The 10 Worst Tanks Of World War Two….

Some tanks changed the course of history. Others just changed how many soldiers came home in body bags. Today, we’re counting down the 10 worst tanks that rolled into World War II. Machines so flawed, so poorly designed that their own crews feared them more than the enemy. Let’s begin. Number 10, the cruiser Mark 5 Covenanter.

Britain built nearly 1,700 of these tanks. Not a single one ever saw combat. The Covenanter was plagued by a cooling system so poorly designed that engines would overheat and seize up during basic maneuvers. The radiators were positioned in such a way that crews couldn’t even access them for maintenance without partially disassembling the tank.

British tank crews called it the most reliable tank in the army because you could reliably count on it breaking down. Almost 2,000 tanks, thousands of tons of steel, millions of pounds sterling, and countless man-hour, all wasted on a tank deemed too unreliable to risk in actual combat. It spent the entire war as a training vehicle, teaching British crews on a machine they’d never use in battle.

 Number nine, the Type 89. IGO. Imagine taking a tank designed in 1929 and throwing it against modern armor in 1941. That’s exactly what Japan did with the Type 89. With only 57 mm of armor at its thickest point, the IGO could barely withstand heavy machine gun fire, let alone anti-tank weapons. Its shortbarreled 57 mm gun had terrible penetration and accuracy.

 But Japan was desperate. They had nothing better. So they kept sending these relics into battle throughout the Pacific War. Against the M3 Stuart and M4 Sherman, the Type 89 didn’t stand a chance. It represented everything wrong with Japan’s armored forces, outdated designs, weak industrial capacity, and a military doctrine that never properly valued tanks.

 Number eight, the M3 Lee Grant. The M3 Lee was America’s awkward teenage phase in tank design. Standing nearly 10 feet tall, it was a massive target that screamed, “Shoot me first!” on any battlefield. Its main 75 mm gun was mounted in a hull sponsson on the right side. This meant the entire tank had to turn to aim the gun and it had extremely limited traverse.

 Meanwhile, a smaller 37mm gun sat in a rotating turret on top. The result, a seven-man crew operating two different guns that were rarely useful at the same time. British crews who received it under lend lease renamed it the Grant and tried to make the best of a bad situation. In North Africa, its height made it easy prey for German anti-tank guns.

 One British tanker described it as a factory on tracks, too big to hide and too clumsy to fight. The Lee was always meant as a stop gap until the Sherman arrived. Everyone knew it. The crews knew it. And that knowledge didn’t make climbing into one any less terrifying. Number seven, the T-26. When Operation Barbar Roa began in June 1941, the Soviet Union had more tanks than Germany.

 What they didn’t have was good tanks. The T26 light tank was a perfect example. Based on a British design from the early 1930s, it had just 15 mm of armor in most places. German 37 mm anti-tank guns could penetrate it from over a kilometer away. Even heavy machine guns could punch through at close range. Soviet crews called them coffins on tracks.

 In the first six months of Barbar Roa, thousands were destroyed. Not in heroic last stands, but in one-sided massacres where German gunners barely had to aim. The T-26 represents one of the darkest chapters of the Eastern Front where Soviet tankers died in machines that couldn’t protect them. Fighting a doctrine that valued quantity over quality.

 Number six, the infantry tank. Mark one, Matilda. The original Matilda had one thing going for it. Thick armor. Everything else was a disaster. It crawled across the battlefield at a maximum speed of 8 mph. A soldier could jog faster. Its two-p pounder gun, already obsolete when the war started, became utterly useless as enemy tanks improved.

By 1942, the Matilda couldn’t penetrate the front armor of most German tanks, but it was too slow to flank them or retreat. In North Africa, the heat was unbearable. The crew compartment turned into an oven. Tankers would pass out from heat exhaustion during engagements. Some crews wedged the hatches open during combat, sacrificing protection just to breathe.

 The Matilda was designed for World War I style trench warfare. Instead, it got thrown into World War II’s mobile warfare, where speed and firepower mattered more than armor alone. It was the wrong tank for the wrong war. Number five, the Type 94. tanky. Let’s be honest, the Type 94 wasn’t really a tank. It was a motorized coffin.

