The First German Tank A7V 

I can totally see the cramped space and all those people causing some very heated arguments. "Schiesse, Hans, you stepped on mien toe!" "It's not mien fault your feet are too big." "Oh shut up, Hans, go play with your pigeons!"

Would be a cool design for a themed lunchbox.

Great job! EDIT: And a great idea for a channel.

The two dislikes are probably from Senior Infantry Commanders of WW1 who supported the deadly charges.

You should definetely make one about the zeppelins involved in the war; the coolest military vehicle of all time besides an iron box with 26 guys that communicates via carrier pidgeon.

I saw the last surviving A7V today In the Aussie war Memorial they are impressive to look at

An armored college dorm on treads

"Meters and centimetres aren't precise enough when you're German and dealing with the measurements of a 30 ton tank." Lol I guess modern German tanks are measured in Planck lengths.

The last surviving A7V, named Mephisto, was captured by ANZACs, and is now displayed in Queensland Museum’s ANZAC hall in Brisbane. In addition to the A7V, they also have other really nice stuff, such as artefacts from the SMS Emden. Anyone visiting Brisbane should definitely pay it a visit.

you should totally do a video about the Sd.Kfz. 251 and its numerous variants. The Hanomag was a neat vehicle

when I was a boy in Brisbane Australia , I'm now 55 , we often got to go inside the only remaining example. amazing thing to be able to do. sitting by the side of the road with hardly any cover on it. it then moved to the museum across the river in the 1980s? and eventually got flooded I hear in the 2012 Brisbane floods and has now been restored and in the Canberra war museum.

Love the tongue-in-cheek comment about German engineers and use of millimeters for a tank! :)

A big reason why the A7V gained such a bad reputation was because it was poorly suited for trench warfare and the Western Front. Namely, its very limited ability to traverse vertically-uneven ground (only 1.3 feet in height; anything more than that, it couldn't navigate, which means shell-holes, wide trenches, anti-tank obstacles, etc. would have stopped them). They were also not the most horizontally stable, being so tall, narrow, and comparatively top-heavy.

The only surviving A7Z is currently at the Australian War Museum in Canberra and will return to the Queensland Museum in Brisbane Australia in 2018

I live in Brisbane Australia and they only surviving example was kept here for years. I would walk past it on the way to work . You can see the dents in the front armor front small calibre hits...I'm shocked so many crew were inside.

This show is like a dream i never dream of, great stuff, cheers from Slovakia

You forgot to mention that the mark tanks... Really weren't any better. The earlier ones were carbon monoxide factories that left their crew unconscious wrecks, and it wasn't anymore reliable than the A7V, most of the losses were due to utter mechanical failures. I'd actually say that comparatively, the A7V was quite reliable considering it's opponent. It wasn't produced on the scale of the Marks, but it's easy to think that it's at LEAST on par.

It actually made sense to divert resources for different tanks during WW1. You had no idea at all which design works best. Germans actually had one design that looked like WW2 tank and could have developed into best tank of the war. Since WW1 tanks were so bad, it was not that important to produce tanks, it would have been better to produce more anti tank weaponry to neutralize or reduce enemy tank`s effect, while you are developing good design that is far more worth producing.

there was one of these at brisbane museum, really cool

Mobility is everything. I think you forgot to mention that this speed was considerably worse in off track terrain. Plus, look at its tracks : like the saint Chamon, it was not able to bypass the trenchees, that were the main obstacle of the war. Finally, its heavy weight provided much problems in reliability. But I think that it could have been a decent tank if used in open terrain and moving warfare, like the saint Chamon. Thank you for your video

You should make a visual representation of a WW1 German Squad as you did on your WW2 video

Really enjoyed the video, watched it this week. I had a look online and supposedly there's only one of the originals left, currently in the Australian War Memorial (Canberra) I went and had a look at "Mephisto" today, took a couple of photos too :) Keep up the awesome work, mate. It's inspiring :)

There was the FT-17, and there was the rest. :p

The only real surviving example of this tank in the world is in a museum in Brisbane in Australia. It was captured by Aussie troops in WWI.

Great video. I kinda love the A7V. I have seen the last member of its species in the Australian war memorial. (Mephisto)

at 3:55 you say "75mm" but you wrote "57mm Maxim" Just a heads up. I love your videos!

an australia has the only a7v form ww1 left :P

They should have increased the top armor, purely because the most common weapon that could be used to destroy them was enemy artillery - by far. I think that's even more true considering the small number, and that with such small numbers they would either be used defensively, or in a support role, or used in an offensive and then sit in a defensive position.

