Many thanks to https://www.facebook.com/759933444372886/posts/the... Yes the photo on the right is the actual real tank. Unreal, isn't it?

I love the Bob Semple tank.

Not merely because it’s so exquisitely crap, but because its inventor, Bob Semple, would be the first to acknowledge its crapness.

For those who don’t know, Bob Semple was the New Zealand government’s Minister of Works during World War Two. When Britain declared war on Nazi Germany, New Zealand had done its bit as the self-identified “England of the South Seas” by immediately sending off its strapping young men to battle Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox himself, way over in North Africa.

New Zealand basically bled itself white of military strength. But it’s the most remote country in the world. A million miles from anywhere. Come on. How likely is danger to threaten? Not very!

Then Japan declared war too.

And New Zealand started shitting bricks.

Oh sure, Japan is still a bloody long way off … but at the time, it possessed the second most powerful Navy in the world. Its fleets could smash through any naval opposition the Allies could deploy Pacificward. At least in December 1941. Britain's Royal Navy was already at breaking point containing Germany and Italy. What the hell could New Zealand do against Japan?

Improvise, that’s what. Bob Semple conducted a speedy-quick review of what local industry and production could produce: tractors and corrugated iron. Right. That’ll do!

He threw together the Bob Semple tank. It featured caterpillar tracks and steel sides and machine guns, and very few features you'd find on actual real tanks. Yes, if Bob Semple tanks went up against literally any other tank in the entire universe, they’d get the shit kicked out of them in zero seconds flat. But … the Japanese armies actually relied more on foot soldiers and banzai charges and military fighting spirit than conventional anti-armour doctrine. In open terrain, against rifle infantry, a mobile machine gun platform like the Bob Semple tank might actually do quite well.

But yes it looks ridiculous! No argument from me there. The Bob Semple tank got laughed out of Parliament. Semple himself readily acknowledged how idiotic it looked, but also quite reasonably pointed out that he was doing the best he could with the atrocious range of industrial output available to him. And I agree. If Japan had ever invaded and put his tank to the test, the general public and the nation’s MPs might discover the folly of relying overly on tacticool over results.