Tank Goodness

aka: Cool Tank

The Landkreuzer P-1000 Ratte, planned by Nazi Germany in World War II but never put into production.

"Though I charge through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for I am driving a house-sized mass of fuck you."

— Anonymous Mammoth Tank crewman, Tiberium Wars

In large modern warfare engagements, infantry may as well be Cannon Fodder. You want something that can Hold the Line. Something with a BFG and/or More Dakka, crawler treads and (literal) tonnes of armor. You want a tank.

Real Life tanks have large cannons to take on other tanks and fortifications, and (usually) secondary weapons to deal with infantry or aircraft. In fiction and reality, other tanks may use anti-infantry or anti-aircraft weapons instead of cannons.^note These do exist in Real Life, but they're not called tanks. To make the distinction even more difficult, many of these are based on existing tank chassis, so they look like tanks that have had their turrets swapped out. Cue journalists and the general public calling them "tanks" anyway. The tank's size and mobility may also be used as a weapon to crush people, cars, and walls. The armor is thick enough to stop small arms fire, most of it in the front, with the weakest areas being the rear, bottom and top. Expect enemies to take advantage of this for massive damage.

Of course, the above paragraph refers to tanks around the size of today's main battle tanks. Sometimes that's not enough. They need to be bigger! Big enough to crush the other tanks! And carry loads of weapons! While racing donuts around them! And the armor is able to withstand Martian Death rays! And it has NBC protection! It's a FLIPPING BUNKER ON TRACKS. Oh, and the wheels on the tracks are equipped with armored gun pods.

Other armored fighting vehicles, like armored personnel carriers, self-propelled artillery and tank destroyers may be called tanks. They're not. Don't be fooled! Likewise, don't listen to the deranged lunatics who keep wanting to put legs on them. Ridiculously impractical, that.

Related to Cool Car, Cool Bike, Cool Train, Base on Wheels, and other vehicle/warfare tropes—this is basically Cool Tank. Has nothing to do with Shorttank, which makes you say "tank goodness" in a completely different way. Also has nothing to do with playing a damage-sponge character in an MMORPG, or with the oxygen storage unit strapped to the back of a SCUBA diver.^note Well, maybe this trope has a little to do with these things: tanks in MMORPGs are named after this kind of tank, because they are heavily armoured characters who can soak up a lot of damage while also dishing it out; as for the kind of tank that holds gas or liquid — that is actually the source of the term as used in this trope, odd as it may seem! When the first practical tanks were being developed around the time of World War I, they were so called in documentation as a code term, to confuse the enemy and throw any spies off the track; for one reason or another, the code name just stuck. They might just as easily have ended up with the admittedly cooler name of "land-ships."

For armed tank-like vehicles, which have legs instead of good ol' treads, see Walking Tank. For ones which float, see Hover Tank. For ones that can travel underground, see Drill Tank. When the military geniuses of the world finally realize there is no firepower like battleship firepower, one may witnesses the ultimate tanks: Land Battleships. For when things in video games (such as people) act like tanks when they shouldn't, see Tank Controls. Sapient Tanks can think for themselves.

When tanks are useless in media, see Tanks for Nothing. For inaccuracies with armoured vehicles, historical and otherwise, see Tanks, but No Tanks. For information on tanks and other armored vehicles, see Armored Fighting Vehicles.

If you looked up Mechanized Infantry and expected to see a giant robot with a gun, try looking up Real Robot instead. For tank engines like in Thomas & Friends, see Cool Train.

Although the "tank" class/role in video games gets its name from the role of literal tanks, they have nothing to do with this trope.

By the way, they are called "tanks" because when the British were first developing them in World War I, they were called water carriers or water "tanks", in an attempt at secrecy.

---

Examples

Anime & Manga

• Guntanks from Mobile Suit Gundam were the secret weapons of the earth forces, more or less, and bridged the gap between mobile suits and mobile armor. Guntank descendants also pop up in Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (Guntank II), Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn (Loto) and Mobile Suit Gundam F91 (Guntank R44).
  • Gundam also uses Land Battleships in many continuities.
  • Oh, and we can't forget the Magella Attack, a tank with a turret (Magella Top) that can detach and become a flying hovercraft.
  • Or wielded as an anti-armor cannon by a mobile suit.
  • Zeon also rigged together wrecked Zakus and Magella Botton chassis to form the Zaku Tank. Sometimes just used as a construction machine, sometimes as an actual fighting vehicle.
  • Don't forget the good ol' Type 61, with its double 150/155mm cannons, in MS Igloo 2, King of Ground battles.
    • In fact, despite the shows' natural focus on the titular Humongous Mecha, and their impact for the space battles, up to 80% of all land battles were won by the good ol' 61, even if that fact gets pretty seldom mentioned. This is in part because the Mobile Suit Gundam anime itself depicts about 3.5 out of the 12 months of the One Year War, and the last two months of the war were fought mostly in space. The majority of the ground combat had already happened. Even the most important land battle depicted in the anime, Operation Odessa, focuses almost entirely on the Gundam while ignoring the six thousand Type 61 tanks that were the bulk of the ground forces' firepower.
  • Speaking of Igloo, the Hidolfr pretty much epitomizes the top quote from this page. Just one of these 220 Metric ton, super-heavy-armored, semi-transforming behemoths with a top speed of 110km/hr is a match for about six Zakus and their artillery support.
  • In the Alternate Universes, we have the Tragos (Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, also a Hover Tank, though if necessary it can detach its hover skirt and transform into a humanoid mobile suit), Daughtress Tank (Gundam X), ZuOOT/GaZuOOT (which are Transforming Mecha, but their mobile suit mode has no discernible advantage over tank mode) and, Linear Tank (with its hexagonal INNER barrel; railguns don't need rifling, after all), and in a sense, the BuCUE and LaGOWE (basically Walking Tanks, aside from the fact that they have a dog-like head carrying a beam saber in its "mouth") (all from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED) and Union Realdo Hover Tank (Mobile Suit Gundam 00).
    • The Earth Alliance's Zamza-Za Mobile Armor from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny. The Gells-Ghe (the half-spider/half Strike Dagger) and one of the Destroy's forms count as well.
• The minitank Bonaparte from Masamune Shirow's Dominion Tank Police manga is a partial Aversion. The whole police force uses tanks and the Bonaparte is the smallest one, and has the lightest weaponry. But it pulls its share of the workload partially because of its small size (it can go places the others cannot), and because its driver is a little crazed.
  • Bonaparte was made from the salvaged remains of a larger tank, Squad Leader Britain's Tank Special. It was the only tank on the force made from steel instead of bioplastic.
  • The driver was a perfectly adequate fella, please-and-thank-you, it's the commander who was out of her gourd.
• Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross (a.k.a. the "Masters" arc of Robotech) had the Spartas Hovertanks, which could transform into Humongous Mecha and Walking Tank modes.
• Those Who Hunt Elves has a tank possessed by the spirit of a cat. Whole towns are devastated when it spots a mouse.
• Pumpkin Scissors has a number of tanks. Too bad none of them can stand up to one guy and his handgun...
• Space Thunder Kids shows that one can never have enough tanks. Now to destroy them to victory!
• Desert Punk features the massive tank Fire Dragon Kong. It was the most dangerous machine in the desert, but Desert Punk managed to beat it by shooting a rock structure down on it, then the Machine Gun Brothers shot it until they hit the gas tank and it exploded. Until then, it was pretty freaking deadly.
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • During Mustang's coup d'etat, one of the military men, while commenting on the opposition's fighting power, remarks that it's not like they have tanks. Guess what shows up a few panels later. Turns out that the Briggs soldiers disassembled a tank, then smuggled all the parts into Central and reassembled it by hand.
  • Maj. General Armstrong used a tank to repel Sloth, driving it into a freight elevator, then down a narrow corridor, nearly crushing the Elrics in the process.
• At the beginning of Venus Wars, Ishtar invades the Aphrodian capital, Io, using parachuting Superheavy tanks.
• Future War 198X has an awesome (and fairly accurate) huge tank battles on the North German Plains.
• In later light novels of The Familiar of Zero, Saito obtains a King Tiger II tank from second world war.
• In the Ah! My Goddess manga, Skuld builds a tank for a rubber band fight.
• The Third: The Girl with the Blue Eye features Bogie, a cool tank designed for desert travel, with an onboard A.I. and More Dakka than you can shake a stick at.
  • And storage space for a Powered Armor.
• Joshiraku may be a slice of life show about rakugo performers, but in the opening credits the main characters are shown riding on top of a Type 61 tank.
• Girls und Panzer is all about high-school girls who drive tanks, in particular those made during World War II. The school team consists of a Panzer IV, a Pz.38(t), M3 Lee, a StuG-III, and Type 89 I-Go. Other schools have Churchills, Matildas, Shermans, Tigers, Panzer III, T-34/76, T-34-85, IS-2, KV-2, Elefant, JagdTiger, Panther, and Kuromorimine takes the cake with a goddamned Maus. The Improbably Female Cast is justified by the fact that in the world where the series takes place, driving tanks is considered a "womanly" martial art.

Comic Books

• The vehicle that gives Tank Girl her name.
• Y: The Last Man. After Alter's first attempt to seize the biohazard suite is foiled due to Russian sniper Natalya, the next time she shows up her Amazon Brigade is driving stolen M1 Abrams tanks.
• Tank Vixens, although the tanks mostly served as a prop for weaponized Fanservice.
• The Silver Age DC Universe's Haunted Tank. The first version involved a World War II tank haunted by its commander's ancestor, Confederate General J.E.B Stuart, as penance for supporting slavery. This naturally causes occasional friction in the crew, since the tank's gunner is black. The Haunted Tank recently reappeared in a Vertigo series set in modern Iraq. The general's new descendant is this Abrams tank's commander, who is descended from Stuart and one of his slaves.
• Garth Ennis's War Stories and Battlefields stories featured a couple of tank stories. The very first, "Johann's Tiger", featured a German commander desperately fleeing west to surrender to the Americans while avoiding Russian and German patrols. And a couple of Battlefields stories centred on the crew of a Churchill (and later, a Firefly) tank and their Geordie commander.
• The Batmobile in The Dark Knight Returns. Batman even comments that only something not of this world could ever hope of damaging it.
• One of Calvin's daydreams has him doodle a tank on his homework and blow up his school. His rampage ends when Miss Wormwood shows up, takes away his paper and gives him detention (in the doodle she's a giant monster that is strong enough to resist the tank's cannon fire).
• The Far Side: Psycho 3; the panel shows Norman driving a tank through the bathroom door.
• In Preacher, Herr Starrr uses the resources of The Grail to commandeer a US tank battalion as part of his operation to capture Jesse Custer and simultaneously fend off the Saint of Killers. While Starr definitely approves of the tanks, declaring that the mere sight of them gives him a hard on, they're just as helpless and ineffectual as anything else that tries to fight with the Saint.
• A tank is featured on the cover of the very first issue of the very first G.I. Joe comic book series, and the MOBAT was the center of the plot of issue #5. Other iconic tanks featured include the Joes' Mauler and Cobra's HISS series; later years of the original series introduced more fanciful models.
• Judge Dredd: Justice Department tanks are friggin' huge. They're rarely used outside of military conflicts however, since the Judges are still primarily a police force.
• The Krawls from The Red Star are tanks deployed by dropships. They pack enormous fire with their heavy main cannon and sponson-mounted autocannons. Additionally, they double as artillery with their mounted multi-missile launchers.
• In DC One Million, Vandal Savage brings out his World War II-era Blitz Engines, these are giant tanks powerful enough to dominate contemporary militaries. Though the Martian Manhunter quickly brings them down.
• Continuing with DC are the War Wheels, the originals are Nazi superweapons with Nigh-Invulnerable armour and massive sponson cannons in World War 2 and were used against Blackhawk. In modern times, S.H.A.D.E uses a new type of War Wheel that have all the abilities of the originals and can be remotely controlled, have a series of extra turret cannons and can house an army of G.I. Robots.
• Tintin: In The Calculus Affair, Tintin and Captain Haddock hijack a Bordurian tank while escaping the country with Professor Calculus.

Fan Works

• Considering the page quote, it should come as no surprise that badass tanks are common in Tiberium Wars. Tanks are depicted fairly realistically, with the interior of the tanks being cramped, noisy, and hot, and realistic tank tactics being used. The interior of the Mammoth Tanks are described as being more spacious, but still loud and uncomfortable.
• Despite the rise of Mecha and Engels, tanks are still viable and effective in Aeon Entelechy Evangelion, and the tank crews joke about various disadvantages of the mecha and boast about the advantages of the tanks.
• Here We Go Again! brings the US Marines' M1A1 Abrams tanks into the story of Gate. The 2nd Tank Battalion, Charlie Company a.k.a "The Four Horsemen" often brings additional firepower to Itami's Recon Team and are major force multipliers into fights that were already a Curb-Stomp Battle for the JSDF in canon. Especially when the titular tank, 'Here We Go Again' goes up against the flame dragon, lives to tell the tale and even gets badass claw marks scarred into its hull for all to see!
• Under the Bridge has The Exterminator, a glue-shooting tank-like vehicle fashioned out of a 10" Dalek toy. Its name is somewhat ironic, considering it was built and is operated by small rodents.
• In Worldwar: War of Equals, The Race's landcruisers are not so tough facing 21st century tanks. While several models of tanks such as the Al-Khalid and the Leopard 2 work just fine against them, some tanks such as the Argentinian TAM tank requires an armor upgrade to fight them more equally.
• In Pink Alert 3, most Soviet Pony Republic Commanders place great emphasis on their many tough and highly capable armored fighting vehicles. While the Equestrian Alliance's tanks have all kinds of nifty special tricks and the Aquestrian Empire's amphibious mecha armies look plain awesome, in a traditional armoured slugging match the Soviets can be relied upon for coming out on top.
• Last Rights has a paragraph-long Infodump describing the Starfleet T-204 Hayes main battle tanks carried aboard the USS Bajor for the Kobali Prime land war. They're tracked vehicles a little bigger than an M1 Abrams or T-90, but weigh half as much and are powered by a miniature fusion reactor. Armaments are sponson-mounted Type V phasers (shuttlecraft-grade) and a phaser minigun on the turret, with the main gun being a 120mm coilgun that will put a bunker-buster through eight meters of ferrocrete. The author's notes spoke disparagingly of the Spider Tanks and Mini-Mecha used respectively by the Vaadwaur and Voth in the canon game (they're Awesome, but Impractical, as are Hover Tanks), and envisioned something looking like the bastard offpsring of a Russian T-90 and a Leman Russ.
• Drawing on the Mobile Suit Gundam example of the Type 61 above, the 61A3 that serves as the mount of the main Federation characters in A Feddie Story; the story itself is in some ways the chronicle of the last stand of conventional armor against the new Mobile Suit, and often points out that the tanks actually won.
• Beat the Drums of War has a scene where Bajoran Militia infantry are falling back under attack from Iconian Heralds, with the Harbinger leading the Heralds doing some Evil Gloating. He's abruptly Killed Mid-Sentence by a shell from a Bajoran tank that was sitting on a hilltop two kilometers away.
• Fallout: Equestria - Occupational Hazards features the main characters stumbling across and subsequently taking a ten-meter long 81-ton land battleship from the basement of a vehicle testing facility. Mounting a turreted Equestrian Royal Ordinance 76.2mm gun firing 17-pound shells and traveling at the speed of slow, it's not really sugarcoated that they'd found a TOG II, albeit with some upgrades - least of all being a compact nuclear reactor in place of the diesel engine and 20mm autocannons for coaxial and hull secondary armament.
  • Fallout: Equestria - Empty Quiver has the Tank Ghouls, a band of protectors for the town of Maple Station that all operate and own their own tanks. Of the group, there is a Churchill AVRE with a 290mm spigot mortar, a Sherman Firefly with a bulldozer attachment, a Porsche Tiger, and a Type 2 Ka-Mi, an amphibious tank.
• Wonderful (Mazinja): The tanks built by super-villain Squealer are heavily modified: they are equipped with multiple cannons which shoot fireballs and spiked cannonballs, they can turn invisible, rotate thirty-sixty degrees, deploy electrical shields... and some of them are taller than buildings.
• Davion & Davion (Deceased) includes tank forces as a component of all major military forces, ranging from fast hover tanks to the slower tracked units with heavy autocannon and missiles. Marge Pritchard and her tank crew are occasionally a viewpoint.

Films — Animation

• The animated Korean film Aachi and Ssipak starts out with a tank battle between police and a gang of mutants who drive small one-man tank, motorcycle, roller blade machines. Yeah, they're hard to describe and yes, the cartoon is weird.
• In the "Cannon Fodder" segment of Memories, there's an entire city that is effectively one gigantic tank. It sports many, many turrets of all sizes built into its structure and creeps slowly through the desert on treads. The biggest turrets have entire work-crews loading and firing automobile-sized shells but only get off a few shots per day. They appear to be at war with a similar city-tank, though it's never seen on screen.

Films — Live-Action

• Israeli film Lebanon tells the story of an Israeli tank crew during the 1982 Lebanon war. What makes this movie really stand out is its perspective. You see only what the tank crew sees. That means the only window to the outside world is a gunsight. This serves as pure Paranoia Fuel, and in case the viewer is claustrophobic, Nightmare Fuel.
• In Stalingrad, the German unit assaulting the apartment building can't break the stubborn Russian defense—until a squad of panzers show up and start shelling the Russian position inside the building.
• The Russian war film, T-34 has the titular T-34 tanks, as well the German antagonists using their wide array of Panzers. The plot hinges upon a group of imprisoned Soviet tankers being forced to use a recently captured T-34-85 as live targets for a German training program, but instead figuring out a way to use it to escape.
• Star Wars has hovertanks as well as relatively real Humongous Mecha.
  • The Expanded Universe (and Episode 3) has the Juggernaut vehicle, which could be turned into a full-fledged tank just by replacing the wheels (all ten of them) with tracks. It's essentially a slab of metal with guns.
  • The AT-TE of Episode 2 is designed very similarly to a tank despite technically being a mecha, with a low profile, multiple antipersonnel weapons, no real head, and a massively powerful swivel-mounted weapon on top. If you removed the legs and added treads, it would look like a tank. (The cockpit is transparent, but it's Transparisteel.)
  • The TX-225 GAVw "Occupier" combat assault tank in Rogue One is a track-propelled tank designed to operate in tight quarters and urban environments. It has two laser cannons on each side and its powerful engine can transport heavy payloads, such as Kyber crystals in Jedha.
• James Bond himself commandeers one of these in the big chase in GoldenEye
  • The third level from the Licensed Game GoldenEye 007, where you must find a plane in a runway and escape from the dam, also lets you shoot down the heavy machineguns with a tank. (there is also the level based on the movie's chase scene, but it's just a timed level, no chasing occurs)
• When the Batmobile in Batman Begins was first revealed to the world, fan opinion was mixed. Then the movie came out. Gordon wants one.
  Gotham cop: It's a black... tank.
  • Definitely a Shout-Out to Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.
• DC Extended Universe:
  • Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: The Batmobile is a mix between the armored Tumbler of The Dark Knight Trilogy and classic hot rod Batmobile designs.
  • Justice League (2017) has the "Knightcrawler", an armored Spider Tank designed to explore tunnels. It can crawl walls.
  • Zack Snyder's Justice League introduces the "War Machine" (in Zack Snyder's own words), a tank-like vehicle conceived and operated by Batman, inspired by the Batmobile from the The Dark Knight Returns.
• The Beast of War is about a Soviet tank in Afghanistan that becomes separated from the rest of the army. As the lone tank battles through mujahadeen guerrilla attacks, its crew slowly tears itself apart.
• The Sgt. Bilko movie had a hover-tank which didn't work because the hovering tank has no way to stabilize itself against the recoil of its main gun, so firing the gun launched the tank uncontrollably in the opposite direction. They faked it with some fireworks.
  • Of course, the movie ends before the military figures out they've been duped. It's not clear why they can't be satisfied with a hover-APC, as it can simply fly over landmines and Czech hedgehogs.
• In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the Sultan of Hatay lends support to the Nazi Grail expedition by providing them with transportation including tanks. The film shows one modified WWI tank, a Mark VIII with a turret dropped on top with the Rule of Cool.
• The Landram was used in the Pilot Movie of the original Battlestar Galactica to save some humans from the Cylon rigged Casino on planet Carolon.
• Rambo used one in Rambo III to play chicken with the Big Bad's gunship.
• Kelly's Heroes features some great tank action. The soldiers have on their side Oddball, a proto-hippie tank commander with three Shermans manned by gypsies. The Shermans provide the backbone of the group's offense along the way to the loot, which is guarded by German Tiger tanks. A big tank battle ensues, but ultimately the final Tiger is just too much to handle, so the soldiers negotiate with the German tank commander to split the loot he's guarding.
• The A-Team movie (as seen in the trailer) involves a battle between a tank and Reaper drones. The tank is is in midair, in the middle of parachuting down. And after they shoot down the aircraft, they fire the tank's cannons to adjust its course and allow for a safe landing. They are flying a tank!
• In Tank, James Garner's character uses a WWII Sherman tank he'd bought and restored to break his son out of prison, then drives it to the Tennessee border to seek a fair trial for his son and others framed by a corrupt Georgia sheriff.
• Captain America: The First Avenger has several examples. Wheeled Hydra tanks powered by Tesseract energy are everywhere, and stolen by Allied troops during the prison break scene to even the playing field. Captain America himself highlights a primary flaw in size escalation when he takes out a comically-oversized three-story tank with the classic Insert Grenade Here.
  • Oddly enough, the massive tank that the Cap blows up is just about the only tank that HYDRA is seen using: all the other armoured vehicles were either repainted FV432 APCs or a bulldozer mock-up.
• Ant-Man. When Hank and Hope are trapped in the Pym facility, Hank reveals that his tank keychain isn't actually a keychain.
• In the 1987 homage/parody Dragnet, Friday assaults the bad guys' headquarters with the police version of this; instead of a gun, the tank sports a battering ram with a smiley-face on it.
• In G.I. Joe: Retaliation Roadblock drives a tank-like dune buggy built by Coulton to battle some Cobra tanks.
• Sahara (1943) (the film with Humphrey Bogart and the remake with James Belushi, not the Clive Cussler novel and its adaptation) has the protagonists using an M-3 Lee to escape from the Nazis overtaking the Allies' battle lines in Africa. It is one of the few advantages that the heroes have on the Hold the Line Last Stand that makes the bulk of the movie.
• Shoot 'Em Up. With every freelance hitman in the city trying to kill the Badass and Baby, Smith puts the baby and his Love Interest inside an M24 Chaffee in a museum. "You'll be safe from gunfire and most explosives."
• Fury (2014) is about an entire armored unit of Sherman Tanks. While that in itself may not sound all that spectacular, this does mark the film debut of an actual Tiger Tank. Not a mockup, not a CG render. A Real Tiger Tank. ^note  The tank itself was donated by the Bovington Tank Museum, and is the only fully operational Tiger Tank in existance.
• Tank Girl. The title character has a tank with an astonishing assortment of accessories as well as a Brain in a Jar controlling it.
• In Boy & the World, the police display some really impressive tanks during a parade downtown. Later in the movie, they put them to good use when they take down a giant red bird.
• Underground: The underground refugees spend their time making weapons to fight the Nazis, believing that World War 2 is still raging above. Their biggest achievement is building a whole tank. In one of the film's iconic scenes, Natalija dances on the tank at Jovan's wedding. The refugees also use the tank as their bomb shelter.
• Becomes the Brick Joke in Life Is Beautiful.
• In Chai Lai Angels: Dangerous Flowers, the heroines have been trapped in a cage by Kong, and the Carnival of Killers and an army of Mooks are closing in. When they do a quick count of their numbers, they realise that Hibiscus is missing. At this point, Hibiscus comes round the corner commanding a tank being driven by Chen, which quickly puts the bad guys to flight.
• The 1995 film adaptation of Richard III updates the setting to an Alternate History 1930's UK, and begins with an Action Prologue of Richard assassinating King Henry VI. Said prologue begins with him ramming a tank into Henry's mansion, quickly emerging from the chaotic rubble and blasting his target in the head.
• Part of Don Camillo's Last Round revolves on Peppone, Brescello's Communist mayor and now candidate to the Parliament and also a partisan during World War II, needing to help a local sharecropper who in 1945 got his hands on an M24 Chaffee (previously captured by the Germans and stuck at a farm during their retreat in 1945) and never reported it to the authorities, and as the sharecropper is now about to be evicted he could face serious consequences. He and Don Camillo (the local priest, who decided to help to protect the sharecropper from his own stupidity) manage to move it where it can be "found"... But not without Peppone shooting the dove statue on the Monument to Peace the Communists had recently built.
  • The sequence was so iconic that when a museum to the Don Camillo movies was built in Brescello the town bought a tank and parked it in front... Though they got the wrong model (an M26 Pershing, which is a much heavier tank).
• Snow and Fire: The World War II Western Front winter battle scenes boast well-known tanks of the era, notably the German Königstiger. The (real) one used for the film belongs to the Saumur tank museum, it is the only one in the world that's still in running condition invokedand is reason enough for World War II tank enthusiasts to watch it (the museum hasn't lent it to any other production since).
• 1941 short film The Tanks Are Coming was a propaganda piece showing some recruits going through tank training at Fort Knox. The idea was to reassure the American public that our tanks are great and there was nothing to worry about—look at them ford a ditch, look at them flatten a taxi cab! This was ironic, since the M2 tanks shown in the film were wholly inadequate to combat against the Germans and had to be replaced with the M4 "Sherman" tank.

