we're gonna look today at the a17 Tetrarch
it was the mark 7 light tank 2 given its proper title in fact it was the second
but last of the light tanks the British Army had decided to give up light tanks
in about this time the only thing is and what makes it outstanding compared with
in the earlier light tank is the armament in this case it's got a 3-inch
howitzer but normally it would carry a 2 pounder gun which was about the same
as the average cruiser tank come to that about the same as the infantry tank or
any tank the British made so it was well armed for its day by its standards it
dates from about 1941 it was built by the Metropolitan carriage wagon and
finance company in Birmingham but they were heavily bombed while they were
producing it so production was rather slow but it's quite an unusual and
interesting tank and will come to why it's in this glorious and wooden structure
later on now to begin with it's just an ordinary light tank it's of typical
riveting construction 16 millimeters of armor on the front which is not bad for
a light tank the driver sits in here when you have two men in the turrets and
camera and a commander and the really unusual thing about the Tetrarch is the
way it steers it's got a system which was actually invented by a chap called
Liz Lee little Liz Lee little replaced Sir John Cardin of because when Cardin
was killed and he's the man probably responsible for this steering system the
tank runs on for quite large wheels large time it wheels the wheels
themselves actually armoured they form part of the defensive nature of the side
of the tank but the main thing is that they're on hydropneumatic straps which
come down in the hull to the suspension and each wheel is on a pivot so that
when this tank wants to it can turn a corner and it does it by move
all the wheels but basically the outer wheels should have been downwards like
that and the inner ones do an old bit of geometry but and it meant that the thing
could be driven down the road like an ordinary car
it doesn't skid steer well it will if you have want it to but it has a
handbrake normal up and down handbrake and if you push it down and pull it to
one side and then pull it up it breaks that side so you can skid steer on the
handbrake it's quite unusual system because it means you've got a using one
lever to do both jobs it works quite well
the tanks powered by a Meadows 12 cylinder horizontal engine rated at
about hundred and sixty-five horsepower and that's quite an unusual system it
was the only engine will fit in the tank it goes obviously behind the turret in
the engine bay there and being horizontal it doesn't take up so much
room but it was the first time anyone had tried that sort of engine in the
tank and it did work quite well a few of these tanks were sent to Russia heaven
alone knows why the Russians didn't like him and they didn t want them but they
had about twenty and they played around with them took some publicity photos for
our benefit I suspect it means that the only other surviving Tetrarch in there
aren t - is this one here and the one in the museum in kubinka in Russia they're
the only two set tracks I know of that have survived later on they were use for
operation ironclad which was the invasion of Madagascar only of any fewer
than we use but that's the only time they were used in the ordinary ground
roll later on they come to some sort of prominence and they only involved six of
them including the one with the close support howitzer and they were taken in
these wooden things which were actually and this is the remains of one a general
aircraft hamilkar glider and it is quite a big glider it was made for these tanks
they weren't intended as airborne tank but by 1944 they were so light it didn't
matter and they were heaved into the gliders they were reversed he had a big
door up here and they flew them across the channel it weighs about seven tons
so it's quite a load even for this some glider to pull but to make a cope one of
them actually broke loose over the channel broke out of the confines of the
glider smashed through the door and ended up at the bottom of the English
Channel still with the crew in it quite remarkable really but otherwise they
flew across quite successfully they'd normally be hauled into the air by a
stirling bomber invariably the tank gliders took off from Tarrant Rushton
which is an airfield not far away from here it's just up the road but it was
there the gliders main airfield in southern England and they all took off
from there and went across whether there was any point in landing a 1941 tank on
a 1944 battlefield remains to be discussed but I don't think it was worth
it myself I think the tanks were out of date at
that time and should have been put to rest but they landed with 6th Airborne
Division on the on the flank of the British Army quite well inland and when
they came out of their gliders they mainly ran over and discarded parachute
lines which got tangled round the suspension and brought them all to a
halt except for two two actually broke loose and went into action but they
didn't last more than 10 minutes in action because they were up against 1944
model German tanks which wiped them out one of the men she ran over a mine but
that's how they were lost the remainder we usually dug in as machine gun
positions for the infantry and in that role they work perfectly well however
they did have an odd side effect and 21st Panzer Division which was based at
car and come out of its lair and was moving towards the British beaches the
idea being to fulfill rumbles dream of driving the
British and the Americans back into the sea
from the Normandy beaches rocks when they heard that tanks had landed from
the air behind them they got a bit nervous and decided to go back to Karn
anyway they needs worried these tanks wouldn't have given them any sort of
flight at all but they decided to go back and it was the landing of these
tanks that put off 21st Panzer Division and put them off going further forward
otherwise they would have reached the coast so it is a very interesting little
vehicle the very first time we'd used an airborne tank and almost not quite the
last but you can understand why hardly worth it but what quite impressive the
very fact you can do it at all but that's the Tetra that's roughly how it
works it's a very simple tank but it has this steering system in which is well
worth taking note of I drove it myself once a long time ago and you've got a
steering wheel in the cab here and I just got in the cab and grabbed the
steering wheel that would tend to do position as you normally would and
steered it around a few obstacles and skinned me knuckles they were a right or
miss for a while and when I got out I saw her a chat from workshops who said
to me oh you've been driving the Tetrarch have
you and I looked at my knuckles and I said yes he said you should have held
the wheel underneath if you held it at the bottom at the half past six position
you'd get a much smoother steer but that skinning your knuckles but I didn't know
that at the time I made a complete pig's ear of it as usual
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