That's some praise! When I read your comment I subscribed immediately, about 5 seconds into the video... If his channel is anything comparable to Drachinifel then he's on to a winner!
I remember the tour guide at Bovington saying that on it's first demo before VIPs coming out of the shed it almost squashed those VIPs because the driver steered one way but the tank went the other - the controls had been incorrectly assembled. I don't quite believe the story but that's what the guide told us.
The volunteer 'guides' at Bovvie are great for enthusiastically getting casual visitors interested, but do come out with some questionable 'facts' sometimes...
That would have been a wonderful event if it had happened. Road kill VIPs, who never fought in WW2, coming to an end in such a way. They could have been called the hedgehogs.
If it's reversing, it might have "turn nose the direction of pulled lever" control scheme. So pulling the left lever would make the nose turn left, and the butt turn right, rather the usual brake that side of track. And then some story went around and it becomes told as a technical error rather than the driver not knowing of the thing, because he's never been told, because it's Bovi.
thanks for this nice vid on the tortoise, cheers! hm, have i already suggested vids on the Vickers-Carden-Loyd tankette line? oh hm, how about the Landwasserschleppers? thanks!
Good video Ed but you are mistaken about the final suspension arrangement. It does not have a single wheel, 3 pairs and a final single but it has 4 identical suspension units with two wheels each, like a Sherman's on steroids or 4 Centurion units fitted with Conqueror wheels.
Had the war continued ("operation unthinkable"), then surely these would have been extremely valued frontline vehicles and they likely would have made more of them and given armor piercing ammunition.
i had to google this - tortoise is one, a group of tortoises is known as a creep of tortoises - sometimes recoreded as a bale of tortoises this is more correctly the grouping of turtles. - every day is a school day :P
Greetings! Have you considered making videos about Daimler Dingo and Daimler armoured car? They seem quite interesting but information on it is fairly limited and they haven't been covered extensively or I am a bit blind (which is entirely possible) thanks.
That 6" "Mortar" is the Lilo, I think. That makes the tank a "Bunker Buster"/Assault tank. To hit anything with the Lilo it-and the target- had to stand still . . . and no sun in your eyes . . . no hangover* . . . rolling a perfect "20" . . . *Which renders the whole concept problematic
enough to knock out is3 frontaly at 1000 yards. - except turret cheeks, although it was never designed for this. the 20pdr however was which was ready in 1944! but not fitted until much later.
heya, yeah they were not made. so when teh FV series came in the idea was that each vehicle would have a corresponding support or varient vehicle on the same hull, however many of thehse were not made. 3802/5 were made the others were not but allocated a number should they be made. Centuion did have a casemated version (sp4) and later a 155 VSEL turret much later and not part of this project.
Also there is a picture of a valentine with a long barreled gun, I've asked what kind it could be and a few people have suggested it was a 8pdr or even a 12pdr. Do you know of the picture?
People that new nothing getting there ideas looked at , working as intended, a rolls Royce with a Ford engine ,The Deappe raid was only a disaster for the poor sods that went , it was a test to see what the Churchill could do and what would happen if we attacked a fortified harbour head on
A kind grammatical correction offered. "Tortoises'" does not require an apostrophe, that is the greengrocer's apostrophe, ie. apple's and orange's. Your knowledge of British tanks is probably unsurpassed but your grammar obviously needs a nudge in the right direction from time to time.
This video, with all its details and changes show the truth behind Peter Beales book "Death By Design". British tank designers NEVER spoke to tank crews, NEVER spoke to gun manufacturers, and NEVER cared about the casualties that would result from their inadequate designs and builds. Britain didn't have a tank, until the Challenger, that could take on, in the open, any of the heavier Nazi tanks. Yes, they could kill from ambush, but not toe to toe. The fractured British design "teams" didn't work together, didn't communicate, didn't listen to their MP bosses, didn't care about tank crew deaths and injuries, didn't know how their designs would fare in combat, nor care, since they got paid anyway. To take "39 Steps", (was that deliberate?) before producing the final Mark is atrocious, and demonstrates that the same lax attitude exists over designs for all three branches of the armed forces.
I think the problem you don't have so many viewers is that you criticize the games. Some people blindly believe in the world presented there and you can't have their sponsoring... Being honest costs.
@@DraftySatyr I'm not suggesting being dishonest, just highlighting the fact that people base their beliefs on games and games shape their knowledge. Thus, if you are critical towards games, games dislike you. That's just my definition of the situation. I really appreciate being honest despite suffering from that. This is being really tough. He has ma respect for not following false currents!
