Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 236 - The Bob Semple Tank

Episode Date: November 28, 2022

Once upon a time New Zealand made their own tank. It did not go well. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys sources: https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww2/NewZealand/Bob_Semple_Tank.php The Semple Tank, J.Plowman, Classic Military Vehicle Magazine National Library of New Zealand

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad free and is totally supporter driven we use that money to pay our bills buy research materials that make this show possible and support charities like the red crescent the flint water fund and the halo trust consider joining the legion of the old

crow today and now back to the show hello and welcome to the rare but majestic Zuku regular episode of the Lines of the Lamp. Oh boy! Yeah, majestic is what I'd call it. Just look at Cary frolicking through a field. Francis drinking softly from a babbling brook.

And me, dead from a hunter. It's just like yeah, with like, you know like uh 30 30 shot directly to the skull uh just like bleeding out drentnally near babbling brook yeah it's uh getting taken out by some guy who sees himself as a survivalist driving his a hundred thousand dollar a year pickup truck that lives in a suburb and can just shop at Walmart. Yeah, his GMC the new electric Hummer that's like $120,000.

You wouldn't get an electric Hummer. He's not a pussy. He's going to get a gas powered thing and roll full directly into his own butthole. Everybody knows it's totally gay to have a good fuel economy, guys. Just getting an electric hummer, but then also getting

a diesel generator that you keep in the bed. Just so you can still roll coal and say, you're not a fucking pussy. Someone did that. Unfortunately, it was with a Tesla. Plugging your car in is female traits man yeah in fairness i mean like what was that really a tesla rolling coal or was that just a tesla on fire uh let's you know i mean it could be one of the current tesla stock yeah oh that is yeah that's been that's been fun to watch bottom out you know what the real fun

part is is is we're recording this about two weeks before it comes out so by the time it comes out new more new and horrific things will have occurred that we cannot we're gonna give you we're gonna give you time stamp right now right now it is 11 10 2022 and it is 9 41 on the eastern seaboard so So anything beyond any, any where the economy has collapsed and you're listening to this on like an iPod seven years in the future after 90% of the population has, has died. That's the date we're going from.

Yeah. If, if you're listening to the future and Twitter is still a thing, cool. That, that's very much in question at this point because um the ftc is investigating the violation of consent order uh musk has said today there's one thing that elon musk knows a lot about it's uh yeah we have to be believed out yeah let's uh we're just

gonna move past uh that uh parody parody parody. We're not actually saying that. If he can call a guy a pedo as a joke, I could call him a **** as a joke. Fuck him. I want to be very clear. That does not reflect my binding legal advice to Joe on this matter. But yeah, the FDC has said he might be filing a consent order. He had an all-hands meeting today with all of his staff in which he told them to be more hardcore, but also, whoops, we might be bankrupt soon. Tesla stock has gone down by like, I don't know.

It's like a quarter. It's lost a quarter. Yeah, like a quarter over the course of the past few weeks. And our latest update on the rules for parodies is going forward, accounts engaged in parody must include parody in the name, not just the bio.

To be more precise, accounts doing parody impersonations, basically tricking people is not okay. That is the man who owns twitter right now just like his brain is just leaking out of his fucking ears i love it it's very funny this is one of the uh you know in uh a lab uh all lawyers are bastards with like the hell dude and a few others have have said that you know um have gone really deeply into what constitutes a lawyer brain in the way that Rudy Giuliani's

brain just rotted over time as he just became a victim of his own success. And I want to be really clear that this might be the first really confirmed case of a lawyer brain escaping the contagion of... Or the containment of the legal profession and really just seeping into the general populace. My man might actually manage to tank his entire empire by just being such a fucking dipshit that he can't stop

posting. And frankly, I support him in this. I too cannot stop posting, so I dig. The problem is he thinks he's a poster, but he's a reply guy yeah that's fair in in a normal world he'd just be like a uh an account that has under a thousand followers and never gets any likes on his tweets uh you know it's like that kind of low b but kind of like ingrained in some weird group of twitter but yeah it's just, it's all replies. You go to his Twitter timeline and it's

all replies. And I, for one, love our posting CEO. I do not. I wish nothing but bad things for him. Why let literally what everybody is telling you get in the way of your dreams of losing $44 billion? in the way of your dreams of losing 44 billion dollars uh you know um speaking of people doing things they probably shouldn't oh that's right it's a lion's led by donkeys podcast episode i'm trying desperately to segue here and i'm failing um uh so this show has something of a of a track record for talking about horrible things. Uh, it's not uncommon. Wait, wait, this literally, this literally the entire part part.

I was not told there would be horrible things that I'm, I frankly, I'm offended. Uh, you, you haven't had a happy episode since like the, the, the cute animals that like were on ships, but some of them died. So, well, actually they're probably all dead at this point. I counter that with, recently we published a bonus episode that started a beef with the fake Albanian royal family. He is in my mentions.

That is true. That did happen today and was very good. Obviously, my time zone is very fucked up, so I woke up to like 500 notifications of him calling me, saying that I have special needs. Which like really just goes to the fact that we need to do our first live show in an Albanian bunker. Both because A, it would be hilarious. And then B, because like we could probably find this guy and like, I don't know.

Like I could drink four beers and challenge him to a fist fight. It would probably be funny you know you know what shout out to that guy for not shout out to that guy for not using the r slur though you know he like literally called you special needs which was was very was very funny which you know what i'm not gonna argue on that one um prince le, if you are listening, fuck you. You motherfucker. This is the official first podcast of EF that we have, and it's with the fake Albanian king. Because first of all, he pirated the fucking bonus episode.

That bitch didn't even pay for the fucking bonus. You don't know. Check your most recent. Look your i do your monthly mailing so i haven't seen i haven't mailed anything to slovakia um like a lions led by donkey sticker unless like he has like a very very online screen name uh he did he did he did not pay for that episode which is fine but if you're calling yourself a prince do you think he has somebody who listens to the podcast and then relays it to you or do you think he sat down and listened

to the entirety of this podcast to be mad online about it going off of his comments he listened to the whole thing which I mean I don't know if I would listen to a podcast an hour and a half long podcast shitting on my own dad. Actually, I probably would do that. I mean, I think you've recorded that, if I'm honest.

