"Staying with the Fall of France/Early War kick that I seem to be on" I can't wait for you to try and fit inside a Panzer II tank. It's just so adorable.
They've got a (the only? not sure if Bovington's actually works) running Panzer II Luchs at Saumur. Not gonna lie, I was kind of hoping he'd have a look at it while he was there to do the French tanks.
I've always liked these somewhat odd British early war tank designs like the A9, A10 & A13. They may not have been the best tanks at the time but I find them more interesting than their contemporaries.
Try being inside when it gets hit and all the sheared rivet heads become man killing projectiles in a very small space. People with riveted tanks were soon persuaded to borrow a welding rig and weld the rivets in place
These are great videos. My late father (Canadian) was a a tank driver during Sicily and the Italian campaign. His description of some of the rather lame vehicles they had to endure while in training in England was priceless.
There is a reason it's called a Jerry can . The flimsy cans were used by the RAF too . Many times when the fuel tanker was out of action or multiple aircraft needed a turn round my grandad used the flimsy to refuel a hurricane.
Flimsies were good for one thing. You cut them up to make a "Benghazi Burner" for the brew up at tea time. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benghazi_burner www.steve-noon.co.uk/photo_9383160.html www.bing.com/videos/search?q=brewing+up+tea+british+army&&view=detail&mid=C6275A948B020066481DC6275A948B020066481D&&FORM=VRDGAR&ru=%2Fvideos%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dbrewing%2520up%2520tea%2520british%2520army%26qs%3Dn%26form%3DQBVR%26sp%3D-1%26pq%3Dbrewing%2520up%2520tea%2520british%2520army%26sc%3D0-27%26sk%3D%26cvid%3D0A6ED3356F224DF7A84CC799C1C9D6EA
Chris C It's a realistic concern for tankers, too loose, and you shed tracks when going off road at speed. If your track is too tight, you're putting a huge stress on the bearings in the entire undercarriage, which will lead to bearing failure, and then the tracks come off, followed shortly by the road wheels, and instead of a tank, you've got a steel pillbox that is entirely too lightly armoured to be a good pillbox. I'm sure anybody with even a smidgen of mechanical aptitude will realize that replacing the tracks on a tank is.........well, it's a BIG job, and you don't want to do it on a battlefield with bullets flying around, yeah?
And those of us who have had to replace them when the tracks fall off understand that tracks NEVER, EVER fall off in nice conditions, it's always in deep sand, or deep mud, and or raining, etc. Replacing tracks was one of the worst jobs I had to do while I was in the Army, but then again I never saw combat (Germany, U.S. Army, 1971-1974)
David Briggs I never served, but a friend of mine was a tanker in the Canadian Forces, assigned as a driver on a Leopard I, and he told me some horror stories about changing tracks - his worst story concerns trying to put a track on a tank in northern Alberta in the middle of the winter. 😨 It was buried in a swamp, and lost one track, and two road wheels trying to get out of said swamp. They eventually had to bring in two engineer vehicles, and had them tow the tank out of the swamp, and had to then had to do the repairs in the middle of a blizzard. I snowmobile, have had to do repairs on my machine during blizzards, but my sled weighs 400? pounds, and a tank weighs 50 tons, or more. I do not even want to think how nasty that repair was.
The comment at the end about Jerry cans reminded me of something the late R. Lee Ermey said about them on his History Channel show. Paraphrased from memory, it was something along the lines of, "We're just lucky the British named them. If they'd left it up to the U.S. Army, we'd still be calling them 'containers, fuel, Axis forces' today."
The brace of brass carbon-tet extinguishers is a nice touch. Outside the vehicle is just where they belong, cause you are done if you use it inside the tank.
"Note the use of the Word Supposed, The People who used it Generally have their own ideas as to the effectiveness of the system" These are words that can aptly describe 95% of life.
Steady on, I don't think they have got round to installing the water boiler/tea maker in British tanks until after the war! So hardly luxury, possibly worth only 2 Michelin stars at the most. ;0)
Glad you are continuing the work on educational videos. BTW, just found your collaboration with Lindybeige, I quite liked the format. Would you do something like that in the future?
Can you imagine if we got Jingles, Lindybeige, Matt Easton, Bloke on the Range and the Chieftain to meet up at the same time? And then gave them a table top War game to play.
What, they really did have Lloyd on one episode??? The sheer amount of editing after his probable 2-3 hours of nonstop (but entertaining and educational) chatting must have taxed the production crew to the limit ;) That said, he is the Hannibal guru if there ever was one.