 This Japanese tanket weighed less than 3 and 1/2 tons and had armor only 12 mm thick. Rifle fire could penetrate it. A determined soldier with a pickaxe could probably get through. Its only armament was a single 6.5 mm machine gun, the same weapon Japanese infantry carried. Two men squeezed into a space barely bigger than a telephone booth with no room to move, no protection, and no realistic way to fight enemy armor.

 The Type 94 was designed for reconnaissance and infantry support, but in practice, it was just a way to get two soldiers killed faster than if they’d been on foot. Over 800 were built. Each one represented a waste of resources Japan desperately needed for actual combat vehicles. Number four, the Type 95. Hago. The Hago was Japan’s most produced tank of the war with over 2,000 builted.

 It was also one of the most deadly for its own crews. The Hoggo’s 37mm gun couldn’t penetrate American Sherman armor from any angle. Meanwhile, every weapon the Americans had could punch through the Hoggo’s thin armor like tissue paper. The tank ran on gasoline, not diesel, meaning any penetrating hit usually resulted in an immediate fire.

 In the Pacific Island campaigns, American Marines learned to fear Hoggo’s less than enemy infantry. They called them steel coffins and developed specific tactics to burn them out. Flamethrowers could actually penetrate the thin armor and incinerate the crew inside. Tank destroyer crews reported feeling sorry for HGO crews before killing them.

Anyway, Japanese tankers knew they were driving into death traps. They knew their tanks were obsolete, but Bushidto code demanded they fight anyway in machines that guaranteed their deaths. Number three, the M3 Stewart. Wait, the Stewart. Wasn’t that a successful tank? Yes. In 1941, by 1943, it was a death trap.

 The Stewart’s 37 mm gun, adequate in the early war, became completely useless against upgraded German and Japanese armor. It couldn’t penetrate a Panzer 4 from the front. It couldn’t hurt a Tiger at all. Meanwhile, every enemy tank gun could easily destroy a Stewart. American crews nicknamed it the Purple Heart Box because getting hit in one guaranteed a casualty.

 Its high profile made it easy to spot and target. Its thin armor offered false confidence. And yet, America kept producing them, kept sending crews into them because industrial momentum is hard to stop. Tankers transferred from Shermans to Stewarts described it as a punishment detail. Some crews in the Pacific Theater welded extra armor plates onto their Stearts.

 Anything to improve their chances. It rarely helped. Number two, the Panzer 3. This might surprise you. The Panzer 3 was an excellent tank in 1940 and 1941. By 1943, it was a death sentence. The problem wasn’t the design. The problem was that Germany kept using it long after it became obsolete. The Panzer 3’s 50 mm gun couldn’t penetrate a T34’s frontal armor.

 Its own armor couldn’t stop Soviet 76 mm guns or American 75 mm guns. Eastern front crews called assignment to a Panzer 3 unit the short straw, but Germany couldn’t stop production. The factories were toled for it. The supply chains were established, so they kept building them, kept sending them to the front, and kept getting crews killed in machines everyone knew were obsolete.

 A German tanker wrote in his diary, “They gave us Pancer 3s for the Kurssk offensive. We knew then that command had given up on us. Modern tanks went to the SS. We got coffins. Number one, the infantry tank. Mark 4. Churchill. The Churchill tank earns the top spot, not because it was the worst designed, but because it was the most disappointing disaster.

 The Churchill’s combat debut was the DEP raid in August 1942. Of the 30 Churchills that landed, none made it off the beach. Some threw their tracks on the rocks, others were destroyed by German anti-tank guns. Most just broke down. The mechanical reliability was so poor that Churchills couldn’t be counted on to drive a few hundred meters without something failing.

Early Churchills mounted a two-pounder gun, while German tanks carried 75 mm weapons. British crews were expected to fight tanks three times more powerful with a gun barely adequate for armored cars. The Churchill was painfully slow. Maximum speed was 15 mph and that was on roads.

 Cross country, it barely managed eight. This meant Churchill crews couldn’t retreat from superior forces. They couldn’t flank enemy positions. They could only crawl forward and hope not to get hit. One Churchill commander wrote, “The tank has excellent armor and can climb impossible slopes. Pity it can’t shoot straight, breaks down constantly, and moves slower than the infantry it’s supposed to support.

 It took until 1943 for upgraded Churchills with better guns and improved reliability to become merely adequate. By then, thousands of tankers had already died in the earlier versions. Britain wasted enormous resources on a fundamentally flawed design. resources that could have produced more Cromwells or imported more Shermans.