The Evolution of Tanks - Mitsi Studio Reaction 

Great Vlog again!

He forgot to mention the Renault FT-17 which was the first tank with a fully rotating turret. The basis of future tanks.

Omg good luck on the history channel! very exciting news man

So note regarding the M4 Sherman, that tank had such a high crew survivability rate that you were better off being a tanker in that machine than an infantry man on the ground holding an M1 Garand. Nicholas Moran (TheChieftain) has talked about this in the past and also did a CSPAN presentation on the M4 and general US armor development up to and during WWII, good channel to take a look at some time. Also worth noting that the US produced so many of those things that iirc they were able to arm with just examples left over from WWII, even replacing the M26 Pershing which was loathed by the crews.

Chris gonna be talking about Aliens soon. Congrats on working with the History Channel!

Hi Chris. Quick note on the Z symbol. While it is generally agreed upon that one of its purposes is to identify friendly units, the Z, V and O symbols are also used to designate the area of operation for a unit. To my knowledge however, we aren’t actually 100% confident on the purpose of the symbols, as both the Russians have obviously not been too willing to share their thought process on the invasion and we don’t really use symbols painted on vehicles to designate an area of operation in NATO nations. In the Canadian Army, we don’t use painted visual identifiers except for thermal markings to prevent friendly fire. I only know that last part because as an infantryman, we’re taught the different identifiers of friendly vehicles.

One of my favorite tidbits is one video on the sherman, the guy half jokingly called the hitch spots the most important part. While obviously, a tank needs a lot to be useful, but they could never make it across the atlantic if the cranes cant load them onto the ship. Also it was skipped over, but post WW2 pretty much everyone decided that having different tank models(light/medium/heavy) was dumb, and settles on Main Battle Tanks.

A really obvious point that I see a lot of people miss with US tanks is our position as being the only nation in the Allies that was completely protected from having our supply lines and manufacturing factories for tanks attacked. Because everything was made in the US and then shipped, we never had to worry about our planes and tanks being bombed during production, or having materials and fuel cut off due to losing cities. I think this issue compounded Germany's R&D woes and contributed to their inability to adequately keep up with allied tank production, despite many German tanks being incredibly capable. And yes! There was a "Grant" tank. The Grant was the variant of the M3 Lee using a British instead of a US patterned turret, which also meant that it had one less crewman. They saw use in North Africa.

We had both Lee and Grant as the same tank is was the M3 and had two variants the M3 Lee was the US version and the M3 Grant was the version used by the UK

Fun fact. During the Americans' quest to find a suitable anti-tank weapon during the opening stages of WW2. The Americans didn't have any suitable AT weapons. They began experimenting with all sorts of things, amongst which was throwing rifles or laying log between the sprocket and track, but the most hilarious one was this - The anti-tank rock. A literal rock. You can find pictures of it online. And there was a Grant tank, but it was used by the British. It was the M3 Medium (Lee) that was modified with a new turret. Also, when it comes to the names of American armoured vehicles during WW2, only the tank destroyer, the 76 mm Gun Motor Carriage M18 had its name Hellcat officially used. The Americans did not use the names for the tanks we know as today as Lee, Stuart, Sherman and Pershing or the like. The British used the names Lee, Grant, Stuart and Sherman. The names came into common usage as we know them today due to the fact that American designations were... similar. The American press wanted the public to get an appreciation of the vehicles involved, but it was difficult due to them basically being a bunch of letters and numbers. The question was also raised by the military itself. The American press was familiar with the British names and started using them in their publications. After the war, model makers picked up on the naming business so a lot of false names like Slugger, Wolverine, Big Shot, Jumbo and Jackson started appearing for various other vehicles. As a closing point, interestingly, the Germans referred to the US vehicles by the names Stuart and Sherman. Sorry if this was long. Just wanted to share it and please feel free to correct me.

I just stumbled into your channel and it's my go to for my 3rd shift job! Love history and love your takes on a lot of things. Thanks for making my nights less boring man!

My man! Congrats on making it mainstream! History Channel needs good folks like you involved with them. Proud of you for what that's worth! Love seeing good things happen to good people!

Super exited for the miniseries. Always a joy to hear your knowledge

So stoked for your appearances on the history channel in the near future Chris! Well deserved! And as always keep up the great and informative content!

I appreciate all your hard work. Great content and analysis as always. TY !

Somehow I'm not surprised you will be on the history channel. If I ever won the lotto I always thought it would be cool to make a documentary on the civil war but with high production. Maybe a mix of documentary and a band of brothers style show. Anyway my point was that I wanted to get people like you, Mr. Terry etc to be the presenters/narrators. So I'm not surprised you were chosen to be one for the history channel. Super cool and I look forward to seeing it!

Best wishes to your fantastic career man, hearing that you're working with History Channel sounds great!