When ever I'm bored I watch this gets me up right away and the music great mix these videos make me Wana play world of tanks great work love the narration
Two questions: 1) What is the actual problem with that particular suspension-/bogie-design? 2) Can you guys please use less transitional shots or just *not* restart the music during a transitional shot all the time?
1. There are plenty of examples where a better suspension design it still a fail. Usually this is due to that it's over complicated to repair, hidden in behind too many wheels (e.g. on the German tanks) which simply renders it to take too long to repair. It could also be due to that more spare parts are needed which then becomes a logistical problem. So, the short story is: better isn't always better. The key is always to get a damaged tank back in the battle as fast as humanly possible. The Russians did this well where you more or less could repair a T-34 with any tools you could find on a farm. Ze Germanz overdesigned most of their tanks after the Panzer IV.
+Bad Trip Where are you getting your sources from? the T34's suspension is notoriously bad Christie suspension takes up internal volume and requires massive tools made specifically to deal with the springs associated with this suspension system, it was far more common practice to just deal with driving on a broken wheel and suspension unit then it was to fix it. Also the boggey system is the easiest to fix, this is why the M4 Sherman series was so loved, you could have the entire side blown off, yet all that holds *the entire suspension unit on* is a few bolts per boggey. you could retrack and respring an entire M4 in a matter of hours. Also we need to be thanking the Germans, we currently use their suspension system in our tanks, the only complicated thing with the Tiger and newer tanks was the interleaved wheels, otherwise it's on a very modern and simple torsion bar system, like the sort you see sticking around today on vehicles like the M1 Abrams and Leopard 2. Even the Russians thought the christie system sucked, hence why the T44 and newer abandoned it in favor of yet again, the german style of suspension.
That falls under armament design. Logistics is the part about getting junk to the front and keeping it running there. At least one historian has argued that was one of the institutional blind spots of the entire Prussian/German military tradition...
I loved this tank model when playing World of Tanks. Even if the gun is a mortar, its powerful and can one shot enemy tanks. Can shoot over low buildings and small hills.
The track rubber seals idea is now commonly use on motorcycle chains. Makes the chain life a lot longer. Probably not such a good idea for a tank track.
The riveting is only on the part that slopes down.. it does nothing for stopping richochets going into the drivers face.. And only way those rivets would help you climb atop it in the rain. Is if it's flipped onto its roof and you want to scratch its belly...
Near- and off- sides ... could it perhaps have more to do with cruisers being intended for cavalry regiments for whom near and off always mean left and right respectively?
I just searched photos of the flimsy and wow it looks like it was designed for cooking oil and everyone else decided to copy the jerry can. Real surprising facts there Chieftain!
The only use for flimsies were to make "Benghazi Cookers" from - chop the top of the can off, half fill with sand, pour in petrol and light - brilliant field cooker - one problem, in bright sunlight its hard to see a petrol flame, so blokes would think it had gone out and pour more petrol in... Kaboooom a lot of crews got injured that was - so you see why modern British AFV;s the the Boiling Vessel......
It's a fun thing in WoT, literally a low tier KV-2. Will we ever see Japanese or italian tanks? I'd love to see some inside views of a Type 89 Yi/I-Go Chi-Ro or of the Type 97 Chi-Ha, preferably the Shinhouto.
The logistics of transporting around full or empty Jerry cans however is another story. For emergency in the field refuelling they're wonderful, a strapping young lad could grab a pair of cans in each hand and haul ass across the street to quickly get a vehicle back into action. For small vehicles such as cars, bikes, carriers, hell even half tracks they were good for general storage. But for a tank or truck? Wasteful of space, weight, and capacity. Better to ship whole drums and pump the fuel in then bring them back, or as the allies did at some point send in disposable square thin walled cans (excellent saving of weight and the highest possible capacity of fuel by volume. Then when they're empty just dump them in a pile and burn them to reduce the hazard, why bother shipping them back if you don't have the capacity?
Sounds like you are describing the infamous "Flimsies". It is likely more due to (lack of) quality control, but they had a reputation of being leaky and way too easy to split with rough handling ( or just when travelling on a flat bed on a rough road!).
Yep, but they were cheap, disposable and efficient. Luckily the ships transporting them werent commonly fired upon or otherwise blown up for other reasons (smoking onboard maybe)
Mr Moran, do you have a preference for the channel we watch these videos on? I don't really have an interest in the other videos Wargaming makes these days, but I want to support the information you provide as best I can.
