During early WW2 New Zealand Defence Minister Bob Semple wanted to design a tank named after himself. So he aquired several International Harvester tractors from the Public Works and tried in vain to make a decent tank out of essentially junk materials like scrap iron and corrugated steel panels with firing ports all around. Main armament was 4x MGs with the main gunner having to lie on a mattress in a prone position to fire! Weight was claimed at between 20-25 tons but historians and tank experts disagree with that based on the materials used. Anyway, the tank had a high COG, was unstable, looked horrendous, had to stop to shift gears, had a maximum speed of 8 mph and had 8 men as crew... to for what??? 4 gunners and a driver=5, so what about the other 3??? Three tanks were built with a 4th almost completed before the ridiculed program was stopped and the tractors returned. They had participated in morale rallies but the laughter was too much! Rube Goldberg could have designed a better contraption. As for combat, the troops called the tank the "White Elephant" and "The Tin Can". The Japanese probably would have doubled over in laughter as armor was poor to the point of being taken out by light small arms! Universally regarded as the worst tank design in history.

http://mailer.fsu.edu/~akirk/tanks/newzealand/NZ-Semple.jpg http://mailer.fsu.edu/~akirk/tanks/newzealand/NZ-BobSemple.jpg