--- title: 5 Terrible Tanks. description: "Tanks are supposed to be war-winning machines – brutal, mobile fortresses that carry the fight and shrug off return fire. But sometimes, what rolls out of the factory floor is less a steel beast… and more a smoking embarrassment.\n\nIn this article, we're diving into five armoured disasters that earned their place in the scrapheap of history. Some were rushed into service when desperation trumped engineering. Others were peacetime projects, full of promise on paper but completely DOA when reality got involved. One never made it past the prototype stage. Another never made it out of training exercises. And one made it into battle – only to make its crew wish it hadn't.\n\nFrom overheated messes to under armoured toys, from marketing flops to full-blown wartime liabilities, these are tanks that failed hard – loudly, publicly, and sometimes fatally. And if you think that's harsh, just wait till we get to the last entry. It's a tank many still worship today… but when you look past the reputation and into the reality, the only thing it truly excelled at was letting people down.\n\n## The Covenanter: Britain's Rolling Kettle\n\nOn paper, the Covenanter looked like it could be everything the British Army could need and more to carry it through the early stages of WWII – low slung, big road wheels, stylishly sloped armour, and a modest, but perfectly adequate for the time 40mm main gun.\n\nSo what was the problem?\n\nWell, to cut to the chase, it was rushed into production, like really, REALLY rushed. Its development was commenced in 1939, and production began that same year. The reason for this rush was exactly what you would imagine it was given the year: war with Germany was then a matter of 'when,' and not 'if,' and it was blatantly apparent that Britain just did not have enough tanks, hence the Covenanter being rushed through development to satisfy the age of wisdom of 'owt is better than nowt.'\n\nSo short were the British of tanks in fact, and so brown were the War Office's underpants as a result, that an initial order for 100 Covenanters was placed in April 1939 – before even so much as a single prototype or production evaluation vehicle had left the production line. 'Be reet,' the powers that be reasoned, however, as times were then so pressing, that any issues that came up could simply be fixed while the production line was rolling, and retroactively rolled out to ones that were already with their units.\n\nAnd sure, that wisdom absolutely would have held true if the Covenanter just needed a bit of tinkering around the edges to see it right – a new part here and there to correct small imperfections that were missed during its rushed production. But when the issue turned out to be that the core design itself was a big old pile of crap, that cannot be fixed quite so easily.\n\nThe chief issue was its radiator, which had been placed right at the front of the tank, and fed to the rear mounted engine via really long coolant pipes that led through the crew compartment. Make no mistake, you get their logic for doing this: place the radiator at the front, which will force airflow onto it during movement, and thus improve cooling, but the issue was that those pipes simply couldn't provide the waterflow needed to properly allow the radiator to do its thing thanks to their length and limited internal pressure, and what's worse, since they led through the crew compartment, they bled heat along the way. As a result, both the engine and the crew were simply too hot to work properly.\n\nYet, incredibly, 1,771 of these rolling kettles were built between 1939 and 1943, and not one of them ever fired a shot at the enemy; with them being relegated to the British Mainland for training and civil defence duties – there was a handful that were sent to North Africa for hot weather trials… but that went as direly as you would expect. In the end, their service was ended with their production, both coming to an end in 1943, when it was also declared obsolete, and all hulls, save for the bridge laying variants, were ordered to be scrapped.\n\nFrankly, you wonder why they kept it in production for as long as they did, it wasn't like Britain was short of decent designs – it was quantity they were short of, not quality. Why not have the LMS works that produced the Covenanter make Crusaders instead? They had very similar roles after all, and the Crusader, actually, you know… WORKED?\n\n## The Saint-Chamond: France's Trench-Diving Disaster\n\nIn 1917, France's second attempt at a heavy tank – the Saint-Chamond – combined grand ambitions with fatal design flaws. It was an enormous box of a vehicle, half as long again as its predecessor, the Schneider CA1, and armed with a formidable 75 mm gun that protruded from its nose.\n\nOn paper, this seemed like an absolute winner: big armour, big shooty bit… literally what more did you want out of a tank in those days? Or so its designers reasoned anyway.\n\nTurns out, mobility is what else you could want, because the Saint-Chamond, all 23 tons of it, rode on ridiculously short caterpillar tracks – with it actually just using the tracks and chassis of a civilian tractor, with the 'tank' bit just being plonked on top to expedite development and production. This created an absolutely horrific overhang, at the end of which was perched a hell of a lot of weight courtesy of that 75mm gun. This ended exactly the way you would imagine, with the Saint-Chamond diving nose deep into any wide trench it tried to cross, and then getting stuck with its arse waving in the air, totally immobile until it could be dragged out – and it did have to be rescued too, as its 90 horsepower engine wasn't exactly up to the job itself.\n\nBut how did this even happen? Sure, hindsight is 20:20 and all that, but surely its designers saw this coming?\n\nWell, actually, they did, the issue was that FAMH, the company that designed and produced it, was more bothered about securing a contract than it was actually making a decent tank. You see, Schneider, with their CA1, had beaten FAMH to the post by a whole year – and this didn't exactly spark joy for their accountants, who saw every sale Schneider got as one that could have been FAMH's, if only they had a bloody tank to flog! As a result, corners were cut, haste was encouraged, and out trundled the Saint-Chamond in 1917.