Literature

• In the Ack-Ack Macaque stories from Gareth L. Powell, Land Leviathans are giant tanks that look like battleships on tractor treads. With their huge size and smokestacks, they'd appear to be an example of Awesome, but Impractical. However these Land Leviathans come from an alternate Earth that has a much higher technology level than the already very advanced Earth of 2060 AD. Besides having especially strong armour and cannons as well as missile batteries, these tanks have force fields. With all that technology, they easily storm through Earth's armies and are only held back by Dreadnoughts, giant fusion-powered zeppelin battleships that can sometimes take out a careless Land Leviathan with a missile barrage. The final undoing of the Land Leviathans came when the heroes ally with a resistance band from centuries in the future. The rebel mining ship had a uniquely powerful Plasma Cannon-Laser Cutter.
• H. G. Wells laid out the concept of armored vehicles ("landships") in his 1904 short-story "The L.and Ironclads", making this trope Older Than Television, insofar literature is concerned. However, his vehicles differ from the overall concept in that they were more like a mix between armored personnel carriers and Land Battleships.
• The Bolo series in Keith Laumer's stories, especially the Continental Siege Units (the Mark XXXIII's were called Planetary Siege Units). Their firepower is usually given in megatons per second and have an AI far above human level in both intelligence and ethics. And don't even get started on the Planetary Siege Units that are deployed in independent brigades of 24 units each and that each have armaments that let them duel starships!
• David Drake's Hammer's Slammers stories feature the titular mercenary company, whose primary offensive arm are air-cushion Hover Tanks.
• The eponymous tracked Base on Wheels in Michael Moorcock's The Land Leviathan.
• Tramp In Armour by Colin Forbes features the crew of a British Matilda tank who get trapped behind enemy lines in the last days of the Battle of France, and their journey to Dunkirk in order to escape. An excellent representation of armored warfare. The Matilda's limitations are thoroughly explored, but thanks to the way her crew fight her, she remains a thoroughly awesome weapon.
• Discworld featured a steam tank of sorts in Small Gods — notably, because its existence was enough to shift the balance of power and change history, Lu Tze of the History Monks sabotaged its construction.
• John Ringo's Legacy of the Aldenata features upgraded modern tanks by the bucketful, as well as totally new designs like the Tiger IIIs based on alien tech from Watch on the Rhine.
• Averted in the Starfist military sci-fi series, thanks to the development of highly effective and extremely light man-portable anti-armor weapons making heavily armored vehicles obsolete. This actually drives the plot of one of the novels - a megalomaniac manages to conquer a world with tanks, which nobody has seen for literally centuries, and the anti-armor weapons are now museum pieces. The military is forced to use the museum pieces to manufacture new copies, and have to have history professors instruct the Marines in their use. They do put a permanent order to maintain the anti-armor capability as well. How precisely these weapons are supposed to be effective when you're engaging a combined arms force where the tanks are firing from multiple kilometers away is not addressed.
• Robert A. Heinlein:
  • If This Goes On— has these. They are sort of "landships". To get an idea of the "landships", think of a WW2 battleship that goes overland like a tank.
  • The Puppet Masters has amphibious tanks or "mud turtles".
• The Draka Hond tank is the king of the battlefield in the Eurasian War, and the Draka produce them in Soviet Union-like numbers from their massive transcontinental empire.
• The Sovremenyy. the Russian jaggernaut (ice cruiser) rumbling across the south polar plains in Swedish dieselpunk novel Iskriget.
• Fyodor Berezin is in love with this trope. As an example, the modern Soviet tanks from an alternate reality in his Red Stars duology (where the USSR dominates the world) are four-tracked monstrocities with huge cannons. This is explained by the fact that USSR struck first in World War II, destroying Germany's military-industrial complex instead of the Soviet one, allowing factories to keep building heavier and heavier tanks, like KV-3, and KV-4 (for reference, the Real Life KV-2 was armed with a howitzer cannon and 5 of these obliterated over 20 German tanks in one battle).
  • Berezin's Huge Black Ship series. Picture a Hover Tank called a Sow (AKA Battle Mountain): powered by several nuclear reactors, four hundred meters in length, with its main guns having a 1.5 m caliber, plus a lot of smaller guns. The second book also introduces a 5-ton monstrosity with a six-barreled 152 mm rapid-fire gun. These smaller tanks are called Piglets, since they're actually carried into battle by the above-mentioned Sow.
• While this seems to be the case with the Race landcruisers in Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series, they're no more (and probably less) advanced than modern-day tanks. However, they're monsters in the books' World War II setting, compared to what the human "empire and not-empires" can put out. The shells are laser— sorry, skelkwank-guided and can punch through any human armor. As mentioned by several characters on both sides, had the Race arrived only a generation later (as some of them wanted), the humans would've wiped the floor with them.
  • By the Colonization series, taking place 20 years later, the major "independent not-empires" have caught up and, in some cases, passed the Race's military technology. When the Reich invades the Race-controlled Poland, it's stated that the new German tanks are a 1-to-1 match for the Race's landcruisers, and the Germans actually know how to fight with tanks which was pointed out as the biggest weakness of the Race's tanks by Germans in the previous trilogy. To the Germans, they fought like Russians: "Their tanks are great but their tank skills are shit."
• World War Z: Averted at the Battle of Yonkers. Tanks do very little to kill the massive hoard of zombies that start flooding the bridge. It's also specified, however, that the person in command was specifically an idiot and didn't use them right: real tanks could destroy a zombie horde simply by driving over them.
  • It is mentioned that they are used again against human opponents who don't want to rejoin the United States.
• In the Honor Harrington series, they have largely been replaced by Powered Armor, but they do turn up from time to time. One plotline in Shadow of Freedom revolves around a planetary government's Praetorian Guard using tanks to put down protests and riots, and the local resistance movement's escalating efforts to counter them. The tanks prove to be vulnerable to dedicated Anti Armor weaponry, which the rebels have limited supplies of, and a substantial number of them are destroyed when a truck bomb flattens a parking garage they were staged in to provide cover from the aforementioned anti armor weaponry. Another time, in Echoes Of Honor, a large-scale POW camp breakout was made possible by the external help in the assault shuttle capturing the camp's armor park first, and handing out the available tanks to the rebels, before any Powered Armor-equipped defender ever had a chance to suit up.
  • According to the House of Steel supplement Manticore does use tanks, however we don't see them as the series focuses on the Navy and Marines, whereas tanks are only used by the Army.
• In Animorphs, Marco and Tobias acquire a tank in book 51. They steal it off a train, drive it the wrong way down a freeway, and leave it parked on top of the remains of Vice Principal Chapman's house.
• In Mailed Fist, the stars of the book are the British Churchill Tanks - mechanically reliable, surprisingly manouvrable, heavily armoured, and still only equipped with a gun that cannot put a hole in a German Tiger from a hundred yards away. As Major Foley and his crew discover to their cost.
• Zig zagged in Antti Tuuri's The Winter War. Due to the Finns' shortage of proper anti-tank weapons, Russian tanks often act at leisure, as far as they don't get too close to Finnish positions. However, their impact is rather limited until the Russians improve their tactics. It is mentioned that in another sector the Russians break the Finnish lines with proper use of tanks.
• Rebuild World: High level hunters (Private Military Contractors) in the more dangerous east from where the cast live are said to each have either one of these, or a Mini-Mecha, to help them take on Kaiju. Akira faces a number of monsters similar to tanks (including Spider Tank types). Eventually after Akira gets a price on his head, he and a few allies have to fight off entire tank platoons sent to bring him down, that have Deflector Shields and can make an Improvised Platform out of force fields to point the tank upwards. Human crewed tanks tend to shoot barrages of missiles Akira and allies have to shoot down until they can arrange concentrated Wave-Motion Gun fire. Akira ends up getting extremely expensive (and illegal) Antimatter bullets to take them down easier.

Live-Action TV

• Soviet Storm: World War II in the East features several prominent German and Soviet tanks, namely the T-34, IS-2, Tiger I, and Panther in all their wartime glory. This is especially true with the episode focusing on the Battle of Kursk, where tanks are the deciding factor in the outcome of the battle.
• Hogan's Heroes: Carter infiltrates a German unit to recover confiscated TNT so they can blow up a bridge. However, rather than just getting the TNT and leaving, he requisitions and drives off with a German tank and they use that to blow the bridge.
• In series one of Ashes to Ashes (2008) Alex commandeers a hot pink gay pride tank so that she can total a car.
• Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The original Megazord has a tank mode, although this is used sparingly. Titanus' attack mode is tank-like and was even branded as such in Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger. The original Ultrazord is also basically a tank, guaranteed to obliterate the Monster of the Week by rapid-fire shelling it to dust. The only being to survive a barrage fron Ultrazord was Lokar, and he was badly scarred when next he showed up.
• A staple of the Metal Heroes shows, typically used by the hero; often, their tank can split into a Cool Plane and/or a drill tank. Jikuu Senshi Spielban had the villains using massive fleets of tanks, with the lead general, Deathzero, in an Evil Counterpart to Spielban's own tank, also capable of splitting into a jet and a ground vehicle (with a big spinning sawblade instead of a drill); this carried over into VR Troopers, with the added caveat that General Ivar's Ravage Tank is the only thing keeping the other tanks operating, so the Troopers often target Ivar's tank to end the assault. Season 2 of VRT also gives Ryan his own tank (courtesy of Space Sheriff Shaider).
• Pearly, from the Space: Above and Beyond episode "Pearly". Who is most definitely NOT an APC, thank you very much.
• In Chou Sei Shin Gransazer, when the Japanese military decides to build their own Humongous Mecha someone thought that its support vehicle should be a conventional tank- only a hundred times bigger.
• Ultraseven gives us one of the most ridiculous yet awesome monsters ever in Dinosaur-Tank. It looks like Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Yeah.
• Ineffectual Marxist Citizen Smith gets a hold of a Scorpion AFV and uses it storm Westminster : while the Government is on its Summer Holidays.
• The Japanese cop show Seibu Keisatsu features one in its first two episodes. The vehicle, a massive armored car named the TU-355 Lady Bird, is hijacked by a trio of mercenaries hired by a Right-Wing Militia Fanatic.
• Mitch Dolgen uses an old Patton tank against the prison but it's destroyed during the fight.
• In one episode of M*A*S*H, after a commander of an army tank unit has to have a rather embarrassing problem treated at the 4077th ("carnal flu," as Hawkeye calls it), the camp is plagued by snipers, and Hawkeye "convinces" him to park one of his tanks in the center of the camp to scare the snipers away in return for "losing" the record of the treatment. It works, but then Frank Burns gets the idea to impress Margaret by telling her he can drive a tank, and proceeding to take the controls to prove it. Long story short, he can't. (Ultimately, Hawkeye and BJ agree to cover for him in exchange for Frank signing a form they'd been trying to get him sign for the entire episode.)
• In the Batman (1966) episode, "Penguin's Disastrous End," the Dynamic Duo and the police have the Penguin and Zelda trapped in a gold vault waiting for them to surrender for lack of food and/or air. However, the Penguin has a completely unexpected plan to escape: using his gold loot to have it fashioned into a fully functional tank and smash his way out. Although it is a shock at first, Batman and Robin give chase and easily stop it with their Batzooka.
• Midsomer Murders: In a murder that is unusual even by Midsomer standards, the first Victim of the Week in "The Town That Rose From the Dead" is run-over by a tank.

Music

• The Swedish Power Metal band Sabaton, given their fondness for singing about militaria in general and World War II in particular, naturally feature this trope quite heavily throughout their oeuvre. Special props to "Panzerkampf" (about the Battle of Kursk), "Panzer Battalion" (about the 2003 invasion of Iraq), "Ghost Division" (about Erwin Rommel's "ghost" tank division), and more recently, "Steel Commanders" (about the history of tank warfare).
  Armored tanks of mass destruction
  Killers in the east
  Rats who dares to stand before us
  Feel our guns go live
  Death in the shape of a panzer battalion!
• The anthem of the WWII German tank korps, Panzerlied, which is so good the tune and lyrics have been adapted by the Chilean, Italian, and even French militaries, and (unofficially), by modern German Army. Famously featured in Battle of the Bulge.
  If it storms or snows, or the sun smiles on us,
  The day burning hot, or the icy cold of night.
  Dusty are our faces, but happy is our mind, yes, our mind.
  Then roar our tanks in the storm's wind.
• The Soviet tank forces had several fight songs that all sound pretty awesome and glorify their vehicles: "Three Tankmen" and "March of the Soviet Tankists" are the most famous. (Badly) translated from Russian:
  With their fire, and their strong steeling,
  The tanks will win future battlefields,
  We'll be ordered into battle by Comrade Stalin
  And the Grand Marshal will be our leader.
• The earliest song to feature tanks is the British WWI propaganda song "The Tanks that Broke the Ranks Out in Picardy", written after the first operational use of tanks at Cambrai:
  And the tanks went on, and they strolled along with an independent air,
  And their guns began to blare, and the Huns began to swear,
  For they pulled the trees up by the roots, and they made the Huns look like galoots,
  Did the tanks that broke the ranks out in Picardy!
• Pink Floyd's song "When the Tigers broke free" relates a tank attack during the Battle of Anzio, where Roger Waters' father was killed.

Pinballs

• The "Tank Chase" mode from Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure.
• "Tank Multiball" in Sega Pinball's GoldenEye, which also has a model tank on the play field.
• Mr. Game's Mac Attack has the Mac Mobile, a rocket-powered tank with two massive cannons on top. During gameplay, the player must move it into position to expose a ball lock for one of the game's Video Modes.

Roleplay

• Shadowhunter Peril has Veronica, who can telescope a tank out of her purse. She uses it for the most mundane tasks, such as transportation down the street, or killing a single demon. There are times when it comes in handy, though. Like the Final Battle.

Tabletop Games

• Warhammer 40,000 takes this Trope and makes sweet, sweet love to it. All races have access to some form of armoured death machine, with the exception of the Tyranids, who instead get hulking chitinous nightmares capable of tossing said armored death machines around like toys. From the core game's model kits to Forge World's specialized tank variants or hull types, there's a lot for a tread head to enjoy.
  • The Imperial Guard have pretty lackluster infantry, but to make up for it not only do they get some of the best tanks in the game, they get to take them in squadrons, meaning they'll usually outnumber and outgun enemy armor. The basic Leman Russ has a battle cannon that can smash vehicles or reduce Space Marines to Ludicrous Gibs on top of additional anti-infantry or anti-armor weapon options, but it also comes in a staggering number of specialized variants. The Leman Russ Vanquisher has a long-barrel anti-tank cannon, the Demolisher has a short-ranged cannon that pulverizes even the hardest targets, the Punisher has a gatling cannon that can fire twenty shots in one shooting phase, and so forth. As if that wasn't enough, the Imperial Guard can also field super-heavy tanks like the Baneblade, with its "eleven barrels of hell."^details Baneblade battle cannon mounted in the turret with a co-axial autocannon, Demolisher cannon mounted in the hull, two sponsons mounting twin-linked heavy bolters with two lascannons mounted on top of those, and a further twin-linked heavy bolter mounted in the hull The Baneblade chassis in turn forms the basis for another array of tank variants, such as the Shadowsword titan-hunter or Stormlord transport/infantry mulcher. The scary thing is that, during the glory days of the Imperium's founding, such monsters were designated medium tanks.
  • The Space Marines' Predator battle tank actually feels lackluster compared to the Leman Russ, but overlapping with Awesome Personnel Carrier is the Land Raider, a vehicle with the highest possible armor rating on all its facings, weapon options that can kill enemy armor or infantry alike, a "machine spirit" smart enough to assist the driver (and in some cases operate the vehicle by itself), and it's still capable of carrying a squad of Terminators into the enemy line. The 7th edition "vanilla Marines" codex made Astartes tanks even more powerful by giving them bonus abilities if you have three of a particular variant on the table at once. For instance, if you have three Vindicators (which sport the aforementioned Demolisher cannon) and all are operational, you can choose to fire one shot from one of them with a 10" Apocalyptic Blast marker and the Ignores Cover special rule instead of firing all three with their normal 5" Large Blast marker.
  • Chaos Space Marines get the same tanks as the above, just covered with Spikes of Villainy and with upgrade options such as Demonic Possession.
  • One Rhino APC variant used by the Sisters of Battle stands out for being an artillery platform that is a combination multiple missile launcher and pipe organ.
  • The Orks slap together ramshackle Battlewagons that can carry anything from unreasonably large cannons to mobs of Boyz, but just as often simply looted Imperial tanks. The only good news for their opponents is that looted tanks suffer from Orks' terrible accuracy and have a chance to go careening off when the driver pushes the wrong button. But Emperor help you if they manage to get their hands on a Baneblade and Orkify it...
  • The Eldar use stately grav-tanks that lack the heavy armor of Imperial vehicles, but function more like a helicopter gunship than a conventional tank. Between the firepower of the Falcon or Fire Prism, their extreme speed and mobility, and upgrades such as holo-fields, they're harder to kill than their armor would suggest. The Eldar have super-heavy vehicles too, armed with devastating laser or distortion weapons, but theirs are fast-moving, skimming super-heavy tanks.
  • The Tau's mainline armored vehicle, the Hammerhead hover tank, isn't as fast or flashy as Eldar vehicles, but does sport an enormous railgun as its main weapon that can annihilate entire squads of enemy infantry with an explosive submunition, or fire an anti-tank solid round that can punch clean through an enemy vehicle and reduce its crew to a twenty-meter red stain extending from the exit hole.
  • The Necrons don't have tanks that other species would recognize, instead their heavy vehicle is the Monolith. It's more or less a floating bunker bristling with Gauss weapons, its hull of living metal is exceptionally hard to damage, and it contains a teleporter nexus that allows Necron reinforcements to pour from it. In later editions they acquired an additional selection of heavy skimmers similar to the Eldar's, although not as fast and using Deflector Shields rather than evasion.
  • The Dark Eldar stand out for being a mechanized force that averts this trope - they're pirates and raiders, and so make good use of exceedingly fast but fragile skimmers on the battlefield.
  • The Horus Heresy shows us the Tanks that existed when the Imperium actually had the concept of "development" and "scientific research"; the utterly terrifying Fellblade tank is the Baneblade with twice the amount of guns, while its variants can mount a variety of other titan-specific weapons, including a massive Volkite Cannon. Then there's the Sicarans, which can best be described as the unholy lovechild of a Predator and a Land Raider. Speaking of Land Raiders, it is during these times that the Spartan Assault Tank, what can only be described as a super heavy land raider existed; it could transport entire contingent of space marines and had enough firepower to back them up. Perturabo, not being satisfied with these, decided to one-up everything by taking the hull of a Spartan and marrying it with the Tremor Cannon; A weapon that can be compared to the Vindicator's Demolisher cannon as the Baneblade's Battlecannon can be compared to a grenade launcher. Appropriately, few people dared making compensation jokes around him specifically because of said cannon.
  • Speaking of Perturabo, He also had his own ride; the Tormentor. It is a Shadowsword Superheavy tank (a variant of the Baneblade) modified to be able to carry him and his retinue of Iron Guard robots into battle. If you thought a casemate tank destroyer armed with a Titan Killer Weapon was scary it's nothing compared to one that can also spew out a demigod and his five pissed off robot bodyguards.
• Even Warhammer gets a slice of the action with the Empire's Steam Tanks. They're temperamental and barely-understood contraptions, but you can imagine their effectiveness in an otherwise late Medieval/Renaissance setting.
• Twilight: 2000 lets you come out of character creation with your squad having an M1 or a Challenger II (mentioned above); unfortunately in the context of the game this is likely to prove Awesome, but Impractical.
• The OGRE in Steve Jackson Games' wargame of the same name is a computer-controlled mobile fortress with a size measured in acres. It was heavily influenced by the first Bolo book, which came out in 1976, one year before Ogre.
  • The main and secondary guns of an Ogre fire SATNUC rounds. That's SATuration NUclear Cluster; a round splits into submunitions over the target, each of which takes a split second to aim, and then detonate, producing a shaped charge of nuclear plasma.
  • The Biphase Carbide armor of the Ogre is several meters thick. It cannot be breached even by nuclear weapons. The only hope a defense force might have of stopping one is to destroy its exposed tractor-treads — and even these require nukes to put a dent in them. Of course, good luck getting your forces in close enough to do damage to its treads; the Ogre's arsenal can vaporize a whole tank battalion without even blinking.
• Another miniatures game: Brigade Models makes a game called Land Ironclads, which takes ground combat to a World War I as foreseen by H. G. Wells and friends. They explore a world where tank combat did as these futurists expected, and followed the same model as their present-day naval combat, with scout tanks, cruiser tanks, and dreadnought-tanks.
• The Yu-Gi-Oh! card game has a few tanks, such as Oni Tank T-34
• While BattleTech unabashedly assigns the 'king of the battlefield' role to its Humongous Mecha, conventional combat vehicles are still very much in evidence and frequently use the very same engines, armor, and weapons that BattleMechs do. Well-designed tanks in particular (available in hover, tracked, and occasionally wheeled, though the last seriously suffers in terms of terrain restrictions) can readily match 'Mechs of comparable weight in terms of firepower; the 'Mechs' primary advantages are superior terrain handling and toughness (due mainly to having more hit locations to soak up damage and even being able to lose some and still walk off the battlefield), not arbitrarily bigger and better guns. Tanks, meanwhile, are canonically cheaper and easier to produce...
  • Epitomized by the Demolisher series of tanks. Massive tanks ranging from 80 to 100 tons carrying dual Autocannon-20s, some of the largest ballistic weapons in the game, and with enough armor to weather assaults. In the canon, it was specifically designed to hunt and kill BattleMechs, which it could do readily—few units, even in the assault weight class like the Demolisher, can carry two AC/20s, and even fewer can shake off a hit from just one of those cannons.
  • The Demolisher has two newer cousins—the Rommel and the Patton, armed with a single AC/20 and a AC/10 respectively. The Rommel also comes in a few variants, one of which has a gauss rifle. Aside from the gauss rifle variant, they are less well armed then the Demolisher, but both have better armor and speed.
• In Weird War Two, a dice and paper WWII RPG which basically mixes myth, horror, and WWII, there are demonically possessed Nazi tanks from hell. There are also super haunted ghost tank hunters for the Allies. These tanks can have special abilities and Special Ammo. Tanks in this game are downright deadly to anyone not sporting big guns or lots of infantry with AT weapons. So having a tank on your side is this.
• Paranoia has the Mark IV Warbot, designed by R&D in hopes of replacing the entire Armed Forces. While Nigh-Invulnerable to conventional firepower, it can be disabled by attacking its bot brain (including an overzealous scrubot with a steel scrub brush, and an inferiority complex due to a barometer falling off), or flat-out destroyed by firing into a thermal exhaust port. At one point, another Alpha Complex captures one and renames it the OGREbot (a Shout-Out to the Steve Jackson game).
• The Tank form in Mekton gets you a 2pt bonus to your armour and lets you appoint either the 'head' or the 'torso' to have a 360 degree arc of fire as the turret. Of course, you can also build a mecha that turns INTO a tank, thereby getting Humongous Mecha and Tank Goodness bonuses at the same time.
• Rifts first introduced tanks to the game in the Traix and the NGR sourcebook, and has pretty much made a point in outfitting nearly every country on the planet since with outrageous tanks to go along with their Powered Armor and Humongous Mecha. The standout examples include the Karthum-Terek, a massive tank with guns capable of harming starships and enough redundancy built in that it literally has to be blown to pieces in order to destroy it, and the Neo-Abrams, which manages to combine both realistic practicality (by real-world standards, no less!) and overwhelming munchkinism in the same package.
• Dystopian Wars has a large number of War Machines. For scale, a Small Tank base is the size of a Modern Tank. A Land Ship in game is so large they can mount Saint Paul's Catherdral on its chassis.
• Broken Gears has the USRA's (unification of Communist China and the Soviet Union after the War of Broken Gears) Iron Tiger Land Fortress, a forty yards long and twenty yards high behemoth with 3'' thick armour plates powered with uranium that can crush anything on its path, its one turret can hurl half-ton shells at a mile and enough anti-armour guns and small arms to tackle any enemy. And if it is surrounded, it can vent incredibly hot radioactive steam to blanket the vehicle.
• Mutant Chronicles was an attempted rival to Warhammer 40,000, so it has its fair share. Among them are Cybertronic's twin-cannon Armadillo hovertank and Capitol's Leviathan which is a tank built around the biggest cannon fielded on a land vehicle. The most famous tank in the game though, is Bauhaus's Grizzly which is more of a mobile fortress than a tank and has enough guns and turrets to wipe out small armies. The Dark Legion has a unique tank which is so dangerous that after it had its treads destroyed, it continues to bombard the human factions and has since become a permanent land hazard out on the Dark Legion borders.
• In Necropolis 2035 a Savage Worlds game somewhat reminiscent of Mutant Chronicles, there a number of powerful tanks backed by future technology. The 3 most notable are the heavy tanks: Golgotha, Calvary and Thor. All 3 tanks are armed with a rail gun, a coaxial autocannon and coaxial flechette machine gun as well as pintle-mounted flechette machine gun. They also have a number of ball-bearing firing Anti-Personnel point defense packs. The Sacre Ordines have the Golgotha which is the heaviest of the 3 and has the largest rail gun and autocannon, the Sacre Ordines are moving to the new Calvary which has lighter armour and weaponry but greatly increase mobility due to having an anti-gravity generator. The Thor is a corporate vehicle designed by the Asgard company, it's a slightly inferior answer to the Golgotha but it's still mighty and available to any buyer.
• In the supernatural, post-apocalypse game Obsidian: Age of Judgement the powerful LAW corporation has 2 types of Base on Wheels tanks which protect the remainder of humanity in the former USA. They're the Precinct and the even larger Enforcer. Besides heavy armour and even heavier firepower, these two vehicles are big enough that they carry a small fleet of Weaponized Car, labs, prison and troop bunkers. The Enforcer is so mighty there's only 4 of them, they've never been defeated and in almost a century of service only 2 had to be replaced.
• Gear Krieg is an alternate World War 2 game where certain events had led to Soviet Super Science, Stupid Jetpack Hitler and other anachronistic Mad Scientist tech. So there are many examples of amazing tanks, though the game is moving more to Walkers. Among them is the Maus superheavy tank with its two cannons and several machine guns (yeah it went to production and spawned several variants) and the dreaded Manticore Hover Tank with its heavy laser. Soviet Russia loves their superheavy tanks and their early T-44 Lenin superheavy and its variants already outgun the Maus, but the Soviets double-down and made the KV-300 which has 5 turret cannons and 5 machine guns plus new generation sloped armour. With Allies and Axis also modifying existing tanks with experimental weapons like thermal rays, Tesla projectors and magnetic cannons, plus more nations creating a new wave of superheavy tanks - the Lensman Arms Race is strong in the Gear Krieg world and that's just the tanks...
• In AT-43, armoured might is usually through Walkers, Spider Tank and high-flying Hover Tank. But for the zombie-using corporation O.N.I., they decided to go back to the drawing board and bring back "traditional" tanks that are updated for current times. Their crowning achievement is the O.N.I heavy tank which is not only cheaper than any other factions' top tier vehicle, it boasts a resident mechanic for field repair and has the heavy maser cannon, the heaviest vehicle weapon commisioned from alien Cog faction. Interestingly, in reality the heavy tank and other O.N.I vehicles aren't tanks, with its 6 large wheels the heavy tank looks strongly like the Kodiak/Stryker LAVs in real life.
• Similar to the above 2 games, Dust more emphasizes Walkers and Heavy Walkers. But set in an alternate World War 2 where the discovery of alien technology has led to an Lensman Arms Race, the Sino-Soviet Union (SSU), continues to use tanks as their Walker technology is just developing. The mightiest of their tanks are the superheavy tanks "Karl Marx" (heavy Tesla cannon and 3 12.7mm machine guns) and its variant "Lavrentiy Beria" which uses a 152mm cannon, a flame cannon and a pair of 12.7mm machine guns.
• In the future warzones of Dropzone Commander, the 4 main factions all have their tank variations. The most traditional are the United Colonies of Mankind (UCM). Their tanks are noted for often having a telescopic arm rather than a standard turret and with the exception of some of the Post-Human Republic (PHR), their ultra-thick composite alloy armour is the most protective of any faction. And like all vehicles, they carry a powerful point defense system for dealing with missiles and the occasional heavy shell. Most iconic of the UCM tanks are the Gladius and Scimitar heavy battle tanks. The Gladius has two rail guns to keep a constant pressure on enemy vehicles, while the Scimitar's battlefield laser, while rather weak for an energy weapon, allows it to ignore the point defense systems of other vehicles.

