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It seems that history has taught us two things about tank design...
1: Never design a tank in haste.
And 2:
Never design a tank through a large committee.
But the worst case is to do both like the British did with the TOG tank.
This was the tank horridly designed by the Special Vehicle Development Committee in 1939...
to fulfill a need for a superior British heavy tank.
That was made a top priority, as war with Germany was now becoming a distinct possibility.
The resulting tank, the TOG I was brilliant, innovative, powerful, and lethal...
IF it had been designed and deployed at the end of World War I, 20 years earlier.
By the standards of 1939...
it was outdated and cumbersome...
designed for an era of trench warfare, not for an era that now demanded an agile and all-around performer...
which could take advantage of the new mobile warfare personified by the German Blitzkrieg tactics.
At the same time on the other side of the world 11,000 miles away in New Zealand...
they too, were waking up to the possibility that another World War might be on the horizon.
When the inevitable happened and Britain declared war with Germany on September 3rd 1939...
so did New Zealand later that day.
Then when Japan entered into the war in December, 1941...
with the attack on the US's base at Pearl Harbor...
New Zealand came to a sudden and awful realization.
In World War I...
New Zealand had patriotically sent troops to fight and die for an ideal on battlefields from the Middle East...
to France.
But World War II was going to be a totally different war for the New Zealanders.
As Japan had now joined the war that was a real possibility that geographically isolated New Zealand might be invaded.
Right from the start of the war...
New Zealand had realized they had a deficiency and need...
in all categories of modern weaponry including ships, airplanes and tanks...
and they knew their allies could not necessarily make up these desperate shortfalls...
as they had urgent needs of their own.
So, New Zealand rushed to re-arm and upgrade their Armed Forces...
hindered by the fact that they only had limited heavy industrial capacity.
So to fulfil the desperate need for combat aircraft...
They accepted numbers of obsolete aircraft from their allies.
Like the Vickers Vildebeest...
as well as hardly converting civilian D.H.86 passenger planes into bombers.
At the start of the war, New Zealand did everything they could possibly do to boost their naval strength.
This included such desperate measures as converting the passenger ship "SS (?)" in 1940...
into an armed merchant cruiser and re-naming it "HMNZS (?)".
But the New Zealand government and military...
knew that all this might not be enough to deter a Japanese invasion.
So they began to face the terrifying reality...
that they could be fighting the enemy on their own soil.
They had foreseen this problem as early as the summer of 1940 after the fall of France.
So they had then turned to Bob Semple, the Minister of Works...
who was known as a no-nonsense kind of man.
He took on the project with great enthusiasm and came to the conclusion...
that the best approach was to utilize what they already had.
So he concentrated on converting existing vehicles rather than building something from scratch.
He was not hampered by being tied to a committee and to some degree...
he was given free range over the design.
Therefore, he chose the basis for his design to be the American D8 Caterpillar tractors...
which at the time, 81 were available in New Zealand for conversion.
The Caterpillar D8 was a proven and popular American track type tractor first produced in 1935...
and ended up being used all over the world in large numbers.
The design was so good and versatile...
and it had evolved over the years and the most recent version today is the D8T...
that was introduced in 2004.
So it was a sound choice for conversion...
and Bob Semple proposed designing conversion kits that allow the current fleet of tractors to be used...
in their intended role in supporting construction projects...
but could be converted into combat tanks at a very short notice.
The concept was indeed ingenious...
but when a few test conversions were publicly paraded...
it was widely ridiculed by both the press and the general public and many wrongly thought the bolted on armor...
was just normal corrugated roofing.
What he had actually created...
was a tank with 0.31 inch armor plate...
with half-inch manganese rich corrugated steel plate welded on.
Armed with multiple legendary Bren Light Machine Guns...
pointing in all directions and a sturdy commercial tracked tractor beneath it...
all with a 127 horsepower engine.
It was planned for the tank to have a 37mm gun.
However, such an armament could not be obtained in time...
and instead a Bren Gun took its place.
All this was readily available...
but sadly this did not make the design any good.
In fact, it was one of the worst tanks ever produced.
The New Zealand Army referred to it as a mobile strongpoint...
which was a pretty accurate description for what it might be good for.
As a tank, it was deficient in virtually every department...
apart for ease of manufacturing.
The tank was most often referred by the people as the Semple Tank.
A likely tank...
the Semple would have met in combat at the time...
was the Japanese Type 95 HA-GO Light Tank.
Which was the ideal tank to use in an amphibious assault on New Zealand...
due to its lightweight mobility and its compact size.
The Type 95 could easily out accelerate the Semple Tank.
It was much faster capable of achieving speeds of 28 miles per hour...
compared to the Semple speed of just 7.5 miles per hour.
The Type 95 was much more agile...
being able to turn on the move, something that the Semple Tank could not do.
And furthermore, the Semple's agility was hampered by its height of 12 feet...
Which meant that when it was on bumpy roads or crossing ditches...
It was in danger of toppling over.
Whereas the Type 95 was much more stable and presented a much smaller target to be fired at...
being at just over 7 feet tall...
making its silhouette 40% less than the Semple.
Even how long it could stay mobile on the battlefield was far less than the Type 95.
The Semple Tank only had an operational range of approximately ninety-nine miles...
Whereas the Type 95 could do thirty more miles than that before needing refueling
In armament between the two, it was very one-sided.
The Semple had six .303 (British) caliber Bren Light Machine Guns.
One in the turret...
one in the rear
...one on its left-hand side...
one on the right-hand side...
and two forward facing.
Which was only good for destroying trucks and engaging infantry.
But it was an unstable platform...
gunnery was only effective when moving at low speeds on flat surfaces or when stationary.
With the added problem that the Bren Guns only had thirty round magazines...
and would need changing constantly during the firefight.
The Type 95 was far from perfect when firing on the move but was better than the Semple...
and boasted a dedicated Anti-tank 37mm Gun...
that would be able to easily penetrate the Semple's composite armor.
The designer himself claimed the armor could only withstand Anti-tank shells of up to 20mm.
The Type 95 also had two useful Medium Machine Guns one front facing...
the other covering the rear of the tank.
They would struggle to do any real damage to a tank like the Semple...
but it was not what they were designed to do...
their role was to engage infantry or very light armored vehicles.
Who knows what would have happened if the Bob Semple Tank would have been mass-produced?
And had met something more powerful like the Type 97 Medium Japanese Tank...
or had been deployed to the European Theater and met a Panzer III.
Ironically, Bob Semple had said about the tractor tank project:
"If this country is going to be invaded...
we need to have equipment as good as that of the other fellow if not better."
In that respect, his tank failed miserably...
but many including himself, felt proud of what he had achieved...
as they felt at least they tried to do something during their country's darkest hour.
Only three were ever built.
And in 1942...
they were converted back to being tractors...
as the Allies' Valentine Tanks and locally produced Bren Gun Carriers became available...
and the threat of Japanese invasion had subsided.
Comparison of Bob Semple Tank to NordVPN
The Bob Semple Tank would have been ineffective at protecting New Zealand.
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The Bob Semple Tank had very weak corrugated armor and a high profile.
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As we saw, the Bob Semple speed was very poor...
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Only one Semple Tank was reportedly deployed into service in the Pacific Theater...
beyond its country of manufacturer.
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