems] - point defense mini-turrets designed to shoot down enemy rockets, missiles and shells before they hit, saving the tank's armor a lot of trouble, and to an extent countering the threat that infantry with RPGs and missiles present to modern tanks. The Americans and Germans have been working on their own versions, Quick Kill and AMAP-ADS, and the Russians already have a similar system, 'Arena' installed on their tanks.

** To save heavily on logistics, much of Israel's modern armored vehicle platforms just use the Merkava with the tank turret swapped out for something else.

** The still-more upgraded T-90MS introduce an entirely new turret with integrated ammo bins in the bustle and radically improved protection (and digital FCS and new autoloader). The Army decided not to order it, as they're developing a radically new MBT, but was very pleased with the turret design and will probably use it to upgrade the existing inventory of T-90s and T-72s.

** Of course, Jeremy did make the mistake of trying to outmaneuver the Challenger 2 on broken, muddy ground and steep inclines--their home turf, in fact, in the very field that the tankers practice in. It was there he proved that tires are for speed (which his LR Sport has quite well, if on a well paved road), tracks are for rough terrain. As he puts it "Oh no, I seem to have brought Puff Daddy's car to [http://www.firstworldwar.com/battles/somme.htm The Somme.] This is where I've had it. You can't drive a car, even as one as good as this, over this kind of surface fast. And you can with a tank." The tank crew also feels free to use some of their other abilities, such as neutralizing his speed advantage by blinding him with obscurant smoke -- not a problem to a tank that can avoid large trees with infrared vision and roll over smaller obstacles, but plenty of problems to an unaided driver of a car that doesn't dare hit anything - and the fact that trying to put the pedal to the metal results in a huge dust trail that gives the tankers an easy target to chase. They catch up to him when he tries to drive in a straight line, presenting a predictable target.

** The Dorchester/Chobham II armour. In Iraq, one CR2 returned to the British operating base with the remains of 60+ detonated RPGs all over it. It was described as looking like an evil, 62.7 tonne hedgehog. Another, after getting stuck in a ditch, spent four hours under sustained RPG fire, and survived a hit to the top of the turret (usually a weakspot on a tank) from a modern ATGW missile. The damage? A few broken sight units and periscopes. REME (the British tank mechanics) repaired it 8 hours (after rescue) and had it in service the next day. The only 'Chally' to ever be destroyed was in a blue-on-blue accident. The Hi-Explosive round from another Challenger 2 detonated in the turret after being deflected by an open crew hatch. The shell detonated the ammunition in the turret bins. The hull, aside from fire damage, was fine.

** Unfortunately for its reputation, there's emerging evidence of both a Challenger 2 and several Abrams that have had their fighting compartments breached, both with injuries to the driver, by probably-Syrian [http://world.guns.ru/grenade/gl04-e.htm RPG-29] Vampirs. Still, given that the RPG-29 is one of the most modern anti-tank weapons in the world, some injury isn't that bad, even if it is a black-mark on their aura of invulnerability. Those RPGs penetrated the frontal armour, despite the ERA, which is the strongest armor on a tank safe for the turret front, which sometimes is even stronger. Also, the RPG-29 is actually older than the Challenger 2 and [[M 1 A 2]].

** The Abrams is ridiculously hard to permanently put down even by the full firepower of OTHER Abrams shooting at them. At best, you get temporary knockouts; one M1A1 took a hit directly in the rear from an Iraqi T-72 in the first Gulf War. The crew survived with minor injuries, the assailing tank was quickly destroyed, and the stricken Abrams was quickly recovered and repaired. There's also a story of an Abrams that got bogged down and four T-72s decided to rush it. None of their shots penetrated. The Abrams killed two of them, shot the third as it was running away, and the forth hid behind a sand berm. The Abrams, using the thermal imaging camera, was able to see the hot exhaust rising and shot through the sand berm, killing the final T-72. When other tanks came, it was decided to abandon and destroy the Abrams rather than have to get up specialized equipment to pull it out(The other tanks couldn't). The other tanks tried to kill the now-abandoned Abrams but couldn't. One round exploded the ammunition magazine but the blowout panels directed to force of the explosion upwards. Eventually, a tractor came and pulled it out. The turret was sent back the the US for examination and the tank got a new one and was back in action pretty soon.