You should be SO proud of landing that history channel spot! I really think you deserve that recognition and the world deserves to see someone with the passion that you bring towards history!

Aircraft carriers will always remain relevant. It gives you a portable airfield with an absolute ton of firepower. Aircraft carriers give a nation the ability to quickly move somewhere and launch air attacks without having to first conquer a piece of land, construct an airstrip and then defend it.

Adorable animation, with the right amount of gore, to remind the kiddies of the face of war; oh, fabulous work!

The KF51 Panther name was a name given to it by rheinmetall not the Bundeswehr

I'm Canadian and my grandfather was actually a tank mechanic during the WW2. He had to repair and maintain the tanks. He didn't talk much about the war but he did mention he had to repair all these different tanks and would have to make their way to the damaged tanks underfire and try to get them working on the battlefield. He said Germany would target these mechanics whenever they could. I've seen a few documentaries and read alot of accounts but these mechanics are never mentioned even though their work was crucial to keeping these tanks on the field.

Best of luck on the history channel gig! Hope there'd be more after that 🎉

Congrats on the history channel stuff!

18:37 love your reaction, it makes me smile in laughter. Nice reacton video btw and new sub👍

Interesting part about Little Willie is, that in the beginning, they planned to have a fully rotating turret on top, but after some testing, this part of construction was scrapped. That concept was originaly named Lincoln No. 1 Machine. That's why it has that round metal top cover. So Little Willie would really be the first actual tank with fully rotating turret, not French Renault FT

i just finished the series on the channel the great war about WW1 every week, and after one of the episodes i was looking for a video on the evolution of tanks. real weird coincidence you did this video like a day or 2 later

Favorite lend/lease rib from the Brits: The M3 "Lee" tank was exported to the British military who, in typical tongue in cheek fashion, called their version the "Grant." Edit: corrected for technical inaccuracies between the different versions of the M3 chassis/turret combinations.

If you want to a more nuanced in depth view of tank development you should check out the Chieftain's channel. Especially his lecture on the M4 Sherman has gone a long way to dispel the myth of the Sherman being a bad tank.

Congratulations mate, you absolutely deserve it

I find it kinda funny you’re part of a tv series on the Great War and just this week I finished the Great War by Peter Hart and have moved on to my book on Heydrich.

Dang good video loved it👍👍

Love the animation Mitsi Studio makes.

So cool for the History Channel! Let everyone know what you're going to be doing!

Chris, there was a Grant tank the M3 Grant/Lee. According to Wikipedia the mainline tank which had the offset main gun were known as M3 Lees and those with British-style turrets were referred to as Grants.

Regarding the use of tanks going forward, I think in general: the larger the conflict, the more limited the use. Tanks are only really useful if you command the skies. With the increased use of drones, tanks become sitting ducks in the battlefield if your enemy can get drones into the air.

I LOVE THIS CHANNEL AND MITSI STUDIOS PLEASE REACT TO MORE FROM THEM!

11:45 One thing that's great about the M4 that you and the video don't mention is that it was very easy to get out of it quickly. Even more-so when a hatch was installed for the loader.

Congrats on the History Channel spot!

i believe there was both a Lee and a Grant tank which was basically the same tank but the brits gave theirs the name Grant while usa called them Lee

Congrats on the History Channel Gig!

Apart from the different angle of attack, the Churchill AVRE mortar's high-explosive shells were ideal for busting bunkers and decimating infantry. That's something "normal" tank shells are not exactly made for, as their focus was usually on armor penetration to engage enemy tanks.

Can’t wait to see the histor channel Great War with you

Talking about the history of tanks without mentioning the Renault FT is incredible.....truly incredible

You do a great job. The Americans named the M3 Lee and the British made some changes to the M3 and renamed it Grant

Hope we get to see the history channel documentary in the UK and soon!

17:23 you are correct, but missing an interesting aspect of the story. The Russians actually had several different invasion markings. Most of them where just random shapes and colors denoting attacking forces or locations. What is interesting is that Cyrillic doesn't have the Latin Z in it's alphabet, which is why it was used as an invasion marking. It then became synonymous with the invasion because supporters of the invasion could use "Z" on almost any social media platform. So now it is used all across the Russian Armed Forces, not as an invasion symbol, but more so like the patriotic Red Star would have been used in the old Red Army.

The tradition of naming American made tanks after American generals was started by the British in WWII.

I'll have to disagree with your comment about Destroyers becoming the power of the sea instead of the Aircraft Carrier. The AC is still one of the most important ships in a Navy and it can project more power than a destroyer. However, it's the carrier group as a whole that works together to have everything run smoothly. Destroyers for defense, subs for recon, and Carriers for CAP and long range attacks with their carrier strike groups. But yes, battleships are no longer the kings of the sea.

