We used to have to spend hours, days, weeks pouring through all sorts of reports and documents to get this information. I think you've done a great job. Thank you, and keep rolling on!
I think that was discovered by accident when someone was testing ammo in an abandoned battlefield, and tanks with ammo loads still inside that blew up apparently didn't get penetrated as much
14:08 In the context of War Thunder, however, so many players forget that with a sufficient elevation advantage (which is easy enough to get on most maps), the effective thickness in that case would be 1.2, because you aren't shooting straight into the tank, but from an upward angle that is now at 90 degrees.
First tank produced with composite armor is T-64 of the 1963 model . There is also composite semi-reactive armor , it is having cavities in armor filled with special semi liquid compounds which rushes into the HEAT stream . And there is so called active armor aka intercepting incoming projectiles , this was first used in Afganistan on T-55D and T-62D.
One effect of composite armour you didn't mention is that when a penetrating jet (from a shaped charge) reaches the less dense layer the jet will expand. Then the expanded jet won't be concentrated enough to penetrate the next, denser, layer of armour.
I absolutely love your channel (s)! I hope you continue your great work of no bullshit, solid sourcing and no clickbaity facecams and cringey plugs and pandering. Love from Texas! 🤠
@@MilitaryHistoryVisualized My friend, I don't think our connotations are quite equal: "23 THINGS YOU *HAVE* TO KNOW ABOUT STUG-III ERGONOMICS" versus your MilHisSansVis titles and thumbnails? Shiiiiiiiiiiiet, that ain't "clickbait." The resulting quality and effect of the video on the audience determines if it's an effective means of viewer draw, or rather it's *B A I T* and the thumbnail/title is misleading or getting people to just open it regardless of quality, legitimacy of argument/position and resulting impact upon the viewer of both message and retention of viewers. But you're a smart man, far more than I--and in the upper echelon among all YTs in my opinion. I get exactly what I expect, and then some, from the titles and thumbnails of your content. That's not clickbait, at least to both my understanding of the denotation/connotation of *clickbait.* 🤠🤙
Great video. Thank you. :) One thing I thought was worth mentioning was the use of anti magnetic paste (ie the German Zimmeritt" paste to protect against magnetic mines.) as this too forms a type of protection. Also, the use of tree logs to protect tanks. I mean it worked so well in the movie "Fury :) Edit: Great curved areas symbol. I see i am not the only person to notice this o_0
well, Zimmerit was a waste of time, used only by the Germans and only for a few years, it is an oddity, but not really worth mentioning in a video of this scope. Improvised armor by the crew would definitely would more sense.
Holy Crap, when i subbed there were less than 500 subs, now its almost up to 50k. Nice to see an amazing and informative channel like this grow. Wish you the best!
Another excellent video on what is without a doubt a complex issue in designing an armoured vehicle that can provide a correct balance between the three competing variables of fire power, mobility and protection.
Yeah and the M-113 didn't have gas tanks on the back doors, and useless gun ports for assault rifles, I don't envy the BMP, even the armament seemed a bit pointless since they were supposed to be around real AFVs like tanks anyways, just one more thing to take up space, slow you down, and make you a big target. The US had to make the same mistake all over again with the Bradly. Minus the useless gun ports.
Bradleys can and often do have firing ports actually, made to be used with modified M16s. There's an entertaining film called 'Pentagon Wars' all about the development of the Bradley. I do believe it's even on RU-vid!
Armored Personal Carriers like M113, BTR or Stryker are battle taxis - they're meant to deliver infantry to where they're supposed to deploy. Sure, M113 comes also in anti-tank (M901), air-defence (M48 and M163) or fire support (M106) flavours, but these are specialized variants, and are unable to do any other tasks than one speciffic task they were made for. Infantry Fighting Vehicles like Bradley, BMP-2 or Marder are multipurpose vehicles. They fill roles of not only battle taxis, but also direct fire support, tank destroyers and can engage helicopters if needed. It not ony means one set of spare parts and one set of ammunition, but also means that losing some of them won't cripple unit, as any vehicle can perform any role needed.