** The Abrams also drinks fuel. As in, 20 gallons per mile. No, not miles per gallon. It consumes about 20 gallons of fuel for every mile it travels. Without a steady supply of tanker trucks keeping it topped up, they quickly become very expensive, hard to kill ''bunkers''. Jet Engines are fuel hogs{{spoiler|*:And to make things worse, a gas turbine consumes the same amount of fuel idling as it does driving at full speed. And shutting down the engine every time you're not moving is a bad idea, because combat vehicles often need to start back up in a hurry.}}; there's a reason everybody else uses Diesel Engines, you give up performance but get a massive increase in combat range. Still, almost all tanks have maximum speeds around 40-45mph: It's the Abrams which is almost unique in being able to exceed this with the governor disabled.

*** One thing the [[Yanks With Tanks]] are ([[Internet Backdraft|uncontroversially]]) best at is [[Easy Logistics|logistics]] (no other nation can ship stuff from point A to point B faster and more reliably than the US), the fuel consumption doesn't seem to be that big of a problem. After all, there are thousands of Abrams deployed, and they aren't all running out of energy and turning into fuel-deprived bunkers.

*** Well there was that one time in Baghdad when they just stood around with their dicks in their hands waiting the for the fuel trucks, for about five hours, defended by Bradleys, unable to even lift their guns let alone shoot at anything. Good thing they had that armor.

** Most Leopard 2s used the same 120mm L/44 gun as the [[M 1 A 1]]/2, though the new Leopard 2A6's have the more powerful L/55 version which is shared with the South Korean K2 Black Panther.

** The Bundeswehr ist currently testing the Leopard 2 A7+/A7 PSO. A tank build for MOUT operations. It has (again) the Rheinmetall 120mm L/44 installed. It also got a remotely controlled weapon station, a dozer blade and a 360° protection for the turret and programmable HE munitions. The tank is a supplement to the normal Leoard 2 forces of the Bundeswehr and not meant to replace the A6 and earlier variants.

** [[Word of God]] has it that, if you get a skilled technician to tinker with the engine, you can boost the engines 1500PS to 1800PS, or exceed 2100PS at the expense of killing the engine before the fuel runs out. It was apparently tested once, where it reached the aforementioned 120kph on paved roads, and a whopping 80kph on mud.

** To put it more into perspective the last batch of F-4 Phantoms built in the 70s cost about 3 million a piece.

* More [[Truth in Television]]: In a recent episode of [[Myth Busters]], the cast addressed the idea that the friction between pages of two interleaved phone directories is impossible to overcome. They tested this one first with two people trying to pull it apart... then ten people... then two cars... and, instead of going with trucks or other large civilian vehicles, invoked The [[Rule of Cool]] and rented a couple of M551 Sheridan light tanks (which, yes, finally did manage to separate the books... effortlessly).

** Point-of-fact, the pages tore out, but not many of them actually separated.

** The Char B1 was pretty good: in one battle, one was lured into an ambush by a bunch of Panzer IIIs and IVs, and flattened them (destroyed 13), and still managed to drive home afterwards (it was hit 140 times, but took no serious damage).

*** The 2C was equally used by the French in propaganda movies. B1-bis' advantage was that only Flak 88 used as Pak could destroy it; so was T-34 in 1941. Hence the German Blitzkrieg doctrine of not fighting tanks with tanks, but to retreat and lure enemy tanks into a trap by "Pak-Fronts" proved sensible. Only when they had to, in later war pretty much all the time, did the Germans use tanks against tanks.