\n\nIt would first see combat that same year, at Laffaux Mill on May the 5th to be precise, and it went about as well as you would imagine: 16 were deployed, three were destroyed by enemy fire, and even more still took themselves out of the battle by getting stuck.\n\nTo be fair to FAMH too, as some may say we've clowned on them unfairly here, they DID make efforts to improve the Saint-Chamond once it was in production, with an extra 8.5mm of armour being added to the front, a sloped roof that would allow satchel charges to roll off, and a new observation port being added from the 151st vehicle – 400 were made in total – and it also received a meatier new gun – specifically a 75mm Model 1897 – from the 210th vehicle. None of these did anything to address the fundamental issue however: that of its propensity for getting stuck thanks to the overhang – if anything, the extra armour at the front only made it even worse.\n\nTo be even fairer still, too, we do have to admit that by the time of the August to November 1918 Allied Hundred Days Offensive, which saw the breaking of trench deadlock, and the return of open warfare, the Saint-Chamond did start to perform MUCH better – because open warfare meant less trenches and deep craters to fall into.\n\nBUT, this must be remembered as a happy little accident at best – it, like its British equivalents, was designed first and foremost to cross trenches and then give the business to the Bosch, and for that, it simply was not up to the task.\n\n## The AMX-40: France's Unsellable Export\n\nOur next terrible tank was France's earnest attempt to sell a 'modern' main battle tank on the cheap: the AMX-40.\n\nUnveiled in the early 1980s, it was supposed to be the export follow-up to France's successful AMX-30 – which was a cracking tank make no mistake, but so cracking that it proved to be a smidge too pricy for many developing nations to acquire.\n\nWith this in mind, the AMX-40 was specifically crafted as a lightly armoured, but fast-moving platform that still packed a powerful 120mm smoothbore gun.\n\nIt sounded like a good idea on paper, after all, it wasn't like the Chinese hadn't found tremendous export success with their Type 62, which itself was designed along similar lines, and for similar reasons, specifically as a stripped down and shrunken Type 59. But unfortunately for the French, such success was not theirs to repeat, and the AMX-40 ended up as a tank without both cause and customer, and quietly faded away come the '90s; having failed to attract even a single customer.\n\nAnd yet, despite its failure, the AMX-40 wasn't all bad on paper. In the firepower department, it kept pace with the big boys. That 120 mm cannon could fling shells as hard as any other NATO tank gun of the era, and it even boasted a quirky bonus: a 20 mm autocannon alongside the usual machine guns for tackling pesky aircraft or light targets. It also had then-modern electronics: a laser rangefinder, ballistic computer, and thermal sights were part of the package of available upgrades. By the mid-1980s, French engineers had also introduced a stabilized fire-control system so it could shoot more accurately on the move.\n\nOn the mobility side, the AMX-40 was a sprinter too: a 1,100 hp diesel engine (upgraded to 1,300+ hp in later variants) gave it a top speed around 70kph – a smidge faster than an Abrams, and a LOT faster than a Challenger 1. In theory, this meant excellent 'shoot-and-scoot' capability, but the problem was what would happen when the AMX-40 couldn't scoot fast enough to avoid incoming fire, as it'd blow up – particularly against the more meaty warheads the Soviets were starting to roll out around that time.\n\nUnaware of their looming failure, France's GIAT Industries – who built the thing – produced four prototypes and showed them off at exhibitions like Eurosatory, hoping for foreign orders. Spain was the most serious potential customer for a while, and Saudi Arabia also kicked the tracks – quite literally – during desert trials in 1987.\n\nThere, it was pitted head-to-head against the Abrams, Challenger 1, and even a Brazilian contender – the EE-T1 Osório – and the French tank's mobility gimmick totally backfired. It still used the relatively narrow tracks inherited from the old AMX-30 you see, and in the deep sand those skinny tracks struggled – it couldn't put that juicy power to weight ratio to use, and it struggled, the tracks became overstressed, and ultimately, failed. In the end, finding themselves thoroughly unimpressed with the French offering, Saudi Arabia went with the proven American Abrams, and the French tank was left idling with no takers.\n\nBy 1990, the writing was on the wall. The Cold War was in its closing arc, and as a result, the world was suddenly flooded with surplus top-tier tanks being sold at bargain prices. Why would a country buy a risky new AMX-40 when they could get a used Leopard 1 or M60 for cheap, or receive hand-me-down T-72s from former Soviet stocks? They wouldn't, was the answer, and so GIAT finally pulled the plug that same year – with not a single production model ever having been made.\n\n## Literally Any Tankette: The Category That Couldn't\n\nLet's mix things up a bit now, and look not at a particular tank model, but an entire category of them – among which there genuinely cannot be found a single redeeming example: the tankette.\n\nThese were the miniature two-man tanks, usually without a turret, that many armies flirted with in the interwar period – that magic time when WWI had proven that tanks as a general idea were most big and clever, but the specifics ins and outs of how they were most effective had yet to be fully worked out, leading to a period of 'flinging sh*t and seeing what stuck' in tank design.\n\nTankettes were one of the pieces of proverbial thrown, and they had a straightforward enough concept behind them: be small, be cheap, be able to carry a machine gun or small cannon for a bit of punch. They were NEVER intended to be a substitute for true tanks by any nation that gave them a try, with them instead typically being seen more as a specialist infantry support or reconnaissance vehicle.\n\nIn reality, however, they ended up being little but death traps on tracks. ANY tankette you could pick – be it the British Carden-Loyd, the Italian CV-33, the Polish TKS, or the Japanese Type 94 – proved wholly inadequate the moment it was thrown into real combat.