Theme Parks

• One ride at Action Park was the aptly-named "Tank Ride", where visitors would ride around in giant tank and shoot each others' weak points, stopping them for 15 seconds. It was also known for being the worst place to be an employee, since the riders would shoot them with no mercy when they had to get in the area.

Toys

• Tamiya is famous for creating military model kits, a huge varieties of tanks is among them.
• Kaiyodo has a series of chibi tank capsule toys known as World Tank Museum, those tanks happen to be cute.
• Takara Tomy, of Tomica fame is no exception, they created a pull back BB tank series known as WAR2 (now discontinued), as well as JSDF Type 90 tank for Tomica Premium.
• Common in Transformers. Blitzwing and Brawl always turn into tanks, and Megatron has had tank alt modes several times. Most tank Transformers are Decepticons, with the Autobot Warpath being a notable exception.

Video Games

• The mostly-forgotten RTS 7th Legion had several tank variations, including three that were mostly identical except each successive iteration added another main cannon to the turret.
• The A-gear, or Anima Mortar, of Ace Online is a flying hovertank.
• Act of War is an RTS that brings all kind of cool tanks including Real Life the T-80 and Abrams, along with the more exotic stealth tank Akula and the S.P.I.N.N.E.R, a drone vehicle also capable to convert into an AA platform or a suicide bomb drone factory.
• Laughably subverted by the Blitztank from Akatsuki Blitzkampf. With its baby-blue color scheme, cheesy skull ornamentation and tiny mounted cannon that tragically resembles a micropenis, Blitztank is pretty much ridiculed by the entire fanbase. Really, we're talking about a tank that can be beaten up; of course it's going to be lame. Which made it all the more bizarre when it showed up again in BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle.
• The first boss from Apocalypse is a tank equipped with flamethrowers and missiles, which the hero, Kincaid, must destroy in order to finish the level. Later on several more tanks shows up in the city stages, including two which is a Dual Boss.
• Armored Core would be the ultimate poster child for this trope: most games offer the tank legs. Very slow, but usually very heavily armored, has very low energy drain, has built-in boosters, so it actually saves the main body weight, and carry loads like nothing else. With that in mind, most kinds of tanks can fulfill requirements of More Dakka, Macross Missile Massacre, Tactical Nukes, or all of the above, with Stone Wall defenses. There Is No Kill Like An Overkill is guaranteed. And then, starting from PS2 Armored Core titles, you have the option of having Overboost, and later additional boosters. At that point, tanks can finally achieve Multi-Track Drifting, made even more possible by mounting the best generators. And even with all that, most players don't really consider it, since Gundamlike bipedal robots are just cooler.
  • Also, Armored Core 4 has regular modern tanks. They might as well be plushies for all the good they do. Justified however, given that NEXTs are 4th generation Armored Cores, the absolute best short of a Super Prototype or Ace Custom, and stronger than even the previous game's Cores, which have become Mecha-Mooks labelled as "Normals". And each one is piloted by a borderline psychic crew member and capable of nearly 1:1 piloting input to machine reaction speeds.
    • Armored Core 4 and for Answer allows tank legs to store oversized backup weapons, like, oh, another set of Chain Guns. Or Bazookas. Or damn near anything else in the game. Unfortunately, in a game where only speed matters (at least in for Answer), using tanks are usually a good way to get yourself killed.
    • Armored Core V has given this trope a hefty nod with its opening cinematic which shows a tank AC dropped from a transport chopper. It promptly gets shot by a real tank, shrugs off the attack and runs the regular tank over. From a gameplay perspective, tanks are the only weapons that can carry Ready Position weapons (heavy folding weapons that require other AC types to kneel first) and fire them at the same time, while moving. To make matters even better, there are your regular, ultra-heavy super tough and well-armed but slow defense tank builds, and the Fragile Speedster light tank builds, which strip your regular heavy tank of any defense, march into battle with high-maneuver tank tracks, and use exclusively autocannons, which enables them to actually pursue nimbler enemies, subverting the hell out of the "slow but deadly up close" tank image.
• In Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, one part of the story requires Ezio to retrieve a tank built from Leonardo da Vinci's plans as well as burn the plans so the Borgias cannot build more. The tank is a steam-powered bloated wooden barrel with a dozen cannons sticking out in all directions. You can fire only one at a time, though. Also, the cannons appear to be breech-loaded. The entire beast can be operated by three people, which is pretty impressive.
• Battle City for the NES. Steel Reign for PS1.
• Batman: Arkham Knight sees the Scarecrow and titular Arkham Knight take over Gotham with tank drones. Fortunately, the Batmobile can turn into a tank, too.
• The Battlefield 2 mod Project Reality gives the player no less than eight different playable tanks, ranging from the rustbucket T62 & T72 all the way up to the cutting edge, hell on treads M1A2 Abrams and Challenger 2.
• BattleTanx is all about this. The series has the honorable M1A1 Abrams, the hulking Goliath Tank that was commonly attached on a rail in front of bases, a tiny wheeled tank able to dart about at high speeds and blast at the enemy's rear with heavy machine guns, a tank that exclusively spammed missiles, a tank built around a chaingun, a tank with a gyroscopic cockpit and jets that allowed it to Do a Barrel Roll and sidestep incoming fire, a hovering tank, an Abrams variant with two cannons, a tank outfitted with a flamethrower, a tank built around a laser cannon, a tank with heavy armor on its front (and virtually none on its sides or back), and an upgraded Goliath with two side-mounted machine guns.
• The 1980 CoinOp game BattleZone had you driving a tank against other tanks in a first person view.. The US Army expressed enough interest that it was the first basis for electronic simulators.
  • For the 1998 Activision BattleZone, these are hovering tanks thanks to Bio-Metal
• The 2016 remake recasts the original story in a futuristic techno-landscape with lots of Tron Lines and Virtual Reality touches.
• SOPHIA THE 3rd. NORA MA-01 from Blaster Master, a 4-wheel tank that has destructive blaster cannon, three sub-weapons, and is capable of jumping, hovering, swimming, and climbing wall/celling when it's fully customized.
• Blue Archive has tanks as enemies. However, the player can also summon one of the three tanks in the field within a time limit. Unfortunately, only one can be present in the field and will remove the old one once a new tank has summoned.
• The most popular early online game after Net Trek was a Macintosh title by the name of Bolo. Gameplay consisted of a fight over stationary bases that could refuel ammo and armor, destructible automatic pillboxes that could be rebuilt anywhere on the map, and your tank's ability to almost completely alter the terrain of a map thanks to a construction worker that could stockpile building materials in your tank.
• In Brigador, Of the three vehicle types your Brigadors can use, good old fashioned Tanks are by far the most versatile, boasting a fair mix of Speed and Armor (Where as Mechs have better armor but less speed and Anti-Grav vehicles have better speed but less armor). Tanks also have the unique Ram ability, which temporally increases the tank's speed, allowing it to smash into and destroy any Enemy, Building, or Innocent Pedestrian in its path, with no adverse effects to the Tank itself. And, like everything else in Brigador, the design theme of the Tanks you buy is different depending on which of the three factions it came from. The NEP Loyalist have a more conventional design philosophy for their tanks, But with some 1970s/1980s retro SciFi flair throughout, The Corvids have Tanks made from junk and scrapped cars/tanks like something straight out of Mad Max, and The Spacers have Tanks that look like Space Rovers with turrets mounted to them.
• in the Borderlands 2 DLC Torgue's Campaign of Carnage, by the time you reach the final battle with Piston you know he won't play fair given all of his cheating. His weapon of choice? A tank with missiles, flame breath, raining fire, the ability to do donuts while spewing fire from the exhausts, and the ability to perform a wheelie and create a shockwave. Complete with roaring metal dino-head on top, and Piston presents to you the armored Badassasaurus Rex. Best part: you fight it on foot.
• The Rock Crusher from Brütal Legend has a spiked roller and about six mortar cannons. It also has a stage on the top. You can double team with it to summon a BFS that couldn't possibly be used by any other mortal than a Titan from the heavens to smite your foes.
• In Chapter 6 of Bug Fables, General Ultimax rematches you while operating the ULTIMAX Tank, a powerful assault vehicle armed with shells and missiles, and is capable of ramming enemies on full speed with the help of jet engines.
• In the original Call of Duty your Soviet character gets temporarily transferred into a tank brigade, while in Call of Duty: United Offensive and Call of Duty 2 you briefly play as a dedicated tank commander separate from the infantry soldiers you usually play as.
  • Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare doesn't let you drive tanks, but you get several opportunities to blow them up with Javelin missiles. Then there's War Pig, a friendly Abrams you have to rescue in "The Bog," only to pull off an awesome rescue in "War Pig" by shooting an enemy tank through a building.
  • This is only topped in a scene from Modern Warfare 3 where you get a Gunship Rescue from a tank driving through a building to squash some bad guys that had you pinned down. The same mission also had a memorable moment earlier when the characters realized that parking garages aren't designed to support the weight of 70 ton tanks.
• Combat Choro Q series is all about tanks, living tanks, fighting each other out in the wars.
• Chrono Trigger example: an early boss was the Dragon Tank. Three guesses as to what it looks like.
• In the Civilization series, at least in the first one, armor units, that is, tanks, were by far the best ground units, with an attack strength of 10, a defense strength of 5, and a movement rate of 3 (10/5/3). The only other ground units that were at all comparable were artillery (12/2/2) and mechanized infantry (6/6/3). Only under very rare circumstances was it ever worth trading 3 defense points and 1 movement point for 2 additional attack points, or giving up four additional attack points for 1 extra defense point. As a general rule, tanks were the dominant weapon on the Civ 1 battlefield, at least late in the game. Unless they got killed by a Spearman.
• A very early example was the simple, 4-bit graphics of the tanks games in Combat for the Atari 2600.
• Command & Conquer is probably the RTS franchise with the most tanks ever created. Tanks with guns, tanks with missiles, tanks with two guns per turret, tanks with two guns per turret and missiles, tanks that turn invisible, tanks big enough to crush other tanks, tanks that spray fire, tanks with lightning guns, tanks that teleport, tanks that hover, tanks that walk, tanks with sonic emitters, tanks that dig into the dirt for additional cover, tanks with railguns, tanks that tunnel underground, tanks that disguise themselves as trees, tanks that fire reflecting lasers, tanks that mind control enemies, tanks with giant magnets, tanks with Frickin' Laser Beams, tanks that launch attack drones, tanks with point defense systems, tanks that are stronger when fighting in swarms, tanks with radioactive shells, tanks with Anthrax-laced shells, tanks that get stronger by looting dead enemies, tanks big enough to mount a bunker on, tanks with guns that can build more guns, tanks with guns that build more tanks with guns... well, if that isn't enough for you, there are always Game Mods.
  • The use of tanks so deliberately ingrained into player minds because they're cheap, lethal and durable that infantry can become obsolete quickly in a typical arms race, to the point that an early Zerg rush with low-tier tanks is actually a valid tactic. If you're going to duke it out there, you might as well take a tank with you, because nine times out of ten, the fight will have one. It's even a custom for every Command & Conquer story to incorporate newly-discovered technology onto a tank. For measure of how much C&C loves its tanks, its de facto poster boy is a Mammoth Tank.
    • How cool is the Mammoth Tank? In the final level of the GDI campaign in Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, you can find 3 "obsolete" Mammoth Tanks (GDI in the decades after the 1st war, have switched over to mecha walkers like the Titan). Finding them changes the balance of power in that level, as no ground unit other than the 2 super units are powerful enough to beat the Mammoth one on one (it's a lot tougher and has more powerful guns than the Titan, plus it can shoot Tusk missiles that will quickly down enemy aircraft).
• As a World War II game, Company of Heroes quite naturally features a goodly array of armor, tanks and otherwise. For the Germans, the Panther and the Tiger are, respectively, the Infinity Minus One and Infinity Plus One Swords. In a very nice piece of detail for an RTS, tanks have strong armor to the front and weaker armor to the sides and rear, and can move in reverse to keep their vulnerable rear armor pointed away from the enemy. Taking tanks down involves flanking, ambush tactics, and dedicated anti-tank weapons; this means that tanks attacking without infantry support will get chewed up by a competent opponent.
  • By far the strongest tank is the Tiger Ace, changed in later patches to the King Tiger. Other tanks are paper compared to it, though it's still not invincible, extremely slow, and needs to support. Another super tank was added in the expansion used by the Panzer Elite faction called the Jagpanther. Unlike the other big tanks, this a specialized tank killer, capable of even beating the King Tiger in a head to head fight, but it doesn't have machine guns like the King Tiger.
• Make your own post-apocalypse tank in Crossout, a multiplayer game where you can win new parts for your vehicle ranging from equipment no different than what's seen now to tech of the future such as energy weapons, Hover Tank and Spider Tank frames.
• The second and third games in CT Special Forces has levels where the player can comandeer tanks through enemy territories and blow up everything in sight. The controls of the tanks seemed to be ripped off from Metal Slug, though.
• Dark Reign has three HUGE ones: the Tachyon Tank for the Imperium (hovering Tachion cannon with self destructs and the thickest armour in the game), the Triple-Rail Hover Tank for the Freedom Guard (which was enormous, orange and one-ups all those twin-cannon tanks you see in so many games with 3 rail guns), and the Shockwave for same (which took this trope to new extremes: it self-destructed, causing a shockwave (hence the name) the width of the screen to travel one screen-length, destroying nearly ANYTHING in the way. Also, it had a shark-face on it).
  • Probably the most terrifying tank, though, was the Freedom Guard's Tank Hunter. It wasn't that big, but it was designed to take out anything at close range, including the above three, within mere moments using a powerful electric discharge.
  • The basic Plasma Tank (Imperium) and Skirmish Tank (Freedom Guard) had full AA capability— two of the very few instances of a RTS 'bread-and-butter' vehicle that could protect themselves against aircraft. The Plasma Tank was amphibious too (the standard for Imperium vehicles). To compensate the Freedom Guard had the Phase Tank, which could burrow underground and pop up to roast enemies with its distinctive laser blasts.
• Destiny:
  • In the original game, the biggest and meanest ground vehicle was the Cabal Goliath, a heavy hovering tank with multiple cannons and grenade launchers, which often serves as mid-point boss in several strikes. According to the lore, the tank is an all-purpose vehicle that can engage ground vehicles, fortifications, infantry, and even orbiting spacecraft, and the Cabal, being as aggressive and tank-loving as they are, are all too willing to use the Goliaths in boarding actions against Oryx's Dreadnought.
  • In Destiny 2, in response to the Cabal invading the City, the Guardians have begun building and fielding their own tanks to fight back. Since prior to this, the Guardians had mostly been a force of deadly light infantry whose heaviest vehicle had been Sparrow hover-bikes and the City was heavily-defended by massive walls and artillery emplacements, they'd never needed heavy ground armor.
• In Destroy All Humans!, tanks show up when the Alert level had reached all the way up to Military. They're slow, but they hit hard and are tough, and Psychokinesis is useless against them untill you buy the second upgrade. Time to bring out the Ion Detonators.
• Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime: How do you make The Goomba kick total ass? By giving it control over a magical tank and making smarmy references to the last game in the series. And it works!
• Dune II included the Harkonnen Devastator Tank, a nuclear-powered super-heavy tank equipped with two fixed heavy cannons and a self-destruct switch. Though it was changed to a humongous mecha in the follow-up game, Emperor.
• The Earth trilogy with similar, but tighter and more unique Faction Calculus design mechanics than Warzone 2100. Tanks are most prevalent in the 2150 episode, especially because there's no footsoldiers around to play with. Commonly fielded by the Eurasian Dynasty in flavors of ground-only and amphibious, although the United Civilized States and the Lunar Corporation aren't particularly above using tanks. The UCS has a certain token makeshift lumbering tracked-vehicle-turned-tank that's good for dishing out as much damage as it can take, while the LC has many designs of the hover kind - including the Charon, the only unit in the game with four weapon slots.
• End of Nations has a plethora of massive tanks with heavy firepower and armor, most of them coming from the Liberation Front and the Order of Nations.
• Tom Clancy's EndWar has some very cool future tanks from the United States, the European Federation and Russia. The M5A2 Schwarzkopf is like a suped-up M1 Abrams featuring things like like depleted uranium armour and a RAVEN 20mm autocannon; the Panther 1A3 is a sleek, high-tech tank described as a "who's who" of Europe's premier auto and tech companies, it runs off a clean hydrogen fuel powerblock and can be upgraded with an experimental high-power microwave emitter; and the T-100 Ogre which is frankly a steel monster, armed with a massive 152mm smoothbore cannon, a co-axial flamethrower and even a pair of autocannons for anti-air work.
• Lance of the Epic Battle Fantasy series has a tank called the Valkyrie. It's a fully-fledged WWII supertank with several different types of turrets. In fact, the scan data for it says that it didn't get finished in time for WWII.
• Fallout Tactics eventually gave the player access to a tank. Contrary to the trope name, most players probably never made use of it since there were very few things (and even less ammo) to actually use it on, but it was still satisfying as hell to use at least once.
  • It also has a crew of five which makes it a fine way to transport between missions except for the sixth member of the squad who tends to get run over a lot.
• In the NES Felix the Cat video game, Felix can acquire a mini-tank as a power-up, which shoots out giant balls in an arc that can kill any enemy in one hit and make short work of bosses.
• In Final Fantasy IV the Dwarves of the underworld field tanks against the airships of the Redwings as well as the Giant of Babel near the endgame.
• A tank was one of the various equipable weapons available during the second half of Final Fantasy Legend II, and had the distinction or allowing one to guard against physical attacks while also attacking in the same turn. The Japanese versions named it the less generic Leopard 2.
• Fuga: Melodies of Steel pits a bunch of children against the entire most-definitely-not-Nazi army that razed their village and captured their families, which would be an impossible task if they didn't get their hands on the Taranis, a Lost Technology supertank. The thing is massive enough to double as their Base on Wheels, with the interior alone being three stories tall, and tends to terrify the Berman Empire's soldiers who have to rely on much more standard tanks to take it on. Oh, and most of the mass destruction it causes is done through the secondary guns alone: the main gun, the Soul Cannon, is an outrageously large Wave-Motion Gun that's even longer than the rest of the tank is tall, but considering it kills whoever decides to fire it one of the game's main objectives is to do your best to never use it.
• Gears of War 2 introduces the Centaur. Being a Light Tank, it can't take much punishment, but damn if it isn't a speedy little thing. The gun packs a decent punch, too.
• The Rhino tank of Grand Theft Auto. Many players never bothered with the plot, but simply used the cheat to summon a tank and rampaged about the town. (with the 'Civilians Have Weapons' and 'Riot' codes on, Hilarity Ensues.)
  • Especially funny as the regular police try using spike strips to stop the tank. Yeah, that'll work.
  • GTA San Andreas is even greater fun, at least on the PC, as the mouse aiming on vehicles makes it easy to even shoot pursuing police helicopters out of the sky.
• Graviteam Tactics features many tanks and their variants that were used on the Eastern Front in early 1943. The Cold War campaigns feature the Soviet T-55A, South African Olifant, and the British Chieftain tanks, among others.
• The Ground Control series has a number of cool tanks, ranging from light to heavy. In the first game, the Crayven Corporation has a private army using traditional wheeled and treaded vehicles collectively known as terradynes armed with ballistic weapons. Their Grizzly terradynes are large, slow, and double-barreled. The Order of the New Dawn utilizes much more high-tech equipment. For example, all their vehicles hover and are thus called hoverdynes. They're armed with energy weapons. The heavy Volans hoverdynes are armed with powerful energy cannons and are an even match for the Grizzlies (the latter have less firepower and maneuverability but heavier armor). The sequel takes place several centuries later with different galactic powers but nearly same equipment. The Terran Empire uses old Order tech but makes a few additions, so hoverdynes share a battlefield with Walking Tanks. The Northern Star Alliance uses abandoned Crayven equipment, while making some modifications. For example, the new heavy terradynes are able to rotate their side armor forward to provide cover for any unit behind them.
• Appears in both GoldenEye (1997) and GoldenEye (Wii), as per the original movie.
• Halo:
  • The Scorpion Tank. "66 tons of straight-up, HE-spewin', ceramic-titanium armored, dee-vine intervention!" Starts off with a 90mm main gun in the games, with the expanded universe also featuring versions with a 105mm main gun, twin-linked autocannons, and twin-linked rocket pods. In Halo 5: Guardians, it's been upgraded to a 150mm main gun; Halo 5 also introduces Scorpion variants armed with lasers and other types of advanced ammo, as well as upgraded armor.
  • Halo Wars:
    • The super upgrade for Scorpion Tanks turns them into a Mammoth Tank expy called the Grizzly, featuring the double-barrelled turret and quadruple treads. Dedicated anti-vehicle counters and aircraft tend to at best break even with them.
    • The campaign also has the M-145D Mobile Artillery Assault Platform, AKA "Rhino". It's based on the Scorpion chassis, but is armed with a plasma howitzer. And yes, it can destroy a Scarab with half-a-dozen shots. Too bad you can't build them in skirmishes.
    • Halo Wars 2 adds the Banished Marauder, a Brute hover-tank with a rotating plasma mortar.
  • There's also the Covenant Type-26 Assault Gun Carriage (and its Type-58 successor introduced in Halo 5), known to laymen as the "Wraith". A big chubby purple thing with front armor over a foot thick (made of a polymer that human scientists previously thought was impossible), and instead of firing shells out of a barreled gun it launches huge "mortars" of superheated plasma capable (in the novels) of pretty much flash-vaporizing any poor sap that gets hit by it... and everyone within about 10 ft. of the poor sap as well. Thanks to being a hovercraft, as tanks go it turns on a dime, and like all Covenant ground vehicles it comes with a Boost function for brief bursts of speed, letting it escape trouble coming from behind or the side (as well as giving a very nasty surprise to enemy infantry trying to attack/board it from the front).
• Heavy Weapon is a tongue-in-cheek ground-based Shmup from Pop Cap Games. The player character drives an atomic powered supertank against the forces of the evil Reds in 1986.
• In Hyrule: Total War the Zuna employ mobile Ziggurats; they serve as safe moving platforms for crossbowmen.
• In Immortal Souls, the Templars have a giant holy tank that's adorned with their emblem and fires lasers and missiles. It's just as over the top as it sounds.
• The Imperium Galactica series has various types (wheeled, treaded, hovering) as the main vehicles used in planetary battles.
• Iron Tank, a relatively obscure NES game by SNK, had the player blast his way through forests, towns, fortresses, and the like battling tanks of all kinds, running infantry over, and mixing tank shells (don't ask how that works) for devastating effect. The tank's driver was apparently Ralf from Ikari Warriors.
  • Iron Tank was the sequel to an arcade game called TNK III, that featured Ralf. Ikari Warriors was basically a More Popular Spin-Off.
• In Jak II: Renegade, the Krimzon Guard defend their Fortress with a "Security Tank". This does exactly as much collateral damage to the area as it sounds like it should, possibly explaining why you never face another one. The War Factory in Jak III is defended by mobile AA tanks (or perhaps AA trains) that move on paths around the place trying to shoot your gunship.
• Kirby can transform into a tank in both Kirby's Epic Yarn and Kirby and the Rainbow Curse, while Kirby Mass Attack has a level where your Kirbys ride a tank that uses them as Abnormal Ammo.
• For the Sony Playsation, SCEI's Kouashi Kikou Shidan: Bein Panzer is set in alternate WW2 where the world powers have formed different factions and are fighting on Earth and Mars. The title is supposedly German for "Legged Tank", and all the factions have tanks with legs that are based on real-world counterparts. The Japanese faction also get a unique centauroid robot with tank treads as one of their units.
• In The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel, the Erebonian Imperial Army has recently developed the brand-new Achtzehn heavy battle tanks. Naturally, near the end of the game, said tanks turn out to be easily destroyed by the Noble Alliance's brand-new Panzer Soldats. However, one month later when the second game begins, the army has managed to recover from the shock and developed tactics to deal with them, and it turns out the Achtzehn tanks and even their older-model light tanks do present a serious fighting force against those machines, which turn out to be Fragile Speedsters in comparison to tank firepower. It also helps that the Imperial Army maneuvers to hold its battles on wide open fields, instead of the narrow city streets in the first game which was to their detriment.
• In Makai Kingdom, starting with the boss of Episode 3, characters will be seen driving around in tanks, mechs, and other such vehicles of destruction. Soldier, engineer and professor units can get the most mileage out of them, and get major stat bonuses when riding one (the vehicle gains up to 50% to all stats depending on the driver's TEC stat). The downside is that the vehicle itself that gains experience from defeating enemies, and not the rider unless the driver has a certain skill.
• Mass Effect has the M-35 Mako, a futuristic IFV designed for exploring and combating military threats on distant planets. It has firepower and durability only matched by the most powerful on-foot equipment in the game (and you get it much earlier), ridiculous off-road ability, complete protection from planetary hazards, and of course makes exploring the game's more open areas much faster. And to clarify "ridiculous off-road ability": it can drive up near-vertical slopes, and if it goes off the edge of a massive cliff, it will suffer at worst minor damage to the right front wheel. (Yes, the right front wheel. Not the left front wheel. Not any of the other wheels or any of the other parts of the tank. Just that wheel.) It's so durable that, when you visit the Normandy SR-1's crash site in Mass Effect 2, you find the Mako completely intact. Stuck in the level geometry, but still intact.
  • Keep in mind, the standard operating procedure for planetary deployment seems to be to have Shepard drive the Mako out of the cargo-bay, while the Normandy is travelling at hundreds of miles an hour, several hundred feet in the air, then wait to the absolutely last possible second to kick in the landing jets. Even with the mass-effect core reducing its mass, the landing jets and the shock absorbers, it still lands with the force of a brick.