+EarthenDam My supervisor used to be driver on M113s during his service time. He had quite a few things to say about it. Little of it nice though. One thing he said is, that he had to be carful not to flipp it on its roof when breaking hard (yes, seriously). Some of the things he told me, made me wonder what the designers of this tracked accident-waiting-to-happen were thinking during development...
What an amazing channel you have here. Just discovered it (no idea how I didn't know about it till now) and I'm quite excited to see what other videos you have. GJ! EDIT: And amazingly well organized. Seriously, I'm in awe at your channel!
Reactive armor tends to be fairly thin. Every example I've seen in person, would only be a few mil thick. Basically an ammo box thickness. If you go on liveleak, there's some footage of reactive armor saving the bacon of Syrian forces, from RPGs (no political statement contained in my message).
Timothy Soen some are thick though, to prevent machines to set them all off.. which would be terrible if all the marines are remotely close to the tank.
Explosive RA. Reactive armour can be passive as well basically a bunch of metal plates with a rubbery material between them. On impact the plates compress and the expand.
Another thing to consider about armour is that when it is sloped it, as well as generally giving better protection, it is often lighter than flat armour. Take for instance the upper frontal hull of the Pz IV and V where you can see that the IV has two plates, one flat and one vertical whereas the V has the single plate. Sloped armour can also be cheaper simply because it uses less plates simplifying production all round.
Slanted armor of the same overall thickness is heavier because the plate must be longer. Reduction in weight comes when you reduce actual thickness and create a new LOS thickness.
In part I was trying to keep the first comment short. Overall that depends on the tank of course. For instance if you have the same thickness of plate for both the vertical and horizontal plates then obviously the slanted plate will be lighter at the same thickness. Whilst if you have a thinner or smaller horizontal plate it may well be lighter. Maybe the Pz IV/V comparison wasn't a good example as I'm uncertain of numbers but this would id be a lot more certain about the early Pz IV's. Also to Kekman (your post is removed as spam and I can't restore it?) The Pz IV with the sloped armour had many modifications such as a completely new turret and various other parts redesigned so may have been heavier due to this.
Allow me to clarify. Say you're armoring a crew compartment that is 3 meters by 6 meters long by 1.5 meters tall. A 10 cm glacis that is perfectly vertical at the front will measure 1.5 meters by 3 meters by 10 cm. If you angle the 10cm plate at 45° the plate must still keep that same crew compartment safe but will now be 2.12 m long. Thus, for the same plate thickness, you will have a longer, heavier plate. The weight savings from sloped plates result from using plates of thinner over all thickness at a specific angle to produce a desired LOS thickness. For example: If the plate is to have a LOS thickness of 10 cm at 45° of slope, then a plate of approximately 7.07 cm of thickness is required. At 60 degrees of slope, 5 cm equates to 10 cm of LOS thickness. But as you thin plate down to save weight or as you increase slope, you run into other problems such as risking overmatch penetration and increasing amounts of unusable space within tighter and tighter angles.
Holy shit this was informative. I've never thought about tanks and armor this way. Just the typical "it had Blah millimeter armor" I appreciate your vids!
thank you! I stumbled on that manual from the 1963 and then I got hooked and also found the Technology of Tanks, which was the perfect addition (general overview). Was basically an emergent topic.
Military History Visualized ich hätte eine Frage, undzwar ob eine 220mm Panzerung(Gleicher Stahl) ohne Winkel besser ist als eine Panzerung mit 100mm(Gleicher Stahl) und 45° Winkel.
I actually knew all of this, but it took me a lot of time to figure everything out. This is super good for an armor 101 video. Condenses what I learned in almost 2 years in a single video
According to Wikipedia, welding was discovered quite a long time but what I know is WW2 accelerated the use of welding in steels. Interesting fact, fracture mechanics originated due to concern about welding in ships. Constance Tipper, a scientist from Cambridge investigated why the liberty ships (which were cargo ships) kept failing when it was out at sea. By the end of the war, out of 2500 ships, 140 broke into two and 700 failed. Turned out, it was a combination of poor material and stress-raising design features. That made the ships more brittle and when it was out in the cold, it failed.
