now the Covenanter Cruiser tank which is the tank we're looking at at the moment
is quite an interesting vehicle I know I've talked about it before I added it
to the list of really awful tanks and there are awful features about it but at
the moment we're looking at it has a fighting tank in its own right and
trying to be slightly more positive about it however to start off with the
first thing I'd say is that in in railway circles in particular they was
used to say that a really correct looking engine with everything in the
right place if it looked right it usually was right it behaved right and
it appears that that doesn't apply to tanks because in many respects the
Covenanter is not a bad looking tank it's got some for large road wheels it's got
a very sleek hull a very streamlined turret and you'd think it would be an
excellent tank but for a variety of reasons it turned out not to be
it's got Christie suspension which was quite good in those days up to a limit
of weight anyway so it's got a bit of freedom in the wheels here this actual
tank was dug up it was found on a farm on the North Downs and the adorn command
that probably accounts for the fact that it's in the mid of the state but it was
dug up and we given that they thought it was a Tiger of course well they would do
wouldn't they and gave it to The Tank Museum because they couldn't think of anything
else to do with it we sent it up to workshops and we had all the tin work
remade that's all new it's only the the basic hull of the tank which is original
but workshops unfortunately put the more modern sort of fire extinguishers on
they're not quite correct but they'll do for now
until we get better ones it's got a plaque on the front telling people where
it came from but all the markings are exactly as we found on the tank so we
know it's regiment it belonged to which company within the regiment really quite
a an interesting set of markings in a way so all that is authentic
and that's more than I can say for some of the other tanks in here the gun for
instance isn't the the tank itself the original covenant had a two pounder gun
though except for the close support versions and I think this one's actually
got a 40-millimeter Bofors barrel stuck in which goes to the back of the turret
it's a bit too long but it gives the right impression and that's all we're
out for at the moment the tank will never run again it's too much of a state
I think inside in fact it still matches it wasn't it was dug up and it's hardly
worth bothering with but they've made quite a good job of the outside but
that's the the history of the tank otherwise I don't think we'd have a
covenantal here because the cover Manta was regarded as an awful tank no effort
was made to preserve one for the museum and I've always believed that we ought
to show tanks warts and all in other words all their awful features as well
and have them lined up with the better tanks so that people can see how we'd
not every tank we made was good that Covenanter certainly wasn't and it gives
people some idea of how awful some of that tanks were if they're interested
that is the basic design is very good it's very low because they didn't want
any vertical surfaces on it at all vertical surfaces are an invitation for
anti-tank rounds to hit and by doing so many horizontal bits you're cutting that
down considerably and that's quite a feature it's powered by a meadows
horizontally-opposed 12 cylinder engine in the back which really drives it along
reasonably fast when it's going which isn't always they did originally plan on
giving it the Merritt Brown gearbox but that was too new and too unreliable
so they used ordinary and such and brake steering on it and they were going to
make the road wheels of light alloy but the Royal Air Force intervened and said
I'm sorry we've got all the the alloy we need me
we wanted all so you'll have to make the wheels of something else and they're
made of steel that added to the weight originally they were also going to weld
the tank it was going to be Britain's first welded cruiser tank but as usual
they didn't like the idea of welding it was too new and the London Midland and
Scottish railway the LMS are as it was known in those days was the main parent
for the design of the Covenanter and they hadn't got the welders in the
workshops there plenty of riveters but by riveting the tank you're immediately
putting in a subframe because you can't put two plates together and rivet them
together you've got to Rivet each plate to a subframe and that immediately puts
the weight up so with that and the robia was the weight was already getting up
creeping up before the tank had even been built and then the government came
along and said oh we want to make our cruisers 30 millimeter of armour instead
of less and so the weight went up again and in the end the tank when it left the
factory at Crewe and which is the first place they were built was so heavy it
was already just about on limits to what the suspension could take so you
couldn't expect it to be improved in any way and of all these things didn't help
we'll come to the worst of them in a minute the driver lives in here he's got
a little box to look out of originally they gave the driver a besom machine gun
to fire out of the side of the drivers hatch but that filled the driver's cab
with fumes so they said it was probably better if he just fired a revolver out
if he needed to I don't think there's any evidence of never doing that I think
the bloke was too busy driving the tank to fire a gun but still it had the
provision to do it the other three men so you got Ford here the other three men
are in the turret the commander the gunner and the loader and it's again
they've done the turret with that angular side to it and it's done so that
the men come inside the turret to a fairly
can at least get their elbows in a little bit just to give them a bit more
freedom it's got a correction machine gun as you can see be a bezoar in this
case and smoke discharger alongside it so it's in every respect quite an
ordinary tank the trouble is the real horror of the tank is the way the things
arranged because it's got that 12 cylinder engine flat engine in the back
it's taking up rather a lot of room as far as and ciliary equipments concerned
and the biggest problem it being a water-cooled engine was the radiator so
what they did and I think is crackers but still if you're ever designing a
tank whether we don't do this it's not a good idea
they put both of the radiators underneath these louvers at the front to
the left of the driver it meant that the tank had perfectly good situation for
the radiators but they were well away from the engine it also meant that pipes
full of hot water could be pumped through the fighting compartment to the
radiator to cool down and then back again as cold water and of course one
thing you don't need particularly in the desert is a heated fighting compartment
he gets quite warm in there anyway so all those things were against it but
not only that the cooling didn't work they pipes leaked and they had a lot of
trouble with them they had trouble with the transmission and in the end although
they built something like 1200 of these not just by the LMS father companies as
well they built about 1200 of these tanks none of them ever went into action
for the British Army a 20 fact not within the army they were not used in
action a few went out to the desert for trials but
generally they stayed in Britain and we used for training they were trained
among other things they train the guards armored division on tanks they learned
all there was to know about house and there is something to be said for giving
the crews awful tanks to train on because they've got to learn how to get
their hands dirty putting it right they've got a
work on the tank as well as drive it and it's all good training but I don't think
it's something to be made a big thing of the other interesting thing about it are
the tracks they're only narrow and you'll find this on most British early
British cruisers they're a lot narrower than they should be and they don't
really spread the weights they take the weight but only just
and that's another feature of them it's a dry pin track anyway going all the way
around under there with guide horns at the bottom the road wheels in pairs so
you've got the guy two on down the center to keep it on and that's how the
tanks designed and it came up with so many faults when it would first appeared
that it never got into action and that's the saddest thing of all at a time when
Britain was desperate the tanks when we were really short of them we couldn't
use this one fraction at all only one was knocked out by enemy action and that
was near Canterbury in Kent it was hit by a bomb from an attacking German
aircraft the tank itself at the time was attached to a Polish armored train
operating in Kent and it was the only Covenant and actually knocked out by
enemy action all the rest were mainly used for training around this country
there's plenty of voters of them but they never saw action never went into a
fight anywhere and that really is quite a condemnation if you like what is
otherwise all should have been quite a good tank okay now if you enjoyed that
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that we really can do with thanks very much so what they did and I think is
crackers but still if you're ever designing a tank we don't do this it's
not a good idea