Why do British tank names begin with the letter C? Look at Crusader, Cromwell, Churchill, Comet, Chieftain, Centurion, and Challenger.
Matilda? Valentine? I think it may have been something to do with British Armour tactics which desginated tanks as Infantry or Cruiser, the Cruiser type tanks got names begining with C, the Infantry tanks didn't. Postwar tanks were closer to the Cruiser types than Infantry, so the "C" names stuck. Course I could be and possibly am completely wrong, but I have a dim recollection of something to that effect.
It's a kind of peculiarly British obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) - when we start doing something we find it hard to stop. We also named SPGs after church people (Sexton, Priest, Bishop, Abbot) and started the infectious habit of naming US tanks after American generals. Brits were not alone in this - The Germans, for their part, suffer from an unhealthy obsession with big cats. The Americans were well into catchy little alpha numeric tags (eg M4) before they cottoned on to the whole naming thing. :x
Thought it was because the more modern British MBTs were 'descendents' of the cruiser tank line whose names began with C, rather than the infantry tanks. From the Cruisers Covenanter through Crusader, to the Heavy Cruisers Cromwell and Comet, to the Universal Tank Centurion and ultimately to the Main Battle Tank Challenger 1 and 2. Although I suppose it doesn't explain Churchill (Infantry tank), and Conqueror (Heavy tank) and a few others that sort of don't fit the mould.
Just bought the latest Military Modelling Special issue on Armour modelling, and the very nice article on the history of the A10 (early Brit tank, not the USAF aircraft!) states that the A10 was to receive the name "Cobra" as the first of the Reptile class of cruiser tank, but official thinking changed before the name was adopted. If it had happened then maybe we'd have had Gecko, Iguana etc rather than a string of "C" names...
The Germans, for their part, suffer from an unhealthy obsession with big cats. lol so true what about the Russians? T-34,T-72? they arnt very original :roll:
not only cats: hummel, wespe,hornisse, elefant and the non less famous maus ( what a joke: a maus of 188 tones)
IIRC the first US tank to recieve an official name was the Pershing, M-4 and for that matter everything preceding the M-26 is just as unoriginal, besides whilst I'm no expert on the matter I'd bet money that Soviet tanks had unofficial names that were every bit as imaginative as anything anyone else came up with.