New Article: FV4401 Contentious: Britain's S-Tank?
In the 1950s, the British army investigated the possibility of a main battle tank weighing around 20-30 tons. Named the FV4401 Contentious, it was part of Project Prodigal, which eventually led to the highly successful CVR(T) range, some of which are still in service today.
Very interesting – especially using fuel as armour, which is indeed a nonsensical idea until they proved it worked!
It does look like a really bad idea until you see the test results.
There’s also the point, exploited by the Russians in their AFV designs, that diesel is a really good neutron absorber, thus providing a measure of protection against direct radiation from tactical buckets of sunshine.