• MechCommander and its sequel had tanks again ranging from 'barely a threat' to 'that thing just blew off everything below my kneecaps.'
• Many of the MechWarrior games have had tanks as enemies. The level of threat inherent to these enemies has ranged from 'minute threat' to 'kill it now or pay for it later.' In the former category, 2's occasional vehicular enemies and most of 3's ground vehicles. 4 allowed pilots to stomp on vehicles for easy kills, but in turn many of the tanks available can now dish out a serious case of hurt, including the Quad Panzer, the Myrmidon, and the aforementioned Demolisher. One mission in 4:Mercs actually has you facing a massive tank swarm fit to put the fear of God into Assault 'Mech pilots, in case you thought killing vehicles was an easy no-brainer.
  • In MechWarrior Living Legends, players can pilot a variety of tanks in multiplayer to great effect. Every assault mech player fears seeing a twin rotary autocannon Demolisher tank rounding the corner, or a Morrigu popping up over a hill. It also features numerous cheap tanks for glorious charges, such as the hilarious Harasser hovercraft which carries enough flamers to melt enemies to death, or the Chevalier, which can drift beneath the weapon arcs of enemy battlemechs or just hump their legs while holding down the trigger. Another advantage vehicles have over 'Mechs is their armor and exposure. A 'Mech needs to expose their center torso (which always houses the reactor) to fire upon enemies, meanwhile a vehicle needs to have the turret or any four of their sides destroyed to damage the internal section and they can turn to present their strongest armor while still keeping their weapons trained on the enemy.
• Medal of Honor:
  • Allied Assault lets you drive a King Tiger tank. Yea verily, it is awesome.
  • The first game in the franchise is the only one that doesn't have you fighting at least one tank. Well, it did have a Tiger tank, in the town square during the second mission, but it was essentially a set-piece and was never a threat. Though the preview for the game showed the cannon moving, the tank just sat still the whole time.
• Men of War loves tanks. Location-based damage, accurately modeled penetration and deflection mechanics, and lots, lots of tanks.
• Metal Gear:
  • The Metal Gears themselves have been described as giant walking tanks.
  • A tank appeared as a boss in Metal Gear.
  • In Metal Gear Solid, Vulcan Raven uses a tank during his first boss fight, and the fact that Snake is able to destroy it on his own in direct combat is considered in-universe to be quite the feat.
  • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater has the Shagohod, a rocket-propelled nuclear-capable tank.
• Pretty much the entirety of the Metal Max/Metal Saga games. Not that most non-Japanese gamers would know about them (or at least, not without certain sources) For example, Metal Saga for the PS2 had a number of World War 2 tanks including Germany's Maus tank. For an added bonus, these tanks get souped up with your future technology so you can effectively have one of the larger tanks mount 3 rail guns in its turret! The series returns with Playstation 4's Metal Max Xeno which up the ante with your tanks such as L'il Slugger, which is a tank with enough turrets and sponson guns to impress Warhammer 40,000, and the Gehenna Walker, which is a multi-legged tank with a powerful gun and a pair of multiple rocket launchers.
• The Metal Slug series has the cutest tanks in fictional history, with a distinct resemblance to the one from Dominion Tank Police.
• Miitopia has the heavy-hitting Tank class (as in, Miis wearing a tank on their heads).
• In Level 8 (formerly Chillingo's) Modern Command, as a base defense game - you'll end up facing them. The early tanks you face look like something from the middle of the Cold War and are push-overs, even autocannons with some decent ammo can slice through them. The turning point is when you encounter the Immortal, this is a large tank that looks far more modern and it can take a fair beating while doing good damage in return. More danger is foretold when you encounter the Excalibur. That tank is described as a prototype tank carrying experimental armour and a bleeding-edge Plasma Cannon, which is strong enough to knock down your base's outer walls in 2 hits. This culminates in the Avatar, a robotic tank with top-line armour (even heavy autocannons with the most penetrative ammo can glance off it), a pair of plasma cannons for smashing through your base and it's further protected by a force field so standard missiles and railguns are ineffective. Unless you develop energy-based attacks, don't expect to win a battle against a single Avatar, let alone a line of them.
• Monster Hunter Generations: The game introduces the Rath-of-Meow, a skill which allows your Palico companions (or yourself) take control of a pint-sized wooden tank decorated like a Rathalos dragon's head, armed with a cannon in its' mouth.
• There's a brief scene in Mother where the main cast gets to rent a tank, drive it across Shifting Sand Land, and blast an otherwise undefeatable Humongous Mecha into smithereens. Itoi knows exactly what 12 year old boys want to see.
• Also for the Playstation, there's Nectaris which is a port of the Turbographix-16 game. While the two warring sides have troop transports, artillery, aircraft and infantry - the bulk of the fighting will be done with tanks. And all the tanks are sweet. Even the TT-1 Lenet, the weakest tank by far, is pretty cool as a concept - it's an early model tank with a 95mm turret and a secondary 75mm one as well. And then there's the HNB-2 Giant, which is an absolute fortress of a monster tank with massive armor, a 180mm cannon and 35mm anti-aircraft turret to swat down pesky gunships, its only downside is its awful speed and can only be transported by the largest transport plane.
• The Nintendo Wars series, especially Advance Wars, has a few of these. Black Hole Rising introduced the Black Hole Neo-Tank, a giant cannon surrounded by a spherical hull that drove on four wheels. Dual Strike then one-upped that with the Green Earth Mega Tank, a three-story tall tank with five cannons (one turret with three and two smaller ones). The Mega Tank makes a reappearance in Days Of Ruin/Dark Conflict (renamed the War Tank in the American version) — in both cases the Mega Tank is the only land unit that comes in a unit of one, and that one tank will still wipe the floor with units of other tanks.
  • Unfortunately, because of high cost and, for the Mega Tank, low speed, ammunition and fuel, both units aren't worth using unless you're already winning or defending a very small area. The normal Tank, however, is probably the best all-around land unit - fast, armored, relatively cheap, enough firepower to destroy or cripple all other land units (except the bigger tanks).
  • Battalion Wars takes it a step further with the Battlestation, a small Land Battleship.
• Operation Flashpoint features tanks heavily. As the infantry character in the campaign, you soon learn you have a lot to fear from enemy tanks, especially after a whole platoon of them chases you out of a town you'd only just managed to take, mowing down many of your allies in the process. Later, you take control of a different character who is a rookie tank commander, and he soon gets command of an M1A1 Abrams tank (the strongest vehicle in the game, by far).
  • Tanks also play a big role in the Resistance expansion pack, the poorly-equipped guerillas the player leads have no tanks to start with, so one mission involves stealing a bunch of enemy tanks while they're being serviced at a remote depot. A couple of missions later you make full use of them when you lead a huge tank force (more than a dozen vehicles) in a pitched battle with a larger force of Russian tanks.
• In ParaWorld, the Norse are vikings who have developed steamworks technology. They have the mighty Steam Tank, which can also be considered an Awesome Personnel Carrier. It's a heavily armoured vehicle, so it takes significantly less damage from any attack that isn't armour-piercing, can carry 10 troops and hits fairly hard with its ballista (the Norse have steam-power but never developed gunpowder). Its only weakness, is that it's an extremely slow vehicle if used for transport. As an indicator of how good this vehicle is, it's one of the only two units that are Rank 4 without being a Titan super-unit (and the other unit "The Exoskeleton" can only be made if you are Norse and have a unique, multi-player only hero at Level 4 or higher).
• The Turret Shadows in Persona 3 and Persona 4 are sentient tanks. The Chariot and Justice Shadows are also combined into a tank form, but can split apart into independent turret and hull forms.
• Planetside and its sequel Planetside 2. Even with the lack of variety, a tank in the middle of a firefight is a good thing. A few tanks is better. Two entire platoons loaded to the gills with tracked vehicles duking it out, complete with support crews and the occasional air support? Awesome.
  • In Planetside 2, each of the three factions has their own impressive Main Battle Tank. The Terran Republic Prowler◊ features two barrels, the fastest movement, and an optional co-axial 30mm minigun. The New Conglomerate Vanguard◊ is the most heavily armored, can raise a shield to make it temporarily invulnerable, and has a 150mm 'Titan' main gun. Finally, the Vanu Sovereignty's Magrider◊ hovers above the ground, can activate a speed boost powerful enough to let it drive up cliff faces, and can mount a Plasma Cannon and a Heavy Rail Beam.
• [PROTOTYPE] has the Thermobaric Tank, armed with two small cannons on its turret and a main gun that fires a missile with a huge explosion. Blackwatch calls for it after their standard APCs and tanks fail to breach some particularly tough hives, and it one-shots all the hives in its way. Unfortunately, you only get it for the one mission, and while there are two more in the game world as part of events, they are despawned the second you destroy a military base or hive, or even if you walk a few feet from it after taking it from the event spot.
• In Psychonauts, the Big Bad plans to take over the world via tanks controlled by psychic brains, which are extracted from young children; a think tank, if you will. Normal tank not good enough for you? How about a tank that can telekinetically fling things and shield itself with the environment and mess with the heads of its foes as they try to fight back? All this in addition to the giant gun.
• One level of Red Faction 2 features the protagonist acting as a gunner for a tank driven by The Squad's resident vehicle expert and lunatic. Naturally, when the commander finds out they are driving a tank THROUGH the city he decides he doesn't want to know any details.
  • Red Faction: Guerrilla has two models of tank, one with a fairly standard main gun, and one that attacks exclusively through Macross Missile Massacres. Both are quite effective once stolen.
• REELism, a mod for Doom:
  • One of the reels temporary puts the player into a Nigh Invulnerable tank capable of firing very fast powerful missiles, a vulcan, and the ability to instantly crush enemies under its treads.
  • One of the bosses is also an Imp driving around in a tank who can fire the same missiles as well as crushing nearby players and enemies under the treads.
• In Resident Evil: Damnation, the Super Tyrant proves too cunning to fall for the classic trick of blowing it up with a rocket launcher. So Buddy improvises and steals an abandoned tank, ramming the massive BOW and providing an opening for Leon to finish it off with the main cannon.
• After the Land Leviathan super-unit, the Vinci faction's mightiest ground unit is the Juggernaut in Rise of Legends. Picture a skyscraper-sized, steampunk tank with two cannons and you have the Juggernaut (which can also be upgraded to the Ultra Juggernaut).
• Starting with the third game, the Saints Row series features tanks that can be used to flatten traffic or blow things up. This is best exemplified with the Tank Mayhem missions, dedicated entirely to driving around in a tank wreaking havoc. The second game doesn't have true tanks, but it does have the Bear APC which is a close approximation; equipped with a powerful machine gun and heavy durability.
• Shantae and the Pirate's Curse: The first boss is the Ammo Baron and his tank, which was a gift from his mother. Its tough armor makes it invulnerable against Shantae's normal attacks, requiring her to hair-whip the tank's own projectiles back to it in order to destroy it.
• ShellShock Live revolves entirely around tanks. Tanks that fire bananas, cats, guppies and a myriad of other Abnormal Ammo, mind you.
• Shmups Skill Test has three minigames revolving around tanks, two of which have you holding out against a continuous wave of tanks while the other has you trying to destroy a grid of tanks that fire fast aimed shots at you.
• Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron had a 40 ft. invincible (sort of) purple Nazi tank in World War I! Of course, that game doesn't care about real life anyway..
• In the Slovak turn-based strategy game Spellcross: The Last Battle from Cauldron HQ, the final weapons research you can do is for the Destructor. This is a fast-moving, tank that's bristling with cannons and it was made of Magitek research such as cannons with alchemical warheads and armour of an other-dimensional metal. It also has a stationary, hull-down mode that allows it to put up more guns and armour plating.
• The Siege Tank from Starcraft. In competitive play, it makes up the backbone of about 4/5ths of viable Terran strategies. Most range of any unit in the game, check. Most single attack damage of any unit (other than one that costs money to use), check. It transforms into self-propelled artillery, check.
  • They get even better in the sequel with MORE range, MORE firepower (against most units) and an even cooler transform.
  • Starcraft II Wings Of Liberty's campaign has giant tanks as well, which you can get as mercenaries.
• The Landmaster from Star Fox. It has jet boosters for the sake of allowing it to jump over obstacles that would impede an ordinary tank, and can also roll to move to the side quickly.
  • In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, The Landmaster is available as a Final Smash for all three of the Star Fox characters, though it functions somewhat differently for each of them. It'll hog almost the entirety of a smaller level, frequently forcing the opposition to jump over or on top of it to avoid getting rammed or shot by it, but being in such a position can instead allow you to send them flying with a barrel roll, or more amusingly, simply carry them off the top of the screen using its jets for an instant KO.
• Dynamix's old Humongous Mecha simulator Starsiege had pilotable tanks in its game. Interestingly for a game where the focus was on giant walking death machines, the tanks were still able to pose quite a considerable threat in spite of the lack of Deflector Shields, which the HERCs were able to mount. Tanks are often faster and easier to circle-strafe with, and usually carry heavier armor and larger weapons to make up for their lack of shields. Several of them are also tailor-made for ramming enemies, which is a good way to bring down a HERC (and much less damaging to the tanks).
• Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds features hovertanks. For some reason, a Rebel hovertank can be upgraded (if the game settings are right) to a heavy version which stops hovering and runs on tracks.
  • Empire at War gives the Rebels 3 tanks, a hovering light tank, a tracked heavy tank, and a tracked mobile artillery piece. The Empire also gets tanks, the tracked TIE Crawler and the hovering 2-M. The expansions adds in teh Juggernaut A6 for the Empire, and the new Zann Consortium gets w tanks of its own: The tracked Canderous assault tank and MZ-8 Mobile Pulse Cannon.
• Steel Beasts is a tank simulator that has painstakingly accurate depictions of various tanks from around the world. It originally focused on the American M1A1 Abrams and Leopard 2A4, but has expanded to include other NATO and Warsaw Pact tanks including the Challenger 2, T72, and newer versions of the Abrams and Leopard 2. The development staff included real-life tank crews, and the simulator is so realistic that come countries even use specialized versions to train their own tankers.
• Steel Panthers, the venerable hidden hex strategy game, wasn't so named because it contained furry cats in cages.
• Sierra had the "Raven" in computer games Stellar 7 and its sequel Nova 9. The Raven is humanity's sole response against an alien empire that took our solar system. Armed with the mighty Bi-phasal Thunder Cannon, the Raven also had a force field and a stealth device to make it temporarily invisible. In the remake of Stellar 7 the Raven could destroy enemies to pick up power-ups such as Eel Shields which make your shields temporarily invulnerable and does tremendous damage to enemies you bump into.
• Arctic Fox. The Arctic Fox is a futuristic tank that protected the Arctic from an alien invasion. Packing a powerful main cannon, missile launchers and land mines plus a series of different security cameras to find enemies - the Arctic Fox had more than enough firepower to deal with these invaders.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Super Mario Bros. 3. Bowser's army has tanks made of wood. They have recycled assets from the airship level.
  • Super Mario Galaxy 2 has Bowser's Jr's Boomsday Machine, which is a cross between a huge tank and a castle. It shoots homing electricity, electrifies itself, sucks in the surroundings and has a giant firebar spinning around it about halfway its side. It's about 50+ feet tall and found as the boss in the Boom Bunker level.
  • Super Mario 3D World features tanks that look very similar to the ones from Super Mario Bros. 3, but made with a more haphazard mix of materials.
  • Super Mario Odyssey has the Sherm, a tank enemy that Mario can capture. This is required to defeat the Mecha-Wiggler.
  • In Mario Kart DS, Dry Bones' skill vehicle Dry Bomber looks like a tank, but differs from the usual definition of this trope: it's one of the lightest karts in the game, but it also benefits the best acceleration to recover from offroad and spam turbo boosts.
  • Mario Party 7: The minigame Think Thank has three players drive small tanks, while the fourth is driving a bigger one. The objective for the trio is to destroy the tank of the solo player, and viceversa. The small tanks have only 3 HP each, while the big one has 10 HP. There's no time limit, so the minigame will end when the solo player eliminates all three rivals or vice versa.
• Used in droves in Supreme Commander where anything with treads that is Tier 2 or above qualifies. The UEF Pillar heavy tank follows the relatively normal two-barrel turret model, the Cybran Rhino mounts a heavy laser chaingun, and the Aeon Obsidian just mounts one huge cannon. Anti-infantry weapons are not a concern because infantry are too small a scale to exist in this game, and even the heavy tanks are small compared to later units, which usually become either towering mechs are Land Battleships. The UEF Fatboy probably stands out even then - sure, it's a king Military Mashup Machine, but it's the only one with tank-style treads. That can crush buildings.
  • Supreme Commander pits the UEF's traditional treadhead take on this trope against the Cybran's Spider Tank Goodness and the Aeon's Hover Tank Goodness (though their ultimate Experimental unit is a Humongous Mecha called the Galactic Colossus).
  • Also in its Spiritual Predecessor, Total Annihilation, a good quarter to a third of the units are tanks. While not as impressive as Supreme Commander's loadout, being ten years older, they're nonetheless quite nice.
• All of the units in S.W.I.N.E. are either tanks, or some sort of vehicle - the game is utterly deprived of infantry.
• Gabe had to blow up a Soviet tank in Syphon Filter 3.
• Tank Racer: A case of Exactly What It Says on the Tin - a Racing Game with tanks! You get to pilot one of a dozen different tank and race through forests, valleys, and the big city trying to stay ahead of other tanks, and you can slow them down by shooting them from behind (inversely, you also risk getting hit in the back - watch your step).
• Taz-Mania's Francis X. Bushman had a "tree trunk tank".
• A viable design in TerraTech thanks to the variety of tracks and heavy armour available to players. It is possible to build fast, nimble tanks that can fly, tanks which craft new blocks on the go or giant tanks with dozens of cannons. Or, given enough time, giant tanks with dozens of cannons that can craft new blocks and fly.
• The arcade game Tokyo Wars was essentially about all-out tank brawls in various urban settings with the player(s) driving. It is as awesome as it sounds.
• In the 2nd Touhou game, Story of Eastern Wonderland, Rika pilots a tank for her boss fight. This is a fairly big deal, considering that the rest of the world appears centuries behind technology-wise. She returns as the Extra stage boss where she pilots a flying eye tank.
• Bally/Midway's TRON has a Tank mission as one of its four minigames where you drive a tank around a maze shooting at other tanks (and in some levels, Recognizers).
• Thunder Tanks: Vehicular Combat with tanks!
• Twisted Metal's Minion drove a tank, which tends to be the most durable vehicle in the game (not counting unusable bosses), and extremely fast. As such he's usually only playable through cheat codes.
• The Leviathan, found on some maps in Unreal Tournament 2004. Damn slow, so chances are the match is over before you reached the enemies, but if you do, he's practically unstoppable.
  • The Goliath tank is also very respectable. It maneuvers like a greased brick but has a substantial amount of hit points and a very lethal main cannon.
• Valkyria Chronicles:
  • The first game has Welkin's Edelweiss, passed down to him from his war hero father. Many Imperial generals will show up with a custom tank as well. One of the main "Boss" fights in the game is against an enemy tank the size of a large building. So much so, that the player has to move his characters onto the enemy tank to take out power cores, before the player's anti-tank soldiers and actual tanks will stand a chance against it.
  • Also, near the end of the game, the Empire fields a tank so huge, that it can run over entire villages.
  • In Valkyria Chronicles II each class at Lanseal gets a tank, and you even get to name yours. It's fully customizable, with a choice of several tank and APC chassis; five turret types^note Standard anti-armor, Gatling, Mortar, Flamethrower, and Artillery; camouflage and decal options; and various armor, shoulder, and back parts.
  • Valkyria Chronicles III uses the same mechanic as II, but further refines it and adds more customization options, as well as making the heavy tank easier to move around.
  • Valkyria Chronicles 4 has the heavy tank Hafen and the lighter, more mobile tank Glory for the player. The enemies once again have the light, medium, and heavy tanks but add in the Assult and Ultimate models. There's also the recurring boss tank Vulcan and the Final Boss is the massive, amphibious tank Lophis.
• Prevalent in Vietcong, such as the NVA in the last level of the first game and the Americans in the second game. Earlier in the first game, air recon picks up what appears to be a couple of VC tanks. Turns out they're actually just rusted French armored cars.
  Nhut: Look trung-si! Tanks will no shoot. This old French tank, me know it.
  Hornster: So this is what a VC tank platoon looks like?
  • You can also drive tanks in some of the second game's multiplayer maps.
• Politank-Z from Waku Waku 7, which is a bizarre amalgamation of tank and Humongous Mecha that walks on two legs but has treads for feet anyway. It has the slowest, but one of the most powerful super moves, and can turn into a helicopter if necessary. To top it all off, it's actually a police vehicle, piloted by the chief of police.
• Warcraft III has Steampunk tanks — all dwarf-built, of course.
  • Of course, Warhammer had them before, yet another bone of contention between their respective fans.
    • They started out as Steam Tanks (a Warhammer unit) before being rapidly renamed "Siege engines" in Frozen Throne.
    • Warcraft started out as a Warhammer game before the deal with Games Workshop fell through. Then it was rapidly spun off into its own 'verse.
  • World of Warcraft gives us player-controlled siege tanks, and the first boss of Ulduar, the Flame Leviathan.
• While there are plenty of cool tanks, real and fictional, in War Front: Turning Point including the Maus heavy tank, the Soviet's Kharkov Rampager takes the cake. It's a superheavy tank with a huge main gun and 4 smaller turrets (though smaller in this case means a pair of 75mm and 85mm cannons) that dominates any ground battles it's involved in.
• Most of the NORAD's defense backbone from WarGames Defcon 1 consists of tanks, starting with the classic M1 Abrams (labelled as Dragoon Tank). Later on the game introduces the powerful missile-launching Dragoon Tank, the amphibious Hover Tank, and the laser-equipped Slayer Tank.
• Wargame: European Escalation brings a vast array of tanks from both NATO and PACT units developed during the Cold War, and most tanks come with their variants so, for example, you will find 5 variants of the T-55, from the basic T-55 to the ATGM armed, well armoured T-55 AMV-1, another example for NATO, the Leopard 1A tree brings from the 1A1 to the 1A5, each one stating consecutively better stats like speed, armoure, AP capabilities, inbuilt machine gun, etc.
  • The real tank goodness comes when you unlock and deploy the MBTs into the game, from the incredibly well armoured and armed but slow Challenger to the fast and manouverable yet fragile AMX-32 you have all kind of high tier tanks to further expand your tactical possibilities.
  • And then you get even more tanks with Wargame: Airland Battle, featuring nothing less than 12 nations and their respective array of tanks, also, the new armor stats system has made most MBTs far more resistant to ATGM weaponry.
• Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. Yes, tanks are powerful, but enemies such as Fire Dragons, Wraithlords, Sanctioned Psykers, Heavy Destroyers, and more, are so good at destroying them that tanks become more of a fire support vehicle, to aid your infantry than the damage sponges they are presented as in many other games.
  • Except the Baneblade. Which has 11 weapons, each acting independently, tons of hit points and the most powerful cannons in the game. Unless you bring your entire army/superunits, chances are it's going to wipe your base out. The Land Raider is also an exception, it's blend of strong firepower and tons of health is further augmented by a special ability that makes it temporarily Nigh-Invulnerable. It'll actually beat the Baneblade in one on one combat.
• Warzone 2100: The vast majority of the units in this game are modular, customised tanks of some description. The tanks you could build depended on the technologies you found and ranged from a light tank with a 7.62mm machine gun to hovertanks that had armor made of an ultra-dense alloy and carrying a rail gun. The pinnacle of tank technology is the Dragon multi-turret chassis, this is an extremely tough chassis that uniquely lets you mount two weapons on it for a tremendous firepower advantage.
• Wii Play has a whole minigame, soberly named Tanks, made out of this trope (albeit in a miniature version).
• In Wing Commander IV, one of the missions in the Circe mission series puts you in the position of halting an offensive by laser-armed hovertanks. For the most part, though, they serve as not much more than cannon fodder for your guns (in real life, ground attack aircraft are tanks' Weaksauce Weakness, so this is justified).
• World in Conflict has quite a number of tanks, exactly 3 per faction: the Soviets, NATO, and USA
  • The Soviets have the T-80U as their Heavy Tank, T-62A as the Medium, and the PT-76 as their Light. NATO has the Leopard 2A4, Chieftain, and Scorpion, while USA has the M1A1, M60A3, and M551, all taking on identical roles.
• World of Tanks is effectively Tank Goodness: The Video Game. the tanks in the game stretch from the interwar period through World War II and into the postwar period, including tanks that existed only as prototypes or only on paper. But they've made the tanks as close to real life as possible without becoming a sim game. There are Light, Medium, and Heavy Tanks, Tank Destroyers, and Self-Propelled Guns. All from the USA, USSR, France, Germany, Britain, China, Japan, Czechoslovakia, and Sweden.
• The Heavy Weapons Platforms in XCOM. You can buy ordinary ones that can fire powerful armor-piercing rounds or launch explosive rockets at the start of the game, but you can later develop tanks that shoot laser beams. And then there are the Hover Tanks.... The sequel takes them underwater.
  • The game doesn't specify if they're remote-controlled or automated. Vladimir Vasilyev's novelization goes with the former. In fact, in the book, the tank controllers stay in the transport plane during missions, as the signal is too weak to penetrate the force field thrown up by the UFOs. Another Russian novel, inspired by the game (but taking place a century later), has the crippled general in charge of the task force pilot the tank using a VR helmet.
  • X-COM: Apocalypse adds a fearsome looking AFV with huge tracks, massive armour and mighty cannon that is made totally useless by unaccountably being unable to leave the road and getting destroyed if it hits a pot hole.
  • X-COM's Spiritual Successor, Xenonauts feature more realistic (albeit very light) tanks and scouting vehicles. Their efficiency is somewhat disputable.

