Lars Gyllenhaal | Strv 103 | Arsenalen Swedish Tankmuseum 

Thanks for clarifying this, should have said Walkman myself. Too focused on the tank I was 🙂

i guessed so.

Thanks. I guessed it would be a portable cassette player but I'm an old fa*t.

@@larsgyllenhaal9082 No one is complaining! :D

@@larsgyllenhaal9082 Clear your mind you must

Jag med broder, jag med

@@eriklagergren7124 :)

me too

Vi er os i Danmark!!!

It did reappear very recently with the KF51 Panther where crew members can switch tasks with another crew member.

Let's be realistic. The S-tank design has flaws too. Even now it is my favorite tank there are real flaws. When it was built/designed it was a expensive but in almost all aspects the best tank in the hole world. Due to fire on the move was still not a thing really the S-tank trading the turret for a reliable auto loader and so on it was a odd tank but very much the perfect tank/anti tank vehicle. But far from not having flaws. The moment fire on the move started to to appear in competitor tanks the S-tank design made it only really a tank for defending a attack. It had to stop to hit anything and so the lack of a turret ruined the design. But even if we stop even talking about that part. The design was just not feasible. The S-tank hydraulics are crucial to the design of the S-tank. And the hydraulics weight and problems was and still is a real concern today in tank design. Why pure electric driven turrets are more likely to be found in tanks then hydraulic ones today. And the S-tank even with the turbine engine was under powered. The engines where upgraded but it was to late for the S-tank. It had gotten a reputation of a gas hog, under powered etc etc. And since fire on the move was becoming reality in turreted tanks, well it was the end of the S-tank. Just to expensive and just not fit for modern battles. S-tank was being shown off as radio operated back in the 90s or whatever. It was made for nuclear wars, it had excellent characteristics all around. But trying to protect the crew and still be fast AND also compete with tanks that was now able to fire on the move was just to much. Lepord and Centurion won. It was really expensive to run and maintain. Even now the 1 crew operation and auto loader is such a cool aspect of it. Not to talk about how it can expose very little and still engage a target. Only thing S-tank can do now is become a remote controlled BEAST. But why not just do that with a turret design today. So no S-tank is dead. It was not really possible to remote control it back then. And now we can do it with a turret. But I love the idea of a single crew tank taking on overwhelming odds or just go HAM on a supply line. The rate of fire and mobility of the low hull S-tank together with excellent crew design is just magical. The view out of the driver and commanders optics are still today some of the best in tank design. You can drive it like a regular car/SUV! Not really but still it is the best tank. Even if reality says something else.

@@TheDiner50 the main feature of the 103 that might tip the scales in it's favour as a heavy armed ground drone would be if it could be made submersed amphibious with ducted propellers for propulsion and flotation pods providing neutral buoyancy at roughly 2-3m depth and the gun shortened to not extend past the hull to avoid barrel damage on traversing ditches or steep shores. Such a drone could be a terrifying ambush asset forcing an enemy to dedicate significant resources to either scout and patrol every lake, dam and other sufficiently wide and deep water feature along their attack and supply routes over time OR revise their acceptable loss thresholds for their entire operation. It could also have variants configured as a mine layer or mine clearing drone for laying mine fields behind enemy lines and clearing or recovering the mines if/when the area is reclaimed by friendly forces.

Nope, the Walkman was a freestyle, but not all freestylar was a Walkman :)

@@johanmetreus1268 that was how it evolved. Just like Xerox or kleenex in the us. But the originator of the word freestyle came from Sonys Swedish branding of the original Walkman. It was just the first models that was called freestyle though, because Sony won the international right to the name Walkman, and after that the freestyle brand was abandoned, but by then all small portable kassette players from all brands were called "freestyle" in Sweden :)

They certainly do look similar, in that picture that is, not so much now. :)

@@Ethnarches No absolutely not now. True enough that

I get the feeling that we all kind of looked like that when we were that age.

It is a niche tank, designed for a certain landscape and doctrine. I bet, used as intended in it's designated role, wating in ambush position in really rough nordic terrain for soviet tank hordes, it would have worked out super efficient with that low profile and it's two/three men crew. Would the Stridsvagn 103 be a better tank in large scale warfare in the Fulda gap than the Leopard 1 ? I guess not. But i am pretty sure that the Stridsvagn would have made pay the soviets dearly if they ever had to face them in svedish landscape. The germans had a crazy good cost/benefit ratio with their Stug's, i guess mainly the stug's waited in ambush positions for enemy Armor.

