http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTxZibECa3E
… same problems … :army:
As what, it was pretty good in its day just too big, heavy and more importantly costly especially when the Centurion with 105mm L7 could do the same job for the Brits to use, Conquerors were retired around the time the Chieftain was coming to fruition (last Conq rolled off production line same time as first Chiefy prototype).
Few made so few spares or refinements to tank.
The American Army and Marine Corp had the M-103, what was same same. The M-60 with the L7 was vastly more efficient and effective. Both tanks were in response to the Stalin series heavy tanks. But I suspect they would have had issues had they had to road march into Western Europe…
Actually I’ld like some info on contemporary Russian heavies on that issue. 
It is astonishing that even when the MBT thinking or the British “Universal tank” doctrine was already born, they still were prone to get into the “heavies” trap.
Hey Steben, try looking up the IS and later KV series tanks, such as the IS4, IS6, IS7, IS8, KV4, KV5(ish), and ST-I/ST-II. I’m sure there are others, but information on those is relatively easy to find. It may be just an online game, but the World of Tanks wikipedia project has pretty good info for those tanks, assuming you open all the sections on the page.
I think the heavy trap was an illusion of security, thicker armor with a good gun while sacrificing mobility (Merkava anyone? :D) seem to make sense. You may produce less of them, but in theory they have greater survivability and kill-per-death ratio compared to MBTs with overall average armor, gun, and mobility.
Probably, yes. However, even the Tiger I tank didn’t make any sense at the end. And the Tiger was actually not that unreliable and was quite mobile, compared to many other heavy tanks.
The MBT concept varied between nations, the Warsaw Pact and NATO also had different designations for the same tank.
Leo 1, AMX 30 - good gun and mobility but poor armour
Centurion (originally a heavy cruiser then Med then MBT)- good gun, good armour, good off road mobility but low road speed
Cheiftain - Excellent gun and armour, low road speed, average mobility
Dont know about the M48/M60 series really seemed to have good mobility and good gun but average armour and larger size, I rarely operated with them though.
All tanks were a trade off Mobility-firepower-armour Each nation chose its specific requirements as to which was most important. To say MBT’s had overall average armour, gun, mobility is a little wrong - depended on the tank and nation.
USSR T54 and T62 Medium tank’s were classed by NATO as a MBT’s
The main heavy tank threat for NATO was the IS10 later name changed to the T10 which only left service (albeit reserve) with the end of the Warsaw Pact in the 1990’s (it was the tank the Conqueror was developed to beat).