17:30 - there's an unconfirmed info that those markings were used as being familiar from training sessions and stand for Zapad (west) and Vostok (east) which are two teams soldiers would be split into. Edit: 17:50 - also we've already seen how Leopards 2 performed on the same battlefield - not so well as they've expected.

My grandfather served with the 712th Tank Batallion during WWII.

I love it when you look at the camera as a small apology for his obscenity.

I love your channel Chris

Congratulations on getting on the History channel

18:32 I would assume it’s similar to how the US has historical sights like plantations and slave quarters still standing at places like mount Vernon and Lee’s house. I remember taking school trips to those locations when I was younger.

It's really unfortunate that mitsi studio skipped over the French Renault tank from ww1. And no, it's not just the full 360° rotating turret, the entire layout of that tank is more or less the reason why we design most tanks in that similar fashion to this day.

2:40 Some historians have argued that the first type of weapons resembling primitive tanks were the "war wagons" used by Czech soldiers in the Hussite Wars of the 1420s. It was a heavy wagon filled with hand-gunners and crossbowmen that was defended by infantrymen on the sides. The Hussites, for those interested, were basically proto-Protestants in what is today the Czech Republic (100 years before Martin Luther) who for many years fought the armies of the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor to a standstill over religious disputes.

I've always been told that the overall best tank of WW2 was the PZKW V, or the original Panther you mentioned. It was mounted with their world beating 88mm gun. I had an ROTC professor who used this common military proverb: Who wins: 6 rifles or 10000 bows with arrows.

Tanks AND VTH? This’ll be a great evening.

The reason the Ratte was unusual was less the use of naval guns and more *which* guns: The main turret was essentially that of the Scharnhorst-class battleships with the central gun stripped out. It had a design weight of 1000 tons, hence the P.1000 designation.

Basically the M3 Grant was the British version of the M3 Lee, major difference was the shape of the turret. They were used in North Africa before the arrival of the M4 Sherman.

Now you MUST do how countries fight their wars (parts 1 and 2)

Chris Mowery is pretty good at hosting this home-grown show. I watch it all the time. But you DO realize the History Channel contract he just signed means that ''Vlogging" may soon be a thing of the past. The pay at the next level is extraordinary.

You need to come up to Hudson, MA and visit American Heritage Museum which has the largest collection of Armored vehicles.they have both of those tanks you see at the 2:01 mark

The Grant and Lee are mostly the same, with a key difference being the Grant had the radio in the turret for the tank commander to use.

Can't wait for this show to talk about futuristic wars.

Congratulations on The History Channel gig. BTW where is the T28 US super heavy tank (doom turtle) with a whopping 8mph that the US army lost for 25 years or so and was found behind some bushes by a hunter for failed tank segment. M3 Grant is the UK version of the M3 Lee. Surprised he didnt' talk about Tanks in MMORPG 😉

There were two tanks in WW2. One was M3 Lee and second was M3 Grant. Basicaly the same tank but Lee was made for US army while Grant was purely export model for the Brits if I am not wrong.

Originally the idea of naming tanks after generals came from UK, when they used names Lee and Grant for the M3 tank. Lee for the US version and Grant for the UK version.

15:54 well it doesn’t sound that crazy, until you realize the turret on top was the same as the ones on the Bismarck housing the same 15 inch guns.

As the plane junkie I am, I think it’s only natural to do Mitsi’s history of fighter planes next.

Fun fact the city of Detroit when it went into full war mobilization mode was able to produce more tanks and planes than many countries.

Would have been nice of them to namedrop the Renault FT, it being the blueprint for pretty much all following tank designs. Would've been a good seque from WW1 to WW2

There was a Grant tank, it was a variant of the Lee. It would be too much to get into their differences here, just look up M3 Grant and M3 Lee, I'm sure you will find resources that directly compare the two :)

When it comes to classical tanks, I always think of the Empire of Mans' Stean Tank in Warhammer fantasy. 👌🏻😂

16:41. We did not have a Grant tank. During ww2 the British had a different design philosophy when it came to tanks. The British preferred to have their radios in the turrets bustle. So whenever we gave them a new tank, they would always extend the turrets rear to fit a radio. This was the case with the leased Medium Tank M3, known in US service as the "M3 Lee". The British turret was enlarged to fit a new radio, and the machine gun cupola, seen on standard variants, was removed. They called this the "Grant." In fact most of the names like "Sherman" or "Stuart" were never actually given by the US, but rather the British, who liked to name their tanks after historical figures. One thing I forgot to mention is that "Lee" was also a name devised by the British. "Grant" was added as a way to distinguish between the two different variants.

From what I’ve heard, the M3 Grant tank is actually a modified M3 Lee tank from the British. I forgot what role they took out though in the grant tank, since it needed one less crew member to operate compared to its American counterpart.