\n\nThey had paper-thin armour, often 6 to 12 mm at best, which could often be perforated by ordinary rifle bullets or machine gun fire. To explain further, consider the Czechoslovak VZ.33, as an example. During its testing, engineers discovered bullet holes in its armour. Their response to this discovery? 'Be reet,' followed by welding up the holes, and signing it off as good to go. Indeed, it is telling that when the Germans annexed the Czech half of Czechoslovakia, they did NOT take the vehicles for themselves – as more typically, they'd slap an iron cross on anything foreign they came by and push it into service for themselves. It was that bad that even they weren't interested.\n\nIndeed, when Italy deployed scores of L3 tankettes against British forces in North Africa, the results were tragicomic. Italian tankettes were cut to ribbons; their 8 mm machine guns couldn't dent Allied tanks, while any anti-tank rifle, never mind a field gun or actual proper anti-tank gun, turned the L3's into colanders.\n\nSo small and weak were they in fact, that even wire entanglements, and muddy terrain could stop them in their tracks – quite literally – which is exactly what happened in some early WWII campaigns, where many tankettes got stuck or bogged and had to be abandoned. An Imperial War Museum article on the tankette says it best, noting that while these vehicles may have been \"effective\" for policing colonised populations or chasing rebels, they were utterly \"inadequate for modern warfare\" when pitted against a well-armed foe.\n\nPerhaps the saddest part of the tankette story is that so many nations wasted time and money on them. Britain's early Carden-Loyd tankette inspired MANY copies around the world, and yet by WWII, even the British themselves recognized the concept's futility, with there only being a single recorded combat use of them by the Brits during the conflict, and that'd be around May to June 1940, when around 200 tankettes took part in the defence of the Dyle-Namur Line in Belgium. As for how they performed, badly, in a word. Instead, they mostly ended up just using them as handy transports for the MG's, which would then be pulled out, and set up in their traditional manner.\n\nBut at least the British had alternatives. Poland, facing a ferocious onslaught and in a desperate defence down to the last man, did not, and so it pushed its TKS' – itself a Carden-Loyd derivative incidentally – into proper full-on front-line combat, and they were massacred, proving to be mere fodder for the hungry panzers that circled around them. They DID manage to get a few kills with their variants that sported a 20mm WZ.38 autocannon, but they had a mere 24 of these as compared to a total inventory of 575, and even these few kills were against the weediest things the Germans brought with them – Panzer I's and the like – and even then were rare, and VERY lucky.\n\nThe Japanese, and indeed the Thais, to be fair, did actually have some success with them.\n\nBUT, that fact is testimony more to the strength, or lack thereof, of their opposition, than it is any merit of their Type 94's and Carden-Loyd's respectively. As evidence of that claim, consider this: when the Chinese started getting serious hardware sent to them from the Western Allies, the Japanese tankettes began to suffer the exact same fate as their European counterparts. Similarly, when the Soviets joined the fray in 1945 and invaded Manchuria, the Japanese tankettes still in service – which was actually still quite a lot – were simply brushed aside as mere obstacles in the path of advancing Soviet armour.\n\nStill though, while tankettes may have been a total technological dead end, from the Carden-Loyd, the British did at least create the Universal Carrier, which was a belting little bit of kit. So every cloud and all that we guess.\n\n## The Panther: The Overrated Diva\n\nAnd to close us off, let's have an entry that may just prove a smidge controversial: the Panzerkampfwagen V Panther.\n\nNow, we know what many of you are thinking now, \"But SideProjects, however could you say something so brave and bold,\" or, to those less inclined towards flattery, \"what an absolute load of w*nk, everyone knows the Panther was one of the best tanks of WWII?!\"\n\nAnd to those of you thinking such things, bear with us, because we firmly believe that the Panther, in STARK contrast to its common reputation, was actually lowkey kind of a heap of junk. A cool looking one, make no mistake, but a heap of junk nonetheless.\n\nCertainly, at face value, it does look like we've lost the plot a bit here, we mean, come on, a VERY powerful 75mm gun, excellent frontal armour, and plenty of go – what's not to love, after all? It's reliability, that's what's not to love – because it was bloody dreadful, maybe even comically so in fact.\n\nLet's rewind to its big debut: Kursk, July 1943 – the largest tank battle in history, and the moment Hitler hoped his shiny new wunderwaffe would swing the tide back in Germany's favour. 184 Panthers were assembled in record time and rushed to the front, and of them, only 10 remained operational by the fifth day, with 85 of the losses coming from mechanical failure, and 25 by fire, including two that caught fire while being offloaded from their delivery trains – and we've done the maths, yes, that DOES mean that more were lost to unreliability than enemy fire.\n\nA large part of this was caused by its engine, the Maybach HL 210, which was plagued by overheating and oil leaks, which caused both mechanical failure and fire. So bad was this, that by September '43 it was replaced by the HL230, and, to be fair, this did stop the random fires, but overall reliability was still atrocious.\n\nThis continued unreliability came from the fact that its final drive system – originally designed for a mere 30 ton tank, rather than the Panther's 40+ tons – was also incredibly fragile, with field reports indicating an average lifespan of just 150km before failure. For context, a Panther could get upwards of 260km of range out of a single tank of fuel if being driven on the road, meaning that, often times, it needed a new final drive system more than it needed its fuel tank topping up. This simply is not acceptable in a front-line tank; it took tanks out of action when they were needed in the front lines, it wasted the time of mechanics, who only had so many hours in a day to work, and it put a HUGE strain on logistics having to keep a steady supply of new final drive systems both produced, and delivered to the front.