This reminds me of the WWI German campaign in Empire Earth where you're only given ten tanks and cannot produce anymore. Now I know why they did that.

You mentioned that there were several competing designs: I'd love to hear more about this

lol, "centermeters or meters aren't precise enough when you're dealing with a 13 tonne tank"

Keep up the good work. Your videos are informative and largely unbiased.. While I may not agree with all your conclusions, I understand your interpretation of fact and can't fault you for a clearly subjective statement. Thank you for your contributions here.

this channel is absolutely amazing. keep it up man, these videos are what I've been looking for for a long time. very well put together and good information

When i was young I used to play inside Mephisto at the museum in Brisbane, Australia.

Loved it! Perfect! I would go so far as to say, by today's standard, think of the pure numbers involved. 20 tanks (from production runs), in all of the "Great War"? The first tank produced by the Axis powers (not just Germany!)... IMO, by today's standards, these were field trials, proto-types. In perspective to the guy in the mud. One, single enemy tank was too many.

I am glad 'The Great War' linked to this site, it is great.

I have seen the only remaining a7v left in the world. I have a video of it on my phone. It got captured and the guys who captured it, stratched on the back "tank boys" and all thier names of the guys that captured it. Its in Australia at the moment, and i saw at the aussie war memorial. The place with parts of the red barons fokker dr.1, both of his boots (one is rotting away) and a me163 komet, a me 262 schwallbe, a bunch of ww1 planes, a sub that was hit with a torp, an avro lancaster, a mitsubishi a6m zero, a bunch of medals from soldiers from ww1, a v1 buzzbomb, a couple tanks, and soooo much more

4:45 That escalated quickly

Love the channel! Just found it yesterday and started watching. Some really good info and love the presentation!

Nice, Time to learn about the Great German Box Tanks! PS. I think its kinda ironic that the first tanks made could be classified as heavy tanks for the time.

Homing pigeon handler?

These tanks look so cool but the one issue I have with them versus, say, the British Mark IV is that the latter seem much better adapted for traversing trenches and ditches with their elongated lozenge-shaped caterpillar tracks. Additionally, they were often equipped with fascines to assist with this. The A7V tank looks perfectly adapted to traverse flat terrain and if there is one thing I know about the terrain in WWI is that it was the opposite of flat. If these went anywhere near a trench, they would have a strong chance of falling in and getting stuck.

When I was a child, I would obsess a bit about facts like "Top speed was 10 mph, it carried 18,000 rounds of machine gun ammo..." Having served in combat, the number of rounds in that tank would just depend on how many cases of bullets were shoved in the vehicle before it had to roll out. Might be 10,000, might be 30,000. Same with the number of crew members. If the pigeon handler had the runs that day, you could -1 the crew count. Actual combat is trying to apply logic and force to fear and chaos. It gets pretty messy. For sheer insanity, it's hard to top "With the Old Breed" and its coverage of the US Marine Corps conquest of Peilelu island.

It's facinating stuff. A7V would of been really intetesting to see in combat. Both Entente and Central powers AFV would of create panzer fright if faced against by infantry for the first time. The M4's werr producceds as you said in the thousands. While 24 A7V's, with 18 men being anfixiated within these lumbering beasts. The M4's in the early stage were rated by combat veterans like Albert Jacka VC and he blasted them seeing them as magnets for artillery fire and small arms so not providind any viable cover for soldiers near them . He was really scathing in his review and some have said he was denied being awarded a second as by this time brass were committed to the idea. He was meant to rubber stamp there production i suppose. Back to the A7V i thing with 18 they wouĺd been like a moving small fortress. where can i find your comments on the combat performance of the AFV

the last one of these tanks in existence is called the Mephisto and it is in a museum in Queensland Australia

The A7V had some serious faults, but these faults were forgiveable in light of the rushed development and lack of anything approaching a doctrine on using tanks.

A great video and I look forward to the second part on the A7V in the field !

I´am glad I found this channel. Great presentation. I love the graphical presentation, so its easier to memorize the facts. BTW are you german? I thought so because of your accent.

you made some pretty serious mistakes on this one my friend, the Renault was the most numerous tank and had a single engine, and just a two man crew while the whippet was the most successful British tank and had an 8mph top speed, neither were designed or utilised as moving pill boxes and certainly the whippet was fully exploited with great success as a cavalry tank.

so knowing allmost next to nothing about tanks ( but was military) and being a truck driver now, 23 people in the side of my mid roof truck is just insane. my truck is about 22'long 8' wide and 11' tall. and 18,000 rounds of 7.62. just mind blowing they could fit so much into so little

This channel is very informative and easy to understand.You're good at this.Please keep doing this videos ^_^

Can you cover a little bit on German Rocket systems (v2) and halftracks? Or the Goliath drone from ww2? awesome video btw!