Same with the Americans until they came out with the Sherman. But a certain amount of bolting on of armor is handy when it comes to maintenance and repair. Look up The Chieftain's Hatch here on RU-vid and watch his videos on the Panther and you'll see what I'm taking about. To get at part of the tank (I think it was the transmission) you had remove the entire plate on the top front of the hull, and then strip the interior along the side wall next to the driver, then you can access the component in order to repair or replace it. Although it was never specifically mentioned, I strongly suspect that the removal of the top plate involved cutting it off since there are no bolts that I can holding that top plate on to the hull, nor are there any latches of any sort.
Not really. Look at this picture: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panther_tank#/media/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_101I-635-3966-27,_Panzerfabrik_in_Deutschland.jpg and you see that the plate that hold driver and radio-operator hatches is removable. You can see what mean a transmission change on a Panther: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panther_tank#/media/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_101I-280-1096-33,_Russland,_Reparatur_eines_Panzer_V_(Panther).jpg See, the top plate is still there (driver periscopes are still in place). Of course, is a fine dance with that transmission on the crane to make it fit into the tank.
Something you kind of got wrong was slat/bar/cage armor. The point of cage armor is not to give spacing, it is made so that if the HEAT shell goes in between the bars, the fuse does not go off and the charge is crushed and neutralized. The only spacing it provides is because it has to have some distance from the main armor to avoid the fuse hitting it. The more typical spaced armor can be called fence armor. It uses a wire-mesh instead of a plate to save weight. Fence armor can cause bullets and low caliber shells to tumble, reducing their armor piercing capability. The cage armor on the other hand does not stop bullets and low caliber shells. Anyways, great video man, keep it up!
thx, yeah, I got that wrong, I thought slat/bar/etc. is a sub-category of spaced armor. Meanwhile on reddit and also here I got new information. Although your comment was by far the most helpful and friendly one. thank you!
Thanks for another great upload. It's great to see how much your channel has grown in the past couple of months. It has fast become one of my favourite channels! I'm really looking forward to this next series of videos. Thanks again :)
That annotation that you put in when you were talking about how shaped charges work was a lifesaver. I was about to go on a huge rant and you probably know that it never ends well when german-speaking people get angry >:)
Wonderful. A lot of necessary information is presented here in an easy to understand format; the sort of data that will improve understanding of many issues otherwise too difficult to interpret based on the focus of most books and documentaries on oversimplification. Your definitions of RHA vs Cast armors and the Munroe effect are especially useful to the armor enthusiast wishing to understand the evolution of armor composition and distribution. Thank for posting this. And, since I, also, post videos on armor and armor topics, you have served to improve my presentations as well, and for this I thank you a second time.
thank you! Be aware that the Munroe effect is not really correctly portrayed in the video or annotations... I guess at one point I will cover it properly, but hadn't enough time and it is quite complicated.
An important thing to note is that with "face hardened" armor they tried to get around the britlenes of the armor by only heat treating one side of the armor, this generaly is the side facing the enemy. this helps with the britlenes yet it still is somewhat of a weaknes against very heavy shells. something that the Soviets tested with some captured german tanks. while the King Tiger is able to withstand a 122mm Shell to the upper frontal plate, after a few shots this armored plate is cracked and nearly pulverized
very nice video! one point about sloped armor: In regards to armor thickness, sloped armor is not better than not-sloped armor. If you angle a piece of armor 60 degrees, you receive twice the thickness, but you cover only half of the vertical space, so you'll need twice the length of the plate to protect the same area. So you could just make a vertical piece of armor twice the thickness. In essence sloped armor doesn't offer better thickness kg for kg. BUT the slopping does improve shot bouncing, and most of it's advantage comes from that.
"Bouncing" is a highly complex issue. With relative density, thickness/diameter ratio, velocity, penetrator design and armor/projectile hardness as inputs. For WW2 type projectiles( and barring ridiculous t/D ratios its usually between 60 and 70 degrees that you approach a critical angle.