\n\nThen there's the matter of its suspension. Sure, interleaved road wheels look VERY cool – we'd never try to claim they didn't – but have you ever stopped to consider how much of a monumental pain in the arse they were to maintain? Think of it this way – a suspension arm breaks, or a road wheel on the inside needs changing, look how much other stuff you have to unbolt just to be able to get to the part that needs to be changed? And of course, the Nazi war machine wasn't exactly short of stuff that needed repairing at any given time – the mechanics' work day could have been FAR better spent than spending half of it faffing about with a fancy over-engineered suspension… there's a reason NO ONE used this sort of set up after WWII, and the faff of maintenance is that reason.\n\nAnd here's another stat to REALLY sell our thesis to you all: in Normandy, post-battle assessments found that over 50% of abandoned Panthers showed NO combat damage whatsoever, meaning that instead they had been abandoned due to mechanical breakdown, or lack of fuel.\n\nSo, just how did this become the case then? Just why was it such a heap of junk?\n\nThe root of the problem was actually quite simple: much like the Covenanter we looked at earlier, the Panther had been rushed into production to meet political expectations rather than mechanical reality. As a result, corners were cut, and the Panther as we know it – warts and all – came to be.\n\nEven when improvements were made – and they were, over time – the Panther never really lost its diva energy. Late-war versions were better, yes, but they were still high-maintenance, fragile, and utterly dependent on supply lines and support crews that Germany increasingly lacked. Tank crews dreaded drawing Panthers. Not because they feared combat, but because they knew that driving one was essentially a gamble: would you make it to the fight today, or would you spend it waiting for a tow?\n\nAnd look – credit where it's due – when it did make it to the fight, the Panther could be devastating. Its gun was world-class. Its frontal armour was more than a match for most Allied weapons. A functioning Panther, set up in a good position with a competent crew, could – and did – punch well above its weight. But war isn't won on hypotheticals and highlight reels. It's won by what shows up, holds together, and gets the job done. On that front, the Panther just didn't deliver.\n\nIn total, over 6,000 Panthers were built – a staggering commitment of resources for a tank that so often failed to deliver a return on investment, and yet, for every Panther firing a shot in anger, another was being cannibalised for parts or limping back to repair. It was, in effect, a luxury tank in an economy that could barely afford an austere one.\n\nSo yes, it had potential. Yes, it scared the hell out of Allied tankers – but only when it actually worked, which wasn't enough to matter.\n\nAnd that's why the Panther, despite its reputation, earns a rightful spot on this list. It wasn't the best tank of the war, and nor was it even close to the top of that list. It was a glorious failure given eternal relevancy in the popular zeitgeist by the fact that, by pure fluke, it ended up being big, and looking cool.\n\n## Key Takeaways\n\n- The Covenanter tank was rushed into production during WWII, leading to severe overheating issues due to poor radiator design.\n- The Saint-Chamond tank's design flaws, such as short tracks and excessive overhang, made it prone to getting stuck in trenches.\n- The AMX-40 tank failed to attract customers due to its narrow tracks, which struggled in deep sand and led to mechanical failures.\n- Tankettes, like the Carden-Loyd and CV-33, were ineffective in combat due to their thin armor and vulnerability to small arms fire.\n- The Panther tank, despite its powerful gun and armor, was unreliable and often broke down, leading to high maintenance demands.\n\n## Frequently Asked Questions\n\n### What was the main issue with the Covenanter tank?\n\nThe Covenanter tank had a critical design flaw with its radiator placement and coolant pipes, which led to overheating problems for both the engine and the crew.\n\n### Why was the Saint-Chamond tank ineffective in combat?\n\nThe Saint-Chamond tank had a significant overhang due to its short caterpillar tracks, causing it to get stuck in trenches and other obstacles, making it ineffective in combat.\n\n### What was the intended market for the AMX-40 tank?\n\nThe AMX-40 was designed as a cheaper alternative to the successful AMX-30, intended for export to developing nations.\n\n### Why did the AMX-40 tank fail to attract customers?\n\nThe AMX-40 failed to attract customers due to its narrow tracks, which struggled in deep sand during desert trials, and the availability of surplus top-tier tanks at bargain prices.\n\n### What were tankettes primarily used for?\n\nTankettes were intended as specialist infantry support or reconnaissance vehicles, not as substitutes for true tanks.\n\n### Why were tankettes considered ineffective in modern warfare?\n\nTankettes had paper-thin armor, often 6 to 12 mm at best, which could be perforated by ordinary rifle bullets or machine gun fire, making them inadequate for modern warfare.\n\n### What was the main problem with the Panther tank?\n\nThe Panther tank was notorious for its unreliability, with mechanical failures often outweighing combat losses, particularly due to issues with its engine and final drive system.\n\n### How did the Panther tank perform in the Battle of Kursk?\n\nIn the Battle of Kursk, only 10 out of 184 Panthers remained operational by the fifth day, with 85 losses due to mechanical failure and 25 by fire.\n\n### What was the issue with the Panther's suspension system?\n\nThe Panther's interleaved road wheels were difficult to maintain, requiring the removal of multiple components to access and repair individual parts, making it a significant maintenance burden.\n\n### Why did the Panther tank have a high abandonment rate in Normandy?\n\nOver 50% of abandoned Panthers in Normandy showed no combat damage, indicating they were abandoned due to mechanical breakdown or lack of fuel.\n\n## Sources\n\n- [Original Side Projects video: 5 Terrible Tanks.