I am actually surprised that it had 30mm of armour and could still reach 16km/h. That seems a lot better than the early British tanks. Especially with a crew of 20 people inside.

I love when you mix english and german without being aware, that's very fun. It happens to me quite a lot.

Ever heard of the phrase "can't hit the broadside of a barn", I guess that is what the germans thought when they created this tank.

Impressive stats!!!! Good range AND homing pigeons.... World domination!

World War I tanks are not designed to fight another tank, more like "protect infantry from machine gun nest" and "as long as it can travel across trenches"

Thanks for the information

Great video!!! Thank you for the hard work and research into these videos!

Coming back I remembered one thing. I'm curious how high an obstacle could the British tanks navigate over. I heard that the A7V had issues with the tracks, ground clearance or something like that. "the track system had insufficient rise at the front" my book says.

Great video! Two tips for future videos though: filter your audio to remove the background noise, and reduce the volume of the music at the end. It's much, much louder than the rest of the video - I had to pull out my headphones. Very informative! I look forward to your next video.

For a true German milimeters are just "rough estimates" xD Better go with micro- or nanometers to be sure that it's really precise ;-)

The only surviving A7V "Mephisto" has returned to BRISBANE and is permanently based inside the ANZAC Legacy Gallery Queensland Museum (November 11 2018)

Good video. But with only 20 A7V produced they had no impact on the war.

In Battlefield 1 I like the version with the autocannons and the health and ammo. I go for support more for direct attack so if i got guys on autoturrets they're more likely to damage people with splash damage and don't have to be as accurate and you get lotsa points from people resupplying. And it has an quick repair. I don't know why people even use the MK5 over the A7V.

One homing pigeon handler! hahaha. gotta love it.

Outstanding video and presentation.

You should do one on the history of the Renault FT, some of the events play out like a drama show. :)

You'd think they'd at least give it better off-road capabilities, considering the front they were sending it to. Even the Mark I was designed to have decent (for the time) off-road capabilities. It's like building a tank to fight in Antarctica, but giving it an engine that can't handle cold temperatures.

I'd love to see a modern version of this tank. Also does anyone else agree that there should have been space for a medic and a wounded solider as this tanks purpose was to aid the infantry

there is an A7V Sturmpanzerwagen know as Mephisto in the Australian War Memotial

Fun stuff and thanks for posting. An interesting spin on the A7V (I agree that it was both a formidable engineering achievement in terms of time and space AND technologically competitive for its time) and an unusual take on the Tiger E. I will digress here and, pursuant to the understanding that you're a busy man, I take pains to warn you in advance that I believe Tiger was the first adequate MBT design. Might I point out that today's MBTs are just as strapped when fighting in low support, 3rd world, areas as Tiger? The USA MBT is the M1A1/M1A2, which outweighs Tiger by a good bit and is unable to operate effectively anywhere but the desert, due to its mass, bulk, and the heat pouring off its gas turbine engine. Most bridges won't hold it, and most ships cannot transport it. Sound familiar? Moreover, the fuel consumption of today's M1 makes the earlier tank look like a Hybrid Prius in comparison. As for unreliability, any heavy AFV driven by teenagers becomes legendary for automotive unreliability. As for interchangability and commonality, Tiger, in fact, had more commonality of replacement parts and drive components than PzKw IV OR M4 Sherman. As for operational transportability, Tiger could be fitted on flatcars by removing the outer layer of road wheels (a fact I am certain you are already aware of). As for our poor M1, it has to be transported across an ocean to get anywhere it might be deployed, with all the complexity (including crane operator man-hours and sea port unloading bottlenecks and traffic jams) that entails. The 8.8cm KwK36/L51 was a marvelous weapon for its time (compare with Bofors' sFlaK and the USA 90mm M3 Cannon) and, unlike its competitors, had high sustained Rate of Fire and superlative killing ability against Tiger's contemporaries (remember it was issued in 1942, a time when the US had just deployed Sherman and the UK was desperate for anything with armor that could reach a battle without a major breakdown-and don't get me started on KV-which could not even shift out of 1st gear on the move; which burned out engines like crazy). In fact, tactically speaking, the Tiger was by far the most effective tank ever, its tiny numbers accounting for far more allied and CCCP AFVs killed PER TIGER killed than anything else. Also, Tiger was the most stable gun platform of the entire war--a fact worthy of superlative-even cross country. You might agree with me (not that I am trying to force my conclusions on you) that, soon after the initial sweep, warfare on the Western and Eastern front quickly devolved into the same kind of grinding war of attrition that had occurred in WW1, making any tank's absolute top speed a useless way to compare it against its opposites. What mattered was Gun and Armor and Crew Proficiency (both ergonomic and training wise), rather than the high mobility of--say--BT7, Cromwell, or Stuart. I use those as examples, because the M4 Sherman was not particularly fast nor mobile cross country and was surely inferior in urban combat due to thin armor and inability to neutral steer (pivot in its own length). In conclusion, I hope you will appreciate that I am not trying to change your conclusions. Nor am I trying to shout you down. I am merely using your most interesting video (and apropos comments therein) as a forum for a topic of discussion I have also given much thought to. When my armchair general friends and I discuss this topic, I always mention the hypothetical paradigm (not particularly useful, when a tank is part of a war making effort--one machine of many) as follows: One on One, in late 1942, which tank would you want to crew--Tiger, KV1, or M4 Sherman? I choose Tiger . . . even though I am a USA first kind of guy. If asked "Whose overall operational and strategic effort would I prefer at my back?" I would answer: "Why, the USA's, of course!" In any case I will continue to both peruse and enjoy your various posts. I've liked them all so far.

