I like how you give credit to the crews for the success of the tanks on Norway. Good crews can make garbage work while the best equipment is nothing without a competent one.
But it's also worth noting that the most potent AT weapon reasonably available in the Norwegian army at the time was the regular MMG firing FMJ rounds. Exactly what the armor was designed to offer protection from. It took quite a few rounds to make the armor brittle enough to break up and allow bullets coming through.
The Neubaufahrzeug is honestly one of my favorite tanks. Its a basically useless design, built in the interwar years and was obsolete the second it was built, and still went on to do decent work. Also it looks cool as hell.
The Zeug (as I call it) may have been a failure, but I still love this tank. It's a pretty good premium tank in War Thunder too, great for a one-two punch against enemy tanks. Fire first with the 36mm gun and if that doesn't work, blow them away with the 75mm gun. I love unusual and obscure designs and the Zeug is my favorite of the inter-war designs.
I'm still trying to gather enough golden eagles to buy one when they discount them periodically. Until then I have fun with the Brummbar I won with a 75% off coupon.
I find the WW1 and pre and early WW2 tanks fascinating. Typically this means the peewee tanks like the M2 and 3, Pzkw1, various tankettes, etc, but this one is also cool
Surprisingly, unlike other German heavy tanks, this one certainly was neither overweight, nor underpowered, so its maneuverability was more akin to a medium tank.
I don't know what heavy tanks you are talking about because the Tiger and King tiger have better cross country speed, ability, climbing, a greater power to weight ratio and ground pressure than contemporary panzer IIIs and IVs (which were up armoured by that point well beyond their original design parameters)as well as shermans(which for the large part (asside from say the easy8, which is hardly worth mentioning as they were so far in the minority even by wars end) were M4A2s which means that they had piss poor ground pressure(spread out on their six very widely spaced road wheels, narrow tracks, poor climbing ability and suspension that does not actually work(the verticle volute). What is more, that after the initial faults were ironed out and when they were not being operated for months on end without time for maintainence let alone overhaul the tigers and king tigers were reportedly, in the words of Richard Rosen and Otto Carius- people who commanded units of these vehicles; both reliable, and excellent. Of course under constant battlefield conditions, and with constant use, and being in a military systemthat is disintegrating under heavy enemy pressure at every level your tanks will take damage you can't repair, or don't have time to repair. It does not mean your tanks are bad it just means that your enemy's day and night bombing campaign on your manufacturing centres, and complete air dominance over the roads and railways that your supplies of spare parts must travel down, their constant shelling and employment of tanks and anti tank weapons against you is working.
Father of Pz.IV, half-brother to T-28, son of Grosstractor and grandson of Independent. The one and only, the tank, the legend. Lady and gentlemen, please welcome... THE [Insert Unpronounceable Gibberish Here]
If you compare paper specs, the Neubaufahrzeug is roughly equivalent to the early marks of the Panzer IV, a smaller, simpler to produce vehicle, needing fewer crew.
Also, the basic design of the secondary turret guns appears to have been used in the making of the Pz I. If that is what happened, it would show that they did take some potentially useful elements from this tank.
@@crapshot321Other way round according die Spielberger/Doyles book on the Panzer IV where it states they used PI (already in production) on the Krupp tanks
I wonder how it would have faired if it had been designed without the machine gun turrets and the space needed for them, plus crew, plus MG ammo. How much weight could have been saved or repurposed towards armour? Nonetheless it did its job.
What you have specified was the test bed prototype chassis for the panzer IV and III which actually used the dual 37 mm 75 mm layout of the fauzoi then Heinz Gaudarian told Hitler to tell the design team to make two separate roles out of the same tank chassis which the roles were designated panzer III and IV
Awesome vid!! Still one of my favorites of the multi turret tanks, id buit one of the 1/72 ones from dragon models a gew years back...oh also, excellently use of blade runner music there in the early part of the video 😉.