Visual Novels

• In Hatoful Boyfriend, the Christmas Thieves somehow have a tank which they hop into for their heist. It can stand up to the fists and uprooted mailboxes wielded by the main character - not actually a small feat, since she seems to have Super Strength — and is stopped only briefly by an anti-materiel rifle.

Web Animation

• Sheila of Red vs. Blue is a tank, in addition to being a major character.
  Church: Why would I surrender to you?
  Grif: We outnumber you.
  Church: Bullshit, dude, I got a tank! People with tanks are never outnumbered!

Web Comics

• Katusha: Girl Soldier of the Great Patriotic War: Katusha and her sister Milla are members of the crew of a T-34 fighting on the Eastern Front in World War II.
• Stand Still, Stay Silent gives us the slightly downplayed Danish tanks viewed while our Ragtag Bunch of Misfits pauses to get their last members and their final tool-up before hitting the Silent World. They're not the biggest examples of Tank Goodness you'll meet on this page, but they're designed to be robust enough to go out and kill Trolls and Giants strong enough to rip their way through solid steel — as demonstrated when an armoured, Swedish train hit very big trouble. As a result, they have to be chunkier than your average tank.
• 6-Commando features hulking supertanks known as Autonomous Armored Vehicles (AAVs or "Rumblers"). They have Artificial Intelligence built in, making them a fully autonomous Sapient Tank. The Echo-class is about six times the size of an M-1 Abrams, and weighs about 500 tons. The planned Victor-class would be even larger, bringing them into Land Battleship territory.

Web Original

• Associated Space has an opening scene involving "Mobile Siege Fortresses", gigantic hovertanks the size and shape of ancient Egyptian pyramids. Which Fatebane sabotages for comic effect.
  Fatebane: Pyramids don't roll.
• The Onion: The sadly axed Dragon Tank.
• In the The Salvation War, tanks turn out to be HIGHLY effective against the demon hordes. Not only do the main gun blast through demonic flesh like tissue paper, but many demons are crushed under the tank treads and just the sight of the "iron chariots" made one demon army route.

Western Animation

• Transformers:
  • Decepticons, while they started out as being primarily aerial combatants (to contrast with the ground-pounding Autobots), like to take tank alt-forms when they're on the ground. Megatron himself has taken particularly awesome ones, in "Generation 2" and Armada.
  • Warpath, Brawl, Guzzle, Quake, and others also had tank altmodes. RiD!Armorhide also has a tank alt mode. The triple-changer Blitzwing usually has a tank as one of his alt modes. Even Shockwave has one in Transformers Prime, probably to drive home how this version is much more combat-capable than most.
  • Megatron's toy has a tank form in the upcoming sequel to the Live-Action Adaptation, but the movie itself, rather than make him a jet/tank triple-changer that was theorized by some fans, made him a jet/tank hybrid—i.e., a flying tank.
    • In general, because toy laws no longer allow realistic looking guns, for any non-collector's toy of Megatron made since the early 2000s that's meant to represent his Generation 1 self, his alt mode has since become a tank due to being the closest vehicle in spirit to his original pistol mode, as seen with the Transformers: War for Cybertron Trilogy toyline starting in 2018, which focused on making "definitive" G1-accurate toys of the cast. Moreso when they actually start using Earth vehicles than Cybertronian approximations; while everyone gets their classic alt modes, Megatron remains a tank. One could argue that this has precedence from before his gun mode was excised; his upgrade Galvatron has treads on the struts of his "space cannon" mode, making it tank-like, and Megatron was already a tank as early as Generation 2. The only times he would ever be a gun besides his original and Masterpiece releases are the Nerf-like Classics figure and its repaints. It also addresses an admittedly silly and thus often-mocked aspect of his original gun mode, as he mass shifts and requires to be wielded by another of his troops to be used just for the stronger firepower, not to mention being immobile. A tank altmode means he doesn't sacrifice his mobility or self-functionality for the sake of terrifying firepower.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender has Steampunk tanks, with Firebenders instead of turrets, or rather Firebenders inside their turrets.
  • Also crawler tanks used against the Fire Nation.
• SWAT Kats has several cool tanks, including the infamous Metallikat Express - a high-speed hovertank loaded to the brim with weaponry and missiles.
• The Simpsons. Bart hijacked one when he got addicted to ADD meds, to shoot down a satellite that was spying on people and gathering massive amounts of marketing data for Major League Baseball. Additionally, Mr. Burns used one to lay siege to the Simpson home when he found out that Mona Simpson was back in town.
• Family Guy. Peter bought Meg a tank instead of a car. Brian and Stewie used it to destroy Superstore USA.
• In Batman: The Animated Series, Harley Quinn ended up being chased by one driven by General Vreeland after accidentally kidnapping his daughter Veronica.
  [while driving away]
  Veronica: Wait-what are you doing? That's my father.
  Harley Quinn: No, that's your father, IN A TANK!
• ReBoot had two games where the User character was a tank. Unfortunately one of the games crashed and a dinosaur game was loaded on top of the crashed game, merging the games. The result was a User character that was a t-rex with a tank turret for a head.
• Panthro's Dynamic Entry in ThunderCats (2011) involves Gunship Rescue by surprise tank attack.
• In the Young Justice episode "Bereft", the Bialyan Army uses tanks effectively against the Team and manage to get them on the run until Superboy arrives.
• The Army Surplus Special on Wacky Races is really a tricked out tank. With all its tonnage, it's a wonder it could get out of the blocks at the start, let alone win a race.

