The Worst Tank You Never Heard Of

greetings all after completing something of a fire hose of a course for the army last week i've had a lot of time to do editing for anything particularly heavy however i have been inspired a little bit by a post recently by steve zaloga over on the book of faces in which he admitted he had a secret forbidden love there are a number of candidates out there for worst tank ever some would say mouse others who are apparently willing to risk their lives for saying so might say bob semple or tog a very common answer would be the valiant and indeed it was number one on david fletcher's list of worst tanks ever and from the short test report that i've read i can see why now that said ed over on the armored archives channel makes an argument that it wasn't actually as bad as all that i'm sure i agree with him but you know watch uh watch his video come to your own conclusions covenanter also has claim to the title but again there is a bit of recent research indicating that by the time it left service much of the trouble had been fixed however all these tanks are comparatively speaking fairly well known and the following ones however not so much the vehicles in question are the dutch order marmon harrington tanks stephen described the aberdeen report he read as vitiperative which sent me to the dictionary however i had a suspicion as to the meaning given that i happen to have come across copies of the aberdeen test reports of the vehicles in my own archive digging and they are some of the most scathing reports i've ever encountered from anywhere now it could perhaps have been that since these were not ordinance designs the ordinance personnel doing the testing may have felt more free to let rip but that doesn't necessarily make the report inaccurate and in fairness they did seem willing enough to point out failures in ordnance equipment as well so as a birthday present to steve i give this report on the ctms and mtls tanks i have no idea what his birthday actually is so give me a little leeway it's the thought that counts so as i'm going through this please bear in mind that these are production standard vehicles built to fight in line units these are not prototypes which you would expect would have bugs that need to be identified worked out and refined there is going to be a lot of reading here now ordinarily i don't go for all that much outside of what i normally do but i think in this case it's necessary in order to get the full effect so settle back comfortably and listen to the dulcet tones of my voice as you drift off to sleep anyway marvin harrington are an american company at the time out of indianapolis which had a bit of a sideline in armored vehicles as far as tanks were concerned their efforts before the american involvement in world war ii may have left something to be desired they did try building some light tanks for the marine corps didn't really work out too well in the meantime though they did have the tank manufacturing capability to spare and some countries weren't really all that picky china ordered 240 ctls for tac light tanks for its ongoing dispute with the japanese however there was a dispute on the exact capability of the vehicles to be provided and china refused to accept delivery they were accepted into service on an emergency basis with the us army as the light tank t16 and sent to secondary parts of the world pending replacement by something better which would prove to be basically almost anything else really that will be built afterwards almost at least t16 was accepted for service the same cannot be said for the next marmon harrington production the ctms one tbi it's to be noted by the way the documentation refers to them as ctms itbi as well they are however commonly referred to as the three-man dutch tank to distinguish it from the four-man dutch tank with its own alphabet soup of nomenclature these were produced for the dutch east indies army on an emergency basis because the preferred tank supplier the uk was certainly rather focused on building vehicles for the british army instead however since the dutch east indies failed to maintain itself as a growing concern to receive most of the vehicles and the us army looked to doing what they did with the t-16 and using it to fill its ranks the contract was taken over by the services of supply and then they sent to colonel eddie of aberdeen a letter in december of 1942. uh let's see war department offers the chief ordinance washington yet a uh two director proving ground the marvin harrington company indianapolis indiana manufactured a number of three mana form and tanks for the dutch government due to the inability of the dutch to utilize these vehicles have been taken over by u.s government in order to determine the suitability of these vehicles for use by our forces one vehicle of each type is being shipped to the proving ground attention of kernel x for test purposes current x by the way if you're not familiar with our ordinance he's the reason that we have a lot of this material that was kept upon receipt of these vehicles at the proving ground it is requested that they be tested under such features of the standard test progress as in your judgment will determine their suitability for military use by the forces of the united states the report of the test should show characteristics in relation to any comparable vehicles in our service and include statements as a relative reliability accessibility performance in relation to the nearest standard us vehicle yet and so on and so forth so that sets the stage the first vehicle we're going to talk about is the ctms and described neutrally as follows the three-man dutch tank model ctms 1tbi one in this case is fabricated from half-inch armor plate with bolted construction it is very angular in appearance and resembles light tanks marine core 1937 t3 and m2a2e2 the turret is operated manually and has a