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Dk8lGhA0LE)\n\n## Related Coverage" url: https://sideprojects.pub/article/5-tanks-so-terrible-theyre-almost-impressive.md canonical: https://sideprojects.pub/article/5-tanks-so-terrible-theyre-almost-impressive datePublished: 2026-06-25 dateModified: 2026-06-25 author: - name: Simon Whistler url: https://sideprojects.pub/author/simon-whistler publisher: Side Projects image: "https://media.sideprojects.pub/cdn-cgi/image/width=1600,height=900,fit=cover,quality=80,format=auto/articles/5Dk8lGhA0LE/hero.jpg" type: Article contentHash: ba7519264eeb525176017a55fe64a6a0fe9a06243873e04bb813d66dba5129a5 tokens: 6390 summaryUrl: https://sideprojects.pub/article/5-tanks-so-terrible-theyre-almost-impressive.md.summary.md --- Tanks are supposed to be war-winning machines – brutal, mobile fortresses that carry the fight and shrug off return fire. But sometimes, what rolls out of the factory floor is less a steel beast… and more a smoking embarrassment. In this article, we're diving into five armoured disasters that earned their place in the scrapheap of history. Some were rushed into service when desperation trumped engineering. Others were peacetime projects, full of promise on paper but completely DOA when reality got involved. One never made it past the prototype stage. Another never made it out of training exercises. And one made it into battle – only to make its crew wish it hadn't. From overheated messes to under armoured toys, from marketing flops to full-blown wartime liabilities, these are tanks that failed hard – loudly, publicly, and sometimes fatally. And if you think that's harsh, just wait till we get to the last entry. It's a tank many still worship today… but when you look past the reputation and into the reality, the only thing it truly excelled at was letting people down. ## The Covenanter: Britain's Rolling Kettle On paper, the Covenanter looked like it could be everything the British Army could need and more to carry it through the early stages of WWII – low slung, big road wheels, stylishly sloped armour, and a modest, but perfectly adequate for the time 40mm main gun. So what was the problem? Well, to cut to the chase, it was rushed into production, like really, REALLY rushed. Its development was commenced in 1939, and production began that same year. The reason for this rush was exactly what you would imagine it was given the year: war with Germany was then a matter of 'when,' and not 'if,' and it was blatantly apparent that Britain just did not have enough tanks, hence the Covenanter being rushed through development to satisfy the age of wisdom of 'owt is better than nowt.' So short were the British of tanks in fact, and so brown were the War Office's underpants as a result, that an initial order for 100 Covenanters was placed in April 1939 – before even so much as a single prototype or production evaluation vehicle had left the production line. 'Be reet,' the powers that be reasoned, however, as times were then so pressing, that any issues that came up could simply be fixed while the production line was rolling, and retroactively rolled out to ones that were already with their units. And sure, that wisdom absolutely would have held true if the Covenanter just needed a bit of tinkering around the edges to see it right – a new part here and there to correct small imperfections that were missed during its rushed production. But when the issue turned out to be that the core design itself was a big old pile of crap, that cannot be fixed quite so easily. The chief issue was its radiator, which had been placed right at the front of the tank, and fed to the rear mounted engine via really long coolant pipes that led through the crew compartment. Make no mistake, you get their logic for doing this: place the radiator at the front, which will force airflow onto it during movement, and thus improve cooling, but the issue was that those pipes simply couldn't provide the waterflow needed to properly allow the radiator to do its thing thanks to their length and limited internal pressure, and what's worse, since they led through the crew compartment, they bled heat along the way. As a result, both the engine and the crew were simply too hot to work properly. Yet, incredibly, 1,771 of these rolling kettles were built between 1939 and 1943, and not one of them ever fired a shot at the enemy; with them being relegated to the British Mainland for training and civil defence duties – there was a handful that were sent to North Africa for hot weather trials… but that went as direly as you would expect. In the end, their service was ended with their production, both coming to an end in 1943, when it was also declared obsolete, and all hulls, save for the bridge laying variants, were ordered to be scrapped. Frankly, you wonder why they kept it in production for as long as they did, it wasn't like Britain was short of decent designs – it was quantity they were short of, not quality. Why not have the LMS works that produced the Covenanter make Crusaders instead? They had very similar roles after all, and the Crusader, actually, you know… WORKED? ## The Saint-Chamond: France's Trench-Diving Disaster In 1917, France's second attempt at a heavy tank – the Saint-Chamond – combined grand ambitions with fatal design flaws. It was an enormous box of a vehicle, half as long again as its predecessor, the Schneider CA1, and armed with a formidable 75 mm gun that protruded from its nose. On paper, this seemed like an absolute winner: big armour, big shooty bit… literally what more did you want out of a tank in those days? Or so its designers reasoned anyway. Turns out, mobility is what else you could want, because the Saint-Chamond, all 23 tons of it, rode on ridiculously short caterpillar tracks – with it actually just using the tracks and chassis of a civilian tractor, with the 'tank' bit just being plonked on top to expedite development and production. This created an absolutely horrific overhang, at the end of which was perched a hell of a lot of weight courtesy of that 75mm gun. This ended exactly the way you would imagine, with the Saint-Chamond diving nose deep into any wide trench it tried to cross, and then getting stuck with its arse waving in the air, totally immobile until it could be dragged out – and it did have to be rescued too, as its 90 horsepower engine wasn't exactly up to the job itself. But how did this even happen? Sure, hindsight is 20:20 and all that, but surely its designers saw this coming? Well, actually, they did, the issue was that FAMH, the company that designed and produced it, was more bothered about securing a contract than it was actually making a decent tank. You see, Schneider, with their