Before the Panzerfaust: German Infantry vs. Tanks 

Can u do a video on smk rounds vs armor

Hiding in a hole with an Artillery shell and hammer included.

I have seen picture of a Sherman with nails welded onto hatches and upper surfaces to try to prevent swarming, but I have also seen videos of Japanese civilians practicing with their poles. All it takes is one.

The Japanese also tried to jam steel rods in between the spokes of early Sherman road wheels.

tbf mine-on-a-stick at least gave you the stick's distance's chance of surviving - unlike later Japanese AT efforts.

The British "Sticky Bomb", didn't require magnetism, so could be used on brick and stone walls as well as tanks, more useful but keep it away from your clothes or hair. Also requires inhuman courage, probably as much machine gun fire used to "sanitize" your own tanks as on the enemy directly. I believe some sticky bombs were used by British and Australian soldiers in Korea, if I'm not mistaken. Any old-timers out there that could confirm or deny? I'm an amateur military historian.

That gun is called the Granatebüchse 39.

@@ricardogarcia1172 yeah, that range seems really optimistic for a rifle grenade, especially for a freaking huge 89mm one. That's probably the theoretical range and not the practical

@@Legitpenguins99 then again, it was a modified AT rifle

That's fascinating, which role did he serve in? I mean like rifleman, or AT gunner or what?

I can't imagine the traumata these soldiers carried for all their lives. Both of my grandfathers served in the Wehrmacht as infantrymen. One got severely wounded and nearly never talked about his experiences. The other one didn't carry physical scars, but he liked to watch war movies. I guess he had to ensure himself over and over again that it wasn't him alone in the war, but that it was normal for every man in his age. He once told me of a combat when he killed a Russian soldier. He tried to tell me how gruesome it was, but he couldn't find the words. Now they are dead, but I carry the memory of their wounds. They remind me that we must practice peaceful behaviour.

Rifleman. He was badly wounded and was saved by the Americans.

Thanks for sharing.

I think that was only the third or fourth video that day :)

The Japanese were even crazier. They tried to disable Sherman’s by sticking steel rods between the spokes of the older style road wheels. Also suicide charges with explosive charges.

Soviets trained K9 units deployed as anti tank weapons

@@ifv2089 the dogs would sometimes run to the Russian tanks because the dogs were trained with the Russian ones. There is a video somewhere about it

@@trappenweisseguy27 Holy Shit that's news to me absolute size of the brass balls you need to have.

@@ifv2089 But failed as sometimes the dogs would crawl under their own tanks - as its been already stated.

It's really a difficult thing to say as that sort of thing varies wildly in time and place like all things. It must also be remembered that most of the information we have in English about fighting in the east derives from German sources which in many cases have a conscious bias. Of course that doesn't mean you're not right but those are some of the caveats.

> I have read that the Soviets initially had trouble with cooperating infantry and tanks. from my knowledge everyone had and often still has. Although in some cases the problems are a "bit" more extensive than in other cases, e.g., if tank to tank coordination is already low or barely existent than coordinating with infantry is even a bit more out of question.

@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized This video and comment reminds me of Heroes and Generals. A game where you at times would need to run towards a enemy tank,place your mines on them and RUN before he realized your there if you would use one of those earlier wappons :,D

@Marcelo Henrique Soares da Silva I meant it differently,. The Soviets were short on trucks early on. So when a mechanised unit had to move for example to counterattack 15 km away from their current position, the tanks would drive there but the infantry had to walk. So the tank units arrived earlier without the infantry. It had an effect on the operational level.

The officer class had been decimated by Stalin's purges,and those who followed were frightened to show any initiative,and followed orders to the letter out of fear.

That's why tanks need armored infantry for support .

They could have used some mirrors?

true

I find listening to his voice immensely relaxing

Glad you enjoy it!

Type 4 was ceramic, Type 3 was hollow charge.

@@JamesCalbraith I stand corrected as I was working from memory.

The confusion is that "heat" means thermal energy which is how thermite grenades work, but shaped charge rounds (HEAT rounds) ablate armor with hypersonic copper.

@@polygondwanaland8390 the cone of the shape charge pushes through the armour.... that is some physics.