traverse of 360 degrees the armament consists of two caliber 30 machine guns mounted in the bow and a 37 millimeter 44 caliber automatic gun and caliber 30 machine gun coaxially mounted in the turret okay not too bad so far the suspension is vertical valued spring types similar to light tank suspensions the track is still connected with steel pins without bushings so we're talking dead track here i presume the power plant consists of a standard four-stroke cycle liquid-cooled six-cylinder hercules rxld gasoline engine equipped with dual carburation and magnetic ignition system powertrain consists of a conventional type five speed transmission control differential and final drive unit control diff not clutch brake characteristic views and so on and so forth okay so that is what it was i will also tell you that the vehicle masked in at 25 435 pounds so some were just over 12 tons and basically away they went the vehicle clocked up 454 miles of operation mainly in march and april of 1943. so your basis for comparison here the the army's already got m5 light tanks and m4 medium tanks under production observations and i'm not going to read absolutely everything here but you should get pretty much the gist engine is rated at 174 brake horsepower but the maximum drawbar host power obtained with the field dynamometer was 99. dynamic brakes horsepower by the way excuse the noise in the background the wife is attending a virtual gender reveal the cooling of the engine was very inefficient the drawbar pool is at pull i'm sorry is not adequate and should be approximately 75 percent of vehicle weight instead of 29 percent tractive resistance was exceptionally high the vehicle would not climb either the 18 inch or 24 inch vertical walls the third bogey wheel on each side would drop below the 18 inch wall and then prevent further forward movement and the number one bogey couldn't even get over the 24 inch the steering brakes and parking brake held the vehicle on a 30 slope however the brakes would not hold on the 40 slope the vehicle will climb slopes up to and including the 40 slope which actually isn't bad by army standards the engine was very hard to start and the battery was being continually discharged due to excessive use of the starter the main causes for hard starting were faulty ignition faulty carburetion and a tendency for the engine to jump in timing the gear shifter is very hard to operate primarily due to the short leverage of the gear shift lever the position of first gear is so far from second gear that the vehicle stops before a shift from first to second can be accomplished oh good good news operation in the sand pit was satisfactory vision from any position inside the vehicle was greatly limited by the small vision apertures and personnel were constantly trying to get into a position which would allow a larger field of view ventilation inside the vehicle was very poor even when operating with the torch hatch open heat radiated from the powertrain makes it necessary to remove glass blocks from division apertures in warm weather operations so as to secure some air circulation within the vehicle so if you're running in warm weather you got to pull the armored vision blocks away a whole bunch of specifications the following component failures were encountered during tests the ignition system was continually causing trouble due to either a weak spark or change in prime timing the magneto had to be adjusted and replaced uh and the engine re-timed during 360 miles of operation due to hard starting characteristics of the engine the vehicle had to be towed to start numerous times basically push started and the battery was discharged twice during the test removal of the battery from the engine compartment requires removal of the engine exhaust pipe and carburetor throttle arm the parking brake burned out during cross-country operation after 304 miles one bogey arm faceplate was broken at odometer 253 and was discovered that the parts in the bogey arm assemblies are not interchangeable basically you couldn't take apart from one boogie and put it onto another bogey it was also not possible to order a new faceplate without ordering an entirely new bogey assembly the vision ports consist of a rectangular casting bolted to the hull and extending inside the vehicle approximately three inches as the sharp angular castings present a hazard to both drivers and assistance drivers faces they were covered with sponge rubber from m4 periscope headrests before the start of the test the tow chain provided with this vehicle broke the first time that it was used inspection revealed that the welding of the lynx was inferior steel cable is more satisfactory the splash trays around the filler tubes of the fuel tanks are a source of trouble as they collect water and allow it to enter the fuel tanks through the filler tubes i suspect water in the fuel tanks isn't good during cold weather ice forms in the splash trays and has to be chipped loose before you can open the filler caps the headlight grilles are of no value and prevent the cleaning of the headlights after operation of muddy terrain the grilles should be eliminated to allow cleaning of the headlights and to permit more light to be delivered to the road the guards around the headlights do provide sufficient protection against breakage so your headlights suck but at least it won't get broken and i should say that it is basically the best thing that is mentioned in this entire report is that the headlight guards protect the headlights then there is a slew of failures so when they got it it had 101 miles on the clock shield cable from battery to generator broken loose and the bulb instrument panel were burnt out they got 56 miles before the throttle return spring broke a spark plug wire ignition ignition wire cracked they had a clean spark plugs they had to re-time the engine after 58 miles of operation cleaned the carbs uh starter