You've recorded that entire episode. Or at least you could probably piece it together over time. But, you know, Prince Lekha, you, me, WrestleMania this year. You're fucking done, dude. You fucking chump. Your family tree ain't got no branches and your bones look like bird bones. You're going down, son.

No, we're not going to fight him. We're going to take him and put him in the Thunderdome with the Habsburg, with the wee-boo Habsburg and let them fucking Thunderdome it out. Battle of the jaws. Actually, no, it'll be great because we could do a tag team match. It could be

me and Joe versus the Albanian Prince of the Habsburgs. And we'll just, you know... Okay, yeah, I would 100% do that. That's going to be our first... We're actually not going to record anything. It's just going to be live on fucking Twitch or whatever. And it's just going to be like a

cage match. 100%, if there's anything that I could think that my entire lineage of ancestors would approve of, it's probably putting a chair to a Habsburg. Let's just go for it. If there's one thing that me and those guys have in common, it's that

neither of us are actually royalty of anything. those guys have in common it's that neither of us are actually royalty of anything but you know we we talk about bad shit on this show all the time and this is probably the first episode that either of you two have ever been on we're not a single person is going to die um so how dare you bring us on and not kill a million Nazis with us? I was promised genocide. And frankly, I'm upset that there's not going to be a single corpse related infrastructure item in this entire episode. If I don't have at least 50,000 dead Russians, I'm just not going to be into this. I mean, they're only a short flight away from me currently.

You could still go there. How many people have died from dysentery in this episode? I need to know this now. None. None. This is a dumb tank episode. It's fucking unacceptable. Let's say it's World War II,

and you are the plucky little nation of New Zealand, a country I don't think we've ever talked about on the show before. If anything is good, like good on, you know, like I was I was talking to the, you know, Tom recently during like a 33rd counties episode. And like, you know, I was like, what is it like to, you know, be Irish and travel abroad and just have people not hate you? And I feel like New Zealand is kind of broadly the same. Obviously, they've had longstanding issues with the indigenous people that they

displaced. But broadly, if you go abroad and you're like, I'm a kidney, or not a kidney, a kiwi, they'll just be like, yeah, all right. I'm a kidney. Boy, you got to get me beard. I don't think we've ever talked.

Maybe we mentioned them before. But, you know, they're in World War II. And unfortunately, they happen to be in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with the rapidly expanding Japanese Empire. War crimes in its way towards your front door. And, you know, New Zealand isn't exactly a military powerhouse. At the time, it was part of the British domain. You have no tanks nor the ability to really build any of your own. And at the moment, Britain isn't going to give you any. So what do you do? Enter what would be the worst tank ever used in war, if it ever made it that far. And it doesn't have an official name, but it is known as the Bob Semple tank. What we have here is

we have the Homer, but of tanks. Kind of. Actually, the Homer might be a better tank. We do have to talk about the man, the myth, the legend, Bob Semple, because he rules. He was born on the 21st of October in 1873 in Crudine Creek, New South Wales, Australia. So I guess his every bad American joke about New

Zealand come to life because he's actually Australian. Yeah. I mean, to go back to the Simpsons episode, just the one where they find the prime... The Bar versus Australia one where they find the prime minister asleep in an know, bar versus Australia one where they find the prime minister, like, uh, asleep in an inner tube in the middle of a pond. That's like, go have a soup,

you cunts. Um, the reason why he eventually moved to New Zealand is because he was, uh, he's a mine worker in Victoria and kept organizing and taking part in labor strikes. Uh, this eventually led to him getting blacklisted and being completely unable

to find work, so he moved to New Zealand. And he started doing the exact same thing again. That's better than in the United States where they would just deport you to a different state. In Australia, they just have to walk you 20 minutes outside of any city

and you just die. The kangaroos will take care of you. I look forward to getting a lot of hate mail from Australians. It's very funny that we're doing this episode while our producer is in Australia. So if you see him, it's his fault. And Nate has nothing but kind things to say about your country. It's true.

I guess good on your mates. He's getting Aussie pilled. If he misses his flight and is still there in two weeks, direct all of your complaints to Nate. Find him in a bar and tell him how much you hated Francis' accent. Not mine, because I both, A, will not do an Australian accent,

and B, everyone knows that the Massachusetts accent is essentially the, I don't know. Essentially, yes. The breath of angels. The breath of angels in regards to American regional accents. Yeah. As Mark Wahlberg would put it, really. Mark Wahlberg would probably say a lot of other things that we can't put on the podcast as well. Just bleep this whole section. No. Bob Semple moved to New Zealand.

And he also began organizing their labor force as well. And took time out of his day to become a professional bare knuckle boxer because why not he earned the nickname of fighting bob simple and in fairness uh you know if you're a labor organizer at that particular point in history the two things kind of do go together yeah that's fair and i assume bare knuckle boxing in new zealand is just cornering and punching tiny flightless birds. Just being the shit out of a fucking kangaroo or like a platypus. There's no kangaroos in New Zealand.

You shouldn't exist, motherfucker. Now, when World War I started, Bob was vocally against taking part in it and actually hid his son's age from the local draft office. For this, he was eventually arrested. This would not be the only time he was arrested.

He attempted to use his position as the local mine union boss to pressure the government to abandon conscription. At one point, he told his miners to, quote, not get lassoed by the Prussian octopus conscription, which, credit where credit is due, I think this is the first time I've ever heard someone use the octopus thing for political commentary, and it wasn't anti-Semitic. So, good job, Bob. It was anti-German, which we're all fine with. As you can imagine, he got arrested again under the new War Regulations Act, which at the time meant free speech was kind of out the window. And then that also meant he didn't even get a jury.

He just got thrown directly into prison. And he was there from 1917, got out, and began touring the coal fields once again, telling anybody who would listen that the war was dumb and maybe break your foot before you get drafted. He actually said that. I agree. Don't go to actually said that. I agree. Don't go to World War I. It sucks. I think I'd rather saw my foot off than do that.