It's easy to say now that a tank like the Tortise was never required because the war was won. But at what avoidable cost in men and material? Except to some degree with the Churchill all other Western tanks were vulnerable to a extensive range of German weapons. So doesn't it make sense that that vulnerability should have been reduced by using something like the Tortoise in a regular leader role right at the sharp end? It would have been relatively slow in transport mode but quicker in the attack mode and that was the important thing, not to be help up excessively which did occur regularly.
By the time the project was ready, the war was nearly over. this was a period of mobility over anythign else and so a slow movign and diffuclt to transport vehicle would have just held things up, as well as cause a mess in terms of doctrine and force stucture. Simply having a Tortoise seconded from RA to RAC for each advance would have slowed everythign down and given the enemy more time to prepare. A colum leader like Jumbo would have been handy, but the UK was still mired in Infantry and Cruider roles which made such notions more dificult.
@@armouredarchives8867 The 'slow' Matilda showed what could be done in achieving quick economical victories, why the British did not immediately begin working on a upgraded replacement with an appropriate gun makes no military sense.
@@FairladyS130 Debatable. Matilda II was very good at shrugging off the [then] heavy caliber rounds; but even in the Battle for France the Germans had some 88mm guns, which *no Tank in existance* [anywhere] was sufficiently armoured against. (worth noting the largest dedicated A/T Guns in the UK & Germany during 1940 were in the 50mm size range; nothing bigger was to be seen, except in short barrel form) This wasn't deemed a serious issue though in of itself, as Anti Aircraft guns were rarely encountered by Tanks, and doctrinally not supposed to be used against them anyway. (Aircraft not being known to wait around to be shot down) As it was the Germans produced the Tigers and Jagdtiger for basically the same reason the British developed A39: as a Breakthrough Tank. The difference was that Tiger was designed to be the minority of heaviest hitters at the apex of an armoured fist (a "Panzerkunst" if you will), while A39 was intended to destroy heavy fortifications where 17 Pounder armed fare wasn't enough, and naval gunfire support or RAF wizardry unavailable.
@@jimtaylor294 For a start AA units were routinely attached to German ground units in a multi role capacity. So they were a real threat to a breakthrough because they were the last line of defence for a particular unit. Compared with the Soviets the Allies were just too slow to recognise a need for a heavy break though tank and promptly act upon that requirement. And just because they did not act promptly it does not inevitably follow that the need did not exist. It all cost infantry lives but who cares.
^ A flawed conclusion in many ways, but here's just a few: • The 88mm was not available in large numbers in most theaters of the war, making "often" tentative. • Heavy AA Guns are niether easy to move around, nor typically have armour shields (of any use against ground fire), which is why the Wehrmact had to split off some of 88mm production into dedicated anti-ground mounts. (the US & UK already knew the practical problems of moving heavy guns around from, which is why a good enough approach was used) • Having more sizes and types of guns in service than you can make do with is only a drain on logistics and industrial capacity; and as any economist will assert; failing so completely at both is a leading factor in why the Germans *lost* WWII. (seriously: look up their absurd number of gun types, subtypes thereof, and ammunition requirements thereof: it hastened their defeat by a considerable margin) • Between D Day and VE Day, the western allies gained territory every day along the front; *even* during the Battle of the Bulge, meaning the theoretical german advantage in firepower didn't amount to much. • As anyone familiar with UK rail loading gauges can affirm; there was a practical weight and size limit, which combined with limits on engine power and torque restricted what could be practically operated even further. • As any picture of a Panther (45 tons) marooned by a collapsed bridge can illustrate; Heavy Tanks & bigger were a bad idea in general for the terrain of western-eurasia. Add in the fact that most of Germany's attempts thereto were scarce on the battlefield, comically unreliable, insanely expensive and riddled with weak points (Tiger's even side on were woefully under-armoured against allied Tank guns, look it up) & drank increasingly limited fuel like it was going out of fashion... it's no wonder Germany lost the war within a year of D Day. As mentioned: Matilda II proved that no allied Tank (even in 1940 when German hardware was still limited in firepower) was immune to Heavy AA weapons, but this was as much if a given as bding vunerable to Naval Guns... because *no Tank on any side in 1940 was immune to guns that large* , nor could realistically be expected to, as they weren't designed to be.