CA1, had beaten FAMH to the post by a whole year – and this didn't exactly spark joy for their accountants, who saw every sale Schneider got as one that could have been FAMH's, if only they had a bloody tank to flog! As a result, corners were cut, haste was encouraged, and out trundled the Saint-Chamond in 1917. It would first see combat that same year, at Laffaux Mill on May the 5th to be precise, and it went about as well as you would imagine: 16 were deployed, three were destroyed by enemy fire, and even more still took themselves out of the battle by getting stuck. To be fair to FAMH too, as some may say we've clowned on them unfairly here, they DID make efforts to improve the Saint-Chamond once it was in production, with an extra 8.5mm of armour being added to the front, a sloped roof that would allow satchel charges to roll off, and a new observation port being added from the 151st vehicle – 400 were made in total – and it also received a meatier new gun – specifically a 75mm Model 1897 – from the 210th vehicle. None of these did anything to address the fundamental issue however: that of its propensity for getting stuck thanks to the overhang – if anything, the extra armour at the front only made it even worse. To be even fairer still, too, we do have to admit that by the time of the August to November 1918 Allied Hundred Days Offensive, which saw the breaking of trench deadlock, and the return of open warfare, the Saint-Chamond did start to perform MUCH better – because open warfare meant less trenches and deep craters to fall into. BUT, this must be remembered as a happy little accident at best – it, like its British equivalents, was designed first and foremost to cross trenches and then give the business to the Bosch, and for that, it simply was not up to the task. ## The AMX-40: France's Unsellable Export Our next terrible tank was France's earnest attempt to sell a 'modern' main battle tank on the cheap: the AMX-40. Unveiled in the early 1980s, it was supposed to be the export follow-up to France's successful AMX-30 – which was a cracking tank make no mistake, but so cracking that it proved to be a smidge too pricy for many developing nations to acquire. With this in mind, the AMX-40 was specifically crafted as a lightly armoured, but fast-moving platform that still packed a powerful 120mm smoothbore gun. It sounded like a good idea on paper, after all, it wasn't like the Chinese hadn't found tremendous export success with their Type 62, which itself was designed along similar lines, and for similar reasons, specifically as a stripped down and shrunken Type 59. But unfortunately for the French, such success was not theirs to repeat, and the AMX-40 ended up as a tank without both cause and customer, and quietly faded away come the '90s; having failed to attract even a single customer. And yet, despite its failure, the AMX-40 wasn't all bad on paper. In the firepower department, it kept pace with the big boys. That 120 mm cannon could fling shells as hard as any other NATO tank gun of the era, and it even boasted a quirky bonus: a 20 mm autocannon alongside the usual machine guns for tackling pesky aircraft or light targets. It also had then-modern electronics: a laser rangefinder, ballistic computer, and thermal sights were part of the package of available upgrades. By the mid-1980s, French engineers had also introduced a stabilized fire-control system so it could shoot more accurately on the move. On the mobility side, the AMX-40 was a sprinter too: a 1,100 hp diesel engine (upgraded to 1,300+ hp in later variants) gave it a top speed around 70kph – a smidge faster than an Abrams, and a LOT faster than a Challenger 1. In theory, this meant excellent 'shoot-and-scoot' capability, but the problem was what would happen when the AMX-40 couldn't scoot fast enough to avoid incoming fire, as it'd blow up – particularly against the more meaty warheads the Soviets were starting to roll out around that time. Unaware of their looming failure, France's GIAT Industries – who built the thing – produced four prototypes and showed them off at exhibitions like Eurosatory, hoping for foreign orders. Spain was the most serious potential customer for a while, and Saudi Arabia also kicked the tracks – quite literally – during desert trials in 1987. There, it was pitted head-to-head against the Abrams, Challenger 1, and even a Brazilian contender – the EE-T1 Osório – and the French tank's mobility gimmick totally backfired. It still used the relatively narrow tracks inherited from the old AMX-30 you see, and in the deep sand those skinny tracks struggled – it couldn't put that juicy power to weight ratio to use, and it struggled, the tracks became overstressed, and ultimately, failed. In the end, finding themselves thoroughly unimpressed with the French offering, Saudi Arabia went with the proven American Abrams, and the French tank was left idling with no takers. By 1990, the writing was on the wall. The Cold War was in its closing arc, and as a result, the world was suddenly flooded with surplus top-tier tanks being sold at bargain prices. Why would a country buy a risky new AMX-40 when they could get a used Leopard 1 or M60 for cheap, or receive hand-me-down T-72s from former Soviet stocks? They wouldn't, was the answer, and so GIAT finally pulled the plug that same year – with not a single production model ever having been made. ## Literally Any Tankette: The Category That Couldn't Let's mix things up a bit now, and look not at a particular tank model, but an entire category of them – among which there genuinely cannot be found a single redeeming example: the tankette. These were the miniature two-man tanks, usually without a turret, that many armies flirted with in the interwar period – that magic time when WWI had proven that tanks as a general idea were most big and clever, but the specifics ins and outs of how they were most effective had yet to be fully worked out, leading to a period of 'flinging sh*t and seeing what stuck' in tank design. Tankettes were one of the pieces of proverbial thrown, and they had a straightforward enough concept behind them: be small, be cheap, be able to carry a machine gun or small cannon for a bit of punch. They were NEVER intended to be a substitute for true tanks by any nation that gave them a try, with them instead typically being seen more as a specialist infantry support or reconnaissance vehicle. In reality, however, they ended up being little but death traps on tracks. ANY tankette you could pick – be it the British Carden-Loyd, the Italian CV-33, the Polish TKS, or the Japanese Type 94 – proved wholly inadequate the moment it was thrown into real combat. They had paper-thin armour, often 6 to 12 mm at best, which could often be perforated by ordinary rifle bullets or machine gun fire. To explain further, consider the Czechoslovak VZ.33, as an example. During its testing, engineers discovered bullet holes in its armour. Their response to this discovery? 