In retrospect, it seems like it was a bad time. I've heard not great for the lads. They didn't have the Pizza Hut like I did. Have you done a Gallipoli episode yet? Not yet. I'm planning for it um like it's it's in the the beginning stages uh the the pre-come of a podcast episode just a just a not a nocturnal

edition of an idea yeah uh no uh he uh after he got out of jail and was touring he was eventually elected into parliament in 1918 and then immediately lost his seat the next year. He remained working as a union organizer until the late 20s when it seems like people stopped caring that he had that conviction from wartime hanging around him. So he was eventually elected to the Wellington City Council and then leader of the Labor Party, which at the time was not in power. Though eventually the Labor Party came back into power after the elections in 1935. And he kind of has a thing for running and losing elections before he finally finds his safe seat. He ran for mayor of Wellington, lost, and then was elected to a different parliamentary seat, which he finally sat on until he retired. But this is the

more important part of our story here. Bob and his party returned to power pretty much just in time for the world to implode into war. And he was also named the Minister of Public Works, which is a cabinet position. And peacetime, it's exactly what it sounds like. You handle unemployment relief, Great Depression relief efforts, infrastructure projects, stuff like that. It was kind of like an overall... It wasn't... Because when you say public works, I just think it's like, oh, we're going to... Maybe like civilian conservation corps sort of thing with paving roads or whatever. I think they also did that as well. From my understanding, this ministry doesn't even exist anymore.

Yeah. Well, it was funny because I was researching the various different secretariats in Massachusetts recently. Everyone who just listened to that in Gafod, shut up. But one of them was during the 70s, what is now the Executive

Office of Labor and Workforce Development. It was literally just called the Secretariat of Manpower affairs and that was just like what it was called yeah it was it's kind of a strange name i think that the ministry of public works kind of got privatized um some qe listener can correct me because it's probably not that simple because it never is but when world war War II broke out, being the Minister of Public Works, because New Zealand wasn't exactly set up for a world war. So they ended up just slapping a ton of more responsibilities onto ministerial offices that already existed, like Minister of Public Works. And it effectively made Bob Semple

the second most powerful man in the country after the prime minister well third if you count the king of england but nobody's counting that fucking rules hell yeah fuck yeah bob we all we all love a guy in like a commonwealth government whose name is just bob not like you know roger, like Wadsworth, the 14th or whatever, but just like, who's that? Who's in charge of that agency? Oh, it's Bob. Yeah, Bob. He's in the unions. He likes coal miners. He wears a...

Bob's a guy that would wear a hoodie and shorts. Yeah. 100%. Or the Kiwi version of a hoodie and shorts. I don't know what that would be. Probably a hoodie and shorts. A bush hat and a banana hammock. Or maybe a hoodie and board shorts, maybe?

Yeah, maybe. Write in if you know what the equivalent is. If you're a Kiwi and you're listening to this, look at pictures of John Fetterman and then write in and tell us what the Kiwi equivalent of that is. You really love a guy who works his way up from, one, getting out of prison for resisting World War I conscription and unionizing mine workers to being the second most powerful man in the country within the space of a decade.

It's pretty impressive. But unfortunately, his politics did change, And some of that's for obvious reasons. He was now very pro-conscription. And he was pro-censorship as well, despite the fact he was previously thrown in prison for violating both of those things. very far away from New Zealand. It was, he, he considered it not New Zealand's war. I obviously agree with him. Uh,

but you know, why the fuck should anybody from New Zealand have to go and die in a muddy hole in France? Because some Austrian got clapped by a Bosnian server who was buying a sandwich. Right. There's no, it's a little bit different when the war is in your backyard. Yeah.

Like World War II was a lot different. Yeah. I mean, Japan was steamrolling their way through the pacific everyone was terrified that eventually there'd be an invasion attempt on either australia or norzealand or both a japanese invasion of australia seems wildly impossible uh because you know it's mostly 99 nothing and snakes it's like it is mostly uninhabitable like they're it's like when

the didn't um when they took over the illusion aisles and it's like okay and like i guess we'll just sit here and freeze to death yeah okay have have fun on your rocks i suppose well it's like even like a lot of like dystopian uh like fiction about like you know some sort of invasion the united states ultimately ends up being like yeah they uh you know some sort of invasion the united states ultimately ends up being like yeah they uh you know they invaded the pacific coast and they pushed out to the rockies and then they just stopped uh because there wasn't a lot else there really it turns out america quite a large country um in australia large and very hostile uh very deadly yeah you can you can you can survive on the plains of uh of america um americans did it for a long time but there's there's a reason there's no like

nebraska equivalent in australia yeah why like everything just nothing uh yeah i mean it's kind of like canada in that way where it's like yeah everything along the american border a lot of people uh everything uh you know significantly farther north or it's significantly way the fuck colder. And yeah, just like fucking moose. There's a lot of moose, not a lot of people. um now uh i it's not true no i hope nobody actually believes i think that i should point out here though that the japanese never actually had formalized plans to invade new zealand they were you know like if everything goes really well and we and we win we'll take care of new zealand at some point and that's definitely more of a pressure Australia type thing rather than we're going to invade and do hand-to-hand combat with the wallabies and shit. But it was still a very real fear. And New Zealand was effectively standing by itself in the middle of the Pacific Ocean because Australia and New Zealand are very close

to one another. They're not exactly military powerhouses at the time, and they're both heavily relying on the British. And the British are very far away and very busy getting their shit kicked in by the Nazis. And even now, if you described a military powerhouse, you want to be like, New Zealand. Yeah. I mean, I worked with their soldiers

in Afghanistan. Great dudes. Yeah, I mean, nothing against them. It's not to say that they're not professionals in everything they do or that the assets that they have are great or whatever. I wouldn't be like, yeah, man,

don't fucking worry. We got New Zealand on our side necessarily. That's a separate question. They'll bring their air force of flightless birds so i guess they're also infantry one is like if anything it's a it's a compliment like ah fuck you buddy you've accidentally spent too much money on a social welfare state instead of spending all of your money on a national defense and security state uh you fucking idiot

now here come the japanese and don't you wish you had a hydrogen bomb? Well, guess what? You're on our side, New Zealand, so you're okay. We're going to go ahead and just vaporize about half a million Japanese people over the next month and a half. Now, New Zealand and Australia, for that matter, entire defense plan rested pretty heavily on the British military. This included for naval defense, virtually the entire Air Force and any heavy vehicles. But none of those things that they needed were actually in New Zealand at the time. And in case you haven't looked at a map, it's not exactly a short trip from one to the other. Shipping anything over would take a very long time. And this is made much, much worse by the fact that as soon as the war started, the allies in Europe were not exactly having a good time.