switch wire had worked loose and needed to be replaced then they got another 100 miles and that's when the bogey face arm uh bogey arm faceplate fell off so they repel repaired it by welding because they couldn't get a replacement or take it off another tank or anything uh chain toe broke water and fuel system stopped engine well we saw that coming uh distributor broken high tension contact on rotor that's at 300 miles in battery had to be replaced at 400 miles magneto be replaced at 402 miles track shoe had to be replaced at 405 miles parking brake burned out to 430 miles and also there was an oil leak in between the oil filter and the engine block magneto adjusted 461 miles the carburetors had to be adjusted at 461. the battery had to be replaced again at 5.25 so this is after 101 so that was at 404 424 miles starter failed at 553 or 452 operated following observations failure of one track block and one bogey on faceplate and all of 304 miles of operation indicate that the suspension would be a major source of trouble suspension parts are not interchangeable on the same vehicle or of vehicles of the same type none of the suspension parts are interchangeable the existing standard vehicles the suspension provides a very rough ride which is hard on the operating personnel and contributes to a jumpy farming platform the hull so half an inch of armor again offers no protection from enemy fire from caliber 50 upwards the hull and turret are constructed entirely with bolts and nuts under combat conditions this type of construction is hazardous to the operating personnel you would have thought by the 1940s that have figured this out the entire interior of the vehicle is too cramped and none of the crew members have sufficient space to enable them to function efficiently the exterior of the vehicle is very angular with practically all plates presenting a vertical surface to the most probable line of fire the front particularly is not designed to deflect enemy fire as it is constructed in three almost vertical steps maintenance is difficult to perform in this vehicle due to the inaccessibility of the engine and powertrain the engine is mounted low in the engine compartment and very little spaces around it the powertrain is covered with cowling which has to be removed and space inside the vehicle is too limited to permit efficient work yeah okay we have concluded that there's not much good to be said about this tank now if you're curious how it actually worked out the gunner would sit to the left of the gun and the position was described as extremely cramped with his right shoulder hitting the cradle of the gun the left shoulder was jammed up against the terror wall traversing was difficult because the ring and the bearings were rusted which i suspect is a possible concern in the dutch east indies they struck me as being somewhat of a potentially humid environment so okay in conclusion after all this the report states and quote the vehicle is thoroughly unreliable mechanically and structurally on the sound underpowered and equipped with unsatisfactory armament it is recommended that these vehicles be considered unsatisfactory for use by any armed force of the united states interestingly the vehicles did still somehow get around the ones that dutch did receive ended up in random locations of dutch influence ecuador bought a dozen after its conflict with peru we saddled mexico with four of them for some unknown reason possibly because they already were using some other mormon herrington vehicles cuba took eight and kept the things in service at least officially until the 1960s and may be the only combat users of the thing shooting up against gorillas guatemala also ended up with a half dozen there are at least three currently in the u.s generally in pretty miserable conditions so in theory i can film one but i doubt it'll be very thorough overview suffice to say none of these vehicles cover themselves with glory and you will note that i skipped over the 37 millimeter gun and that's because oh and the machine guns that's because the four-man dutch tank the mtls1g14 has two of them so it's double the trouble don't worry we'll get there and again the name seems to vary but 1g14 is what the test report says in the meantime i shall read the description of the mtls the four-man dutch tank mtls 1g14 built by marmon harrington is a 42 000 pound so we're talking about panzer full weight here a full track laying vehicle powered by a six cylinder liquid cooled 240 horsepower engine manufactured by the hercules motor corporation 240 in theory at least the vehicle is a front drive employing a five-speed transmission with a marmon harrington control differential drive with dual controls so the assistant driver could drive if necessary the marmon harrington all steel 18 inch track uses outside guides integrally cast in the track blocks and suspension is a vertical value type spring employing rubber tire bogey wheels okay the hull is made of flat plates bolted together varying from one and a half inches thick on the front to half an inch thick on the top so again in 1943 that's being tested for consideration it was built a year earlier but still one and a half inches thick vertical the turret has a 360 degree traverse and it mounts two 37 millimeter 44 caliber automatic guns one swivel mounted caliber 30 machine gun one caliber 30 anti-aircraft machine gun mounted on the outside of the turret the auxiliary arm consists of three caliber 30 machine guns okay yeah for whatever reason aberdeen was sent a very well worn one which somehow it managed about 2 400 miles on the clock it got 20 miles before the differential failed when they took it apart they found that the tank had a slew of failures it was not worth repairing and they simply asked for an entirely new tank this new tank got 362 miles into the testing program before they finally pulled the plug so random tidbits and in fairness