The British forces deployed to Norway included the .55 cal. Boys anti-tank rifle, and at least one Hotchkiss 25mm 34SA anti-tank gun in their inventory, the later weapon being credited with damaging one of these very tanks and rendering it at least temporarily combat ineffective during the fighting in Norway in 1940. The French Chasseurs Alpine would have had several of these weapons as well (at least they did on paper) but never AFAIK actually encountered any panzers in Norway. The Norwegians for their part wouldn't have had anything other than field guns (attempting) to engage the German panzers (and AFAIK, none were issued with AP ammunition) or machine guns firing armor piercing ammunition of questionable utility against the armor plating of such machines.
This is NOT a horrible design; it was the best they could do with the technology available. Look at the current version of the BMP; it has a 100mm gun, a 30mm gun, and a machine-gun, with light armor. The Neubaufahrzeug had the 37mm AT gun of the Mark III, and the 75mm infantry support gun of the Mark IV (the German 75mm L/24 and U.S. 75mm L/40 H.E. round had 90% of the capacity of a 105mm H.E. shell). Given a more powerful engine which could support thicker armor, this would have been a tremendous infantry-support tank, especially in woods or urban areas, with all-round machine-gun defense. Imagine if a Mark IV looked like this.
Both the USA (M3 Grant, some M4, M18) and the Brits (Cromwell, Comet, Centurion...) used aircraft engines in tanks. The USA in WW2 where famous for using whatever they had (Funny: The never build a Packard Version of the Meteor, forcing the M26 to use the underpowered Ford GAF from the Sherman)
ZbV = zur besonderen Verwendung = for special purposes / use And if you have a rifle proof vehicle with a 75mm howitzer and the other guy has none - you have an advantage. The 75 could reliably kill most bunkers back then
The M3 Lee stomped in North Africa for a similar reason. That medium velocity 75mm in the hull sponson had more power than comparable 75mm guns used by the Afrika Corps and Italy in early 1941.
Seems to me like it is a decent enough design for urban combat, where the multitude of machine guns and multiple viewpoints would be useful, alongside its narrow profile and light weight. Not a good design for waging actual war but a good police vehicle in occupied terrirtory to quench rebellions.
The suspension might have been rubbish, but the vehicle has a lot of road wheels and a lon track length on the ground, I would wager its ground pressure would have been pretty decent. I'd accredit this to its favourable manourvrability.
The Neubaufahrzeug was an interesting tank with a rather weak engine and a ridiculously thin armour with 20 mm on the drivers front and 13 mm around on top. Not a good proposition. Nevertheless it gave us good knowledge. Good job 👏 👍👍
It was actually a decent tank for when it was designed. Remember, most tanks in 1932 had only machine guns. By 1939, it was obsolete, but that would be against other tanks, against troops lacking anti-tank weapons or training, it would still be viable armor. The issue with multiple turrets is not that they provide no benefits, but that the benefits are outweighed by the complications and increased crew requirements. Remember, even late in WWII pistol ports were still on many tanks. A laughable, production slowing addition.
I don't think anyone had the industrial ability to make a decent tank engine till the war well and truely started. The Brits just gave up and started putting any rolls royce merlin that was considered too damaged to be reconditioned for aircraft use in all their new tanks.
You mention how absurd the weight of the tank was but mention it as only 15 tons. My guess is this was a typo, it actually weighed 25 tons. More absurd for sure...☺
Just like many of Germany's projects it was thrown to the wolves so to speak but it seemed to be one of the more successful designs. Obsolete yes but its main purpose was to be a support gun for infantry which it did to great success. I'd say they atleast got their money's worth out of that learning experience.
Dusty because he'd be 145 years old. More seriously, there has long been a move to call people and places by what the locals call them e.g. Peking has become Beijing, so "Iosif" would be the more likely of the two.
The term Soviet Russia was very common in the western world well into the 1950s. My grandparents and parents still used it (and I am german). Derived from the fact that Russians where the majority of people in the UdSSR