Real Life

• There's a good case for Truth in Television with this trope. Even though a single tank may not be a rampaging fortress of badassery in itself without combined arms support, it doesn't mean that they're not cool. The M1A2 Abrams, Leopard 2A6, Challenger 2, Leclerc, Ariete, Merkava Mk.4, T-72, T-90, Type-99, Type-10, K2, Al-Khalid and several others are all examples of Real Life tanks that are pretty damn cool and fairly badass. Plus, they don't suffer from the Crippling Overspecialization of fictional tanks (though most of them fall somewhere separate of the others in terms of speed, armour, firepower, and cost (the hidden factor!), ensuring no two nation's tanks are exactly alike). Most of them also have the neat feature of being totally modular - swapping the entire engine, suspension, armor plates, etc is easier and faster than actually repairing the components.
• The Israeli Merkava is the most versatile tank of the lot. Not only is it big, bad and extremely powerful, it has been designed first and foremost with crew survivability in mind. Also, its gun/Fire control system allow it to shoot attacking helicopters out of the sky, fire air bursting munitions and launch laser guided missiles. in addition to these features, it can also carry troops into battle,allowing the tank to double as an APC, Mobile command center and even a Medevac platform. It is basically a Swiss-Army Weapon in tank form.
  • As of 2010, the Merkavas are being outfitted with 'Trophy' Active Protection Systems - point defense mini-turrets designed to shoot down enemy rockets, missiles and shells before they hit, saving the tank's armor a lot of trouble, and to an extent countering the threat that infantry with RPGs and missiles present to modern tanks. The Americans and Germans have been working on their own versions, Quick Kill and AMAP-ADS, and the Russians already have a similar system, 'Arena' installed on their tanks.
  • To save heavily on logistics, much of Israel's modern armored vehicle platforms just use the Merkava with the tank turret swapped out for something else.
  • As a by the way the word "Merkava" means chariot. As that is in a way what a tank is, a "horseless chariot", it makes sense.
  • Unfortunately for Israel, ambulance vehicles claiming protection under the Geneva conventions aren't allowed to be armed, meaning that they have to choose between being protected by their medical status, and being protected by, well, being in a main battle tank. Also unfortunate is that the Merkava has to choose between either carrying troops or carrying reserve ammunition for it's main gun. One might think this Awesome, but Impractical, but most of the people that Israel would be likely to fight are guerrilla organizations without much of a history of respecting the protection afforded medical vehicles, so it may not make much of a difference. (Should it ever come to land war with one of the Arab states, or-somehow-Iran,^note The geography and the politics of it make such an eventuality a near impossibility, but Israel still has to prepare for such a scenario no matter how unlikely it is. the Geneva Conventions will likely be respected on both sides—as they were, by and large, in the previous wars in 1948, 1967, and 1973—but suffice it to say that such a war is presently highly unlikely.)
  • The downside of all this coolness is that Merkava IV is so freaking HUGE and heavy that it literally has difficulties moving. Even with Israel's tiny size it is usually delivered to the battlefield on trailer because running it on its own power consumes the engine and transmission's service life, and the bridges have to be specially reinforced so they withstand its 63+ tons weight- fortunately, there are very few rivers in Israel (it is a dry country after all and most of it is desert).
  • Israel is designing a new main battle tank, with possible weapon systems to replace the main gun including an EMP cannon or a laser cannon. Estimated finish date is 2020.
• The somewhat older gas-turbine-powered T-80, though in a peripheral role in service due to the fragmentation of industry with the Soviet breakup, is still famed for its nickname as the "flying tank"—capable of accelerating fast enough to jump off ramps and even fire its main gun in midair◊ at demonstrations to this day. This however, demonstrates a case of Awesome, but Impractical due to the chances of hitting anything while maneuvering like this.
  • The T-80U, the top variant of the T-80 tank, was, during its time, the Soviet Union's answer to the best the west offered. With Heavy Explosive Reactive Armor panels, or Kontakt-5, covering most of the tank's frontal armor, the T-80U was an exceptionally tough target to kill, and a fast moving one at that. Its 1G46 fire control system was not as good as those on the western tanks, but was still able to get the job done, able to fire APFSDS rounds at a range equal to M1A1s and Leopards, albeit with slightly less accuracy.
• The newer T-90, which is a major "upgrade" (if you can call the all-new engine, transmission, turret, armor, gun, and control system an "upgrade") of the T-72, could give bursts of speed around 90 kph (though seriously overloading its engine and transmission, its designed speed is about 70 kph) pretty much on every terrain, leading to quite a spectacular leaps that earned it the nickname of Flying Tank as well, and it can execute a literal Multi-Track Drifting while shooting at a target. The diesel engine is somewhat less powerful than gas turbine variants, but it has the benefit of far superior range and much lower fuel consumption.
  • The still-more upgraded T-90MS introduce an entirely new turret with integrated ammo bins in the bustle and radically improved protection (and digital FCS and new autoloader). The Army decided not to order it, as they're developing a radically new MBT, but was very pleased with the turret design and will probably use it to upgrade the existing inventory of T-90s and T-72s.
    • And then went around to order several hundreds of them due to development delays and mounting cost of the T-14 .
• The newest Russian tank, the T-14 Armata, first displayed during the traditional Victory Day parade in May 2015, has tank buffs all over the world practically salivating, and since the first announcement of its development in 2010^note Just after the cancellation of its predecessor T-95 as being too cool to afford. it probably has fueled more Flame Wars that T-34-vs.-Panther debate. Designed as a radical aversion of traditionally Russian mode of a very small, extremely mobile, extremely cramped and somewhat volatile tank, it is significantly larger, heavily armored, and while keeping with high mobility, is designed with survivability in mind.
  • The most revolutionary feature is that in addition to the now-standard composite and reactive armor, the Armata has a much more advanced "active protection system" consisting of radar panels on the sides of the turret to detect incoming projectiles and tubes to launch explosively formed penetrators to shoot them down. This is claimed to be effective against projectiles up to 1700m/s in velocity, which would include most current tank gun rounds and ATGMs. However, Russia does have a repute of inflating performance.
  • Like Leo-2, it has a high-powered diesel engine, whose nominal 1500 hp can push its 48 tons at the uncharacteristically high 70 kph, but is usually run at 1200 hp, to give it the enormous service life of 10,000 hours. With its governor removed, the engine can give out up to 2100 hp, though it virtually consumes itself at such power.
  • It is equipped with an improved 125 mm cannon (a 55-caliber 2A82, instead of 51-caliber 2A46 of T-90) with new, faster, larger sized autoloader that can handle newer, better shells that can penetrate, supposedly, 1000mm of steel, which is close to the statline for the OG Challenger 2 turret, and has provisions for installing the enormous 152-mm 2A83, developed for the T-95 Super Prototype.
  • Another major innovation is the totally unmanned turret. This was long toyed with all around the world, but it is the first time it appeared on a production tank. This feature allows the designers to isolate the potentially volatile ammo storage from the crew, a traditional weakness of previously very compact Russian tanks, that have long suffered from most penetrating hits cooking off the ammo, often together with the crew. A problem might be large blasts that damage the electronics and penetrating shots could be difficult to repair.
  • Though unlike the Merkava, it eschews the frontal-mounted engine (which, together with the heavily armored glacis, tends to overload the Israeli tank's front), it takes its cue in focusing on the crew survivability. Unlike any other tank in the world, though, it achieves this by putting the whole crew in the dedicated, heavily armored control capsule, isolated from such potentially volatile areas as the fuel tanks and ammo storage, made possible by the unmanned turret.
  • Given that the gunner and commander now lack the vantage point of the turret, it instead gives them the situational awareness through a lot of high-tech gizmos, including an all-round view through literally dozens of CCTV cameras scattered around the tank's body, a dual thermal imaging panoramic sight, and the world-first full 360-degree-coverage AESA radar, tied into the sophisticated active protection system.
• Going older, the T-54/55 may be given short shrift due to being reduced to the status of a mook tank to be destroyed by the dozens by newer NATO tanks, but it didn't become the most produced tank in the world for no reason, and has had many upgrade packages that can still make it competitive on the modern battlefield with a well-trained crew—modernized fire control systems with laser rangefinders, gun-launched missiles (each one of which costs almost as much as the tank itself), and so on. The design set the pattern for how a Soviet/Russian tank would look like for decades to come, with its low profile, heavily sloped front, and rounded turret shape.^note The autoloader would have to be left for its successors though. Its D-10 100mm cannon is arguably the best tank gun of its generation: it is the only World War 2-vintage armored vehicle main gun still in widespread active service, and the late-war SU-100 tank destroyer which was equipped with it had a deserved reputation for being able to lay waste to basically every German armored vehicle of the day. You won't be able to destroy a modern-generation MBT from the front with one, but if you could somehow get a flank shot off, it still has a good chance at taking one out.
• The aforementioned British Challenger 2 was demonstrated to be a very Cool Tank indeed on an episode of Top Gear (UK)—you'd expect Jeremy Clarkson in a Land Rover Sport to run circles around the tank. Not so. In fact, he underestimates the Challengers versatility.
  • Of course, Jeremy did make the mistake of trying to outmaneuver the Challenger 2 on broken, muddy ground and steep inclines—their home turf, in fact, in the very field that the tankers practice in. It was there he proved that tires are for speed (which his LR Sport has quite well, if on a well paved road), tracks are for rough terrain. As he puts it "Oh no, I seem to have brought Puff Daddy's car to The Somme. This is where I've had it. You can't drive a car, even as one as good as this, over this kind of surface fast. And you can with a tank." The tank crew also feels free to use some of their other abilities, such as neutralizing his speed advantage by blinding him with obscurant smoke — not a problem to a tank that can avoid large trees with infrared vision and roll over smaller obstacles, but plenty of problems to an unaided driver of a car that doesn't dare hit anything - and the fact that trying to put the pedal to the metal results in a huge dust trail that gives the tankers an easy target to chase. They catch up to him when he tries to drive in a straight line, presenting a predictable target. They're also good sports in that they never say "You know, we don't really have to use the 120mm main cannon to destroy a civilian SUV...man the machine gun."
    • It also demonstrates the skill of the British tankers, in that, despite Jeremy being in a car with a lot of "viewing ports" and essentially 360 degree vision, they still managed to hide from him. You heard that right: a 63 ton MBT managed to jump a man in a vehicle designed to have high visibility.
  • The Dorchester/Chobham II armour, oft considered among the front runners for "toughest tank armour in the world." It certainly has an almost untarnished combat record to prove it. In Iraq, one CR2 returned to the British operating base with the remains of 70+ detonated RPGs all over it after 24 hours in the field. It was described as looking like an evil, 62.7 tonne hedgehog. Another, after getting stuck in a ditch, spent four hours under sustained RPG fire (14 impacts reported), and survived a hit to the top of the turret (usually a weakspot on a tank) from a modern MILAN ATGM. The damage? A few broken sight units and periscopes. REME (the British tank mechanics) repaired it 8 hours (after rescue) and had it in service the next day. Simon Dunstan also describes an incident of one taking an Iraqi tank shot at near point blank range with the crew not even realising they were hit. To sum up, this is a seriously hard tank. In fact, it had some of the best turret armor in the cold war period....This truly was a camper tank. Especially since, well, teapot.
  • The only 'Chally' to ever be destroyed was in a blue-on-blue accident. The Hi-Explosive round from another Challenger 2 detonated in the turret after being deflected by an open crew hatch. The shell unfortunately killed two crew members who were outside the tank at the time, throwing them from the vehicle and left hot shards setting a fire inside it. Eventually, this fire reached and detonated the ammunition in the turret bins. (Hard to put out a fire in the middle of a warzone in time when half the crew is gone and the others injured) Despite the resulting explosion, the hull, aside from fire damage, was for the most part fine.
  • There were only two instances of their fighting compartments breached, by probably-Syrian RPG-29 Vampirs for the first and a colossal IED for the second. Still, given that the RPG-29 is one of the most modern anti-tank weapons in the world, some injury isn't that bad, even if it is a black-mark on their aura of invulnerability. The RPG-29 had been placed almost like an IED, firing at the relatively unarmoured lower glacis. The detonation set off the ERA due to the tandem charge, then penetrated and bypassed the ERA. Even then, the British only lost three toes. (The driver even drove the basically undamaged tank home) Since then, the British had placed Dorchester armour on the lower front and the belly, a material that has stopped RPG-29s in the past - the so-called "Streetfighter" upgrade. It is an oft cited myth that it "penetrated the frontal armour" of the Challenger, but this has been disproven. The second incident involving the IED strike, of course, was rather similar. Once again, the tank was essentially undamaged barring an injured crew member who still serves in the British Army to this day.
  • Don't forget the brew-up, people. The Chally: a virtually impenetrable, go-anywhere tortoise with teeth that can calmly boil water for a decent cuppa (or, you know: heat up a meal) when you've got five or ten minutes to spare when not under direct fire. That's pretty cool. And, can find you friends in strange places willing to hog your ability to make their meal breaks more interesting. It's a British tank: not being able to make tea for a break any time, anywhere? Inconceivable! Arguably the strongest-armoured, best-armed, fastest, heaviest, maneuvrable and well-engineered kettle you'll ever meet. Until the next version rolls up, that is.
  • The electric kettle, or more specifically "Vessel Boiling Electric" or Boiling Vessel (BV) is actually a feature of British tanks that goes back to WWII. Originally, crews would either make a makeshift burner, or just simply put the kettle on top of a running engine. The U.S. has also adopted the design and is using similar devices within their own armored fighting vehicles.^note As a side note, ever since designers of the Centurion located the outlet of the boiling vessel near the loader's position, the loader has traditionally been the person responsible for preparing tea, soup, and other such niceties to ward off the cold. The modern design is such that food items could even be fried inside one if so desired—and, of course, modern boil-in-the-bag rations can be heated inside as well.
  • Another feature of the Challenger II which only a tanker might be able to appreciate is its track tensioning system. Tank track tension has to be routinely checked (usually pre- or post-mission) so the vehicle does not throw a track and lose mobility during missions, and adjusted if the tension is inadequate. In most tanks today this involves fooling around with grease-guns to pump the necessary fluid into the hydraulics controlling the system, which like most other things involving maintaining tanks, can get quite tiring and messy; in older vehicles this often involves most of the crew leaning on a large wrench to adjust a large screw connected to the idler wheel. Both of these procedures are done outside the vehicle, which means doing it in foul weather is yet another aggravation. The Challenger II has hydraulic track tensioner rams which can be adjusted by the driver using knobs at his seat, meaning he doesn't even need to leave the tank to adjust tension. This feature has been known to make British tankies the subject of mild envy by coalition armored forces deployed alongside them.
  • Around one hundred and fifty Challenger IIs are scheduled to by upgraded to the new Challenger III spec, featuring a ton of upgrades including a new turret with a smoothbore Rheinmetall 120mm cannon allowing commonality with other NATO tanks, an improved hull, upgraded weapons sights and control systems, active protection systems etc. for the next generation battlefields. Unfortunately, this also removes a useful feature from the tank: the ability to (safely) lap-load in order to unleash a rapid burst of main gun fire. Modern single-piece 120mm ammunition use combustible cellulose-based shell casings, which are relatively fragile, resulting in lap-loading being a Dangerous Forbidden Technique in the armies that use the Rheinmetall gun lest highly combustible propellant be spilled everywhere into the fighting compartment. Challenger II uses a main gun with multi-piece ammunition, and each of the component pieces are easily lugged around by one strong arm, resulting in a fire rate comparable to its contemporaries. While the charge bags shouldn't be kept outside their regular storage spaces too long for the same reasons as the 120mm ammo, the warhead certainly can be.
• The M1 Abrams is also no slouch. It's powered by a literal jet engine and can go so fast, that its treads will actually tear off if you remove the engine governor.^note Only applicable to earlier variants; the modern marques of 70+ tons weight won't be able to hit such a speed, governor or no The Abrams can also demolish most other tanks and is incredibly resilient with its composite depleted uranium/ceramic armor. In both Gulf Wars, not a single M1 Abrams was knocked out by an enemy tank. The majority of damaged/destroyed Abrams resulted from accidents, ambushes with anti-tank weaponry, friendly fire, and scuttling. They're so resilient, that even American weaponry has a hard time destroying them.
  • The Abrams is ridiculously hard to permanently put down even by the full firepower of OTHER Abrams shooting at them. At best, you get temporary knockouts; one M1A1 took a hit directly in the rear from an Iraqi T-72 in the first Gulf War. The crew survived with minor injuries, the assailing tank was quickly destroyed, and the stricken Abrams was quickly recovered and repaired. There's also a story of an Abrams that got bogged down and four T-72s decided to rush it. None of their shots penetrated. The Abrams killed two of them, shot the third as it was running away, and the fourth hid behind a sand berm. The Abrams, using the thermal imaging camera, was able to see the hot exhaust rising and shot through the sand berm, killing the final T-72. When other tanks came, it was decided to abandon and destroy the Abrams rather than have to get up specialized equipment to pull it out (the other tanks couldn't). The other tanks tried to kill the now-abandoned Abrams but couldn't. One round exploded the ammunition magazine but the blowout panels directed to force of the explosion upwards. Eventually, a tractor came and pulled it out. The turret was sent back the the US for examination and the tank got a new one and was back in action pretty soon.
  • The Abrams also is the epitome of a gas guzzler, with its range measured in gallons per mile. As in, 20 gallons per mile. No, not miles per gallon. It consumes about 20 gallons of fuel for every mile it travels. Without a steady supply of tanker trucks keeping it topped up, they quickly become very expensive, hard to kill bunkers. Jet engines are fuel hogs, after all. There's a reason everybody else uses diesel engines: you give up performance but get a massive increase in combat range. Still, almost all tanks have maximum speeds around 40-45mph: It's the Abrams which is almost unique among contemporary tanks in being able to exceed this with the governor disabled. As a bonus, though, the Abrams will consume the same amount of fuel at a dead stop as it does at full bore so high speed isn't a problem, though attempts have been made to rectify this with a small electric engine. ^note Note well that past American tanks have all been noted speed freaks; 45 mph+ was definitely possible with the M60 Patton if it had its governor removed, and the same may have been true of other American tanks—as most of these have had governors and never had recorded speed tests without them, we'll never really know.
    • That said, the one thing that the Yanks with Tanks are uncontroversially best at is logistics. No other country can ship supplies from point A to point B faster or more reliably than the US which means that the Abrams can and do meet most of its fuel requirements. After all, there are thousands of Abrams deployed all over the world, and there has only been one instance where an Abrams ran out of fuel in the field. Indeed, the main reason for adopting the turbine engine was logistics: (1) the logistics people wanted an engine that would run most efficiently on JP-8, an oily kerosene-based jet fuel closely resembling the Jet A-1 fuel used to power most commercial jet aircraft, which (it was decided) would be the sole fuel of the US military, so they used a turbine (JP-8 can be and is used as diesel fuel, but not quite as well as it can be used in a turbine, generally speaking); (2) because the US is so good at logistics, it's generally no problem for American tanks to get their fuel.
    • Additionally, the logisticians liked the turbine engine for another reason: it makes the Abrams multi-fuel capable, so it's perfectly able to run on everything from gasoline to moonshine (though not as reliably), which means it can make use of captured enemy fuel supplies. Even household kerosene for lamps and stoves can make the tank run: if it's liquid and it burns, the Abrams can probably run on it.
    • As a previous user explains here, the fuel-hog reputation of the Abrams is also somewhat overblown. Part of the reason the tank drank fuel was that earlier variants of the Abrams lacked a reliable and robust auxiliary motor, meaning that to keep the tank parked but the electronics (like radios and so on) powered up required running the main engine, even while you're settling down somewhere for the night. This is also why, as noted above, the tank consumed the same amount of fuel whether it was parked or rolling. Because the military was footing the fuel bill and could supply it reliably, the crew generally weren't too concerned about this. Eventually, a suitable auxiliary power unit mounted on the turret bustle was designed and installed, and the bustle rack was extended to mitigate the loss in space for the crew's personal gear.
  • It's also really quiet compared to the loud as hell diesels in most tanks. Iraq War veterans have made mention of insurgents waiting for a convoy to rumble past, jumping up to ambush it - and then getting ambushed in turn by the Abrams tanks silently stalking behind the convoy.
  • One downside of the gas turbine engine is that the enormous heat being dumped by it makes it impossible for infantry to sit on the tank or work as close support. Future variants of the Abrams, optimized for more of an urban combat environment, may use the same diesel engine as on the Leopard 2. (Which will only be a mild disappointment to the logisticians; remember again that JP-8 can also be used in diesel engines, especially if they're designed for it, which any Abrams diesel engine will be.)
  • While shorter than the /55 on the current Leopard 2A6, the Abrams has the advantage of Depleted Uranium Shells, which one-up the Leopard's tungsten shells in three ways. First off, it requires less alloying, (where tungsten rounds need a full 10% of their weight in alloying materials, depleted uranium only requires 1%), meaning depleted uranium APFSDS rounds weigh more and pack more of a raw punch. On top of this, where a tungsten sabot "mushrooms" out as it pushes its way through armor, blunting it and spreading the kinetic impact, depleted uranium is "self-sharpening", maintaining its slim, pointed profile as it pierces straight through the same armor. This is in part due to the third advantageous trait of depleted uranium as a shell: its pyrophoric qualities. Due to a number of complex chemical attributes, it will spontaneously combust on impact, burning/melting itself and as a result, doing the same to the armor of whatever poor bastard it hits, and this molten mass is dragged behind the uranium shell when it finally breaks through and into the target's innards, covering it in molten metal. As a result, the Abrams packs a significantly harder punch than any of its competitors.
• The French came up with the AMX-56 Leclerc, starting full-scale production in 1993. It uses a steel inner-shell overlaid with ceramics, titanium, and ERA blocks. Designed from the beginning with active protection in mind, the Leclerc is one of the fastest tanks in the world, as well as one of the lightest. It also incorporates an autoloader which, unlike Russian equivalents, is actually faster at loading shells than an extra crewman.^note Though the main reason Russians went with autoloaders was probably because they wanted more compact and lighter tanks for the same effective armor thickness, and autoloaders allowed for much smaller interior spaces Though it has yet to be tested in combat, its predecessor, the 1960-vintage AMX 30 still destroyed more advanced Iraqi tanks during the First Gulf War, and the same people make the AMX-56...
• Then there is the Leopard 2, which is a sibling of the M1 Abrams; both tanks were developed out of the original joint American-German project Kampfpanzer/Main Battle Tank 70 (which was cancelled because the Germans and Americans could not agree on what role the tank was supposed to fulfill, leading to a Master of None situation and cost overruns). For a tank it's absurdly fast (capable of driving 120 kph on road). The only drawback is, that it is nearly uncontrollable and only drives in a straight line; add the most powerful main gun of any tank to that, though, and you are ready.
  • Most Leopard 2s used the same 120mm L/44 gun as the M1A1/2^note Which is actually the other way around. All M1A1 use the Rheinmetall 120mm L/44, which is designated M256 in the U.S. armed forces., though the new Leopard 2A6's have the more longer L/55 version which is shared with the South Korean K2 Black Panther.
  • The Bundeswehr is currently testing the Leopard 2 A7+/A7 PSO. A tank build for MOUT operations. It has (again) the Rheinmetall 120mm L/44 installed. It also got a remotely controlled weapon station, a dozer blade and a 360° protection for the turret and programmable HE munitions. The tank is a supplement to the normal Leoard 2 forces of the Bundeswehr and not meant to replace the A6 and earlier variants.
  • Word of God has it that, if you get a skilled technician to tinker with the engine, you can boost the engines 1500PS to 1800PS, or exceed 2100PS at the expense of killing the engine before the fuel runs out. It was apparently tested once, where it reached the aforementioned 120kph on paved roads, and a whopping 80kph on mud.
  • It is still unclear how good the Leopard 2 would fare in a real combat with tank against tank, since it has never been in one. If the regular exercises are any indicator at all the Leopard 2 is at least on par, if not better. However it is imperative to note that comparisons are fishy at best since the Leopard 2 has a totally different modus operandi than say the Challenger II, which is also reflected it its design. From an armour standpoint it is by far the weakest armoured tank of the modern tanks, however it packs the most punch (disregarding Soviet ATGMs fired from tank cannons), beating the Challenger IIs rifled gun (as tested by the British army in the Challenger Lethality Improvement Programme (CLIP)) and being the fastest of the western tanks. The doctrine of the German army is to quickly drive up to the enemy, fire a few rounds and then get the hell out. In training, experienced Leopard 2 crews hit around 95% of the target while standing and only 3% less accurate while moving. There are even (forbidden) techniques of getting out three rounds in about five to seven seconds, which includes one round in the cannon, one in the hands of the loader and the other on the foot of the loader. After the first round is fired the loader rams the second in and pushes the third up with his foot, after that he can quickly ram down the third one. Much faster than any auto loader on the Russian T-90 series. To put is simple: This tank is fast and packs a hell of a punch.
  • It is however to note that the combat performance out of a strict tank versus tank environment has been very good so far. The Canadian army uses Leopard 2 a few years in Afghanistan and they are very pleased with it. At one time a Leopard 2 A6M drove onto an IED and the crew surviving with minor injuries, the tank was repaired and put back into action. Denmark had almost the same experience in January 2008, where a Leopard 2 drove onto an IED and lost one of its tracks. The tank could crawl back into base on its own and was repaired quickly (the crew was unharmed). the only reported combat casualty on a Leopard 2 was a IED ambush in mid 2008, where a Leopard 2 A5DK drove onto an IED and the driver was killed, this however was due to the fact that that Leopard 2 was not upgraded with a mine protection, as now almost all Leopard 2s have.
  • On the other hand, the Leopard 2 suffers from a critical flaw in it's protection scheme, thanks to the small turret ready rack and attendant larger ammo stowage in the frontal hull, which Kurdish troops took full advantage of during the Syrian war. Any attack to the foreward area of the left side hull of the Leopard would invariably cause it to detonate in a Sovietesque fireball, tearing the tank apart and killing the crew.
  • A fact that furthermore makes the Leopard highly moveable is its engine which is the engine itself and the transmission in one big block. You simply loosen the screws that hold the block, lift it out and put a new one back in. The Bergepanzer Büffel, which is equipped with the same engine and has the same chassis than the Leopard 2 can even lift out his own engine (yes you heard right, it is the only vehicle to be able to do that) and put it into the Leopard 2. The Büffel can also tow the Leopard out of harms way without the crew leaving the tank (if the towing equipment was prepared beforehand).
  • The Singaporean variant, the Leopard 2SG, has customised armor upgrades made for it that improves its armor grade beyond the stock Leopard 2.
• The MBT-70 was the prototype for the M1 Abrams, ultimately rejected as too expensive at a per unit cost of $5 million a pop in the 1970's. To put that in perspective the M1A1, is one of the most expensive tanks in the world today, and it costs $5 million now, $5 million in the 1970's would be about $26 million now.