@@polygondwanaland8390 Hypersonic Copper - great metal band name, there.

thats because you guys used a tactic known as "elastic defense"

The Finns were amazing, the greatest defense against an empire since Thermopolae.💪🇫🇮

"Unknown Soldier" and "1944" are really good in showing the Finnish anti-tank tactics. They really took advantage of the forested terrain to ambush tanks.

@@4T3hM4kr0n Elastic defense was developed by the Germans in ww1. In military academies this is the most studied case of elastic defense of ww2 , the battle of Targu Frumos : ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-MrW_uHxBpzY.html

@@scratchy996 I think that the Finnish resistance to Soviet tyranny is one of the most noble and heroic acts of all time.💪

This is a good point, thanks for stating it. A lot of the English-speaking YT audience probably don't realise that many people in the content they watch are making an extra effort to put their info/ideas on record in this way.

Definitely this. I appreciate it to a degree owing to having family with English as a second language and seeing them struggle with it at times. I wouldn't do even a 10th as well in French.

Glad you like them!

Glad you enjoyed it!

thank you!

@Bjorn Larsson: The film "Saving Private Ryan" has a scene in which an American infantryman is literally blown to pieces by an improvised explosive device which failed to stop the tank he was attempting to attach it to.

thank you very much!

I think the word uniform here is spelled c-o-f-f-i-n.

well, not much fun in Stalingrad: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-cYBugb7h5AQ.html

lol

If you think German grammar is hard, you should try Russian grammar

German grammar is one of the most severe and effective weapons known to man...

You craft a long enough word and use it as a lever to jam the wheels and tracks of the enemy tank! Stabbing the driver with said word through the viewing port is also encouraged.

@@trauko1388 like driving over barbed wire, it jams up everything and you have to clear with wire cutters.

yeah, those are discussed in my visualized video.

Still a thing in the Swedish infantry during the 90is.

I learned the exact same tactic in the Danish Army in the early 90ies. I would rather stick to my Carl-Gustav RCL for AT work 😁

Nazi propagabda has little to do with that, its the survival instinct in humans. Military trainings purpose is to convince your brain that fighting has a higher chance of survival then freezing and not moving. Also you could usually let your position get overdriven by tanks as infantery and then use this while the tank is passing close to your position or past it. The bigger problem then the tank is actually the infantery usually close to tjat tank that will try to shoot you while you are compleatly exposed. Fast way to earn some iron cross i guess...eather for the chest or for the tombstone

It’s the opposite, these men had the biggest balls As always in the most dangerous jobs in the military you find the guy with the least fear and biggest balls, because if you think you’re scared doing the scary shit, imagine the other guy WATCHING him do something suicidal, he’s gotta be shitting himself thinking the guy thinks he can win

;)

@Paul Thiessen Whille speaking softly to the crew. That could get them startled.

Or Granatbüchse 38

nope, initially they had a small one and "large" one, whereas the small was intended for light to medium tanks but that idea was ditched soon.

Do you mean if the mine lands correctly and detonates? If so, there are a lot of long winded physics behind it, but the bullet answer is that the shape of the explosive creates a focused jet of gasses and the vapourised cone shaped copper cover, moving at supersonic speed and hot enough to burn through a LOT of armour.

@@LeonidasRex1 I think he means if the "recoil" wouldn't be bigger than the force of the magnets keeping it on. To which i think mass inertia and speed of the charge are the key words.

@@nirfz Probably would throw the casing off. But that doesn't matter as the copper hey would continue unhindered on its path.

Normally mortars or mgs would supress the infantry, and the view from a T-34 really sucks.

@@PalleRasmussen Surely. But wonder some thirty T34 with mounted infantry smashing through a poorly defended sector. I guess it was in places like that these weapons were most used.

@@marcosfernandez7207 up until mid 43 much of Red Army combined arms were amateurish, so that would have been rare. And you do not wage war around exceptions.

@@PalleRasmussen These weapons were last ditch solutions. Even the Panzerfaust was. The bazooka also, and so on. The solution to the tank is always a better tank and better tactics. But when you see yourself in the loosing end with tanks roaring around, then you will use anything you can to get rid of them. And even modern tanks can be destroyed if the infantry man have some handy AT weapons. This is not exception. This is the rule.