An ambush predator.

They didn't sadly, the 103 never had blow-out panels. There were trials proposed, but don't think they ever actually studied it.

@@TzunSu It makes sense, considering how relatively new the blowout panels were at the time.

@@DaReaperZ Was probably also not considered cost-effective with the placement of the ammo very deep and in the rear. Your odds of surviving a close range shot from the rear in a vehicle without a turret is probably pretty much non-existent, panels or not, and if your vehicle has been penetrated straight through the tank, your probably also already pretty fucked. Swedish strategic thinking during the cold war was really only focused on one thing: Causing vast casualties on an invading Soviet force, by trading it for our own forces. Our military planning during most of that time expected that the Swedish airforce, 4th biggest in the world at the time, would be wiped out in the first 3-4 days, a week if everything went swimmingly well. This was no secret to the pilots, they were very clear about what their job was going to be and how their chances looked. The same went for our ground combat units, trading ground and conscripts for losses and time. Everything was focused on defense in depth, ambushes and short counter-assaults. Very heavy focus on mining and demolition charges, and of course a lot of light anti-armor weapons, Carl-Gustaf in 1948, developer of the AT4 and so on. It's actually fascinating how closely modern Ukrainian tactics match Swedish 60s-90s tactics, both armies having the sole focus of national defense against Russians.

@@TzunSu Interesting indeed. I do wonder though why such a large air force was expected to be wiped out so quickly. Was it simply the fact that we couldn't match the sheer numerical advantage that the Soviets would have had against our pilots? I hadn't thought of it before, but it does seem like Ukraine has a similar strategy, albeit with way better access to manpower.

@@DaReaperZ Yes, and with a time sensitive very specific primary mission: Sinking ships over the Baltic. You have to get fairly close to fire missiles, and you're up against SAMs and heavy fighter cover, whilst your expecting heavy losses to your airbases in return, ergo the Base 60 system of road bases to try to mitigate that. Ukraine has a similar type of system, although i don't know how much it is used. We now know after the fall of the iron curtain that extensive spetnaz operations would likely precede any invasion, and targeted killings of pilots was one of many contingences the USSR had. Yes, although the numbers we see in the Ukraine armed forces so far aren't outside the scope of Swedish conscript numbers at it's peak. Remember, everyone served, almost to a man, to some degree. Ukraine could mobilize a *lot* more men if they had the resources and time, though.

Maybe Lars as an historian and author can make one for us. :)

@@Echoes- go Lars! 👍

That is how it was officially described in the proposals, as I recall.

@@TheChieftainsHatch Yes, and it has been a debate about that, among other things about this tank.

The autoloader could not remove a round once it was loaded, so the only way to switch from one type of ammunition to another was to fire the gun. Of course, if you had the element of surprise, you could simply approach with the breech empty and select HE/APFSDS/smoke once you acquired a target - if you have the jump on your enemy, a few seconds to get the gun loaded won't change the fact. Besides, no other autoloader can extract a loaded round either (the experimental Abrams autoloader apparently could, but that didn't enter service). Some autoloaders enable the crew to operate the gun manually, including loading the gun by hand (and unloading, but you might not necessarily have anywhere in particular to put that shell). However the Strv 103 doesn't, because the breech and autoloader is so far back in the hull in a separate compartment, but the radio operator/rear driver could at least cycle the action by hand-crank if the automation failed.

@@akmzd6938 were all 50 rounds available to the autoloader? Or did the crew need to move the rounds from storage to the magazine.

You don't move and shoot as in being on the move when firing as far as i know. Otherwise it's like any other armor doktrin you cover those on the move than you move.

I see it on your channel 👍💪😎

long range desert group ?

@@guttormurthorfinnsson8758 The LRDG actually had Swedish Bofors AT guns on Chevy trucks and in the book we highlight these and LRDG member Bill "Swede" Anderson. In North Africa the British Army also operated a lot of 40 mm Bofors AA guns. Cheers, Lars

@@guttormurthorfinnsson8758 Yes. I was being a little bit flippant.

Thats a key factor, indeed. To understand why the S-tank was built it is important to understand how much better modern tanks are at firing on the move, i.e. in comparison to the tanks of the 1950/60s when the S-tank came about. Thank you for your interest in my old tank 🙂

They should have used Jake but unfortunately he wasnt a Swedish tanker 🙂