World's WORST Military Vehicles

Gunner13

Gunner13

Active member
Dedicated to vehicles that just didn't work out or work right.

US entries:

M561 Gamma Goat. 6 wheels, 3 articulated sections and a zillion headaches. Even though it was a poor amphibious vehicle (it wasn't very watertight and spun the wheels for propulsion/steering) the compartments for the Driver/Co-Driver and engine always had a nasty little lake of water, oil and scum in the bottom, which lead to electrical problems galore.

M59 APC. The US Army's answer to the Wooly Mammoth, but without the wool. High sided, mechanically complex, slow and impossible to hide. The exits for the infantrymen in the back were 2 armored doors barely big enough to pass one soldier at a time thru each.

M73 APC. Close cousin to the M59 and better only in that it had a hydraulic ramp instead of the doors. Cost more that the M113 did 10 years later and was still too big to hide.

M3 Grant/Lee Tank. Tall, flat-sided two-gunned tank with riveted armor that was too thin to stand up to anything much. The rivets tended to fly around the inside of the tank when it was hit and kill or injure the crew even if the shot didn't penetrate the armor. Had an underpowered 37mm cannon in the top turret that could only penetrate thinly armored opponents and a short-barreled 75mm in the lower sponson that was good mostly for High Explosives only. Nearly impossible to hide, or miss, in the desert or other open country.
 
id

Put the
M113 on that list....thin armour,penetrated by anytihng....I know someone who was in one when they had a remotly operated charge explode on them....That M113 had extra passive armor, and sand bags put on it...still the explosion melted the side of this thin APC...id rather be on foot.
 
T-54 Tank. Just a crapy design thats too obsolete to be featured on today's battlefield, which fortunatly for the US, it still is in the Middle East.
 
I disagree

The T54 was at its time a good tank.it was cheep, had thick armor, a large main gun(100mm), good top-speed. It dose have a few problems.
And i agree that it has no place on todays battelfields. but when it was desined in the late 1940', it was greate. :tank:
 
Hands down worst vehicle ever was da Vinci's tank. Geez, a tank the size of a village powered by horse teams, what an idiot. One of our Abrams could drive right through it. Genius my hind end.

:lol: :lol:
 
lol redneck I'm thinking the worst military vehicle would have to be the Trojan Horse. I can't even imagine how hot and cramped it would have been in there.
 
But it worked perfectly. It went off without a hitch, so it could arguably be the best military vehicle ever. 100% success rate. :wink:
 
Military motorbike, with its side-carrage.

Those things are fast but lightly armoured (obviously) and can't carry heavy weapons because of the stabability of the bike. Good for recon & backtracking but poor for battle :lol: :shock:
 
Hey Sherman105: What do you mean add the M113 to the list? It's one of the most successful APC ever. Solid, flexible and reliable design with loads of capacity. It is not the designer’s fault that people keep trying to use it for things it wasn't intended for (i.e. urban combat). In situations like that, you're better off dismounting or, like you said, converting an obsolete tank chassis to APC.

Other vehicles to add:

British Matilda I - Well armored, but slow, underpowered, mechanically fragile and under gunned - only 1 machine gun and no way to up-gun (ooh that describes a lot of Brit WWII tanks, doesn't it???)!

M520 GOER - Big old amphibious cargo truck with no suspension (it used is oversized tires to take the bumps). Liable to bounce excessively (and possibly flip) if driven too fast without a full load on board. Replaced in a hurry in the mid 80s by the HEMTT (my unit in Germany had 5 tons in lieu of GOERs and we considered ourselves lucky!)
 
ok

thats a good point,but,what is it usefull for? if it isent good for anything,its a bad vhiecle. IT DOSNT EVEN DESERVE THE TITLE APC-
ARMORED PERSONALL CARRIER-
ITS NOT ARMORED.......! THAT THING CAN GET SHOT UP BY AK47S!!!
 
It stops AK47 rounds..

As I have said earlier, we bought an old M113 in Lebanon, and used it on the firing range...

It stopped 7,62x51mm without a problem..
Both from out Handguns (AG3) and machine guns (MG3).
12,7mm Multi Purpose penetrated the first wall, but stopped in the rear wall.
12,7mm APS (Armor Piercing Super) penetrated both walls....

The M113 series is not bad for what they are/was intended for.

It's no Tank, but it's ok as an APC, and it was not made for Urban Warfare..
We use it for a lot of different tasks here in Norway:
Forward Observer vehicle, Command Post, Armored Ambulance etc..
And we are upgrading several of them now, with a new and modern interior (FO and CP).
 
As

As i said,"Armored" is not a right term,maybe-"LVPC"-
"Less Volnrauble Personall Carrier".....
It should be able to protect at least against 0.5,for pits sake....
 
Try This One

TYPE 90II/ 96 / 98 / 99

Powerplant: 8-cylinder turbocharged diesel
Max Speed: 37 mph
Max Weight: 48 tons
Armament:

one 125mm smooth bore gun
one 12.7mm machine gun
one 7.62mm machine gun

Nice one compared to the Russians and Americans
 
solomonwanca: If you mean modern systems shuch as the M1A2, Leopard II and Challenger 2, perhaps, but it is a bit slow compared to them. Which country is this one from Russia or China?

Moving along to other nominations:

Char B1 Heavy Tank - a rotten 1937 French design that reverted to some of the worst features of WWI tanks while introducing some bad features all its own:

1. Mechanically complex and broke down a lot.
2. Tall (2.79 m), which made it very hard to hide or move.
3. Underpowered for its size and therefore slow at 28 kph max speed.
4. Had a range of only 180 km, which forced frequent refueling.
5. Placed the main exhaust vent for the engine on the left side of the hull, creating a huge vulnerabilty
6. Worst Feature: Forced the commander to double as the gunner and loader for the 47mm gun.

It did have a few good features, such as respectable armor, a fair 47mm gun and a radio, but these where overwhelmed by the bad ones.

M103 Heavy Tank. The US answer to the T10 and IS series Soviet heavies, but in a new and very bad way. It featured a very good 120mm main gun (based on a US 120mm/4.7" antiaircraft gun of WWII), but combined that with poor reliability, huge weight (56.6 metric tons, as much or more than the M1A1), short range (130 km), slow (max speed of 34 kph) and huge size (11.3 m long witht the gun forward, 3.8 m wide and 2.9m tall! - try concealing that outside of a barn). Phased out very quickly in the 1960s as a real dog. :P

FV214 Conqueror Heavy Tank. A British entry that was almost as bad as the M103, with most of the same bad features. Featured slightly better range (155km), but was even heavier at 64.8 metric tones. Also phased out in the 1960s.
 
OK.

German WWII Panzerjager Tiger "Elefant" TANK DESTROYER.
Slow, with no rotating turret, no MGs against infantry, unreliable, heavy.
 
The German Panzerkampfwagen VIII Maus was even worse...
It was defined as a Super Heavy Tank, 188 tonnes (metric)!! :shock:
A mobile fortress...
Hitler did originally order 150 of those, but only one was produced (of obvious reasons....)

Speed:13-20 Kph
Lenght: 10meters
Height: 3.6m
width: 3.6m
Armament: 128mm KwK 44 L/55 & 75mm KwK 44 L/36.5
1 x 7.92mm MG34

Check out www.achtungpanzer.com for more info
 
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