Landships II

So sorry I didn't get your private message earlier allerting me to this thread!

I haven't been checking this thread every day, and the past 3 weeks were on vacation in Northern Europe.

Christie is one of those great thinkers, but not so great do-ers.

The world where Christies designs would actually work as well as he thought they would, would be a fantastic world indeed.

Could it be that Christie didn't have the daftest idea about real warfare? Perhaps he never even fired a gun in his entire life? I simply can't understand how someone who knew about warfare could ever think these designs would work. The closest thing to real world use of Christies designs were the Soviet BT tanks in WWII. The Germans thrashed them en masse, the Finnish army had no trouble knocking them out at will, and more Soviets probably died at the hands of their BTs than Axis troops.

The theory does hold water, in a way. The SR-71 had dozens of missiles fired at it and outran every one. However, the principles of airial warfare do not apply to ground warfare. Take the T-80 for instance. Ridiculously fast and maneuverable, nicknamed the "Flying Tank". With Israel facing the theoretical threat of attack by a country suppled with T-80s, they instead designed a slow, very well armored, very survivable vehicle, their Merkava. In fact, the only type of tracked AFV that seems to be evolving into faster and faster vehicles are APCs/IFVs. Furthermore, in the classic fixed-gun tank destroyers, from the Stug to the Stridsvagn 103, there has been a focus on defensive action, with the ability to live through a hit on the frontal armor. With Christies designs, they have the design aspect of a tank destroyer with their fixed forward guns, however they have paper thin armor, and speed that is absolutely useless in the tank destroyer roll.

Christies most promising design, taking all of that into account, is his M1928, with no turret, and a pedastal mounted MG. In pictures, it looks very much like a M113 APC. If it could have been redesigned with a troop compartment, it would have made a smashing good APC. As the halmark of armored, armed, troop carriers, is high speed, high mobility, and a distinct lack of armor and armaments compared to proper tanks, the M1928 would have fit the bill very nicely.

Now, with all of that complaining... Christie was an absolutely amazing engineer, and really did do a lot of great things. His vehicles were fantastic and very ahead of their time - although like I mentioned, I don't believe there ever was or will be a time where a vehicle with a combat profile like the christie tanks could ever win against the big, heavily armored, dreadfully slow (in comparison) main battle tanks of WWII to the present.

Thanks again for the link to the article!! Those scans are by far the best i've seen.

---Vil.