Then Dunkirk happened, forcing the British to leave a lot of their heavy vehicles behind, meaning that there was a shortage back home. New Zealand sure as fuck wasn't getting anything. New Zealand's entire armored force consisted of six vehicles. None of them were a tank. There were all these things called Bren carriers carriers if you're not familiar with them it kind of looks like if you slapped a thin steel armor on one of those tiny cars made for kids that you plug into a wall um in short they're fucked you know you don't want to rely on a fleet of brendan carriers yeah i mean it's you know it's like oh uh

uh we want a tank. Well, do you really have a tank? Well, we got the Swiss-Dachshund tank. Yeah, you ordered it. You described a tank through a series of bad telephone calls and they made a Bren carrier. It's like a track vehicle.

We'll hold on to that thought because we're getting to something that kind of happens like that. A track vehicle that can carry a single fucking machine gun. At this point, Bob Semple decided if he couldn't buy or get any tanks, he would just have to find a way to plug the gap in New Zealand's military. New Zealand Defense Department had been in talks with the United States to get their hand on some armored plate, something that New Zealand couldn't really manufacture on their own yet. This is because Bob had heard of something called the

Distin Tank Design. The Distin was a joint project by the famed tractor manufacturer Caterpillar and a saw company called Distin Saw Works, which is not exactly who you want to team up to build a tank. Fire powers combined. Fire powers combined, we effectively what they did was slap a bunch of cheap armor plate onto a caterpillar model 35 tractor the distant had a 37 millimeter gun in its body and a turret with a 30 caliber light machine gun it could reach the blistering speeds of maybe five miles an hour,

which would be good if it was World War I. All of this could be built for around $20,000, which is around $300,000 today, which is still very cheap for a tank. However, when it comes to military equipment and military engineering and stuff, you really do get what you pay for sometimes, and the Dist distant was a piece of shit it was super tall and therefore easy to see there's a reason why it's fairly cheap for a tank because it's it's not a very good tank yeah it's it's barely a tank at all it's civilian tractor tracks could barely go off road after being loaded down with cannons and armor and oh yeah the engine was completely and totally uncovered and exposed sitting in front of the tractor.

Nobody ever bought a single one of them, but apparently three were built and given to the kingdom of Afghanistan for free at the time and vanished. Nobody knows what ever happened to them. Probably broken. Good thing that never happened again. damn see we we only had one of the bases i was on in afghanistan had a uh had a t-55 on it um that that the local mechanic was was that was his project he was like i want to get this thing running before the end of uh uh the end of his his deployment but now it's just like man now i could have found i could have found a new zealand tank in afghanistan just turn the corner and find some weird like engine on the outside metal abortion happening here there's like a non-zero chance that we're gonna see a fucking youtube video of the taliban somehow like

resurrecting this fucking getting it up and running again yeah uh but uh bad news bob couldn't get the armor plate from the u.s he couldn't even get blueprints for the distant because that would take too long. He couldn't exactly get an email of it. It's the 40s. So he figured that he would just try to build his own, a shittier version of a shitty tank that not even Afghanistan would actually pay for. All of this is despite the fact that Bob knew less about building a tank than the guys who built the distant which is never a good sign and like i should point out here this is not the only time this happens during the war shut up for trying for trying though you know like he's yeah

he's really somebody he he found a problem and that problem was we need a tank in case the japanese come and we can't get one i'm just gonna fucking figure it out let's go this incredible dad energy that bob's got going on wasn't alone in doing this though like australia was caught pretty much in the same kind of trap and found themselves rapidly having to slap together something that looked like a tank um this this resulted in something that was actually much better than the bob simple tank tank called the AC-1 Sentinel. The Sentinel's entire hull was cast steel, like in one giant piece, as was its turret, which is very weird. And it was powered by three car engines that had been wired together.

This turned into a mostly functioning tank until they brought it out for testing and discovered the thing barely worked, mostly because the engine is considered such a miserable waste of time and resources that when staring down the possibility of conflict with the Japanese, the government decided that, you know what? Maybe we should just use the resources from this tank and build more railroads, which yeah, you should probably do that. And like I said, the Sentinel in comparison to the Bob Semple is way better. But we haven't really talked about the Semple yet. We're getting there. He's finally getting close. Equipped with a pitcher of the distant tank and little else, Bob went to talk to a guy named T.G. Beck, who's a public works engineer from Christchurch, and asked if he and other department engineers could build this thing

that he wanted. Beck, a man who was in charge of an irrigation project, shrugged and said, Yeah, I could probably do that. I mean, we appreciate him. Yeah, we appreciate him. He's just like, I don't know. Fuck it. I got a welding rig and some spare time.

I don't know. Fuck it. Let's do this. I got a drill press. Let's do it. How'll back it a go. Without any kind of formal plans or blueprints, they began work at the Publix workshop in Tamuka.

Their plan was to take their fleet of 81 D8 Caterpillar tractors and build armored bodies for them. The tractors would be used for their normal purposes and if called upon for war service, they would have these armored bodies swung around and fitted on top via a crane. So they were kind of building a transformer. They would require virtually nothing to be done to the tractors themselves. And the entire tank body could be built completely separately. Though they did make sure to strengthen the suspension to accommodate the extra thousand pounds of tank that they were going to plop down on top of this like a Kiwi nesting doll.

But it's not enough. It's going to be a problem later on. New Zealand Matriska doll. Now, by June of 1940, the first prototype rolled out of the depot. No, not really. They still didn't have steel, so they built it out of wood. But the design was a monster. Wait, what?

Yeah, they built it out of wood. It's a wooden tank. Oh, cool. It's like a proof of concept. I mean, yeah, but even so, I feel like kind of going back to your prior comment there, I feel like there's going to be a weight difference. I feel like there's going to be very crucial differences. I feel like there's going to be a very crucial difference that has evolved that a wood tank is not necessarily going to solve.