Great video! Just one thing I noticed. When you started talking about spaced armor, you kept the "Sloped Armor" tag on the upper left corner. just confused me a little because I thought you were going to talk about sloped-spaced armor hybrids.
During WW2 Australia used large cast sections for it's only production tank because it didn't have a rolling plant capable of making tank armor but could produce large castings in existing locomotive factories..
Great video, loved it. I do have a small nitpick though :) Shaped charge warheads don't "burn" their way through armor, that's a common misconception. Obviously the steel armor is not on fire, burning up, and not enough heat energy has arrived to melt a hole. There is a lot of heat involved, but not enough for a melt-through. Even the shape of the whole (given the armor thickness) wouln't make sense for a melt-through. What happens is the shockwave from the shaped charge causes the copper liner to be formed into a jet traveling at high speed (over 1500 m/s, the tip might hit 10000 m/s) that penetrates metals via a combination of Hydrodynamic penetration and plastic deformation.
Nice video. But I have to point out one *huge* mistake! The metal in shaped charges does NOT liquefy! It stay *solid* and is just deformed by the explosion. "The immense pressure makes the metal flow like a liquid, though x-ray diffraction has shown the metal stays solid;" Source: Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaped_charge#Liner
This video was excellent! I would love to see something like this but focused on active protection systems, always wanted to learrn more about that topic.
A very concise and easily understandable treatment of the subject matter. I will look forward to examining some of your other historical treatments of weapons
I came back to this video because I’m taking a class on precision manufacturing and we learned a LOT about metals and welding so now I can come back and understand more :))
This is amazing. I was looking reliable source to get a quick grasp on this topic. These things are side interests of mine, so don't have to motivation and time to look into it myself. Thanks!
I would recommend using a drawing of the M4A1 Sherman as the exemplary "Cast" tank, as both its turret and hull had very round shapes that show of their cast ancestry. In contrast, the other variants of the M4 Sherman used flat plates for their hull, giving the boxy, square-shouldered look present in the video.
Great video, minor nitpick: the M113 is usually pronounced "Em- one one three", rather than "Em one hundred and thirteen". Other than that, great work!
Guardia Rossa "On YOUR language," on my language? I don't own any languages, I'm just saying that he pronounced it wrong "Stop being annoying." stop being wrong
Guardia Rossa "It's his way to pronounce it." Yes it is and his way is wrong. For the actual number 113 it's fine but for the M113 it's wrong, really not hard to grasp
At 5:10 you labeled the Degtyarev AT rifle as a Simonov rifle. I know, they're quite easy to confuse. I do it too. Only the Soviets would field two rifles for the same purpose firing the same round with two different operating mechanisms and no common parts at the same time; and kick ass with them.
The reason why Panzers III and IV used spaced screens is to protect from soviet early 76.2mm armour piercing exploding shells that had the MD-5 detonator that would detonate the explosive in the shell after only a few mm of armour and thus destroy the shell prematurely or severly hinder its perfomance in both penetration and damage. The later MD-8 detonator adressed that issue but if you factor in the logistics... PS: Panzers' 30mm side armour was more than enough to protect against 12.7/14.5mm rounds in battlefield conditions when angles and distance was not in the favor of infantry.
Military History Visualized Apparently there's no info about it in the english you'd have to search the russian section for it. Also the MD-5 is inherently unsafe and caused some casualties during the war and well after it(undetonated postwar leftovers) as it's quite easy to set off if handled unproperly.
well, sounds more like that the Russians assumed that the Germans introduced it for the MD-5 rounds. Because my source on the anti-tank rifle is in German and refers to a document/conference on this topic.
Military History Visualized As I said it's unlikely for even a 14.5mm to penetrate 30mm under battlefield conditions which are +/-35 degree offset = 30/cos55=52mm effective. Also consider a rather low lethality of the round if it even penetrates. It was mostly used to detrack the tank which essentially equaled to destruction since a stationary tank was an easy target for regular 45/76.2mms and thus was abandonded. I don't have a verified info about the MD-5 right now but iirc it's a science work behind it.
yes, the French really looked for curvy tanks, and they managed really good designs in ww2. The problem is that casting was slow and expensive, and was a factor in the fact that they were unable to field (by far) the required amount of tanks needed against the Germans.
