okay
but this is the Cromwell tank it's one
of the British Cruiser series that means
it's lighter and faster than that heavy
tanks like the Churchill and reasonably
well armored for its day but when you
think it was first designed in 1942 and
didn't see action till 1944 it's a long
time to wait until the tank can be
developed and can be considered reliable
but its most successful feature
certainly is to meet your engine which
is in the back here it's a v12 600
horsepower 27 litre engine and the whole
sort of brilliance of the meteor it was
actually developed from the Merlin the
rolls-royce Merlin which was the engine
used in the Spitfire in the Huracan
during the Battle of Britain among
others and it really was a superb tank
engine they took the supercharger off
and it still developed 600 horsepower so
it had plenty of power it meant that a
calm well flat-out could do 40 miles an
hour that was actually too fast a tank
it said she fast and the men inside can
stand what they normally did was
actually restrict the power of the
engine to 32 miles per hour because they
felt that it wasn't thought he was more
than the crew could stand the tank has
Christie type suspension it's not
exactly as the American John Christie
would have liked but it was adapted by
the British and it meant that you had a
lot of free space within each row wheel
and the ground so there was a load of
free movement here and it gave the tank
a very comfortable ride especially
across country so the combination of
that engine and the Christie suspension
was the secret of its success it also
had the merit round type gearbox which
meant that it was the gearbox gearbox
and steering system really meant that
the tank could do everything from a
neutral term to any sort of radius turn
you like so it meant they was very
flexible in that respect now the tank
itself is not very exciting it's very
box shaped actually the turret
especially so this arms with the
75 millimeter gun the story is that when
the tank was built it was armed the 6
pounder gun and they managed to ream it
out the 75 millimeter but it did rather
looks as if actually what they did we
developed a new gun of the same caliber
same size to fit the 6000 mounting but
actually with 75 millimeters instead of
57 millimeter caliber which gave it a
slightly better and sort of high
explosive performance although it did to
some extent restrict its armor-piercing
performance but it was quite a good gun
for the tank of this size the tank has a
crew of five again you've got the driver
the whole machine gunner working ibiza
machine gun and then the three men in
the turret the tank commander the loader
and the gamma so that's typical actually
pretty well every British tank and again
you've got rear sprocket drive because
all the cabins that makes it go is in
the back and it makes quite a sense of
wood size of tank actually very light
very fast and around there what 7th
armoured division was the main British
shoes this particular tank has markings
of the Polish Armored Division and it
was attached them to their own holy
starboard regiment in the Polish Armored
Division and it was attached to them the
duration of Second World War in
northwest Europe you'll find that the
poles and the Czechs also use the
Cromwell in quite a big way so it was
fairly common but not as common say the
Sherman which is the other sort of tank
used a lot by the British but quite an
effective vehicle its own right not
fantastically well armoured I am modern
standards but it had the speed and the
mobility to overcome that and didn't
really need it so it's actually quite an
effective little weapon
you