It's a problem. But the main problem wasn't the wood, actually. It was the concept itself because it was a full 12 feet tall, which is huge for a tank if you've never been close to one. People think tanks are massive. I mean, it's pretty huge for a tank. If you've never been close to one, like people think tanks are massive. I mean, it's, it's pretty huge for like, I mean like my like big dumb lifted,

like pickup that I inherited is like seven feet tall and that's like way too fucking big. So no, for comparison sake, a King tiger tank was only nine feet tall, right? Like I feel like, I feel like 12 is a little excessive.

It would, it was the tallest tank ever built. It's something they still hold. It's a tank for tall guys, man. Not really. Finally, a place where you can do tanks. The extra space is not for people. For another comparison, there's a cartoonish Nazi wonder weapon called the Panzer VIII Maus

that was a full foot shorter than the fucking Bob Semple tank. It kind of does go into production, though most people don't consider this a tank that was officially in production. Despite that, it's the tallest tank ever produced by anybody ever, and it will

hold that record until the day of the heat death of the universe, probably. Arguably, the building the Bob Semple was more of a feat than building the Panzer VIII Maus because the Maus was never actually finished. They built a couple Bob Semples. So congratulations, New Zealand, you did it. You're the sleeper dumbest tank designer of World War II. Just coming in at the last minute. They had to scrap their plans to actually put a cannon on their tank because they discovered we have no cannons.

We actually don't have any of those. The one weird trick to prevent anyone from putting a cannon in a tank is not having any cannons for your tanks. Yeah, everybody was so worried about building something that could withstand, have a little bit of armor and move. And then nobody thought about, well, what if we want to shoot back? Like, ah, God damn it. Who's got a cannon around here? Well, they decided to replace it with six machine guns facing literally every single way.

There's just a pillbox at this point. A pillbox that can move, yes. Yeah, a mobile pillbox. Actually, that's actually unfair to pillboxes because those can protect you, but we'll get to that point. They had to carve out where exactly these would go, and it seems like they didn't put a lot of thought into it. One of the machine guns is put directly over the engine so in order to shoot it a crewman would have to lay down on top of a mattress that'd be draped of the running engine to protect them from getting burned um and they weren't even sure how many people should fit inside the thing

how do you convince anybody to do this shit like is it is it just because we're of an era where we expect too much just to be like hey man i need you to lay i need you to lay down on this fucking running engine to operate the gun inside of our wooden tank and like somebody's like yeah sure and like they put so little planning into all of this they never knew how many people should crew it like it went from eight to seven but then also six. So they're bad at engineering, but they're also bad at planning. But one of the weirdest oversights of the vehicle, by far, in my opinion, was that there was no turret hatches for the crew. And there was really no hatches at all.

Every member of the crew would be forced to enter and exit via a single back door. Just real fuck them energy. Remember, this could be up to eight people. Fuck these fucking nerds. I'm really fucking tired of hearing all their whining. Yeah, you're all going to go in and out of the same door, you fucking assholes. Yeah, I think that means they've effectively created the first military vehicle ever that could also be the victim of a crowd crush in the right event. So good job.

So good work there overall. So they're still on the wood tanks here. And that was the proof of concept. And despite this being a giant dumb pile of shit they decided to keep working on it because again what other choice did they have this product so they ordered a prototype made of actual steel like how it would be uh when it was really done and um they also got some form of armor plate, but not really. It wasn't like steel.

It wasn't really armor plate. So they had metal now. They didn't have to build out of wood. However, because they didn't have actual engineered armor plate, they ran into a problem. We still need something to protect this monster that we've created. So they decide to use corrugated magnanese, which is probably known better as the aluminum siding to your house. You know, I was going to joke to say they should just go to Home Depot and get some aluminum siding, but that's what they did, huh?

If you look at a picture of this thing, it looks like get some aluminum siding, but that's what they did, huh? If you look at a picture of this thing, it looks like they put aluminum siding on a tank. Yeah. So now you have a badly built, armed suburban home, I guess. It was slapped there at the understanding that because it was corrugated, and for people that maybe don't know what corrugated means it's wavy or whatever it would deflect bullets nope that's not how anything works and uh they didn't even bother testing it no like oh my god i'm actually i'm just now looking at a picture of it this is literally a killdozer but the killdozer was like better armor the killdozer had more armor however with all this new weight on top the uh of the the tractor body tests showed that it could barely crack five miles an hour and remember it's 12 feet tall and they quickly learned the same

lesson the 1990s suv manufacturers uh learned and that's things started rolling over if they were turned on even the slightest hill or grade that wasn't paved uh so they made it a a death machine but for only the people within it it's just like the uh the csa's submarine yeah it kills a whole lot of confederates to be fair this this doesn't kill anybody but it absolutely would have if they tried to use it um remember this is a tank shell on top of a tractor right so it's not exactly put together well it's it's not a it's not a well-functioning tank um so when the drivers hit just kind of like you know that'll do is like a fucking technical spec you know just like yeah it's fine like what torque does it need? I don't know. Tight enough. It's fine.

Yeah. What's the worst thing that could happen? Until it starts to crack. Right. So when the driver hit the gas on the test rides, they found that even at five miles an hour, driving straight down a perfectly paved road for fear of flipping over and dying, they still could not fire while moving. The tank shell vibrated so violently on top of the tractor that it shook the eyes in their

socket so badly they could not accurately fire the machine gun which also made driving awful that fucking rules just like just absolutely just like creating a fucking like like punishment chamber like this is just you know this is

just sadomasochism with a lot of extras. We have built a vibrator for your soul. Yeah, this thing was created by some kind of New Zealand cenobite. No. Obviously, the New Zealand army.

You have to get like a... What kind of percentage do you think you get for detached retinas from the VA? That's unfortunately, sir, that it's not service connected. You get nothing. It is if you're in a Bob Semple. Now, you didn't need to get in that Bob Semple. That wasn't even an army vehicle.

