Tortise Tank Operational At Bovington

Welcome to the Tank Museum - Home of the Tank - Tankfest 2011 - Tortoise to Run!

TANKFEST provides the public with a unique opportunity to see rare vehicles in action. This year, you’ll see the massive Tortoise tank running before the public for the first time in 60 years.

The Tortoise (official designation Tank, Heavy Assault, A39) is one of the largest and heaviest vehicles in the collection, weighing 80 tonnes. It was built in Birmingham in 1947, making it a surprising design contemporary of the highly successful Centurion tank.




EDIT: Whoops - typo in the title. My apologies.

 

Never seen that pic before. Very nice. Thanks a million.

 

Now that I think about it, do they have to exit the tank in order to detach the barrel support thingy? Would think the ability to detach could be done from inside so not exposed to fire....Also that's a strange place for the machine gun. Any chance it was ballistically matched with main gun? Like for ranging?

 

I think they would detach it before going into battle .

 

The Tortoise tank was designed to outclass and outgun the German heavy armour, Designed in 1944 the first prototypes weren' delivered until 1947, It had a crew of 7 was powered by a Meteor 600hp engine, Weighing nearly 80 tons the vehicle could only manage 12mph, Armour was 35-225mm thick, Can't wait to see it run again

 

Is that a 17 pounder?

 

I believe its a 94mm (32 pounder). I don't know what the penetration specs are offhand, but I'm sure they were impressive.