* [http://www.militaryfactory.com/armor/detail.asp?armor_id=210 KV-2], which mounted a [[BFG|152mm howitzer]] (largest caliber weapon ''ever'' fitted on a production tank), but was virtually immobile and couldn't traverse its turret unless it was on perfectly level ground. Its intended role was an ''assault gun'', i.e. self-propelled bunker-buster, better compared with the German Jagdpanzers or StuGs. As such neither did it need much mobility, nor lack of ease of use would be all that detrimental for it. Of course, these lumbering behemots performed well enough [[Useful Notes/Finns With Fearsome Forests|slowly chewing through Mannerheim's concrete]], in highly mobile warfare of the summer campaign of 41 they acted more as mobile fortifications -- unable to hit anything that doesn't stand and wait for it, but armored heavier than [http://www.militaryfactory.com/armor/detail.asp?armor_id=313 KV-1] that were able to [http://books.google.com/books?id=5EA5LrwmP2UC&pg=PA36 survive over a hundred cannon hits] and beat lighter tanks by ''[[Ramming Always Works|ramming]]''. [http://books.google.com/books?id=5EA5LrwmP2UC&pg=PA18 One well-placed KV-2 was enough to stop a division]: tanks and anti-tank cannons failed to penetrate its armour, so Germans stuck until they brought in 88-mm anti-air guns. 105-mm howitzers were able to only to blow off tracks off these monsters, but not destroy them. KV's worst enemy were the Stukas (bombs were more practical against heavy armored but slow tanks) and Red Army's own logistical troubles. Still, the scheme was good enough to reuse production lines, upgrading both assault gun and tank branches, and later turn KV series into [http://www.militaryfactory.com/armor/detail.asp?armor_id=191 IS] series.

** One battle in 1941 involved 5 KV-2's ambushing a German tank column. The Soviet tank commander made sure to utilize the KV-2's strengths by trapping the entire column on a narrow road going through a swamp by blowing up the leading and trailing German tanks. Any Panzer that tried to go off-road found itself bogged down and just as trapped. The camouflaged KV-2's rolled out one at a time, fired, and rolled back into cover, making sure the Germans had no idea where they were. By the end of the shooting gallery, sorry, battle, the Germans lost 43 tanks with no casualties on the Soviet side. The Soviet commander's crew counted the hits on their tank - there were over 200 with no penetrations.

** The Finnish army captured two intact KV-I tanks in the Continuation War, which were quickly put into action against their former owners. They stood the battle quite well - they were always employed as the "spearhead" tanks. ''They both still exist in driveable condition'' and were used in making the film ''Tali-Ihantala 1944''. This must be a unique situation in war movies where not only actual vehicles are used in the movie, but also the actual individual tanks which have taken part in the [[Real Life]] actions the film depict.

** During [[World War Two]] [[Those Wacky Nazis]] developed the Panzerkampfwagen VIII ''Maus'', a 188 ton superheavy tank (it means 'mouse' -- who says the Germans [[Fluffy the Terrible|don't have a sense of humor]]) with a 128mm ''and'' a 75mm coaxial gun. Two were built, and both were pressed into combat against the Soviets in the last days of the war. Both were scuttled by their crews to prevent the Soviets from capturing them. Unfortunately for them, one crew destroyed their turret and the other their hull, so the Soviets stuck the working turret on the working hull and put it in a museum. On the drawing board was the Landkreuzer P1000 ''[[Idiosyncratic Episode Naming|Ratte]]'', theoretically 1000 metric tons (in practice it would have been twice that) with [[More Dakka|two 280mm naval guns, a 128mm antitank gun, eight 20mm anti-aircraft guns and two 15mm heavy machine guns!]]

*** And topping it all was the P1500 Monster, which was the [[Bigger Is Better|800mm Dora artillery piece]] with its railroad running gear replaced with about eight sets of tracks. With two 150mm howitzers and multiple machine guns for backup. See the infamous 11 barrels of death known as the Baneblade above? The Monster is larger than that. A Tank from reality is actually bigger and more badass than one from fiction. No wonder it only ever existed on paper.

** Americans meanwhile tried [http://www.militaryfactory.com/armor/detail.asp?armor_id=331 T28 Super Heavy Tank / Gun Motor Carriage T95], redesignated back and forth due to lack of turret. 95-ton monstrosity with 8 mph top speed and 4 sets of tracks for different soils wasn't much more usable than the rest, but at least got to move on its own -- there are two prototypes.

