Britain Built the World's First Modern Tank—Then Let Everyone Else Take Credit скачать в хорошем качестве

Britain Built the World's First Modern Tank—Then Let Everyone Else Take Credit

In 1945, Britain built a tank so ahead of its time that it fought in Korea, dominated the Six Day War for Israel in 1967, served in Vietnam with Australia, and was still in active service in South Africa in the 1990s. It was called the Centurion. It was arguably the world's first true main battle tank. And somehow, when people list the greatest tanks ever made, it barely gets a mention.So let's fix that.Before the Centurion existed, every army on Earth organised its tanks the way a navy organised its warships. You had infantry tanks—the Churchill, the Matilda—built with thick armour to absorb punishment at walking pace. You had heavy tanks like the Soviet IS-2. You had medium tanks—the Sherman, the T-34—built for speed and production numbers, fast enough to exploit a breakthrough but too thin-skinned to survive a head-on fight with anything serious. And you had tank destroyers—the M10, the M18 Hellcat, the M36 Jackson—carrying massive guns on flimsy chassis, designed to kill enemy armour from ambush and then run. Three separate vehicles. Three separate supply chains. Three separate training pipelines. Every major army accepted this as the natural order of things, the same way sailors accepted that you couldn't build a destroyer that did a battleship's job.Britain looked at that arrangement and said no.