False, false and false. Casting is actually relatively cheap and simple method of producing armored hulls and turrets, especially if you cast them in more or less one piece. Secondly, the French in fact ridiculously outnumbered the Germans with tanks. The problem was that French tanks were either Renault FTs that were still around from WWI, or more modern tanks that could have been reasonably capable, but were hampered by several factors. French were very fond of one-man turrets, completely overtasking the commander, didnt have radios on tanks (except command tanks), followed an obsolete doctrine, and relied on the 37mm SA18 gun for most of their tanks despite the superior SA38 gun being available, simply because the SA18 was available practically for free since a large number of Renault FTs were either rearmed with twin MGs or scrapped altogether. The SA18 had a pathetic penetration of 20mm (most german tanks at the time had 30mm frontal and 20mm side armor), and by the time they realized and equipped tanks with the better SA38 (pen of ca. 40mm) it was already too late. One of the other problems they generally had was that their cast armor was not robust enough by their standards. Test-firing a german 3.7cm Pak36 against a R35 with 30mm hull thickness revealed that the gun could easily punch through, hence the thickness was increased to 40mm which remained the standard for french tanks with some exceptions. However, most of these negative aspects of french tanks had a reason. One-man turrets allowed for the tank to be smaller overall, making it cheaper, and if the tank is smaller overall increasing armor thickness doesnt impact the overall weight as badly as with a comparatively large tank (just compare Matilda and KV-1, same armor, but one is twice the mass). Lack of radios was due to them following the viewpoint that making a plan beforehand and rigidly following that was all the coordination necessary, meaning that they could not adapt to changing circumstances or surprises. If you take those things away french tanks were actually quite modern and well regarded throughout the 30s. France was setting the standards of tank design at the time and before the germans came steamrolling down the french tanks were considered the best in the world. Well armed and armored with good mobility, generally reliable and serviceable.
Casting price depends on quality. Poor quality casting is indeed cheap, but it very fragile. Good casting metal has to undergo a series of very expensive and slow processes to extract defects. So either the French payed for that, or their casting armour was as good as nothing. The French indeed had a a lot of tanks, but as you said, most of them were WW1 relics which had to be replaced (some French strategist maybe thought that the FT-1 was good enough, but today we know it wasn't). I agree with the rest though: France having very interesting, advanced designs, and the tactic and operational problems, that had a massive impact. Although considering the fact that a better deployment and tactics (and having radios) could have had a massive impact on the development of fall gelb, I still believe the choice of casting to be a major factor in the French tank pool in '39.
casting is only expensive when getting it a start up the production line but when you get the molds and proper equipment and manpower they just roll in the production line so easily
Hi, i recently stumbled upon this channel and i really enjoy the content. But what would make it even better would be some subtitles, because it would make it much easier to follow. Thanks for providing interesting videos.
Brilliant video as usual. Just one thing that may be confusing to some: after listing HEAT ammunition, you go on calling it hollow/shaped charges without stating that you are still referring to HEAT ammunition. Later you explain what shaped charges are, but this could have been confusing for some of the les informed viewers. Just nitpicking here, though - keep up the good work!
Minor corrections: Ho-mo-ge-ne-ous has 5 syllables. (Many native English speakers have trouble with this also.) M113 is an Armored Personnel (not Personal) Carrier.
7:14 ah nope, first production tank with composite armor was T-64, and they are fighting to this day. 8:00 nope again, "counterexplosion" armor was developed in 1949 by Scientific Research Institute of Steel in USSR by Bogdan Vjacheslavovich Voitsekhovsky, and was fully developed for mass production in a T-72 tank, a decade before 1982 Lebanon. Is this one of those historical revisionist channels where only the Western side of history exists? Kind of looks like it already...
The T-72 did not initially have explosive reactive armour though. It was later models, like the T-72A and T-72B that had ERA. From what I can find ERA wasn't added until the 1980's.