That's that was never officially adopted. Not service connected. That was a hobby that you had. Anyway, the VA is going to hire me now. connected that was a hobby that you had anyway the VA is gonna hire me now also just imagine like having to like explain to your kids that the reason why you like can't see them is because your retinas got detached while you were in a tank called the bob simple like you know it's like i was you know like sorry like you know but you know grandpa's like hearing is fucked because he was in like the fucking roy rogers of fucking tanks. Fuck is that? A union

guy who became the minister of public works made me sit in a vibrating shitbox and now dad's blind. It sounds like a lot of the cars that all my friends drove in high school, to be honest. When the army saw

these things, they fucking hated them obviously um they were worthless for anything uh but they still had no options so they ordered three of them um this construction was carried out in the railway workshop in addington which is in kreitz church starting in january of 1941 and they actually rolled out the first one in less than a month, which tells you the solid quality control that they had. Much like a Tesla, to be honest.

Just kind of slap it together like, yeah, I don't know. It's good enough. Well, this isn't fair. Not a single Bob Semple caught on fire. America was churning out battleships in eight days. What do you want? Yeah, that's because they like a manufacturing capacity like the world has never seen this is new zealand in 1940 uh which is mostly sheep and in fairness uh you know to the bob simple it has never run over a small child in a crosswalk that's true that is true i do take back my comparison

they did uh They did find some armor plate this time, but it was only less than a half inch. Like anything else, when confronted by a half inch of anything, this is just a disappointment. Then for a good measure, they still strapped on the corrugated roofing

tin they had laying around. That's what gives the sample its iconic dumbass look. if you're if you're wondering if they tested it yes according to one guy who worked on it and that's about it and how they tested it kind of showed that none of these guys uh knew anything about tanks or how to build one um according to one guy named saw bemple uhel, they tested the tank and it was fine. Don't worry about it. Don't look too far into it.

It's cool. They fired an anti-tank rifle at it, a weapon that was considered mostly useless by the end of World War I. Just so people don't think I'm shitting on anti-tank guns or whatever, they were used pretty extensively throughout the early stages of World War II with a minimal effect, but could still hurt lightly armored vehicles, something a tank is not. And the anti-tank rifles could penetrate significantly more than 0.31 inches of armor, which is what the sample was working with. And I just realized, I'll bet that sentence is when I read it out loud and out of context. For example, the Commonwealth's

owned boys anti-tank rifle that was like the British supplied everybody could punch through more than double the samples armor.

And this gun was thought to be useful only against lightly armored vehicles and soldiers were warned about never using it against the tank.

And it could fucking spit roast this thing. Again, a sentence I should have read out loud before I wrote it. But so the idea that they tested it with an anti-tank rifle,

I'm going to say dubious at best. I'm going to say someone pencil whipped that motherfucker because the boy's anti-tank rifle would have like punched straight through every single part of this thing. Well, it didn't blow the tank up it just uh you know went through and came out the other end and then blew up over there so you and you've only killed six no no that's what anti-tank rifles do they puncture through tanks and they kill the

people in them uh there's they don't like explode um it's it looks like a gigantic hunting rifle for hunting the most dangerous game so you can harvest the succulent tank meat from within. Is that what you were? The succulent tank meat? Yeah, I'm succulent tank meat. Was that your MOS?

Yeah, yeah. 19 kilos, succulent tank crew member. Many people are saying, Joe, how are you so succulent? I'm like, I don't know. I was born this way. By March of 1941, the second tank was finished and both took part in a parade in Christchurch on the 26th of April. And honestly, this is very funny to me because this entire thing was to promote the war effort. Another tank was sent to Wellington, another to Auckland. They were all paraded around. This parade was meant to show

the people of New Zealand this gigantic tractor monster to prove to them that we were able to defend ourselves. They wanted to raise public morale. Don't worry. This did the exact opposite. Look at the goddamn thing. If you're listening to

this podcast you don't know what the bob simple looks like google it real hit pause look at this fucking monstrosity the picture on wikipedia specifically of the bob simple on parade it makes it look like it's got like the brain guns and the way that the front grill is it makes it look like it's got a face and And it's just the saddest face. Like, this is the worst McDonald's toy I've ever seen. Face in constant pain. So, first of all, they couldn't drive it anywhere due to the fact that they were so loud and hard to control and slow. They were worried about, like, because you could barely see out of the fucking things, even for a World War II era tank.

They were worried about hurting someone. They had to put them on tractors. They had to put the tractor on another tractor. Just a fucking Russian nesting doll of tractors. The engine kept stalling constantly. They were worried if they

actually drove it through Christchurch, they would just die. They had to see Frankenstein's monster tractor on parade securely in the back of a tow truck tractor type deal. It was specifically built for the Bob Semple because of how big it is. And that's actually how this tank got its unofficial name, the Bob Semple tank, because people were blaming him for the birth of this fucking thing. Much how people like to boo my own mother whenever she goes out in public. People had political cartoons published in local newspapers shitting on Semple and his tank, which is great. I can't think of another

situation where someone's writing a political cartoon shitting on a guy in a tank at the same time. We need more of that somehow. I don't know how we would get there though. However, public shit talking didn't stop the government from going ahead with tests because, again, they still had no other options. Well, and because, you know, federal governments will be federal governments, really. I mean, the Brits still hadn't made with the tanks. So, like, well, it's our best option, which is our only option. Nobody else showed up to the science fair with a different tank. So it's just like you win by default, I guess.

The two sweetest words in the English language, default. Now, we have no idea if the anti-tank testing actually took place or if it was one of the engineers covering his ass and pencil whipping some paperwork. But they did do some other tests for sure. And that is spraying them with machine gun fire to see what would happen um and you know one of the most minimum things you want in a tank is it stops machine gun fire you know obviously um one would say that's largely the entire point uh yeah it's like um as they were originally conceived like in world war one well due to the horrible design of the machine gun ports in the

tank for all of the machine gun all six of the machine guns inside bullets could puncture right through it and shatter sending spalling directly into the face of the gunners manning them this is known as bad you don't want that to happen with your tank people keeping track you just gotta wear your ipro and you'll be fine eye pro back then was just called eyes this is why it's important to have you on as a former tank crew member because Francis and I would not be able to you know we wouldn't know if that was good or

bad yeah many people don't know that it's actually very very bad your turret is full of very fast moving pieces of metal going directly into your face it's exfoliating Very fast moving pieces of metal going directly into your face. It's exfoliating. So there's that.