  • To put it more into perspective the last batch of F-4 Phantoms built in the 70s cost about 3 million a piece.
  • The Expeditionary Tank that was developed in Parallel wasn't too bad either.
• More Truth in Television: In an episode of MythBusters, the cast addressed the idea that the friction between pages of two interleaved phone directories is impossible to overcome. They tested this one first with two people trying to pull it apart... then ten people... then two cars... and, instead of going with trucks or other large civilian vehicles, invoked The Rule of Cool and rented a couple of M551 Sheridan light tanks (which, yes, finally did manage to separate the books... effortlessly).
  • Point-of-fact, the pages were completely torn out of their respective bindings, but not many of them were actually separated from each other.
  • Actually, while one of the tanks used in the episode was a Sheridan, the first to start moving was not a tank at all, but an M113 armored personnel carrier fitted with a tank turret. I guess it classifies.
• Modern MBTs have large diesel or turbine engines that can give between 1000 and 1500 hp on average. The biggest Detroit Diesel truck engine (still in the prototype stage) is just 600 hp. That's more than double increase in the power, and then there's the matter of traction as well. Tanks grip the ground with the whole surface of the track, while trucks has only the points of contact — the rather smallish areas where the tire contacts with the ground, greatly increasing the possibility of slippage. And, last but not least, tanks are friggin' HEAVY — just upward of 40 tons for the modern ones, while only biggest 18- or 22-wheelers can be this heavy when fully laden. This also leads to slippage in such tests. In short, tanks make much better tugs than any wheeled vehicle.
  • Heavy tanks may be, but those tracks distribute the load well, so the M1A1 has only twice the ground pressure of a man standing still (the ground pressure goes up when walking).
• Early heavy tanks designed and built toward the end of WWI era and some years later — Real Life examples of "Games Workshop tank".
  • French FCM Char 2C◊, outclassing and outweighing any other tank of its time.
    • By the WWI standards, she was the pinnacle of heavy tank development. She was armed with a primary 75mm gun in rotating turret, four sponson mounted machine guns and one rear-mounted machinegun turret. Her frontal armor could shrug off direct hits by any German field gun (which were. basically, capable of disabling any other tank). Her terrain-crossing abilities are impressive even today; she was capable to climb 1,2 meter wall, cross the four-meters wide anti-tank moats and due to sheer mass & size could break nearly everything that came on her way. Internally, she was ergonomically thought-out well, both her engines could be serviced from inside, and her electric transmission allowed her to move (albeit very slowly) even if one of her engines break down - pretty common problem for WWI tanks!
    • Only, this tank was not produced before early 20ies (think "political meddling"), and only ten machines were ever made. All ten were considered "ships" (because the FCM company was actually a shipyard), and have individual names; they were named after provinces of France.
    • It is interesting to note, that despite being old and outdated by the times of World War II, those giant tanks weren't actually completely incapable. The most numerous German anti-tank gun in early war years, the 3.7 cm Pak 36, could penetrate their frontal armor only from relatively short distance. On the other hand, their giant size, low speed and transportation problems made them nearly completely unsuitable for highly-mobile World War II armored warfare. But whenever it appeared, its HE blast could actually rip gunbarrels.
  • Where possible, French tanks captured by the Germans were used straight as captured for training and second-echelon duties; tanks such as the Hotchkiss and the Char-B/C series were modified and used either as tank destroyers or as SP artillery. A training regiment equipped with French tanks fought in the front line in Normandy in 1944.
    • In December 1939, one tank, the "Lorraine" was experimentally up-armored. After refit, her frontal armor was 90 mm thick, side armor was 65 mm thick, and she was basically invulnerable to German anti-tank guns even at point-blank range. Her weight, though, reached the 75 ton mark, which made "Lorraine" the heaviest tank still actually commissioned.
  • The Char B1 was pretty good: in one battle, one was lured into an ambush by a bunch of Panzer IIIs and IVs, and flattened them (destroyed 13), and still managed to drive home afterwards (it was hit 140 times, but took no serious damage).
    • The 2C was equally used by the French in propaganda movies. B1-bis' advantage was that only Flak 88 used as Pak could destroy it; so was T-34 in 1941. Hence the German Blitzkrieg doctrine of not fighting tanks with tanks, but to retreat and lure enemy tanks into a trap by "Pak-Fronts" proved sensible. Only when they had to, in later war pretty much all the time, did the Germans use tanks against tanks.
  • Red Army has T-35 (built in 1933-1939) with five turrets, mounting a total of three cannons and six machine guns. With 7-11 crewmen depending on the model. Even more of a Lego-machine, since first it got its four side-turrets from BT-2, later replaced with combination of BT-5 (slightly modded) and T-37 turrets.
    • And proved, like its predecessor, the Vickers A1E1, to be a flop. If you look on the list of how they were lost, most were to various malfunctions due to the combination of complicated machine and USSR tech/craftsmanship. Combining with her great size and relatively thin armor (and VERY cramped internal conditions), this tank wasn't well-suited to World War II standards. Literally anything that we mounted on a tank would shred it.
    • For the early 1930s, the T-35 was fine, though. Her armor gave her adequate protection against light anti-tank guns, AT rifles and heavy machineguns (which were considered the main threat to tanks in early 1930s), and her multiple turrets made her really good in trench warfare, providing the suppression fire on several target at once.
    • On one tank, though, the fire control problem was partially solved in 1936 by installing the centralized fire control system - like on naval warship. The tank commander could use stereoscopic rangefinder to follow targets and retranslate orders to gunnery crews in turrets. Surprisingly, with that system T-35 actually worked pretty well, but all reliability problems were solved only by the late 1938, when the tank itself was considered obsolete, and planned refit was cancelled.
  • In late 1930s, the USSR started to seek the new heavy tank to replace the aging T-35. The initial design was still multi-turreted - albeit the number of turrets was only three, and even that was lately reduced to two (to improve armor protection). Two different designs, SMK tank and T-100 tank were developed by competing tank factories and prototypes were tested under field conditions of Winter War. Eventually, SMK won the competition and was recommended for mass production... which doesn't started, because single-turret KV-1 tank prototype demonstrated MUCH better characteristics.
• KV-2, which mounted a 152mm howitzer (largest caliber weapon ever fitted on a production tank), but was virtually immobile and couldn't traverse its turret unless it was on perfectly level ground. Its intended role was an assault gun, i.e. self-propelled bunker-buster, better compared with the German StuGs. As such neither did it need much mobility, nor lack of ease of use would be all that detrimental for it. Of course, these lumbering behemoths performed well enough slowly chewing through Mannerheim's concrete, in highly mobile warfare of the summer campaign of 41 they acted more as mobile fortifications — unable to hit anything that doesn't stand and wait for it, but armored heavier than KV-1 that were able to survive over a hundred cannon hits and beat lighter tanks by ramming. One well-placed KV-2 was enough to stop a division: tanks and anti-tank cannons failed to penetrate its armour, so Germans stuck until they brought in 88-mm anti-air guns. 105-mm howitzers were able to only to blow off tracks off these monsters, but not destroy them. KV's worst enemy were the Stukas (bombs were more practical against heavy armored but slow tanks) and Red Army's own logistical troubles. Still, the scheme was good enough to reuse production lines, upgrading both assault gun and tank branches, and later turn KV series into IS series.
  • The KV2's biggest flaw was that it could only be used on the flat. The top-heavy turret not only made it problematical on slopes, if tipped too far from the horizontal, its sheer weight displaced in one direction caused it to jam solid in its bearings, making it impossible to traverse.
  • Talking about IS tanks ( Iossif Stalin, by the way), don't forget the IS-2, a heavy, breakthrough tank developed to counter the German Panthers & Tigers. The IS-2 main armament was a 122mm gun that could kill a Tiger or Panther from much greater range than they could kill it or bust open fortifications with the best of them AND it could match a Panther on mobility. Only flaw was a very low fire rate from handling the huge ammunition in a quite compact fighting compartment.
  • Although the Soviets won the war by mass-producing the awesome-in-its-own-way T-34 and KVs, they were also prone to some bizarre experiments, such as the unmanned, remote-controlled Teletank and the Antonov A-40 flying tank or strapping a pair of 245-mm rocket rails on top of BT-5 light tank (reappeared in more sane variant as side rockets on KV-1, but cancelled due to low accuracy).
  • One battle in 1941 involved 5 KV-2's ambushing a German tank column. The Soviet tank commander made sure to utilize the KV-2's strengths by trapping the entire column on a narrow road going through a swamp by blowing up the leading and trailing German tanks. Any Panzer that tried to go off-road found itself bogged down and just as trapped. The camouflaged KV-2's rolled out one at a time, fired, and rolled back into cover, making sure the Germans had no idea where they were. By the end of the shooting gallery, sorry, battle, the Germans lost 43 tanks with no casualties on the Soviet side. The Soviet commander's crew counted the hits on their tank - there were over 200 with no penetrations.
  • The Finnish army captured two intact KV-I tanks during World War II, which were quickly put into action against their former owners. They stood the battle quite well - they were always employed as the "spearhead" tanks. They both still exist in driveable condition and were used in making the film Tali-Ihantala 1944. This must be a unique situation in war movies where not only actual vehicles are used in the movie, but also the actual individual tanks which have taken part in the Real Life actions the film depict.
• Even more Truth in Television, as far as the coolness aspect is concerned. Any Superheavy tank would count even if most of them don't work. They make the list based on sheer principle.
  • During World War II Those Wacky Nazis developed the Panzerkampfwagen VIII Maus, a 188 ton superheavy tank (it means 'mouse' — who says the Germans don't have a sense of humor) with a 128mm and a 75mm coaxial gun. These two prototypes – one with, one without turret – underwent trials in late 1944. The second was pressed into combat against the Soviets in the last days of the war and was scuttled by its crew to prevent the Soviets from capturing in, when it was destroyed by placing charges in the engine and fighting compartments. Unfortunately for them, the Soviet Commander of Armored and Mechanized troops ordered the hull of the first to be mated with the turret of second and it was put it in the Kubinka Tank Museum. The Maus holds the record as heaviest land combat vehicle ever built, and given the Awesome, but Impractical nature of building land combat machines of that size, it's quite likely that that record will never be broken.
  • The Maus had a competitor, the Panzerkampfwagen E-100. Lighter than the Maus at a "mere" 140 tons, it was to have been armed with with both a 75mm gun and a 150mm gun while being lighter and more maneuverable than the Maus. The prototype never reached a functional stage, and it was eventually captured and sent to Britain for evaluation (result: "too mechanically unreliable, not useful at all") before being scrapped in the 50s.
    • Incidentally, on the drawing board was the Landkreuzer P-1000 Ratte , theoretically 1000 metric tons (in practice it would have been twice that) with two 280mm naval guns (the same type used by the ''Scharnhorst''-class battleships), a 128mm antitank gun, eight 20mm anti-aircraft guns and two 15mm heavy machine guns! And topping it all was the P-1500 Monster, which would have the 800mm Dora artillery piece with its railroad running gear replaced with about eight sets of tracks. With two 150mm howitzers and multiple machine guns for backup. Its nominal weight of 1500 metric tons is even less realistic than the idea of the Ratte weighing only 1000 tons; the Dora gun alone weighed 1350 tons, after all. Both these tanks are in fact even larger than the Baneblade from Warhammer 40,000, which is comparably tiny (at only 250 tons). If the Maus was impractical, such behemoths would be virtually useless; they would've likewise been easy targets for allied bombers mistaking them to be buildings, unless for the the flak guns did their jobs. Hitler was a badass for curbstomping fiction before it even came up with its own, wasn't he?
    • It is interesting to note, that the main designer of P-1000 - engineer Edward Grotte - in early 1930s tried to persuade Soviet Government to build quite similar 1000-ton tank with 12-inch cannons. This may be the reason, why USSR decided to terminate the contract with Edward Grotte...
    • As ludicrously impractical as these concepts were (Hitler's own top tank general, Heinz Guderian, dismissed the notion as a ridiculous fantasy), they were in fact technically possible; certain civil vehicles were in fact as big (or even bigger), such as the NASA Crawler-Transporters and the insanely huge Bagger 288 coal excavator (roughly the same size as the RMS Titanic). This proves that tank sizes could certainly be increased to this extent, but would be militarily worthless.
  • Americans meanwhile tried T28 Super Heavy Tank / Gun Motor Carriage T95, redesignated back and forth due to lack of turret. Essentially, when the Americans decided they needed a new Tank to take down the Siegfried Line, they decided to fight bunkers with bunkers. A 95-ton rolling bunker with a literal foot of armor, a 105mm gun chosen specifically for it's excellent performance against concrete, and a blistering top speed of 8 miles per hour. But at least it managed to move under its own power and not sink into the dirt, in no small part thanks to it's mounting 4 tracks, 2 on each side. Of the two prototypes built, one was recovered in 1974 when a farmer stumbled upon it, abandoned in a field. It currently sits in Fort Benning, Georgia. The other one sadly, was damaged in an engine fire while being used as a testbed for heavy vehicle components and had to be scrapped.
  • The British counterpart to the T28 above, is the Tortoise Heavy Assault Tank, likewise built to break through the Siegfried Line. Weighing in at only 78 tons, and mounting both a smaller gun and less armor than the T28, the Tortoise was capable of being marginally more mobile, albeit still being comically slow by any standard.
  • The author of the book My Tank Is Fight!, which specifically looks into the various super projects of World War II and puts forth hypothetical scenarios involving their deployments, mentioned that were the Rattes or Monsters to be built they would likely have to be built in naval shipyards (and be subject to the same allied bombing raids as the other ships). They would be devastating, sure... for the first encounter, after which they would likely be bombed out of existence from the air. Even as heavily-armored as they were planned to be, a single 500 pound bomb was all it would take to pierce that armor. That's not counting even narrower list of accessible terrains and inability to cross most contemporary bridges. Awesome, but Impractical.
  • After the war, USSR build a really impressive IS-7 heavy tank. Reaching 68 tons, this tank was the heaviest in her line and heaviest of post-war tanks actually considered for deployment. She was armed with long-barreled 130-mm cannon (not counting two REALLY heavy 14.5-mm machineguns and six light 7.62-mm machineguns, all on remote controlled mounts), and protected with six-inch armor in " pike nose" configuration, which basically made her frontal armor impenetrable to any existing AT weaponry... Unless it didn't face you head-on. Despite being as heavy as "Tiger-II", IS-7 was much more mobile, capable of reaching 60 km/h on good road and with much less gound pressure. Eventually, though, this impressive tank was considered too heavy for frontal deployment, too costly for mass production, and much cheaper T-10 heavy tank was produced in limited numbers instead.
  • Somewhere in between is Obyekt 279 ("Object 279"), a Soviet prototype heavy tank with a maximum armor of 305mm and a 130mm cannon. It is designed to withstand a nuclear attack, and it seems that it doesn't fail its purpose. Two pairs of tracks and 1000 horsepower to move 60 tons allowed it to be a tank and not a self-propelled bunker — velocity on a road is claimed to be 55 km/h and you can see how it plows through snow and swamp. Canceled, like most projects of its time not related to either nuclear missiles, space race or overdue upgrade of production capabilities.
    • Speaking of the heavy Objects, there's some more that should be noted. The 279 would probably have been a logistic & maintenance nightmare with its overly complex chassis, but another project of that time - the 277 - is also notable. The main drawback of Heavy Tanks (low mobility) would not have really applied to it; it wasn't too heavy (a lot of modern MBTs have more weight than its 55 tons); its power-to-weight ratio would have actually been better than most medium/MB tanks of its time (about 18 HP/ton), and its ground pressure was on par with the MBTs. It would have had a 130mm rifled gun with mechanized loading (same as the 279) and its armor, while less than that of the 279, would have been thicker than that of the medium/MB tanks. The project (as part of the whole heavy tank development program) was killed by Khrushchev himself, who believed that dedicated missile tanks were the future. They were not.
    • For reference, Khrushchev was a firm believer in missile superiority over armor. He fought any proposal for large armored ships, calling them floating targets for missiles.
• Speaking of the failed German superheavy tanks from World War II, there's also what was without a doubt Nazi Germany's scariest war machine — if not its most reliable — the PzKpfw VI, otherwise known as the Tiger. Sure, it is over-engineered, expensive to produce and broke down often, but it's arguably the most iconic armoured vehicle to ever have existed, with its thick armour and enormous 88mm cannon. Allied forces suffered "Tiger terror" for a reason, and recommended tactics for Sherman medium tanks — at least before stuff like the Firefly came about — was to outnumber the heavy tank five to one, and it was still generally accepted that four of those were likely to be destroyed. There were many more Shermans than Tigers though when incidents like this occurred. ^note Specifically, there were eight Shermans for every Tiger at some points.
  • As if to underscore the American understanding of the importance of logistics, reports from one of the first American ordnance officers to be able to review a captured Tiger I, after making positive mention of its armor and gun, made sure to also mention that its outer set of roadwheels could be dismounted for rail transport.
  • Or the Tiger II (aka King Tiger), a Tiger tank on several jars of steroids with an even more powerful gun and sloped armor. However, as with many German WW2 tanks, mechanical problems were quite common and few were built as they appeared in the last year of the war.
  • Awesome as the King Tiger was, the Jagdtiger tank destroyer had even more armour (a freakish quarter of a metre thick in places - ten inches, all but a hairsbreadth) and an even bigger 128mm gun that could trash any enemy tank from two miles away. Fortunately, few were built and mechanical problems were common (along with fuel and equipment shortages). And mobility issues, since a lot of bridges couldn't actually take its 70+ ton weight.^note  The Jagdtiger, in fact, was the heaviest armored fighting vehicle to be put into mass production. Larger vehicles like the Maus and T95 only ever reached the prototype state.
    • They usually were simply driven in ambush to wait oncoming enemies, picking them one by one. And then reversing away, shooting all the time should things get too hot.
  • Tiger? See also the Panzer V Panthers. The US Army Armor Officers Basic course used to (might still) require an essay on the Panther vs the T-34/85, which was quite comparable. They were close enough that picking either one was acceptable, as long as you gave good reasons and covered the pros and cons of each. A battle between a Panther and a T-34/85 would most likely be decided by the quality of the crews — terrain and surprise being equal.
    • Shermans upgunned with 76mm (American) and Ordnance QF 17-pounder (British) guns didn't do too badly either, and in fact Sherman Fireflies (armed with 17-pounder guns) could penetrate Panther turrets at a decent range and were almost a match for Tiger 1s (if they could hit; first-generation 17-pdr high-velocity discarding sabot ammunition had a tendency to be not able to hit the broad side of a barn beyond close range, though the standard armor-piercing ballistic cap ammunition was passably accurate if a little less capable of hole-punching). ^note  In fact, the Sherman Firefly is The Dreaded to Tiger I crews, who made Fireflies a first-priority target if encountered. It was also a Sherman Firefly that ultimately did in famed German tank ace Michael Wittmann's Tiger I
  • Panthers actually were tanks in the blitzkrieg tradition. That is, they were made to be heavy cavalry without horses. Tigers were anti-air guns on tracks- developed because they needed a way to give mobility to the cumbersome but powerful FlaK 88 gun- and Tigers were the result.
    • In the hands of skilled drivers, Tigers did actually have good mobility on rough terrain on par with the Panzer IV, contrary to popular belief.
  • The Panther, however, had huge flaws, like its secondary gear shift and complicated intersected wheels for example. It was poorly constructed and held together for a whopping 150km, before needing a maintenance overhaul. The turret had a weak motorisation that left the crew with hand cranking it while tilted, and the intersected wheels made changing the inner row a pain, since you had to remove 3 wheels to change one. The motor and tracks also didn't hold together that much, needing to be swapped every 1000 and 500km respectively. That said, the good did outweigh the bad by a huge degree, and in combat the design's merits were proved beyond a doubt. Despite this, the Panzer IV remained the workhorse of the German Army until the end.
    • Some of these problems were corrected in later variants, but more than half of the Panthers lost in Normandy were due to the weak final drive that caused the Panther to break down after just 150km of use (or less than half of its gas tank). The Germans simply made the mistake of making the tank too heavy (45 tons, or the same weight as the original specifications for the Tiger heavy tank) for the technology of the time.
    • Panthers represent an interesting case. In terms of size and design parameters, Panthers belong with immediate post-war medium/main battle tanks such as Centurion, M-46, or T-54, all of which were designed with the recognition that the relatively small World War II mediums could not be satisfactorily equipped with sufficiently heavy armor, armament, and other equipment. They were all physically bigger and much heavier than World War 2 mediums such as Shermans or T-34s (40-50 tons rather than 25-30 tons), but were designed to operate as medium tanks rather than as specialist vehicles that the heavies were. While Panthers were armed and armored to be superior to the contemporary mediums, it was not enough to stand up to tanks in their own class—which, to be fair, didn't exist just yet. Consequently, they were better (but not dramatically) than most of their adversaries, but quite inferior to the more appropriate counterparts that showed up just a few years later (US M-26, the tank that M-46 would be developed from, was starting to show up on the battlefield by early 1945. The Centurion was about to enter mass production when the war in Europe ended. The Soviets were starting to field T-44, from which T-54 would be developed from, by the end of the war as well. Each one of these outclassed the Panther, by considerable margin in some respects.). Speaking of which....
  • Ironically, but debuts of both Tigers (in 1942), Panthers (in 1943) and Tiger II's (in 1944) on Eastern Front turns into embarrassing blunders due to poor planning on German side and well-prepared Soviet defenses.
• The British Centurion deserves some votes as the best tank of its era. It was designed on the same premise as the Panther, the recognition that the World War II era medium tank was too small to accommodate the kinds of armor, weapons, and other equipment needed for a future war. Originally designated as a 45-ton "heavy cruiser" tank, it was better armed (originally with the 17 pounder (basically, the equivalent of the long 75mm of the Panther), than the 20-pounder (equivalent to the long 88mm of the Tiger II), and eventually the revolutionary 105mm L7), better armored, fairly fast, and utterly reliable. It was good enough to be remain in service as a frontline tank for 30 plus years and in supporting roles (modified as engineer vehicles or heavy armored personnel carriers) for 30 years or more and counting. Not bad for what is essentially a late World War II tank.^note To paraphrase an overview of the tank by a researcher, all other British tank designs used in World War II was a stopgap in one way or another; the Centurion was the first time the designers felt that they had the time to sit down and not half-arse the job while incorporating all the lessons learned so far from the war. The longevity of the resulting design speaks for itself.
• Statistically, the best "tank" of the German army was actually the Panzer III, which then transitioned to become the StuG III assault gun. All types of Tigers are claimed (but not verified) to have killed 10,000 Allied tanks. The StuGs alone claim to have killed twice that number by 1944.
• On the other side of the scale, you have the French Leclerc, one of the fastest main battle tanks in the world. And the fastest one when firing; while other tanks have to slow down to shoot, it can pummel you with twelve 120mm rounds a minute (it has the fastest autoloader of any main battle tank too) while running at 50km/h.
  • The Leclerc also deals with the poor fuel efficiency of jet engines by using a hybrid diesel/gas turbine setup. The main engine is a mostly conventional diesel, but instead of the usual supercharger it's got a small gas turbine.
• The British Churchill AVRE mounted a 290mm spigot mortar, designed for breaching fortifications. The projectile weighed 40lbs, and was known as a "flying dustbin." That wasn't the only modification it received either.
• Sturmtiger, anyone? The thing was build on the Tiger's chassis. Although smaller, stockier, more armored and armed with a repurposed and modified large naval rocket launcher, the 380 mm Raketen-Werfer RW61 L/5.4. It had a crane at the back to help loading the enormous shells. Unfortunately, it was Awesome, but Impractical in practice—the shells had a ~500m blast radius that could easily disable the firing vehicle itself, unless you sat back so far away that the armor of the Sturmtiger basically served no useful purpose whatsoever. Furthermore, the blast effects were so intense that no vehicle of any kind could hope to traverse through an area where such a shell exploded, rendering the thing effectively useless for close support of assaults.
• What happens when you take an already crawler-tracked bulldozer, weld a few tons of steel to it, seal it up and go nuts? The Killdozer.
  • Done over right by the IDF's 'Doobi' armored Caterpillar D9 bulldozer.
• Leonardo da Vinci actually designed a tank. It was built out of wood, was powered by hand cranks, and had multiple cannons pointing all around the tank. One TV show was even able to build a functioning replica.
  • They had to modify the design; as originally drawn, the wheels would counter-rotate and result in it going nowhere, as well as cannons having to stick through the wheels themselves. It was mentioned on the show that Leonardo would occasionally do this sort of boobytrapping in case someone picked up his notes.
  • This design is used in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood as one actually built by Leonardo for Cesare Borgia. It was actually pretty fast, although only firing one cannon at a time. The mission involves destroying all prototypes and the original plans. It can be assumed that Leonardo then made a second set of plans deliberately flawed.
• The T-34, the tank that broke the Nazi armies. It was built in 1940, and its appearance completely shocked the Third Reich, who did not think the Russians could design good tanks. The T-34 was cheap, fast, reliable, tough and very powerful. Its 76mm gun outclassed the 37mm and 50mm guns of early Panzers, whose shots would simply bounce off the T-34's sloped armor. The 1943 upgrade of an 85-millimeter gun allowed them to deal with upgunned Panzer IV variants, Panthers and Tigers. Although not the first tank ever to have sloping armor, it was the first to use it so well in its design that it became an obvious factor to its battlefield survivability, thus prompting the Germans to come up with what eventually was the Panther. Consequently, sloped armor became a standard feature on pretty much every tank post-WW2.
  • While the Russians have had a reputation for poor build quality, the T-34's armor quality was consistently excellent and the much-vaunted German armor had highly inconsistent quality (verified by both Soviet and American tests on Panther tanks as well as by a prewar Russian test on a Panzer III tank). The consistently good armor quality on the T-34 was a factor in keeping the sloped frontal plate and allowing it to bounce shots - the Germans, with their hard but often brittle armor, decided against copying the T-34's armor until they devised the Panther with its less sloped but far thicker frontal armor.
  • Unlike most other tanks, the T-34 was also built to operate well in winter conditions - its diesel engine could start easily and keep running in such freezing conditions (diesel fuel has a lower freezing point than petrol/gasoline which the German tanks ran on) and cold even nullified defects in radiators that earlier tanks suffered from in summer, and its wider tracks were like snowshoes, allowing it to race across ground that German tanks couldn't hope to cross (the German tanks had narrower tracks meaning they bogged down in mud and snow, and outfitting them with "snowshoes" just didn't work).
  • Being cheap also goes well with the fact that it was relatively easy to manufacture them by the numbers. Crew compartments were crude, sure, but all that time saved furnishing for comfort could result in more tanks being made and sent straight away to push back the Germans at Leningrad and towards Berlin. The Russians learnt that a tank that could not be pushed out and sent to the front lines was as good as no tank at all, especially when the front lines were less than a dozen miles from the factory where the vehicles were being built.