Ugh, another video where the word "burn" is used to describe HEAT ammunition or shaped charges. Please, can we just get this right? HEAT rounds use an explosive charge to shape a plate of metal, usually copper, into a hyperplastic jet which uses sheer kinetic force to punch through armor. The jet is hot, yes, but it does not "burn through" armor. The material property which regulates heat transfer in materials, heat conductivity, cannot be altered as it is an intrinsic one. If you have a long bar of steel and you put one end in lava and hold on the other end, the rod will not suddenly immolate your hand. You can put the other end to a fire and, until the end you are holding is equally hot to the fire, it won't matter if it is in lava or in a fire. Both rods heat up equally fast, because the material simply cannot propagate heat faster than is it's intrinsic capability. Thus, if you user heat to "melt" through steel armor it would not happen in a split second. Heat propagation through the thickness of the armor would limit the speed of armor penetration. HEAT rounds penetrate armor via kinetic energy.
Just blame it on the abbreviation, mate. When some genius decided to shorten the name of this type of ordnance to HEAT, most people will assume it has something to do with melting stuff. I guess they could have chosen something like Hollow Charge Anti Tank , but I guess the abbreviation does not sound as catchy as HEAT. Silly yanks and their abbreviations.(:
Nope. It's the same concept of a oxygen/fuel cutting torch. Do you think torches melt the metal out of the way? Cause the slag is burn iron oxide. Its burning
The US also uses depleted uranium on areas of the Abram to add more protection. Its mainly focused on the front of the turret and the side skirts. The US Abrams are just able in penetrable frontally against anti tanks rounds. The British Challenger 2 is also very well protected.
I didn't look it up, words that are rather similar in German are usually the greatest sort of error. worst offender: rhetoric vs. Rhetorik looks the same, but the in German the "h" makes it slow in that part, thus the word sounds completely different.. oh and Aristotle ... because usually all names are pretty much the same it it Aristotles in German and also pronounced so differently that no German will know whom you are talking about even if they know him quite well... they will just go: "what did you just say?" :D
yeah, elementary level, but considering that most Austrians don't even speak a dialect free German that people from Northern Germany can understand, well, you can assume that their English is probably not the best... even without considering the "quality" of our teachers.
Your channel randomly came up in my feed. this is the first video ive watched and im now asking why your channel has been hidden from me all this time?! I will now binge watch your videos. thank you.
Your videos are a goldmine of information and rare insight. I think they’d be even more effective if you added a jaunty tune in the background. Something like that might help me concentrate better on your words. Your voice is soothing and I tend to mentally wander off.
Rolled steel vs Cast steel you also have to take in account the effectiveness of the welding. That also partly off sets the disadvantage of cast steel. Late WOII German armor became notorious for bad welding and splitting at the welds when hit.
Very good explanation, but when you talked about the types of spaced armour there is, you could have shown some kind of sketch so people would know what they look like. I think these kinds of videos are getting more people interested in this kind of stuff, so I appreciate your work, good job ;)
The Brinell hardness measurement is usually only used for soft metals like aluminium, not for steel. It is way more likely to that the Vickers or Rockwell hardness measurent was used for tank armor.
Modern composite armory utilizing ceramics prefer to have flat faced armor because the modern APFSDS is far too difficult to deflect, to reduce the number of damaged ceramic tiles, and that ceramic armor works by abrading and deforming the projectile rather than deflecting since, as I said above, it is far harder to deflect APFSDS. On some modern tanks, the flat faced armor is hidden under thin sheet metal that appears sloped as in the Challenger. And others simply display the flat face openly, such as the Leopard 2 before the additional spaced armor was added to the front of the turret.
Many of those tank armor technologies introduced in the 1960s had been in common use on battleships since the first world war. Surface hardening, multi layer composite (Although it tended to use steel[more than one hardness], liquid, air, concrete, and wood as the layers rather than a modern ceramic.), sloping, and spalling protection. In several cases they would make less critical parts of the hull so thin that large shells could pass all the way both sides without detonating and using the weight saved to add more armor to critical areas.
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