'Be reet,' followed by welding up the holes, and signing it off as good to go. Indeed, it is telling that when the Germans annexed the Czech half of Czechoslovakia, they did NOT take the vehicles for themselves – as more typically, they'd slap an iron cross on anything foreign they came by and push it into service for themselves. It was that bad that even they weren't interested. Indeed, when Italy deployed scores of L3 tankettes against British forces in North Africa, the results were tragicomic. Italian tankettes were cut to ribbons; their 8 mm machine guns couldn't dent Allied tanks, while any anti-tank rifle, never mind a field gun or actual proper anti-tank gun, turned the L3's into colanders. So small and weak were they in fact, that even wire entanglements, and muddy terrain could stop them in their tracks – quite literally – which is exactly what happened in some early WWII campaigns, where many tankettes got stuck or bogged and had to be abandoned. An Imperial War Museum article on the tankette says it best, noting that while these vehicles may have been "effective" for policing colonised populations or chasing rebels, they were utterly "inadequate for modern warfare" when pitted against a well-armed foe. Perhaps the saddest part of the tankette story is that so many nations wasted time and money on them. Britain's early Carden-Loyd tankette inspired MANY copies around the world, and yet by WWII, even the British themselves recognized the concept's futility, with there only being a single recorded combat use of them by the Brits during the conflict, and that'd be around May to June 1940, when around 200 tankettes took part in the defence of the Dyle-Namur Line in Belgium. As for how they performed, badly, in a word. Instead, they mostly ended up just using them as handy transports for the MG's, which would then be pulled out, and set up in their traditional manner. But at least the British had alternatives. Poland, facing a ferocious onslaught and in a desperate defence down to the last man, did not, and so it pushed its TKS' – itself a Carden-Loyd derivative incidentally – into proper full-on front-line combat, and they were massacred, proving to be mere fodder for the hungry panzers that circled around them. They DID manage to get a few kills with their variants that sported a 20mm WZ.38 autocannon, but they had a mere 24 of these as compared to a total inventory of 575, and even these few kills were against the weediest things the Germans brought with them – Panzer I's and the like – and even then were rare, and VERY lucky. The Japanese, and indeed the Thais, to be fair, did actually have some success with them. BUT, that fact is testimony more to the strength, or lack thereof, of their opposition, than it is any merit of their Type 94's and Carden-Loyd's respectively. As evidence of that claim, consider this: when the Chinese started getting serious hardware sent to them from the Western Allies, the Japanese tankettes began to suffer the exact same fate as their European counterparts. Similarly, when the Soviets joined the fray in 1945 and invaded Manchuria, the Japanese tankettes still in service – which was actually still quite a lot – were simply brushed aside as mere obstacles in the path of advancing Soviet armour. Still though, while tankettes may have been a total technological dead end, from the Carden-Loyd, the British did at least create the Universal Carrier, which was a belting little bit of kit. So every cloud and all that we guess. ## The Panther: The Overrated Diva And to close us off, let's have an entry that may just prove a smidge controversial: the Panzerkampfwagen V Panther. Now, we know what many of you are thinking now, "But SideProjects, however could you say something so brave and bold," or, to those less inclined towards flattery, "what an absolute load of w*nk, everyone knows the Panther was one of the best tanks of WWII?!" And to those of you thinking such things, bear with us, because we firmly believe that the Panther, in STARK contrast to its common reputation, was actually lowkey kind of a heap of junk. A cool looking one, make no mistake, but a heap of junk nonetheless. Certainly, at face value, it does look like we've lost the plot a bit here, we mean, come on, a VERY powerful 75mm gun, excellent frontal armour, and plenty of go – what's not to love, after all? It's reliability, that's what's not to love – because it was bloody dreadful, maybe even comically so in fact. Let's rewind to its big debut: Kursk, July 1943 – the largest tank battle in history, and the moment Hitler hoped his shiny new wunderwaffe would swing the tide back in Germany's favour. 184 Panthers were assembled in record time and rushed to the front, and of them, only 10 remained operational by the fifth day, with 85 of the losses coming from mechanical failure, and 25 by fire, including two that caught fire while being offloaded from their delivery trains – and we've done the maths, yes, that DOES mean that more were lost to unreliability than enemy fire. A large part of this was caused by its engine, the Maybach HL 210, which was plagued by overheating and oil leaks, which caused both mechanical failure and fire. So bad was this, that by September '43 it was replaced by the HL230, and, to be fair, this did stop the random fires, but overall reliability was still atrocious. This continued unreliability came from the fact that its final drive system – originally designed for a mere 30 ton tank, rather than the Panther's 40+ tons – was also incredibly fragile, with field reports indicating an average lifespan of just 150km before failure. For context, a Panther could get upwards of 260km of range out of a single tank of fuel if being driven on the road, meaning that, often times, it needed a new final drive system more than it needed its fuel tank topping up. This simply is not acceptable in a front-line tank; it took tanks out of action when they were