YouTuber Hooks a Plow to a 55-Ton Chieftain Tank—and It Out-Performs a TractorMost farming projects start with a tractor. Joe Hewes started with a British Chieftain main battle tank sourced from an army base, a custom-fabricated rear linkage, and a healthy disregard for the doubters.The premise isn't entirely without historical grounding. Hewes points out that post-WWII Britain left farmers cash-strapped and tractor-poor, but flush with decommissioned armour. The idea of repurposing surplus tanks for agricultural work wasn't invented for YouTube – it just hadn't been put on YouTube quite like this. His channel's video is the full-length follow-up to a testing video that dropped a week earlier and has since racked up north of 70 million views across Facebook and Instagram on the strength of a short preview clip alone.The conversion itself required fabricating a custom adapter plate to mount a rear three-point hitch to the Chieftain's hull, then routing the tank's existing hydraulics to handle implement lift. Hewes says in the video, "We have done is made an adapter plate with front linkage on which we've put on the back. And we've got proper hydraulics and we've connected up to a classic Dowwell DP70 plow."AdvertisementAdvertisementThe Dowswell factory, incidentally, has since gone bankrupt – though the plow survived long enough to be dragged through English soil by a 55-ton Cold War relic.The Tank Outperformed the TractorThe Chieftain weighs as much as it sounds: 55 long tons, powered by a Leyland L60 19-litre opposed-piston diesel engine producing around 750 horsepower depending on the variant. Traction is not something this machine lacks. Three or four passes of the field consumed just over 100 litres of fuel – not cheap, but Hewes was open about the fact it came in better than expected. "It actually was a lot better than I thought it was going to be," he noted.What nobody expected was the comparison test. When the crew switched to a conventional tractor for a plowing run, the modern machine promptly got stuck on ground the Chieftain had chewed through without drama. "The tank makes this look a little bit easy, doesn't it?" Hewes observed, watching the tractor struggle. That's a sentence you don't often hear about agricultural operations.The day's farming also included a £500 CLAAS Dominator 35 combine harvester picked up from Facebook Marketplace, which the team used to harvest grain – despite neither Hewes nor his crew having previously operated one. A chain snapped on the elevator, got bodged back together, and the machine kept going. "I should probably point out this is the first time I've ever driven a combine harvester," Hewes mentioned, roughly two minutes into driving it.AdvertisementAdvertisementThe grand total farmed: approximately one acre. "After a hard harvest of 1.0 acres, we are knackered and we're going to need to go home and rest," Hewes signed off at the end of the video. He had already floated the next step: "Oh mate, I am more than up for doing 200 acres next year."The tank made its public debut at the 74th British National Ploughing Championships, requiring an 18-truck convoy to transport it to the event, where it attracted large crowds along the field's perimeter. An M60 tank project is already teased as the next thing on the channel's agenda. Whether that one ends up in a field with a seed drill attached remains to be seen, but at this point, betting against Hewes seems like the wrong move.
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