One can certainly argue that Matilda II or Churchill were not garbage... sorry, trash, even though they were fairly specialized for the role and not suited to have the entire Army made from them. Even Cromwell had some good points compared to Sherman. And Centurion, I would argue the best tank design ever, was a British WW2 design.

The main reason for the prevalence of US tanks in 1942 onwards was quite simply because there were so damned many of them built. UK tank construction was simply unable to produce in the numbers that were required. However, yes, in comparison, the products of the UK in 1943 and 1944 were quite simply not up to the American standards.

The British started the war with some pretty reasonable equipment, such as the aforementioned Matilda II and Cruiser A.10, both of which were basically the equal of anything else in service anywhere in the world. Matilda sacrificied some operational capability for armor, but nowhere near as much as the French tanks did (and it still had more armor). A.10 was more operationally capable, but overweight for what it provided. (Rivets, unfortunately).

With the loss of many tanks of the BEF, there was a need to build whatever they were tooled up for, even if obsolescent. Hence the prevalence of 2pr guns both towed and in tank mounts, even though the replacement 6pr had been long accepted for service. 6pr did not find its way into tanks until early 1942, basically, Designs, similarly, developed in the interest of speed from what already was out there. The main British cruiser tank of 1941/42, Crusader, was basically a development of the first British Christie cruiser, and suffered a lack of upgrade ability. Compared to the M3 which came before it, it was pretty reasonable. Compared to the M4 which came out just afterwards, it was barely worthy. The next infantry tank, Valentine, owed its heritage to the A10.

For the next generation of tanks, the British, with the immediate pressing needs being met by both current production and what was coming from the US, was able to settle down a bit. Churchill and Cromwell/Centaur were the result. Churchill had no equivalent in US production as the US did not believe in separate tanks for infantry support and exploitation/pursuit duties. Cromwell took quite a long time to get all the kinks worked out. In 1943, although supposedly the equivalent to the year-older Sherman, Cromwell was a disaster. By D-Day, however, Cromwell provided a tank which was much faster than an M4, about equivalently armored, and not too far behind on the Firepower and reliability departments. An attempt to upgun, A.30 Challenger, was something of a disaster, the next move, Comet, provided a tank with the mobility of Cromwell, the armor and reliability of Sherman (but not necessarily ease of maintenance), and a pretty handy anti-tank capability at the cost of being pretty inconvenient to crew. With Centurion, they decided to throw the rulebook away. All limitations for railway gauges etc were discarded, and released from this, and with the knowledge that Comet and Sherman was currently being fielded, they took their time and did it right.

American tanks started from an extremely competent base design, the M2 Light and Medium. By basically playing with the same design all the way through the war, the US did not need to worry about rushing experimental designs into service. If you look at a 1943 M4 Sherman, you can see the family resemblance to the 1939 M2 Medium.

I might toot my own horn and suggest you go visit my Youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/user/TheChieftainWoT I review a lot of the vehicles discussed.

See also some of my written articles, such as the endurance testing of Cromwell in 1943. https://worldoftanks.com/en/news/chieftain/The_Chieftains_Hatch_Dracula/

If you have access to them, Fletcher’s trilogy of Mechanized Force, The Great Tank Scandal, and The Universal Tank, are good overviews of the progression of tank development in the UK.

In addition to what u/The_Chieftain_WG has provided, I answered a similar question some time ago and I think some of this bears repeating

The efficacy of British tank design and doctrine is a question that is complicated by several factors.

1.The need for tanks now

Most immediately, after the catastrophe in France, the British needed tanks. Any tanks. And they needed them now, simply because 500 obsolete tanks are better than no tanks at all when you’re face with an imminent existential crisis.

This meant that, for example, the A11 ‘Matilda 1’ continued in production long after it was known that the design was seriously flawed and the tank was essentially ineffective. Around 700 of these quite useless vehicles were built after Dunkirk.

The Covenator was another example of a bad tank that was rushed into production due to the immediate requirement for tanks of any kind. In peace-time, pre-production testing would have revealed that the Covenator had congenital flaws and the design would simply have been binned. As it was, around 1,700 Covenators were built. None of them ever saw a shot fired in anger.