it does actually start out a little bit better than the three-man tank ah the vehicle forded 48 inches of water at a speed of approximately one mile an hour there was no spray or splash no water leaked into the engine or fighting compartment the vehicle went over the 18-inch vertical wall easily in first gear and reverse it went over the 24-inch wall in first gear but failed in reverse then things started turning downhill when the vehicle was operated in the sand course it was exceptionally slow and sluggish this was due to the fact that the vehicle is underpowered when comparing this vehicle with the light tank m3a1 it is found that even though the engine horsepower is approximately the same for both vehicles the dutch tank weighs in at forty two thousand pounds while the light tank weighs in only twenty eight thousand five hundred the vision from any position inside the vehicle was greatly limited by the small vision apertures and both the driver and assistant driver were constantly trying to get into a position which would allow them a greater field of vision a couple of administrative or mechanic or measurement notes after 176 miles of operation the 10 bolts that held the left rear idler to the hub pulled loose and the idler wheel fell off all of the bolts failed at the head this indicates that the counter stroke heads are constructed too lightly after operating the vehicle 337 miles the steering brakes adjustment had been taken up as much as possible and still the vehicle could not be maneuvered satisfactorily so the differential was inspected the brake drums were found to be cracked the brake bands were completely worn out since the control diff is the same type and size as one used in the three man tank of about half the weight it is believed that this control differential is too small for the four main tank during the entire operation of this vehicle considerable difficulty was encountered with track pin failure now this is a fun one the way the track was on the marmot hearing if you imagine this is a marmot harrington and armand harrington wishes it was one of these has a rivet on one side on the inside and it has a bolt or retaining mechanism i think it's a bolt on the outside and what would occasionally happen is that the rivet would fall off there would be nothing holding the track pin in and it would work its way out and then the track would fall apart the proposed solution was to put the right track on the left side and left side on the right track and then ala t34 construct a ramp at the back so that if the pin was sticking out too far and about to fall out it will get whacked back into place they did not actually attempt to do so because the test was canceled before anybody bothered to drive this vehicle any length of time was very tiring since the steering levers are extremely short so an extension of 11 inches was added to the levers and this reduced the minimum turning effort necessary to turn the vehicle from 100 pounds of pull to 60 pounds of pull even with this reduced steering effort the vehicle was tiring to drive because of the cramped quarters small vision ports and short gear shift lever and that's basically as far as they got so so far the tracks fall off the wheels fall off the engine is not powered enough the armor is useless considering the time uh by the way there's no mention in this report anywhere of a radio there's no mention of the headlight guards in this report either so i don't know if they even they work but let's assume that they did the engine compartment is watertight but maintenance is a bear the steering and brakes fail quickly the um the engine needs oil let's see what else we've got so on to the weaponry perhaps it can be redeemed here because it sounds impressive starting off with the machine guns so as mentioned the ctms came with two in the hull one was fixed for the driver to play with and one was a flexible ball mount you know standard whole machine gun and it came with a coaxial the mtls does better it has a ball mount in the hole two fixed hole mounts for whatever reason although in fairness if you look at the photograph it seems to indicate that one might actually be a second ball mount which doesn't make any more sense anyway why would you do it one coaxial mount a ball mount to the right of the turret again no known reason and a pintle mount for the awesome firepower of a caliber 30 against the aircraft the guns themselves were called mg 38b2s of which i know nothing so i reached out to ian for briefing and apparently are basically knock-offs of the browning 1917-1919 series but almost none of the parts are interchangeable with the brownings according to him the guns do work well enough and indeed one was test-fired in the ctms and no negative mechanical issues were encountered that would mean that there is at least one piece of the ctms tank with which worked well sort of the report complained that even though caliber 30 cult functions satisfactorily its effectiveness in battle would be greatly impaired by the small amount of flexibility of the good mount and inadequate size of the vision ports however because the guns did technically work on ctms that may have taken it out of contention for the title of worst tank because the guns did not pass the test fire on mtls not because of any particular fought with the guns but because the mounts were so badly manufactured that they could not physically install the guns in the first place and you'll notice that the photographs they're not installed either the mounting holes were misaligned so that the holes in the trunnion mounts that you know you basically put a pin through to hold the gun in place did not line up with the holes on the guns or the holes in the mount shields were too small to let the gun fit so on to the 37 millimeter gun american armaments corporation m2 44 calibers in length it is described as an automatic gun but the test refers to