82 - T-70 - Soviet Mediocrity!

The M41 Walker Bulldog isn't a tank that gets talked about much. But it has a surprisingly rich combat history, often in the hands of CIA backed non-state actors. From the Bay of Pigs, to the hills of Lebanon, and possibly the sands of Angola, it's a tank that got around.

Following Stalingrad the Red Army wanted a self-propelled assault gun. And they wanted it with a really big honking gun. And so they came up with first the SU and later the ISU-152's. With a 152mm howitzer chonking out great big lumps of high explosive. They were known to their friends as "Zveroboy" or "Beast Killer". And we're going to talk about them with you for quite some time!

Argentina wanted a tank, some Germans wanted some money moved out of Switzerland, the TAM was born. A Marder hull, a 105mm gun, a lightish modular family of vehices it all looked good. And yet it failed to get to the fight the one time it mattered.

Recorded to celebrate America's 250th birthday with beer and it's greatest tank we explore the M4 Sherman in all it's glory as an exemplar of everything that made America great.

Britain is trying to build a new tank. But they're doing it with a gun that entered service in the 1970s and re-tread hulls that ended production a quarter century ago. And they're building fewer than 150, which for a completely orphan fleet is a "courageous" approach.

With over 8,000 produced the T-70 should not be an obscure tank. With an extremely unusual profile it should be easy to ID. And yet it's not exactly at the top of anyone's list, but we are going to try and shed some light on this Soviet light tank.

What time period exactly was this great tank the greatest tank ever?

When all the world was bright and new and small boys were allowed to design tanks a lot of concepts were created for lumbering landships lurching slowly across the battlefield while delivering justice and vengeance to the enemy from a series varied weaponry in multiple turrets. More boring designs eventually proved more useful, but in this episode we explore this inter-war golden era where tanks sprouted turrets like mushrooms after rain.

Failed joint procurement programs somehow led to the one tank that a cashed up country making its own decisions would buy. With the production lines open again it's time to revisit the Leopard 2!

The Soviets decided they didn't have a need for light tanks. And instead built a very useful light vehicle with a big gun. And they built a lot of them. And this is their story.