The generals present at the testing attempted to turn this turd into a diamond by noting their main complaint was, along with all of the other complaints, was just that it was too fucking tall. General Paddock, one of the New Zealand's commanding generals, really wanted to put a cannon on it because it's a tank. It should have a cannon. But New Zealand just didn't have any, making the turret pretty much pointless. So they decided to rip the turret off, cutting them down to a svelte 10 feet tall, which is still the tallest tank ever to be ordered by any country ever. And then they were accepted into military service officially by the military of New Zealand. So they were in military service, but they were immediately relegated to beach defense because they didn't have to drive or move at all to do that, which is two things that it was not good at. Now, even after General Paddock, who spoke well of the tank, despite hating it,

recommended that the government never build another one of these fucking things ever again uh and just to stop uh just i recommend i recommend we execute everybody involved and bury all of the bodies along with the plans and never speak of this again just to be safe we should also shoot the tank in the back to kill it uh but the truly the chappy of tanks. Of the three that were officially built, two were accepted into the military. Now, thankfully for New Zealand, just as the army was resigning themselves to probably dying in this goddamn thing

that looked like something out of the old TLC Junkyard Wars show, the British finally came through shipping them real tanks in the form of the Valentine II, eventually shipping them real tanks in the form of the Valentine II, eventually getting hundreds of them by the end of the war. Now, to add to that, the Kiwis also finally got a factory up and running that could churn out Bren carriers, which despite looking hilarious, even though these were the only things that New Zealand had

at the start of this entire episode, were still better than the Bob Simple thing. So there's that. Two of the actually had their tank shells taken off and they were returned back to civilian service which i assume means in the cars universe they're va retirees um but uh the third did see active service but not as a tank that also stripped off all of the tank shit, fit it with a dozer blade and then shipped to, I believe like new Guinea or something. But that also meant that was significantly more useful than it ever had been as a tank.

They just did like a return on the tank back to, back to being a, a bulldozer, I guess. Yeah. They released it back into the wild. Be free tractor. You don't have to pretend to be a tank anymore.

Beating our swords into plowshares and turning our tanks into tractors now, I guess. They did the opposite. They're like, what if we turn these plowshares into a sword? Fuck, this makes a bad sword. Put it back into a plowshare.

Mistake is a mistake. Melt it back into a plowshare. It's a mistake. It's a mistake. Melt it down again. Probably my favorite part of this entire story is just how much the people of New Zealand laughed at these fucking things. And they kept giving Bob Semple shit about them. And Bob, for being a slightly brain-damaged bare-knuckle boxer guy who used to breathe a whole bunch of mind fumes also got pissed off when everybody brought it up. He knew they failed as a tank, but the way he looked at it was like, fuck you, at least I tried. You know, fuck all these other people.

Bob Semple was trying to defend New Zealand and nobody else was doing anything else. So you can't really give you can't really give him shit for this. Like he's not a tank designer. He was just a guy who had a garage and some time on his hands during the meeting in 19. OK, before I read this quote off, I had to change it. It's not a direct quote. It's the 40s. Bob did not use the word Japanese for people. And I'll let you use your imagination for the other word that he used. So I had to change from slur into word.

But during a meeting in 1943, Bob had an exchange of that kind. And it ties up the entire... New Zealand's entire relationship with this thing. He said, quote, when I came into office, we had insufficient strength to protect a current bun from the attack of a blowfly. I assume that's a bad thing. I don't know what either of those things are. But if the Japanese could be killed with wheelbarrows, we could have stouched them. Sure. We had plenty of barrows. Two years before the war, quietly slipped machines to Fiji and Tonga, built aerodromes there secretly.

It was plain as the day that the Japanese would strike south through the back door of Singapore to New Zealand. What stopped them from doing this? Someone laughed in the crowd and loudly replied, Probably your tank, Bob. God, I love this shithead in the back he's probably a little drunk too he just kind of showed up and just cracked his third beer and just uh i don't know i don't know what stouched means like the if that's kiwi slang or old-timey slang or old-timey kiwi slang i don't know yeah there there's a lot of um i understood maybe about 50 of what you said i got the spirit of what bob

was going for yeah and bob replied if that is a cheap sneer you keep it i had a vision to try create something while a lot of others were just sniveling see his tank was a work of art he had a vision this is essentially the dialogue right now between everyone on twitter and elon musk it's unfair to call bob simple elon musk he has done way less horrible things that i'm aware of someone a new zealand listener i swear is going to send me an email like actually bob simple is a monster and here's why like i was gonna say i was gonna say it's like one of those things you have to like you have to qualify particularly particularly in a Commonwealth state. You're like, that I'm aware of because there's a better than 50% chance

he's going to turn out to be a horrible generation-spanning nonce or some other terrible thing. It's always possible. He's a white New Zealander who was former Australian. He was Australian. Yeah, he's absolutely racist.

He has said slurs that would make all of our hair curl, including my head is shaved. During a public speech. I mean, it's in the mid-40s. Everybody talked like that, unfortunately. But yeah, it's like...

I'm like, well, I'm not going to transpose that quote word for word. So in closing, I'll give what might be the most positive evaluation that the Bob Semple tank ever had. Now, listen if you can catch all of the ifs in here. This is from Peter Cook's book, Defending New Zealand Ramparts on the Sea. Quote, it's possible that the Bob Semple could have been a potentially useful tank in battle,

as is planned to have a 37mm anti-tank gun rather than the Bren gun in the turret. The armor was also not completely without bullet resistance, so it could at least be somewhat effective in the event of an efficient. What a vote of confidence. I don't think there's any, like, because this is World War II Japanese ships,

like, those things would get obliterated by... It's not even coastal defense. Where do you put those things? They'd be beach defense for an actual landing. And I will say, despite how shitty the Bob Semple tank was, I'll give it a fighting chance against Japanese tanks, which were awful. They were so bad. And they're the worst mass-produced tanks of World War II by far.

So it's possible. I'm not going to give them a lot of possibility there. Now, maybe if they attach a knife to the front of a Bob Semple tank, like those videos of people putting knives on Roombas. I don't know. Maybe give it a fighting chance. Just run it in. The best thing a Bob Semple could do is do what it looks like, and that is become an ISIS-built suicide truck or something. I don't know. Fellas, that is the Bob Semple tank. It's probably been requested more than any other vehicle to talk about. Unfortunately, there's not a lot to go off of because, thank God, the thing never saw combat. But yeah, that's it.