@@marcosfernandez7207 I am not sure you understand what I am writing, and you jump around between subjects in a way my (military historian) brain cannot find a red thread in. I am tired after a long week and a bad storm, so I am going to leave you to it. Have a nice day.

Just as shooting a soldier is just as good as killing him. He wont be able to fight and they will need to expend resources to extract him from the fight

@@alexisXcore93 Not really. A tank is still a big armoured box with a ginormous gun. It can still do a fair bit of damage.

which makes getting into cover in 4.5 or 7.5 seconds even harder.

@@nirfz the germans had different Brennzünder. Not only those with 4.5 and 7 seconds. They also used that with 20 seconds.

Lots of potatoes though....or potato mashers?

I will tell you a college tale. A few of us were horsing around, and one guy, driving his car, tried to climb an embankment, slid back, and the engine cut out. At the bottom of the embankment, he kept trying to start his car, to no avail. Remembering a "potato over the exhaust pipe" thing from a TV show, I suggested he check out the exhaust pipe, since he'd dug a long, shallow ditch-let in the grass-covered "hill." Sure enough, the tail pipe was plugged. He took off most of the exhaust pipe, and was soon roaring hither and yon without the muffler!

from what I know he made some rather unsophisticated claims.

They both did the same year (1943) but I think Schrek was out about 4 months about April vs about Sept for Faust as none was present at Kursk but quite a few Schreks was used in that battle. At least 3 Soviet tank crew that I talked to during the late 90's said their units was attacked and lost a few T-34's and a Su-152 to them at the final days of that meat grinder of a battle. As there was no enemy armor or field guns anywhere when said vehicles went up and there was also no incoming artillery or air strikes.

@@ChrisS-fh7zt That is interesting. Thank you for the post and additional detail.

as far as I know the Panzerfaust came out before the Panzerschreck. How much the Panzerschreck was derived from the Bazooka is debatable, some argue it was a copy, some argue it wasn't, likely the bazooka influenced existing German concepts and/or even prototypes.

@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized Or typical Germans after looking at it decided we can go bigger, just like the 75mm L70 that the Panther and Jp IV/70 had after looking at the F34 76.2mm cannon on KV-1's and T-34's. I notice that is how most times the Germans operated after running into something that outclassed them when it came to firepower they went bigger. Same case with the 2.75 inch Bazooka and Panzerschrek, in fact the US came out with the Super Bazooka after the war due to testing and being on the receiving end of the Schrek.

@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized Interesting points - thank you for the response. Seems the Encyclopedia Britannica leans towards a case of influence: " The United States claimed that the Germans had copied the design of the Panzerschreck from the U.S. Army’s bazooka, which was supplied to the Soviet Red Army in 1942 and had fallen into German hands. In any case, the bazooka certainly stimulated the Germans in their own efforts to design a similar weapon." The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum seems to lean in the other direction: "The German Raketenpanzerbüchse (rocket tank rifle) 54, popularly known as the Panzerschreck (tank terror) or Ofenrohr (stove pipe), was an anti-tank weapon with origins in American bazookas captured in North Africa in early 1943." Meanwhile, the Osprey work on "The Rocket Propelled Grenade" by Gordon L. Rottman seems say it was based on the bazooka: "The Germans developed another antitank rocket weapon in 1943, the 88mm Raketenpanzerbuchse R.PzB.43, wihch was based on the bazooka ..." But suspect the concept was out there for some time in one shape or another. Heck, even Robert Goddard worked with "tube-launched rockets" in 1918, and demonstrated prototypes a few days before the armistice. (pages 77 and 78 or "Rocket Man: Robert H. Goddard and the Birth of the Space Age"). That led to a legend that Goddard invented the bazooka, when "The Goddard tube-launched rockets of 1918 and the bazooka were distinct contraptions; their most important common element was C.N. Hickman, who worked on both." ..."That idea would have use in the future, but there were few people in 1918 who could predict the armored vehicles and tactics yet to come."

Road wheels. They stuck 'em to the roadwheels....except the dummy wearing the non-Airborne gear. It wenr boom.

The Russians were the first to use them in combat.

Pretty sure they had something similar to the stick charge and where well know for massive use of Anti tank rifles while also i think there most common gun the 76,2 mm