“The BEF had been forced to withdraw from France in May and June, leaving behind most of its tanks. There seemed a real prospect of a German invasion of Britain and replacement vehicles were desperately needed.”
By Steve MacGregor
PICKING THE worst British tank of World War Two isn’t an easy task. Many early-war models were lacklustre and some proved to be little more than liabilities when they faced combat. However, one tank stands out more than any other: the Covenanter.
The first British tank to receive a formal name, it was produced in large quantities at a time when Britain was critically short of armoured vehicles. But it had such fundamental inherent problems that it was never used in combat. This may just be the worst armoured fighting vehicle ever used by the British Army.
Origin
By 1934 the British Army had defined the three types of tanks it would need in the future.
Light tanks, which were lightly armoured and armed, to be used for reconnaissance; infantry tanks, which were heavily armoured, slow and with main guns to attack enemy fixed positions or to support infantry; and cruiser tanks, which were fast and armed with main guns capable of destroying enemy armour and suitable for flanking and breakthroughs.
The first British cruiser tanks, the A9 and A10, entered service in 1938. Neither was particularly effective; both had complex and fragile suspension systems that had an alarming tendency to shed tracks if rapid turns were attempted on uneven terrain. Despite these shortcomings, both types were rushed into service and used by the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France and Belgium in 1940.
Even before the war had started, work had progressed on a replacement, the A13 (also known as the Cruiser Tank Mk III). Designed and built by Nuffield Mechanization Ltd., a new company formed in 1937 specifically to produce tanks. The A13 was certainly better than the A9 and A10, with suspension based on the Christie system and using four rubber-tired road wheels per side. However, it was still lightly armoured and armed with only a two-pounder (40 mm) main gun.
By early 1939 it was becoming increasingly clear that war with Germany was inevitable. Britain’s capacity to manufacture tanks was limited and a decision was made to appoint a new company, the London Midland and Scottish Railway Company (LMS), to design and build an improved version of the A13. Although the firm had only produced locomotives and railway rolling stock in the past, it was hoped that LMS could quickly build on the basic design produced by Nuffield to produce an effective Cruiser Tank.
Design
The new LMS design was given the cumbersome title A13 Mk. III, Cruiser Tank Mk. V. It used the same angled turret and two-pounder gun created by Nuffield and mated this to a new hull. This used Christie-type suspension consisting of four rubber-tyred roadwheels per side. Power came from a 340 Bhp Meadows D.A.V flat-12 engine. This horizontally-opposed engine was low and wide, and it gave the first two prototypes a low, sleek and aggressive look.
The hull projected just a few inches above the tracks and the frontal armour was steeply angled. The side armour on the Nuffield turret was also angled at the sides and rear. This was a great-looking tank but one that had a fundamental problem that would never be satisfactorily resolved: The large Meadows engine completely filled the engine bay at the rear of the hull, leaving no space for a cooling radiator. A radiator was mounted on the left front of the hull and connected to the engine via long coolant pipes that ran through the crew compartment. This arrangement never worked satisfactorily, leading to overheating both the engine and the crew compartment.
Restricted space in the engine bay also led to the fitment of only a small cooling fan for the transmission, leading to frequent overheating of the transmission. When the two initial prototypes were delivered for evaluation, one suffered from catastrophic overheating issues. However, by the summer of 1940, the British Army was in dire need of new tanks.
The BEF had been forced to withdraw from France in May and June, leaving behind most of its tanks. There seemed a real prospect of a German invasion of Britain and replacement vehicles were desperately needed. British Army units noted a particular need for 9,000 additional cruiser tanks in late 1940. The flaws in the new cruiser tank were already apparent, but on the orders of Winston Churchill, volume manufacturing of the new tank began at the LMS works in Crewe. The thinking seems to have been that even a flawed tank was better than no tank at all, and soon, production also began in two other works, the English Electric Valve Co. in Stafford and the Leyland factory in Kingston-upon-Thames.
The new tank was also given a formal name: Covenanter. This was the first British tank to be given a name and it began the tradition of giving new British tanks a name beginning with the letter “C.” Deliveries to army units began in early 1941 and it soon became apparent that the Covenanter had some serious problems.
In Service
The 22nd Armoured Brigade was the first unit to receive the Covenanter and in the first six months of 1941, more than 250 were delivered to various other units. All complained about engine and transmission overheating and extremely high temperatures and poor ventilation in the crew compartment. Even in relatively chilly Britain, the Covenanter was a problem. However, by early 1941 the only British land units engaged in combat were those in North Africa, initially facing Italian forces and then the Panzers of the Afrika Korps. It was clear that the Covenanter was entirely unsuitable for the high temperatures of the desert.
Several subsequent versions were produced in an attempt to improve engine cooling and crew ventilation systems. None provided substantial improvements. A decision was taken in 1941 that the Covenanter would be used only in Britain and only for training. However, incredibly, over 1,700 examples were manufactured. No Covenanter tank ever fired a shot in combat and the last tanks rolled off the production lines in early 1943. Later the same year, this tank was declared obsolete and all examples scrapped, other than a handful that had been converted to bridge layers.
Conclusion
During wartime, continuing with production of a flawed design may be understandable. Early versions of the Russian T-34, for example, had a number of issues though it was essentially a capable platform. Rather than interrupt production to adopt improvements, the original T-34 was produced in large numbers. It’s more difficult to understand the British decision to continue with large-scale production of the Covenanter. It was obvious that the Covenanter’s cooling problems meant that it couldn’t be used in North Africa, where tanks were urgently needed. Better tanks, including the A15 Crusader were already in production. Why waste time and resources on producing a tank that could never be used in combat?
No-one really knows. The Covenanter wasn’t just flawed, it was completely unsuitable for combat in most circumstances and the decision to churn these out in large numbers is baffling. Was this the worst tank ever used by the British Army? Possibly, and it’s certainly a contender for a place on any list of the least effective tanks used in service in World War Two.
Steve MacGregor is the author of The First Cruisers: The Origin, design, Development, Production and Operational Use of the British A9 Cruiser Tank Mk. I and A10 Cruiser Tank Mk. II. His other books include The Real Story of Flight 19: The Unsolved Mystery of the Disappearance of Six U.S. Navy Aircraft in December 1945.