    • All wasn't rosy for the T-34, though. Initial T-34 designs came with a turret that was too small to allow for more than two people to operate(a common failure of many early-war tank designs, with French tanks having only one horribly overworked man in the turret), and were often built without radio equipment (another drawback of many early war designs). Both of these factors severely hindered the combat effectiveness of T-34 units and made them difficult to command. Hard-pressed factory workers also often pushed out half-finished T-34s with no gunsights and shoddily-built machinery that would literally fall apart after running for a few dozen miles. This understandably happened in factories that were at the verge of being run over by the Germans or which had to be shifted thousands of miles in a matter of days, although according to reports the best T-34s by far were from Factory No.183 (based in Kharkov pre-invasion, and the factory that first developed the T-34) and the worst were from Factory No.112.
    • Early T-34s could barely accommodate two men in its turret, leaving them cramped internally. The T-34M, which was under testing when Operation Barbarossa began, would have rectified this, but these new developments were hurriedly abandoned due to the necessity of cranking out as many tanks as possible before factories were overrun. The late T-34s armed with modified 85mm anti-aircraft gun managed to enlarge the turret but the turret design, like the Panther's, had shot traps that could make it vulnerable against guns that would otherwise fail to penetrate it. Armor protection, high for 1941, was inadequate against the guns of Panthers and Tigers, although it was still effective against smaller weapons at long ranges.
    • Early T-34s were also borderline blind, a combination of not having a cupola, and terrible optics for both the Driver and Gunner, effectively blinding it, and further escalating a problem of only being able to engage German tanks in close distances. Later models rectified some, but not all of the problems involving the T-34's visibility, with one tank commander straight-up referring to his T-34 with it's hatches sealed up as "deaf and blind".
    • While simple to manufacture, T-34 was not exactly "cheap." Its engine was largely made of aluminum (the design began as a project to fit lightweight diesels to long-range bombers), which USSR was very short of until the later stages of World War II. The heavy use of aluminum is one of the factors caused the Germans to decide that T-34 cannot be economically copied.
    • While sloped armor is a very good idea, the T-34 was generally agreed to have been an overly enthusiastic adopter, with sloped armor on all sides, leaving the tank a with relatively little usable space and limiting the ability to install larger turret rings. Successor tanks like the T-44 and T-54 kept the sloped front armor, but not the side/back slopes, similarly to the American Sherman and German Panther.
    • Another problem with the crampness is the Christie Suspension, which, while good, eat up a lot of space, further exacerbating the above issue, and is hard to service. While the T-34M (which would replace the Christie suspension with torsion bar, amongst other improvements including turret for 3 people) never got into production due to outbreak of the war, post-war Soviet tanks pretty much abandon Christie suspension due to that reason.
  • To quote creator of this tank, M.I. Koshkin: "Even a fool can invent something complicated". And this tank was simple.
  • The Military Channel show Top Tens episode on tanks ranked the T-34 as number one, ahead of M1 Abrams. One of the main ranking categories were production numbers and historical impact. The M1 Abrams, while arguably the best modern tank, has not yet made significant historical impact. Also, they're very high-tech and expensive, meaning there aren't very many of them made ^note Although this is a relative term; there are over 8.000 Abrams in service all over the world, but this is a drop in the bucket compared to the 85.000 T-34s of all modifications that rolled off the assembly lines. The T-34 is the second most produced tank in history(after the T-54/55) and was crucial in turning the tide of a world war. It is, basically, the AK-47 of tanks.
• While often forgotten in shadow of T-34 and IS tanks, the Soviet light tanks - T-60, T-70 and T-80 (the first one, not the modern one) actually were the machines, which stopped the German Blitzkrieg on its tracks. Up until 1943, they were the most numerous tanks of Soviet Army. While not as impressive as their bigger brothers, those light tanks were cheaper, could be build on automobile factories (which were more numerous than heavy industrial plants required for T-34), and due to well-refined design, descending from pre-war series of amphibious tanks (T-37 and T-40) were quite reliable.
• The Kubinka Tank Museum near Moscow has got tanks of just about all degrees of awesome in one place. Including the five-turret T-35, including Obyekt 279, and including a 188-ton Maus formed from the hull from the turretless first prototype mated to the turret from the second prototype.
• The humble M4 Sherman has a poor reputation nowadays due to its performance during the Second World War, when it was forced to fight Panthers and Tigers with an inferior gun and Zerg Rush tactics. However, that all changed when the Israelis got their hands on some Shermans and gave it the love it deserved. Their first major kitbash, the M50 Sherman, ironically replaced the original 75mm gun with a more powerful French 75mm gun derived from the German Panther's Kwk 42. Another kitbash, the M51, did away with the 75mm altogether and opted for a 105mm gun. Both types saw extensive action during the many Arab-Israeli Wars, facing tanks that were far superior to any Tiger or Panther. The Israeli Shermans, along with other more modern Western contemporary designs, consistently beat the crap out of these newer tanks.
  • Just like when inferior German tanks faced superior Soviet ones, or were far outnumbered; one suspects that crew and general army quality has something to do with this. The fact that Soviet export models were greatly inferior to the original models used by the Soviet military is also a factor.
  • And as an extra dose of irony, Syria fielded, amongst other things, surplus Panzer IVs.
  • The Sherman, despite being outgunned and out-armored by the Panther and Tiger, did have some real advantages. It was the very first tank to have a (vertically) stabilized main gun, which helped make firing after moving easier since the elevation didn't have to be adjusted after stopping. It also was quite agile for a medium tank of its era and relatively compact (at least in length and width; it was a bit tall for its size), allowing it to go places a Panther or especially a Tiger could never dream of. In an era where most tanks made use of a hand crank that would allow for a full 360 degree turret rotation in one minute, the Sherman had an electrical system that could do the same in as little as fifteen seconds. And finally, it was probably the most reliable tank of World War II, with some Shermans managing to make it through the entire Western Europe campaign with no more than a single major overhaul. This reliability was intended for the tank from the very beginning, as the US had to ship all of its fighting forces afar for combat and a maintenance-heavy tank would have caused unneeded delays on campaign.
  • There's also the fact that Tigers and Panthers were exceedingly rare, with around 1,500 Tiger Is, 500 Tiger II's and 7,500 Panther tanks being made. The US built almost fifty thousand Shermans. Shermans did quite well against the more common Panzer III and IVs since they were closer to its weight class than the heavier Tiger and Panther. Plus, much of the Sherman's more powerful upgrades were delayed either due to reliability issues or crew ergonomics issues, or looked over by the troops on the ground as unnecessary at the time. However, once the upgrades had their kinks worked out and were implemented Shermans became far more effective against German armor.
  • The Sherman also had an excellent service history with the US Army, contrary to modern history films that often exaggerated its failures largely due to only very basic research (for example, the oft-quoted "it takes 5 Shermans to take out one Tiger" was redundant. The Tiger was a heavy tank, and the entire point of heavy tanks was summed up nicely in the concept: take down more than 1 vehicle from a lesser weight class; furthermore, as noted below, the "5 Shermans for a Cat" thing is mostly myth). During the battle of Arracourt in 1944, the US Army lost only 30 Shermans while destroying over 90 German tanks - mostly the vaunted Panthers. While lacking air support^note Besides one madman who mounted bazookas on the wings of a scout plane; it was way too cloudy for any kind of combat air missions beyond that. This was also somewhat helped that the US Armored Corps had adequate support of mechanized infantry and artillery, something their German counterparts were severely lacking in, if they were lucky enough to receive it at all.
    • Better tactics and training can make up for a lot of deficiencies in tanks—and the Sherman was not too far behind the tanks of 1940s or even 50s, with appropriate upgrades. During conflicts in Middle East and in South Asia, Israeli and Indian Shermans made mincemeat of Jordanian and Pakistani M48s on several occasions.
    • The 5 Shermans for one Tiger is actually just an Urban Legend, which stems from the fact that the smallest combat unit of tanks (a platoon) was 5 tanks. So you would need 5 Shermans for a Tiger because you wouldn't usually send less than 5 Shermans for a job, whether it was for taking out a machine gun nest or an isolated tank.
  • Well before the Israelis created their Super Shermans, the British upgraded the Sherman to carry the enormous and powerful 17-pounder anti-tank gun, this being their best AT weapon. The resulting tank, the Sherman Firefly, was rightly feared by German tank crews and Fireflies became priority targets to the extent that the Firefly's main gun was often camouflaged to resemble the Sherman's original 75mm gun.◊ Famously, it was likely a Firefly that did in German tank ace Michael Wittmann's Tiger, as noted above.
    • The Firefly was not without its own disadvantages however. The oversized 17-pounder gun barely fit inside the M4's turret, making it difficult to aim and load the gun,^note The stabilizer and powered elevation/traverse systems of the base M4 had to be removed to make room, the gun had to be shoved in sideways, and then a the turret had to have it's back cut and the radio made to stick out said back, and even then, the gunner had to get into a hilariously contorted position to aim and fire the gun and a decent high-explosive round wasn't available until very late in the war. To give a point of comparison: the original 76mm-armed, small turret Sherman was rejected by the US Army because it was too cramped inside for maximum crew effectiveness. The 17-pdr gun was even bigger than the US 76mm gun, and had to be significantly modified to fit inside a Sherman turret, and generally comparable or slower in loading speeds to a 90mm gun, such as used by the Jackson (which, itself was a returreted Sherman)^note Part of this was due to issues with British tank/cannon procurement during the war—artillery branch had the say on what kind of cannons were made, and little attention was given to how adaptable these designs were for tanks.
  • The 75mm gun-armed Sherman, although not as powerful as the 76mm variant, was able to penetrate Tigers from flank and frontal shots during Soviet testing. Also, it fired a superior high explosive shell than the 76mm variant (due to the 76mm needing extra casing material to withstand higher velocity, and thus less HE filling. This makes the 75mm much more effective against enemy infantry). The "Sherman Jumbo" assault variant had additional armor but usually retained the 75mm gun (about 100 had the 76mm gun). In fact, the very first time Shermans got into a confrontation with a Tiger, seeing that their AP rounds were having no effect, the US tank platoon fighting the Tiger loaded HE rounds and fired at the Tiger until it stopped fighting back; the Tiger crew were killed by the concussive force of the HE rounds.
  • The US also eventually got their own Sherman variants that performed better against German armor, such as the Sherman Jumbo and Easy Eight, which had significantly more armor and were commonly fitted with the more powerful 76mm cannon. To put it in perspective, Jumbos had almost as much frontal armor as a Tiger I.
  • The main problem with the Sherman was that since it was so simple and successful at the start of its career, the powers that be saw no reason to do any serious planning to replace it. Shermans at El Alamein in late 1942 were regarded with mild fear by the Axis due to the massive increase in firepower and armour compared to what they were used to facing. By Normandy in 1944, when faced by what was effectively the same tank, the Germans had moved ahead with equipment and now refered to Shermans as Tommy Cookers (more due to lousy ammunition storage practices^note Generally attributed more to the Brits, who had a habit of stuffing extra ammo absolutely everywhere inside a tank, which improved endurance but made every penetrating hit more likely to cause ammo fires than any fault of the tank itself, and remedied with "wet" storage; furthermore, despite the name, crew casualty rates were astonishingly low given how easy it is to get out of an M4 quickly in an emergency, aided by the fact that American ammo tended to burn more slowly, which generally gave the crew enough time to escape before the inevitable cook-off and fireworks show).
  • The M4 Sherman was deployed after the T-34 so had less of a shock value to the German forces who had prepared anti-tank guns like the pak 75mm and Flak 88mm. It was a highly reliable vehicle that had small but important upgrades in only a few years' time to improve its mobility, armor, and most importantly its gun. The tank units were generally happy with what the 75mm could do, and didn't initially adopt the 76mm gun armed Shermans due to concerns over logistical complications; this attitude changed rapidly once the Normandy invasion was underway and the "Tiger Scare" set in among Allied tankers.
  • While the Sherman was produced in smaller numbers than the T-34, this was more a result of the United States simply not being as focused on a single land war as the Soviet Union. A good portion of American production was put towards the naval war with Japan, as well as an air war and bombing campaign in Europe, not to mention supplying trucks, food, and countless other supplies for the entirety of the allied military. If the U.S. had singlemindedly produced M4 models like the Soviets did with the T-34, it's likely that the Sherman production would have vastly outpaced that of the T-34.
  • Sherman tanks, send in USSR, were well-received by Russian tankers, who loved their reliability, good ergonomic, effective radio equipment and powerful weaponry (albeit they criticized their height, which made Sherman's more obvious targets than T-34, and low-quality armor on some production series). The USSR imported more than 3600 Sherman tanks, of diesel-powered variety. Initially, due to concerns about the ammunition supply, some Soviet Shermans were re-armed to use Soviet-made guns, but after the logistical problems were solved, this practice was abolished. Russian crews gave the machine a passionate nickname "Emcha", which was abbreviation of "M - chetyre" (translation of M4 number).
    • The high profile of the M4 design was partly so it could accept a wide variety of engines, including aircraft radial engines as necessary (indeed, some early marques were equipped with such a radial engine). Thanks to a minor economic hiccup years prior, only aircraft engines were still being developed at any significant pace, so the tank designers took that into account. This design choice left enough room under the main compartment to store main gun rounds vertically, which was helpful since in "wet storage" ammo racks this was the only way to store main gun rounds.
  • While unsurprisingly inferior to the Panther and Tiger, the Sherman was in fact superior to the most common German tanks, the Panzer III and IV, as well as its Soviet counterpart, the T-34, thanks to its stabilized gun and impressive reliability, as proved against the former in WWII, and the latter in the Korean war.
• The M26 Pershing, the ancestor of M47, M48, and M60 was only introduced in the last year of world war 2, but is well remembered. Like the Tiger it used a repurposed anti-aircraft gun but improvements made its gun closer to the Tiger 2 gun. It did have reliability issues, however, partly due to the engine essentially being M4's engine being used on a tank 10 ton heavier, which first resulted in the US Army rejecting it for service outright (before heavy advocacy resulted in a small quantity being shipped to Europe over objections), and eventually led to its service in the Korean War being cut short and replaced by M4 and M46 instead. The heavier weight also proved a logistical problem, as most if not all WW2 US pre-made bridging equipment was designed to take the weight of a Sherman-sized vehicle but not a Pershing-sized one. Like the Panther, the Pershing was designed, not as a heavy tank, but as an outright replacement for the Sherman, essentially being the "Missing link" between WW2-era mediums and the modern MBT.
• Some credit has to be given to the Medium Tank M3, built by the Americans but primarily fielded by the British, who chose to dub the tanks "General Lee" (with the original American-designed turrets) and "General Grant" (with a newer British-designed turret, which was enlarged to fit a radio set). In addition to starting the American tradition of naming armored vehicles for generals (Sherman, Stuart, Pershing, Patton, Sheridan, Bradley, Abrams, etc.), the M3 also carried an unusual armament mix of a light high velocity gun in the turret paired with a heavy low velocity gun in the main body of the tank. This was done because there were no current turrets that were large enough for the 75mm gun, and the US needed a medium tank with such armament right now (at least as a stop-gap) rather than waiting for the proper turret to be designed (which would come within a year in the form of the M4 Sherman). Pulled from service with the arrival of the Sherman, many Grants and Lees were retooled into various unusual vehicles, including one version that used a high-intensity turret-mounted spotlight to blind German defensive positions during night battles.
  • The M3 Lee was also sent to the Red Army. While the Russians were not happy with the high profile, the poor hull shape, inadequate armor and the need for gasoline fuel (as opposed to Diesel), they liked the high explosive capacity of the weapon, and the spacious crew compartment allowed them to function as heavy Armored Personnel Carriers in summer, carrying ten troops armed with SMGs.
  • Obsolete in Europe in mid-1943, the Lee and Grant tanks were shipped on down the line to British 14th Army in Burma, where the high silhouette was not an issue in jungle combat and the secondary weapons proved effective against Japanese infantry. The high-mounted turret machine guns were especially effective against Japanese snipers hiding in trees.
  • A word on gasoline engines: One of the (many) myths that gets passed around regarding the inferiority of American tanks mentions that they burned gasoline rather than diesel fuel, making them far more likely to catch fire in combat. While it is true that many American tanks (including the Lees and Shermans) burned gasoline, it is also true that most German and British tanks did as well. For various reasons, including the state of the art of engine design at the time, only the Soviets (and the Japanese, but the Japanese tanks weren't exactly anything to write home about) were big into diesel-engined tanks. Gasoline-engined Lend-Lease tanks probably presented more of a logistics problem than a safety problem for them.^note Which was a non-issue for tanks like the Sherman, which were built with diesel engines if they were intended to be sent to the Sovs.
• The M10 Tank Destroyer. Designed as a stopgap "heavy interceptor" vehicle to blunt German armored spearheads after they broke through the frontlines, the M10 used a slightly modified M4 chassis with an open-topped turret on top mounting a 3-inch high velocity gun for defeating armor. It did quite well at what it was designed for in the few instances where it performed its intended role—one of these being the Battle of El Guettar, where it made a impressive debut and helped stop a German attack that included Tigers. In the majority of instances where it could not be employed for this role (due to there being no German armored thrusts to turn away—or, later in the war, much of any German armor at all), it didn't do too badly at indirect fire support and bunker-busting either (though at cost to the barrel life of their guns). The Brits also made use of the vehicle, either with the original 3-inch gun or refitted with a 17-pounder gun (both variants became known as Achilles, though this name is now only commonly used to refer to the 17-pdr equipped variant; the base model with the 3-inch gun is commonly called Wolverine, but this name is poorly attested in archival records and is of uncertain origin).
  • Another word, this time on US Tank Destroyer doctrine as used in WWII. A very common misconception is that the US did not intend to use its tanks (like the M4) to fight enemy tanks and wanted to leave this to the tank destroyers—commonly paraphrased as "tank destroyers kill tanks, tanks kill everything else." In reality, the intention was for tanks to be used as general support vehicles and tools for breakthrough and exploitation, and this included taking out enemy tanks as necessary. Indeed, even the M4's 75mm gun was chosen for all-around utility including armor-busting, and it only started to become out-classed in this regard once Panthers and Tigers took the field. Tank destroyers were intended for purely defensive applications—move quickly to a point of ambush after a German armor breakthrough, and intercept this armored thrust. (In practice, the tank destroyers were used for other jobs most of the time.) Tank destroyers like the M10 were no longer produced after the war because most commanders thought that specialized tracked vehicles were redundant for this role because a good tank should be able to do this job just fine. On the modern battlefield, other vehicles have stepped in to fill the same role, such as attack helicopters equipped with anti-tank guided missiles.
  • As mentioned, the Brits received and made use of American tank destroyers as well. The only difference was that since they didn't use American tank destroyer doctrine, instead of calling them tank destroyers and creating a dedicated ground forces branch to crew these vehicles, they designated them as self-propelled guns and crewed them (mostly)^note the driver tended to be a tanker with artillerymen.
• The Slovaks have a Version of the T-72 that has a pair of 20MM Anti-air guns attached to the side of the turret.
• The very first tank battle took place at Villers-Bretonneaux in 1918. It involved a battle between 10 tanks on the British side (1 male Mark IV, 2 female Mark IVs, 7 Whippets)^note :In World War I British parlance, a "female" tank was one armed solely with machine guns, while a "male" tank had cannons as its main armament and 3 German A7V Sturmpanzerwagens. None of them were very good tanks, yet the battle looked awesome, with both sides acquitting themselves quite well: the Germans lost their lead tank, Nixie (whose crew later stole her back), but knocked out 4 Whippets and forced the female Mark IVs to retreat, while the British and their Australian allies ultimately won the battle.
  • The very first British tanks however, were pretty noticeably not of this trope in practice, and their German counterparts weren't much different. They moved at a speed slower than an adult walking, even impacts that failed to pierce the armor was likely to cause shrapnel to fly off inside the hull (forcing crews to be equipped with protective equipment made of thick leather or leather and mail), ventilation was poor and the engine being housed in the same space as the crew caused the interior to be so hot that numerous tank attacks ended prematurely from its crew being too sick to continue or even unconscious, the fuel tanks were inside and so them being ignited somehow would likely doom the entire crew in short order, their combination of slow speed, huge size and thin armor also made them fantastically vulnerable to artillery and even light German mortars and to top it off, the things were mechanically unreliable and many of them broke down or were bogged down just trying to arrive to their first battle...but that being said, their first battle had the few of them that were there catching their enemies entirely by surprise and caused the Germans to flee before them, if far too slow to actually chase after them and achieve much more than making them run away.^note After the Germans got their wits together, they brought some of their light field artillery pieces to the front for use in the direct fire role as the world's first anti-tank artillery. As the tank's armor was only thick enough to stop small arms rounds, the unfortunate British crews were quickly blown to smithereens. Well, tanks had to start somewhere...
• British Infantry Tank II Matilda. Before late 1941 it completely outclassed anything the Germans and Italians could throw in, and the only weapon which had chances to destroy it was the 88 mm anti-aircraft gun. It gained the nickname Queen of the Desert during the Operation Compass in 1940. Obsolete at West by 1942, the surviving Matildas were shipped to Far East - where it proved superior against anything the Japanese had. The Australians dubbed Matilda as Queen of the Jungle. One of the more whimsical modifications was to equip Matilda with Hedgehog depth charge launcher.(The Hedgehog is actually a Cluster mortar system, and uses impact-fused rounds, and no, it was not used against submarines, but Japanese bunkers.]
  • The Matilda II has this distinction: it is the only British tank of WW2 that was in continual front-line service from September 1939 to August 1945.
• The Matilda's "companion", the Valentine, was no slouch. Although not nearly as heavily armored as the Matilda, it was still a small, well-protected and versatile tank that could fit a variety of roles. The diesel versions of the Valentine were very reliable, had superb fording and terrain-crossing capabilities, far better off-road speed than one would expect, and excellent fuel economy. The Soviets also received it under the Lend-Lease program, and while they weren't happy with the slow speed and weak firepower, they liked its extreme reliability and still-impressive armor. It is one of two tanks in WW2 that saw service in all fronts—the other being the M4 Sherman.
• The nomenclature of British tanks was a double-edged sword when psychological warfare was involved. It's a lot easier to be frightened by a "Tiger" or "Panther" ^note  These two were Names to Run Away from Really Fast after all. than a "Matilda" or a "Valentine". But it's a lot easier to deceive your enemy when you have the Fluffy the Terrible trope on your side too.
• The Polish PL-01 concept tank. Stealthy like the Armata, but also equipped with an unmanned turret to maximize crew survivability. Poland cannot go into space, but it can certainly make its war machines absolutely badass. Sadly, it went nowhere, and remains just a plywood and plastic shell over an old BMP chassis.
• The Indian Army used quite a few tanks post-independence, such as the French AMX-13, the British Centurion and the M4 Sherman. They also bought several Russian pieces, mostly T-72s and T-90s (both of which received considerable modifications and upgrades, often with a mixture of kit from practically everywhere). They also developed some tanks of their own, such as the Vijayanta ("Victorious" in Sanskrit) - which was a version of the British Vickers Mk I, and the Arjun (named after a famous hero in the Sanskrit epic poem known as The Mahabharata). The Arjun is supposed to be the equal of the T-90 and the Challenger tanks, and was infamous for a prolonged Development Hell. The current version, the Arjun-3, is now under production. With a 120mm Gun, an Israeli guided-missile system (to be replaced with an indigenous one once it gets out of Development Hell, at any rate), a German engine made by MTU and a computerised fire-control developed jointly by the Indians and the Israelis, it's shaping up to be quite a formidable machine.
  • …except, frankly speaking, all domestic-built Indian tanks are mediocre machines fraught with reliability problems, and the Army won't touch them with a ten-foot pole. While a good machine on paper, all iterations of the Arjun tank suffered from the "design by committee" problem, and those that enter limited production are passionately disliked by the soldiers, remaining in production largely to appease the nationalist politicians. The Indian Army, on the other hand, has just ordered another 500 of the newest T-90MS model to serve as its armored backbone.
• The Pakistani Al-Khalid tank is roughly equivalent to the Russian T-80 (same size, same gun, similar armor and mobility), and backs that up with the power of a cool name: it translates to "The Immortal Tank".
  • Unfortunately for them, it's basically a Ukrainian-built diesel version of the Soviet T-80, and there won't be any more of them: the Morozov factory in Kharkiv that built them went into decline and cannot currently produce any new armored hulls, and for the guns they use the Ukrainians (who cannot produce them either) basically cheated Russians, when their relationship was still passable, stating that they'll use them for their own tanks. Nowadays, Pakistan has switched to Chinese, China being their traditional ally and arms supplier.
• The ISU-152, a 152mm howitzer mounted on the IS tank chassis, was a heavy assault gun that -was also used as a heavy tank destroyer. And a fearsome one, at that- like the British Sherman Firefly, the ISU-152 was The Dreaded to German heavy tank commanders. This was mainly because its massive 152mm gun created enough blast force to blow the turret clean off a Tiger tank, while its 90mm front armor was enough to protect it against return fire. Even if the round itself couldn't penetrate armor, these heavy HE shells could easily stun or kill enemy crews by spalling effects or pure concussive force. Due to its capability to destroy the Panther, Tiger and King Tiger tanks and even the rarely-fielded Ferdinand/Elefant and Jagdtiger tank destroyers, it received a nickname- zveroboi- which translates to "Beast Killer" in Russian. In fact, prior to the introduction of the SU-100, this was the only thing capable of reliably knocking these German vehicles out—and even after that it remained a major reason why King Tigers weren't very inconvenient to Soviets, despite being absolute nightmares in the Western front.
• The 1K17 Szhatie, the only laser-armed tank in existence. It was designed to blind enemy optics and shoot down missiles.
• The title of largest military machine even suggested, seems to be awarded to the "Oboy" - the "fortress-destroying machine", suggested by (very patriotic, but not exactly very practical) Russian engineer Smishin during First World War. The "Oboy" was essentially an enormous metal egg, about 650 meters (2000 ft) in height, and almost a kilometer wide, made of thick armor plates and driven by internal eccentric flywheel, rotated by equally enormous steam engines. The whole contraption was supposed to crush the enemy troops and fortresses by just running them over. The project was dismissed by military as being completely fantastical.
• While Italian tanks are usually nothing to write home about, the Ariete is a respectable design, comparable to most post-Cold War MBTs in most respects but with a little exclusive improvement: the very accurate gun and gun control/target acquisition system allow to shoot down any helicopter daring to come close enough to try and lob a missile at it.

---