Can you do an analysis of Tiger I and Tiger II tanks? Also, great work!

I went to the Australian War Memorial a few years ago and took some pictures of the inside of the A7V if anyone’s interested I stuck my selfie stick through the break in the Armour

I genuinely loved the statement "calling A7V a failiure is as justified as is calling Tiger 1 a great tank." I don't know a lot about A7V but I do think Tiger 1 is overrated to some extent.

Amazing videos dude, Icould use all the graphics you use to the Tank Division videos to make a school work. :)

Could you do a video explaining how napoleonic war era tactics were utilized in combat during the time? Many people have this illusion (Especially in America where our teachers brainwash us into being ignorant) that men simply stood in 2 lines and shot at each other. Could you go in depth about how infantry, cavalry, skirmishers, light inf, sappers, etc were used in battles? Thanks :D

Holy damn... did not realise so many people would be inside one :O

so... this video is about a german toaster...

Your videos are awesome!

Awesome job,thanks.

Thank For the Video

Da ich denke das du aus Deutschland kommst, schreibe ich jetzt einfachmal auf deztsch :D. Ich dinde deinen Kanal höchst informativ, vorallendingen da ich mich auch für diese Themen interessiere, ausserdem finde ich deine Videos seher gut gemacht und auch für Leute die nicht mit dem Thema vertraut sind, gut verständlich. einziger Kritikpunkt meiner Meinung nach ist deine Aussprache. Aber ansonsten sehr gute Videos. Gruss

The last known remaining A7V: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mephisto_(tank)

I love watching this channel and the Great War, and then Survival Lilly. :-)

I think you forgot to mention the six guys who had to pedal to make the thing roll...

4:55 Is this a tank or a clown car?!

Very nicely done, but (always a "but") I would have liked some data on performance. You seem well informed, and I don't think your contention that it was "not so bad" was based purely on theory.

I can appreciate the dedicated pigeon boy position in the crew.

Could you please do one over the British MK V and its crew. I believe that's the proper name

Thanks for making this :).

3:53 were not gonna let that slide. (Listen and watch closely)

do one on the tsar tank!

As an engineer I find it a rather peculiar solution to put 6 machine guns and 12 gunners on the thing. If you want full range machine gun coverage it seems to me that putting a small turret on top housing a duel machine gun would be a far more economical solution. By doing so you can cut the required crew almost in half. Turrets were widely used on ships so they knew of the advantages of the concept.

very well done thankyou!

Still waiting on video about use of this tanks in combat!

Very interesting.

do you think its armour could have whistood a French 75mm gun shell? cause considering how big and square it is it would have been an easy target for these French excellent guns they had in large amounts

Pigeon Handler I want that MOS!

Cool. A visual depiction of EVER TANK BUILT IN GERMANY in WW1...and those German numbers strike again.. Just stick to the 88, you can never git that mixed up...