** The author of the book ''My Tank Is Fight!'', which specifically looks into the various super projects of World War II and puts forth hypothetical scenarios involving their deployments, mentioned that were the Rattes or Monsters to be built they would likely have to be built in ''naval shipyards'' (and be subject to the same allied bombing raids as the other ships). They would be devastating, sure...for the first encounter, after which they would likely be bombed out of existence from the air. That's not counting even narrower list of accessible terrains and inability to cross most contemporary bridges. [[Awesome but Impractical]].

* Speaking of the failed German superheavy tanks from World War II, there's also what was without a doubt Nazi Germany's [[Lightning Bruiser|scariest war machine]] -- if not its most reliable -- the PzKpfw VI, otherwise known as the Tiger. Yes, its design suffered from being overengineered, lacking sloped armour and being costly to produce, but it's arguably the most iconic armoured vehicle to ever have existed, with its thick armour and [[BFG|enormous 88mm cannon]]. Allied forces suffered "Tiger terror" for a reason, and recommended tactics for Sherman tanks -- at least before stuff like the Firefly came about -- was to outnumber it ''five'' to one, and it was still generally accepted that four of those were likely to be destroyed. [[We Have Reserves|Since there were many more Shermans than Tigers, though...]] (Specifically, ''25'' Shermans for every Tiger I, II, or Jagdtiger.)

*** They usually were [[Mighty Glacier|simply driven in ambush to wait oncoming enemies, picking them one by one]]. And then reversing away, shooting all the time should things get too hot.

** Tiger? See also the Panzer V Panthers. The US Army Armor Officers Basic course used to (might still) require an essay on the Panther vs the T-34/85, which was quite comparable. They were close enough that picking either one was acceptable, as long as you gave good reasons and covered the pros and cons of each. A battle between a Panther and a T-34/85 would most likely be decided by the quality of the crews -- terrain and surprise being equal.

* The British Churchill AVRE mounted a 290mm spigot mortar, designed for breaching fortifications. The projectile weighed 40lbs, and was known as a "flying dustbin." That wasn't the only modification it received either.

* Sturmtiger, anyone? The thing was build on the Tiger's chassis. Although smaller, stockier, more armored and armed with a repurposed and modified large naval rocket launcher, the 380 mm Raketen-Werfer [[RW 61]] L/5.4. It had a crane at the back to help loading the enormous shells.

** Done over right by the IDF's [http://www.israeli-weapons.com/weapons/vehicles/engineer_vehicles/bulldozers/d9_d10.html 'Doobi'] armored Caterpillar D9 bulldozer.

* Leonardo Da Vinci actually designed a tank. It was [[Clock Punk|built out of wood, was powered by hand cranks]], and had [[More Dakka|multiple cannons pointing all around the tank.]] [http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/doing-davinci-tank-test.html One TV show was even able to build a functioning replica.]

** They had to modify the design; as originally drawn, the wheels would counter-rotate and result in it going nowhere, as well as cannons having to stick through the wheels themselves. It was mentioned on the show that Da Vinci would occasionally do this sort of boobytrapping if someone picked up his notes.

** The T-34's advantages were exacerbated during the Winter seasons of the war. The T-34 was built to operate well even in winter - its diesel engine could start easily and keep running in such freezing conditions (diesel fuel had a lower freezing point than petrol which the German tanks ran on) and cold even nullified defects in radiators that earlier tanks suffered from in summer, and its wider tracks were like snowshoes (the German tanks had narrower tracks meaning they bogged down in mud and snow, and outfitting them with "snowshoes" just didn't work).

** Being cheap also goes well with the fact that it was relatively manufacture them by the numbers. Crew compartments were crude, sure, but all that time saved furnishing for comfort could result in more tanks being made and sent straight away to push the front lines nearer to Berlin.

[[Category:Travel Cool]]

[[Category:Tank Goodness]]