The Ratte was meant to be 1000 tonnes. It was vastly impractical. Couldn't be transported by rail, couldn't cross bridges and it would have been a massive target for allied planes. To give an idea though, it was over 130' long and 45' wide.

when he said the Ratte was designed to use naval guns its not quite what you're thinking, the entire turret was taken from a cruiser

At 11:17, from what I've read , until 1944 the Germans weren't doing that bad in the manufacturing department, in fact, they had a lot of units sitting on their warehouses just waiting to be sent to the frontline. The main problem was the serious shortage of oil, which forced them to de-motorize the Wehrmacht and compromised their whole "Bewegungskrieg" or "War of Movement". Logistics was another nightmare for the Germans, above all in the Eastern Front. Btw, love you channel. Greetings from Brazil.

The grant was the British version of the Lee. It had a different turret but same guns

Fun fact the naming of tanks is always be number designated but not always given a literal name. The closest everyone has gotten tot the origin was a code name for specific tanks and that the British started naming tanks and when was given American tanks started naming them after US generals. But a lot is still unknown, Like Honey was the nickname given to the Stuart tanks by the British but even then the British doesn't even know why it was called that.

Are these stop motion models or is everything computer generated?.....really enjoy the artistic "flare" along with learning.......Peace!

The last time I was high on Pervitin, I invented 500 EXCELLENT pieces of military equipment in 72 hours. I just can't prove it....

Interesting video

To the point of the production total of the T-34. Only around 56k of those 85k were actually produced during the war, the rest were produced after the war

There was a simple logistical reason for why the WW2 US military didn't really use heavy tanks (with rare exceptions): Cargo crane weight limits. US tanks had to be shipped to warzones overseas, and few harbours had cranes that could lift more than 40 tons. Thus, all Sherman variants were in the 35 to 40 ton weight range. More often than not, such concerns of logistical and industrial capabilities determined weapon system designs, not ideas of what would be strictly militarily optimal.

The M3 Grant and M3 Lee were mostly the same Model. But I think only the Lee was really used by US troops and the Grant was the Version exported to the British.

There was a "Grant" tank, ironically it was a british version of a M3 "Lee" called a M3 Grant

German humor: -Make a big tank -Call it "maus"

17:08 Uralvagonzavod is very good at turret toss.

17:37 There were couple of other letters used to distinguish tanks. Such as V and one more I forgot. My theory is that it was used to separate vehicles to different frontlines.

Interesting he left the french Renault Tank of WW1 out, which was amazing for its time. Also the Austro-Hungarian "Motorgeschütz" which even predates WW1 but never got Approvement by the Government. There is the Story, not sure if true, that during the presentation a high ranking Officer Horse went nuts and threw him off. He was so pissed that he was staunchly against it. But also cost might be a factor tough. Also interesting that the Inventor Burstyn already thought of the trenches and came up with some weird arm thingies. Not sure if that would have worked tough, looks rather fragile and not battlefield ready. It also head a movable turret tower on top, so also very modern.

The last M4 Sherman was retired back in 2018.

I dont think tanks will ever be fully obsolete but more used for defense and mobile artillery. With new and better sensors, anti-tank manpads, drones, and artillery deployed mines its hard to imagine something that large playing a huge front line role in a modern top tier conflicts. I do think this will change eith lazer tech because anti-drone lazer weapons will allow tanks better mobility.

If project y involves a place to the east of you around July 4, 1863, I’ll be out that way for work in a couple weeks. Would love to meet you if paths were to align.

12:31 I believe the U.S. form of agriculture was more mechanized than much of Europe as well. I mention this because driving a tractor or other farm equipment would probably be more akin to driving a tank.

Drones are really making us question whether tanks are now obsolete or not.

2:55 i'd argue that thats just the idea of an armored vehicle and not a tank.... that carriage is more like an APC If theres a version that has some kind of small arms, youve got an ancient BMP

i think its amazing that even today only a few countries actually make tanks, the main ones being the big names in WW2, America, Britain, Russia, China, France, Germany have been consistent with new tanks. but other than them only 21 other countries (27 total out of 195) have produced tanks at all, some like israel, north and south korea, india and pakistan have produced more than 2 or 3 designs themselves, but the rest have only had 1 maybe 2 goes at it, and half the time its in prtnership with one of the bigger producers. someone once asked why so many countries just got steamrolled by germany in WW2? why didn't they have tanks as good or none at all? i explained all the biggest tank producers in WW2 were the countries who saw them work and used them in WW1, because they had the money and resources to do it, tanks were new, its expensive to invest in a new technology at the start. i guess i just didn't realise how much thats still true today, paraguay still has some sherman tanks in their military, i saw a military parade in burma and i think they had 3 matilda tanks. its actually quite eye opening to go through other countries rosters and see the complete mish mash of tanks they have from being able to buy little bits of old stock every 10 years or so.