Oooerr, did someone say Conqueror?
Pretty much obsolete from day one with yet another failed attempt at auto-loading but an absolutely beautiful vehicle
aesthetically, and the first ever tank to get a gas turbine engine treatment... The wide-skirted hang of the thing!
A firm favourite, and the noise of one trundling past at Duxford is just unforgettable.
Centurion wins it hands down for me as the primary evolutionary step into the next generation. The short flowering of the ww2 German designs appears to me to be a blip in those evolutionary terms that was running down all sorts of atavistic routes by the end of the war, the Maus is kind of a full stop in their strange gene-pool. Traces remain, some important concepts survive, but the family would have died out eventually from inbreeding.
Cheers,
Adam.
I've never minded girls with splitting hulls.