The A22 Churchill is an extreme example of a type that was rushed into production – in this case the tank was ordered for full production without a single prototype being built. Of course, this meant that the early examples were plagued by faults. Vauxhall, the manufacturers, supplied each tank with a handbook detailing the faults and explaining that these were faults that ordinarily would have been ironed out in testing, but that the tank was essentially a good vehicle. They were right. The Churchill would go on to be arguably one of the most effective armoured vehicles of the war.

The same principle applied to armament. The 2-dpr was a very good gun by 1940 standards but was quickly becoming obsolete. The 6-pdr was much better but production was delayed because it was viewed as unacceptable to re-tool the 2-pdr production lines because the gap in gun production was unacceptable given the circumstances.

2.Logistics and reliability

The Axis in North Africa has the luxury of a short supply line, being only a short hop over the Med, while the British had to ship their tanks around the Cape. The long sea journey meant that corrosion would often set in, particularly in the early part of the war when tanks were stored on deck with little thought given to adequately protecting them from rust. This meant that British tanks developed a notorious reputation for a lack of reliability. The Crusader was not a bad tank but the sea journey had such an impact on its reliability that it earned a bit of an evil reputation for itself.

3.Non-doctrinal factors impacting tank design

There were several factors peculiar to the UK that affected tank design. Mainly, the UK was heavily dependent on rail transport. This had several effects

•There were very few heavy road-going vehicles from which tank engine designs could be drawn. The A12 Matilda II’s engine was in fact two bus engines bolted together.

•There were no tank transporters meaning there was no battlefield tank recovery infrastructure

•The British loading gauge was smaller than on the continent. This meant narrower tanks, with narrower turret rings, meaning smaller turrets and therefore smaller main armament.

In fact, the Churchill was built to the limit of the loading gauge to the extent that the radiator louvers had to be unbolted and stowed on top of the hull before the tanks would be moved by rail.

Another factor was that Britain had to undergo a fairly comprehensive re-armament programme and that the army was the lowest in priority of the three services for funding and resources. Neverthless, some very good new equipment was brought in, such as the 25-pdr gun and the Bren squad automatic weapon, and the entire army was motorised (which is more than you can say of the Germans). In addition, these scarce resources had to be shared amongst the need for new everything from uniforms to field kitchens.

So out of the total UK defence spedning 'pie', only a very fine sliver indeed could be devoted to new tank designs (Fletcher gives a figure for this, which IIRC is in the region of 1% or less of UK defence spending going on tanks)

Neither Germany nor Russia were effected by spending constraints to the same extent as the UK - Firstly because neither country gave very high priorty to their navy, secondly because both countries could put "guns before butter", and certainly in the case of Germany, because their level of defence spending was economically suicidal - Germany depended on conquest after 1938 to keep herself fed, solvent, and armed.

4.Doctrine and tactics

The major limiting factor was less the dichotomy between infantry and cruiser tanks but with doctrine of arming tanks with anti-tank guns, rather than a dual-purpose weapon. As mentioned above both the 2-pdr and 6-pdr were excellent guns for their respective times, but only for knocking out other tanks. But because they only fired solid shot, they were almost useless against enemy anti-tank guns, artillery, and infantry.

Thus Rommel’s standard tactic of throwing an anti-tank screen in front of advancing British armour – the British tanks had no choice but to charge pell-mell against a screen of guns which outranged their own armament, hoping to get within machine-gun range before they were knocked out. All of this charging about was jolly dashing and certainly courageous but it was tactically near suicide.

The British would have to wait for the first M3 and M4 tanks to arrive before their tactics could be adjusted to deal with anti-tank screens.

5.Late war developments

By later in the war, British tank design was rapidly evolving. Both the Cromwell and Comet were effective battle-worthy designs while the Centurion, which arrived too late to see action, would prove the definitive tank design of the early to mid cold war era. In effect, the cruiser concept merged with the medium and heavy concepts to produce the universal tank.

Against all of this, you have to consider that many of the British designs were actually fairly good

•The Matilda II was a good tank for its day but was impossible to upgrade and too slow in production

•The Crusader was a decent tank and the earlier marks of cruisers were probably at least on a par with the Pz 1, Pz II, Italian, and Czech designs that made up the bulk of the Axis’ early war armour

•The Valentine was a reasonably good design and was used by the Soviets til the end of the war.

•The Churchill was an exceptionally good armoured vehicle, despite its low speed and anachronistic appearance.

Sources:

The Great Tank Scandal – David Fletcher

Death by Design – Peter Beale

The Desert War – Alan Moorehead