When you think of British tanks in this era, you typically think of a lot of failures. Like most nations, Britain experimented a lot with its builds, starting badly and improving dramatically toward the end of the conflict. There was, after all, a good reason why the UK benefitted from the likes of the Chieftain and the Centurion during the Cold War. So, there were many to choose from but this is the one which keeps getting the bizarre amount of hate:
One of Hobart's Funnies - an informal name for Major-General Percy Hobart's experimental builds - this tank was a modified Churchill Mk. VII. Reworked and rebuilt, the VII was in mass production at the time and a limited number of them were set aside for special projects like this one. The tank was reworked to fit a hull-mounted flame projector onto its hull along with a fuel trailer, and thus was born the Churchill Crocodile.
Various nations had been experimenting with various flamethrower tanks for some time now, usually with mixed results. This might be the source of some of the derision this vehicle gets, as its role has it listed along with disasters like the Italian L6 Lf flame tank, or the modified Type 95 Ha-Go. However, they proved to be highly effective in their own right for a multitude of reasons, least of all being the sheer terror that the Crocodiles could inspire in enemy troops.
Rather than going in firing, the Crocodiles needed only the implication of their use to win fights. They could advance toward an enemy target with all the benefits of a Churchill's heavy armour, and spray an enemy position with fuel from the flamethrower itself. Note that I said fuel rather than fire, as the petrol in this thing could be shot without igniting it. When approaching a bunker or fortified position, it could soak the entire thing in highly flammable substances, and then wait, just threatening to set it on fire.
The brilliance of this is that it effectively left the enemy soldiers with only two options - Run or surrender. After all, what were they going to do? Shoot back? They get burned to death without inflicting much damage. Manage to blow up the Crocodile? Even a stray spark from it would likely ignite the fuel leading to the bunker. Make a desperate charge against it? The Crocodile was made with anti-infantry use in mind, they're playing into its hands.
Given that the flamethrower had a spraying capability of between 120 and 150 yards depending upon sources, it could get them from a relatively decent range for a weapon of its type. This made them very effective siege breakers, and more than a few bunkers tended to surrender within the first one or two ranging shots. As such, it basically showed up and won its fights when used properly. Even without being used against those targets, however, it was a highly effective terror weapon and it could send troops running at a moment's notice.
Yet there was an even greater strength to the vehicle atop of all of this. The Crocodile was still a Churchill Mk. VII at the end of the day, with all the advantages that offered. Even if its flamethrower ran out of fuel or it was jammed un some way, it still had both its main turret and machine gun to fall back on. If needed, it could even use all three at once. As such, it could still serve in its intended role as an infantry tank with few to no problems. This gave it a level of versatility that a number of its contemporaries lacked, thanks in part due to the Churchill's design, but also retained its overall combat effectiveness against a broad range of targets.
This is, admittedly, the cliff notes version of what it was capable of, but it's also most of what you need to know. The Crocodile was a good, generally effective, tank built for a specific role that it more than excelled at. Perhaps its only sin was falling behind technologically so that it was phased out before the next war, but that happened to most tanks of this era.
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