needed in the front lines, it wasted the time of mechanics, who only had so many hours in a day to work, and it put a HUGE strain on logistics having to keep a steady supply of new final drive systems both produced, and delivered to the front. Then there's the matter of its suspension. Sure, interleaved road wheels look VERY cool – we'd never try to claim they didn't – but have you ever stopped to consider how much of a monumental pain in the arse they were to maintain? Think of it this way – a suspension arm breaks, or a road wheel on the inside needs changing, look how much other stuff you have to unbolt just to be able to get to the part that needs to be changed? And of course, the Nazi war machine wasn't exactly short of stuff that needed repairing at any given time – the mechanics' work day could have been FAR better spent than spending half of it faffing about with a fancy over-engineered suspension… there's a reason NO ONE used this sort of set up after WWII, and the faff of maintenance is that reason. And here's another stat to REALLY sell our thesis to you all: in Normandy, post-battle assessments found that over 50% of abandoned Panthers showed NO combat damage whatsoever, meaning that instead they had been abandoned due to mechanical breakdown, or lack of fuel. So, just how did this become the case then? Just why was it such a heap of junk? The root of the problem was actually quite simple: much like the Covenanter we looked at earlier, the Panther had been rushed into production to meet political expectations rather than mechanical reality. As a result, corners were cut, and the Panther as we know it – warts and all – came to be. Even when improvements were made – and they were, over time – the Panther never really lost its diva energy. Late-war versions were better, yes, but they were still high-maintenance, fragile, and utterly dependent on supply lines and support crews that Germany increasingly lacked. Tank crews dreaded drawing Panthers. Not because they feared combat, but because they knew that driving one was essentially a gamble: would you make it to the fight today, or would you spend it waiting for a tow? And look – credit where it's due – when it did make it to the fight, the Panther could be devastating. Its gun was world-class. Its frontal armour was more than a match for most Allied weapons. A functioning Panther, set up in a good position with a competent crew, could – and did – punch well above its weight. But war isn't won on hypotheticals and highlight reels. It's won by what shows up, holds together, and gets the job done. On that front, the Panther just didn't deliver. In total, over 6,000 Panthers were built – a staggering commitment of resources for a tank that so often failed to deliver a return on investment, and yet, for every Panther firing a shot in anger, another was being cannibalised for parts or limping back to repair. It was, in effect, a luxury tank in an economy that could barely afford an austere one. So yes, it had potential. Yes, it scared the hell out of Allied tankers – but only when it actually worked, which wasn't enough to matter. And that's why the Panther, despite its reputation, earns a rightful spot on this list. It wasn't the best tank of the war, and nor was it even close to the top of that list. It was a glorious failure given eternal relevancy in the popular zeitgeist by the fact that, by pure fluke, it ended up being big, and looking cool. ## Key Takeaways - The Covenanter tank was rushed into production during WWII, leading to severe overheating issues due to poor radiator design. - The Saint-Chamond tank's design flaws, such as short tracks and excessive overhang, made it prone to getting stuck in trenches. - The AMX-40 tank failed to attract customers due to its narrow tracks, which struggled in deep sand and led to mechanical failures. - Tankettes, like the Carden-Loyd and CV-33, were ineffective in combat due to their thin armor and vulnerability to small arms fire. - The Panther tank, despite its powerful gun and armor, was unreliable and often broke down, leading to high maintenance demands. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What was the main issue with the Covenanter tank? The Covenanter tank had a critical design flaw with its radiator placement and coolant pipes, which led to overheating problems for both the engine and the crew. ### Why was the Saint-Chamond tank ineffective in combat? The Saint-Chamond tank had a significant overhang due to its short caterpillar tracks, causing it to get stuck in trenches and other obstacles, making it ineffective in combat. ### What was the intended market for the AMX-40 tank? The AMX-40 was designed as a cheaper alternative to the successful AMX-30, intended for export to developing nations. ### Why did the AMX-40 tank fail to attract customers? The AMX-40 failed to attract customers due to its narrow tracks, which struggled in deep sand during desert trials, and the availability of surplus top-tier tanks at bargain prices. ### What were tankettes primarily used for? Tankettes were intended as specialist infantry support or reconnaissance vehicles, not as substitutes for true tanks. ### Why were tankettes considered ineffective in modern warfare? Tankettes had paper-thin armor, often 6 to 12 mm at best, which could be perforated by ordinary rifle bullets or machine gun fire, making them inadequate for modern warfare. ### What was the main problem with the Panther tank? The Panther tank was notorious for its unreliability, with mechanical failures often outweighing combat losses, particularly due to issues with its engine and final drive system. ### How did the Panther tank perform in the Battle of Kursk? In the Battle of Kursk, only 10 out of 184 Panthers remained operational by the fifth day, with 85 losses due to mechanical failure and 25 by fire. ### What was the issue with the Panther's suspension system? The Panther's interleaved road wheels were difficult to maintain, requiring the removal of multiple components to access and repair individual parts, making it a significant maintenance burden. ### Why did the Panther tank have a high abandonment rate in Normandy? Over 50% of abandoned Panthers in Normandy showed no combat damage, indicating they were abandoned due to mechanical breakdown or lack of fuel. ## Sources - [Original Side Projects video: 5 Terrible Tanks.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Dk8lGhA0LE) ## Related Coverage