Aviation Naval Warfare Land Systems Small Arms By Flag By Year By Tag

Tank, Heavy, TOG 1

1940 WORLD WAR 2 X-TANK

History

Still worried that the war engulfing Europe would become the trench warfare of World War I, in July 1939 a group of senior British engineers and World War I experts who formed the Special Vehicles Development Committee met to develop a special plan A tank type designed for this specific battle. The new armor system will be fully armed and armored, weigh up to 90 tons, and be able to traverse long trenches.

The design was officially named the "Heavy Tank TOG 1" and was over 33 feet long, 10 feet wide and over 9 feet high. Power is provided by a Paxman diesel engine producing 600 horsepower. Under ideal conditions, it's predicted to be around 9 mph -- perhaps a little optimistic. The suspension is unsprung and the drive is electromechanical in nature.

The main armament is a QF 2-Pdr field gun and a movable turret 4 x 7.7mm general purpose machine gun mounted on the broadside. The operator consists of eight employees, including the driver, vehicle commander, a dedicated gunner and ammunition loader, and four machine gunners.

All in all, the project is undoubtedly ambitious, but its design approach lags behind the era of contemporary tank design.

Pilot vehicles were officially built in 1939 and 1940 before being submitted to authorities for formal evaluation in October. However, within this brief period of time, the drive system quickly developed problems, forcing the entire unit to be redesigned to operate as a hydraulic-based system. This switch delayed the TOG 1 project for quite some time until the system was ready for testing again in May 1943 - the war has now spread across Europe and around the world. The revised TOG 1 design is now renamed the TOG 1A and has never gone beyond a single prototype.

Ultimately, the program was discontinued by the authorities and eventually entered into history as more important things emerged from the British authorities, improved main battle tanks such as the American M4 Sherman (and all its fabled variants) provided allies with more quantity.