we're looking at the mark 7 Churchill in fact this is not only at the mark 7 it's
the last Churchill ever built it's got a brass plaque on the turret to advertise
that fact for that reason it's only got about 11 miles on the clock when any one
last look so it's as good as new in every respect
now the Churchill was an amazing tank it goes right back in the early days to
1940 41 when the Prime Minister Winston Churchill insisted on having a new
infantry tank we've reached that point in history when the infantry tank was
really more in demand and the cruiser tank and we got the whole idea wrong at
one point and Churchill wanted a new one thankfully that whether there was really
any point is difficult to say but by the time the mark 7 arrived it was an
excellent tank if they've got a 350 horsepower Vauxhall Bedford flat 12 in
the back which gave it to tremendous amount of power within a reasonable way
it had a tremendous climbing ability they reckon in Tunisia and later in
Italy this thing could go up Mountain and go tracks that no other tank could
climb and that's set it in a realm apart in that sense it's got a rather odd
suspension its individual flanged bogies with coil springs but the flanged bog is
a metal rim they've got no rubber on them at all so it's rather noisy when
it's going along and a lot of that noise gets inside but it's works quite well
now the tanks of all welded construction and what makes it outstanding is that
across the front the frontal Armour in front of the driver there is 152
millimetres thick at actually thicker Armour them on the tiger but over a much
smaller area of course which makes quite a difference as I said it's powered by
the Vauxhall Bedford 350 horsepower engine it's driving through a merit
round gearbox at the back so all the driving and gear changing takes place
behind the driver which makes that difficult but
it's an interesting vehicle it has a crew 5 that is driver howl machine
gunner and then the three-man turret crew typically the loader the gamma and
the course of tank commander so from that point of view it's very effective
now what we've actually got here although it's the last Churchill gun
tank will actually display it has a Churchill crocodile which is the
Churchill flamethrower and for that reason you've got the flamethrower hood
attached to the mount the machine gun mounting in the front of the tank here
normally you'd have an open mounting with a besom machine gun in it but now
you've got this flamethrower attachment that's on the flamethrower is mounted
mostly in a trailer at the bank which we'll talk about in a minute
and the fuel is piped under the floor of the tank up through the floor by the
flamethrower gamma and into the back of the flame throwing weapon the
flamethrower itself is a wasp type flamethrower with a range of about
either about a hundred meters on a good day which is quite effective and they
make a tremendous noise when their flaming so it's quite frightening the
trailer that you towed behind the tank is attached to the tank by amazing
articulating to the coupling so the tank can go across country still it's armored
for about 12 millimetres standard so it will keep out small arms fire but
nothing bigger so the tank has to use itself to shield the trailer as much as
possible the trailer is filled with 400 gallons of plain fuel now 400 gallons
it's a very thick stuff because they like the flame they what they like to do
is squirt it like a jet and then set it a light later so it becomes more
devastating like that and that's propelled by nitrogen in cylinders
there's five of them packed in the trailer as well so the whole lots of
fill fill the trailer completely the idea was to separate the men in the tank
from the actual source of the flame that's bad enough when it comes up to
the tank anyway but that's how they operated the flamethrower and it works
by press the only trouble was the pressure tended
to leak if you left the thing standing for half an hour the pressure would
disappear just leak out and the flame when it's going in you're lucky if you
can get half a minute out of it actually they normally find inverse again fire
continuous belts and flames because that used up the flame even quicker but they
were very very frightening and impressive vehicles flame actually won't
do that much harm but it's psychological we're all fear the flame and the sight
of this thing coming towards you belching flame put most people off
you've got more surrendered than will ever wiped out my flame because they
didn't like it they didn't like the pressure of it and then factly they say
that the crews of the flamethrower tanks were often shot by the Germans when they
were captured because they didn't like them and they didn't like the flames
that they squirted out not that the gemst in their flamethrowers as well but
they weren't quite a nasty of this one as a gun tank very effective in its own
way the gun isn't really a patch on the later German tanks but as typical and
that's the Churchill and the Churchill crocodile to the flame-throwing version
you