I have no segue here other than we do a thing on the show called Questions from the Legion where you donate to the show and you can ask us a question and we will answer it on air. And you could DM me on Patreon. You could email me. You could build a tank in New Zealand

and float it over to me here in the Caucasus. I don't know how you'd get here, but I would take your tank message. Build a Bob Semple tank and bring it to us. Yeah, I don't want a message in a bottle. I want a message in a tank. And you know what?

I'm glad I hit my tank bong before this too. So I was really in the spirit of this podcast. That's method acting. You're just method acting. It's fine. And today's question is actually like the most normal question I think we've ever gotten. Tell me something good happening in your life right now.

The world is terrible and I'm depressed. So what is something good happening in your life right now uh i don't know i mean i'm generally fairly happy uh the the podcast in the store continue to you know be doing well and uh i don't know i'm not unhappy i guess like i just uh a lot of qualifiers in there just really high praise that we got going on here well i mean like everything that i have going on like like that's good in my life is are things that have been going on that are good it's like i've got you know a family i've got friends i do a fun podcast like this like these are all things that make me happy and make me

my my brain not uh go run screaming out the door. The fact that I am not a big puddle of depression on a regular basis because I have Wellbutrin and marijuana, that's a good thing going on in my life. So what is keeping you happy right now? Drugs mostly. Next question. You know what I mean? As they say, any port of storm um i uh without just saying something stupid like oh i'm really happy about this podcast because like obviously i am and you can't really say

the one good thing happening in your life is technically what your job is uh that would be very weird in my opinion um but obviously like i'm very happy with my, my career. Um, and, uh, I, uh, my book recently came out, uh, last month and did much better than I thought it would do. Uh, which is always really nice when, you know, you work your ass off on something for, and I just realized I said, I can't say work is the good thing in my life. And I'm saying work is the good thing in my life. You have, you have a job that you enjoyed. Like that is a good, that is the good thing in my life and i'm saying work is the good thing in my life you have you have a job that you enjoyed like that is a good that is a good thing like not everybody sometimes it almost makes me feel guilty for enjoying it because people work so many like

i've worked jobs that i fucking hated so many people work jobs they fucking hate we have all worked shitty we're all in the military we've all had we've all worked shitty jobs it's okay that now in our middle ages it's okay to have an email job. It's all right. You don't have to. No, you don't. But I know Kerry and I do. We have email jobs and they're very nice.

Yeah, it's nice to be able to like... Today, I was talking to someone about community to work every day. And it was like, yeah, to be clear, I only have to go to work two days a week. And that's nice. I went into the office today and it was nice. But mostly, I stay at home and I work 40 hours a week, but they're not... I've worked much harder for a lot less money than I do now. Oh, yeah. For certain. Yeah. It's okay. It's okay to not hate your job. It's okay to be happy. You know what?

I'm culturally American. I'm supposed to be unhappy with my work life. Okay. If Twitter is still around while this comes out, I don't know what weird permutation it's going to be in two weeks from now. around or whatever like i feel like if if twitter goes away a large chunk of people who like us and our people are going to like i don't know maybe maybe become a lot happier because we don't have this thing to doom scroll and uh we'll have to start a forum return to tradition shocks what what are you happy about you have you've you've remained suspiciously quiet we're recording this in

november what are you thankful for not a lot of things but uh i'll be honest but uh one thing that i am very thankful for is i know that uh i um i related on the internet about a month or so ago that uh my my beloved uh dog had had pneumonia in one of his lungs and was you know in the fucking in the veterinarian hospital overnight was on oxygen and had to have an iv and i had to spend an unreasonable amount of money in order to like keep him good uh but he's like he's back he's feeling good he's like he's you know um jesus like fucking 12 years old now. And I never would have expected that when I first rescued him, you know, back in 2012. And the fact that he's good and he has been like an anchor to like me going through law school, me dealing with like my, you know, my father's death and like a

lot of other things. And so the fact that he is okay and is kind of like a puppy again, because unlike me, he's now lost his COVID way because he had fucking pneumonia. You know, he's doing better. And like that entire thing is good. And so like, he's,

he's happy and healthy. And as a result, he's, he's something I can hold onto a while. Like a lot of other things in the world are pretty fucking miserable. I'm thankful for that. That's good. Shout out to Medium Brown Dogs. I'm glad I had you guys on this show

for this question because if it was Liam, he'd be like, nothing. Fuck you. Bye. You don't have to go through life like Liam. In a world of Liams. Thank you so much for joining me today. Plug your shows. Yes. I am on What a Hell of a Way to Die, which is another show which the two of you are on often.

So if you like this, you should come over to my show too and give me $5 a month for a lot more of this. Gary, go ahead. And similar to that, as a sub-series to Hell of a Way to Die, Tom and I have been doing 33rd County. We've been talking about the intersection between the Irish experience and the Irish-American experience, in which I just very callously expose them to, uh, exactly how we've interpreted that in America and make them watch a lot of terrible Boston movies and other sorts of, uh, you know, various different media and things.

Uh, we are gradually moving towards hopefully, you know, launching something ourselves. Uh, and, and as part of that, hopefully we will be doing an entire Duncan-related episode, so look forward to that one. That's been much requested. Are we going to bring Tom to America? Has Tom been to America before? So Tom is talking about coming to America. How would you do that to anybody? And he's talking about coming to America in Boston in March.

coming to America in Boston in March. So there's a non-zero chance that we're doing a live episode for the St. Patrick's Day Parade in Southie at some point in the next week. Outstanding. So, you know, just know that whatever psychic trauma that Joe has enforced upon all of you

as a result of, you know, talking about genocide for many different episodes in many different ways, you have still suffered less than Tom will suffer as I bring him to the South Boston St. Patrick's Day Parade. Everybody, thank you so much for listening to the show. If you like what we do here, consider supporting it through Patreon.

You can do it for as little as a dollar. You get this episode early, bonus episodes, access to the Discord, etc. Or don't. It's your money. I'm not going to tell you what to do with it. But leaving us a review is free. And it helps us for reasons I don't fully understand. But yeah, leave us a five-star review.

Possibly support the show. And until next time, disregard the military-industrial complex. Build your own tank in your backyard.