it as a semi-automatic actually the test report refers to the gun as many things but mechanically is semi-automatic and in fairness at the time it was not unusual to see people refer to semi-automatic weapons particularly canons which have manual loading as automatic in their description and in this case it actually is a self-loader from a clip it's loaded in a manner similar to a traditional semi-automatic gun you manually open the breach by using a detachable handle you insert a first round in by either a couple of fingers whether it's a specific loading tool i suspect you want to use the loading tool because while you are keeping the rand in place you slowly raise at the breach you then place a five round semicircular clip of ammunition into the feeding drum for subsequent rounds reloads of the clips were stowed around the hull three 37 millimeter guns were available for testing one on the ctms two on the mtls and it should be noted also that the 37 millimeter round is not interchangeable with the us army standard 37 millimeter so first they got into the ctms brought it down to the range somehow made it there maybe they choked it i don't know but um give an example they fired the first round they keep they keep detailed records they fired the first round at 14 40 in the afternoon here we go round one failure to eject okay ten minutes later they're ready for round two failed to eject another ten minutes of work round three is fired successful ejection then the mounting actually seems stable and we now have ejection cue discussion and prep work and about half an hour later they load a clip into the feeder prepare for automatic fire round four gun jams 15 minutes later they're gonna try again round five failure to eject these guys are nothing if not persistent 4 pm round 6 failure to eject at this point decided to call it a day went home stepped on it next afternoon the back on the range giving it another crack four more rounds were fired in a 35 minute period and each round failed to eject so they decided to take the gun apart at this point and in fairness they believed part of the problem was the use of the wrong type of recoil oil which prevented a long enough recoil stroke to reliably open the breech but there was also a problem with the ramming mechanism as well which would have prevented reloading anyway as rand 4 saw still as i said they had three guns to play with so they moved to the mtls which nonetheless had powered traverse they set the work on the left gun first well why not it's closest to the gunner pull trigger well actually what you would do is there's a lever that you would push forward to fire the gun but you could fit a solenoid if you so desired so push forward on the lever and nothing try again and not even a click it turned out that the seer trip spring wasn't working and they also figured out that if you inserted a screwdriver through the side of the cradle it was possible to release the sear and then fire the gun they did think that the right gun was capable of firing after their little bit of work was done but by this point word came down from on high that this was all a complete and utter waste of time the folks should stop messing around with this piece of rubbish and go play on something useful in the end the report stated the armament on this vehicle is unsatisfactory from a standpoint of accuracy maintenance and interchangeability the guns are not provided with stabilizers and the unstable firing platform would render their fire highly inaccurate during vehicle operation also due to their complex structure they require a kit of special tools for maintenance to sum up the mtls report concluded the vehicle is slow sluggish and unmaneuverable since it is underpowered the control differential oiling system is unsatisfactory driving fatigue is excessive since the steering levers are extremely short and the driver sits in a crowded position shifting the vehicle is difficult due to the shortness of the gear shift the driver's an assistant driver's vision is inadequate the metal track pins are unsatisfactory the hull is ballistically unsatisfactory since it employs flat bolted plates that are practically vertical and the 37-millimeter tank guns use foreign ammunition the conclusion in the report the four-man dutch tank model mtls-1g14 is not a satisfactory combat vehicle for any branch of the armed forces the vehicle is thoroughly unreliable mechanically and structurally unsound underpowered and equipped with unsatisfactory armament now again this is a production combat tank valiant was a prototype crusader supposedly got fixed eventually and did at least perform a useful training role they built several hundred of these dutch order tanks and they were never fixed the vast majority were simply scrapped immediately a number ended up showing up as gun turrets for local defense the australians thought the only good thing in them was a hercules engine which i then took out of the tank and then left the tank to rust there seems to be absolutely no redeeming quality to this tank whatsoever i would submit that not only is the mtls in the running four worst tank you never heard of it may even have a claim to being the worst tank ever period and so there you go i hope you found the video interesting and informative i will see you on the next one take care

Channel: The_Chieftain

Views: 258,545

Rating: 4.9460664 out of 5

Keywords: MTLS, CTMS, Marmon-herrington tank, MTLS-1G14

Id: faaea_1jWaE

Length: 32min 3sec (1923 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 09 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/HugGigolo]

No reason to mark this as a spoiler.

[u/commandersnow7]

One I've heard of is the Valiant, hailed as the worst tank ever made. The driver can injure himself easily on the controls, and if it gets anywhere near tops speed the whole crew is bumped around like mad.

[u/Alex_the_Weirdman]

Woorgæming please