World War Two's most common tank 

Lindy proving his point even further by running World of Tanks on the PC equivalent of a T-34

Funny thing about tanks is that ANY tank works if the enemy has nothing to deal with it. Imagine a tiny little Panzer 1 rolling along a street and all you have is your rifle. It literally becomes an impervious machine gun platform just as deadly to you as an Abrams could be.

Another WW2 Lecture, just like old times, we are in for a treat

As the Chieftain (Nicholas Moran) pointed out, the Americans came across tigers just three times in the drive from Normandy, and, in his words, "The first time, the Shermans won, the second time the Pershings lost, and the third time the Tigers were being loaded onto flatcars, so it wasn't really a fair fight".

The most important bit is that the shermans crew probably survived, would be given a factory replacement.

I hadn't realized how much I miss WW2 content like this. Great stuff!

The only wunderwaffe that would have turned the tide of the war was luckily invented in allied territory and not in axis. I'm sure many Germans and Japanese were thankful that the mighty Bob Semple never saw full production

The US also produced almost 23 thousand stuart light tanks which were pretty decent light tanks. The reason the US produced so much is not necessarily that they simply had a larger workforce to do everything, but also that they were safe from attack and also had superior efficiency. The Germans and the Americans had roughly the same number of workers producing military aircraft, but the US produced roughly double to that of Germans. Also, these included the quite expensive and large heavy/strategic bombers like the b-17 and b-29. The US also slapped 50 cals to everything which was not cheap.

WOW! That "knock the pins in" plate is the most Soviet tech I have ever seen! It does the job and is so primitive, it borders on genius. And every idiot from a place without roads can repair it.

21:06 “I wonder if you can tell me what this is?” Certainly! That’s a tank!

*World of Tanks PR team:* Lloyd, would you be interested in advertising our game? *He of the Beige:* Yes, absolutely, I'd love to run this ad for you! *World of Tanks PR team:* Excellent - we just need to check, your PC has high-level specs to show the game in all it's glory, right? *The Beige Bloke:* .......Yes, absolutely, I'd love to run this ad for you!

5:25 I read a memoir of a Soviet tank captain during World War Two, and the escape hatches were a big problem. He said that because the driver had a procedure to follow to get that hatch open, if he didn't finish by the time the flames reached him, the panic would make him unable to complete it, and he would die. And as you say, the machine gunner/radio operator had it much worse, having to wait on the loader or driver to get out first.

I remember this absolutely shocked me as a kid, how few they built. Probably the biggest misconception about WWII that most people have is that it was in any way an even match.

For years I have watched your videos and dreamed of one day visiting Bovington. Last week, on the last day of my graduate program study abroad to London, I was able to make it out to the Bovington Tank museum before returning to the United States. It exceeded all expectations and I brought home a Tamiya to remember the trip by. Your lectures are joyful and interesting, and for that I am very grateful.

Panther's gun being fairly good. Now that is Lindy's understatement of the year.

I wonder how much of the German focus on making highly survivable tanks was down to their resource & oil limitations. No point trying to mass produce tanks if you lack the energy & resources to manufacture them, and subsequently the oil to run them

Something that I had considered before (and how silly of me!) people often compare the T34 and Sherman but the circumstances they are born in is incredible. The Sherman is a feat of engineering, but the T34, with its factories being relocated and being produced in such numbers is truly an enormous feat. Incredible to have been produced during a war on home soil.

You're points about the Panther make sense, but you have to put yourself in the Germans' boots. They didn't have the oil to fuel tens of thousands of tanks, nor did they have the manpower to crew them. Even if they went the route of creating thousands more Panzer IVs, they didn't have the means to use them.

The Sturmtiger was doing its best. The real underdog of WWII

After seeing mid war T-34s, it's amazing they didn't fall apart just going into battle. Absolutely astounding that they made something so ingenius with a bunch of farmers and old factory tools while the German spend so much time and effort building a single perfect tank to counter and most of those tanks just break down anyways.

the drive wheel of the t34 uses rollers to interact with the teeth on the track and because of that produces much less friction than a conventional sprocket wheel. that is great because it's much more efficient on the engine power, the same amount of horsepower will move the tank faster. the problem however is you concentrate much more force on a smal bit of metal (the pins he mentioned). so in practice the t34 was really at the upper end of weight you could move with that system, that's why it never caught on.

The great thing about the tens of thousands of Shermans and T34s is the allies got to use tanks against Germans who had no tanks. Forget Sherman vs. Tiger. The real matchup was a Sherman against a bolt action rifle.

The idea with the drive wheel/sprocket is that there are rollers that engage with the teeth on the track. The advantage of this is that there is no friction between the sprocket the track. The reason it's no longer used is that there is a limit to the weight that can be propelled by this system, being that the whole strain of weight of the tank is taken by the track teeth.

Lindy's back talking about WWII, what a great day to be on youtube!

7:23 this is the first time i see Lindy utter such a prominent and emphatic "I don't know" 🤣. These drive wheels like they're easy to repair.

I am Polish, and this reminds me of an old TV series from my childhood, "Four Armoured and a Dog", in which four nice guys (Poles) had adventures during the Second World War as the crew of a Russian T-34. My childhood was still at the end of the years when official history only remembered the alliance at the end of the war, not mentioning that in 1939 the Russians attacked us together with the Germans. To this day, there are quite a few of these T-34s (with Polish markings) standing on pedestals in our villages and small towns as souvenirs of the war.... EDIT: I see you even shown at least two of them, 22:24 and 23:39 :)

It actually amazes me that, when the amount of tanks each side produced is put into perspective, the war actually lasted as long as it did. I understand that from 1941 onwards the USA and Russia had to ramp up production after entering the war but the scale just absolutely astounds me

"Four Tank-Men and a Dog" Made between 1966 and 1970, the series is composed of 21 episodes. It is set in 1944 and 1945, during World War II, and follows the adventures of a tank crew and their T-34 tank in the 1st Polish Army. The book and TV series have achieved and retain a cult series status in Poland, the former Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries. Full series with English subtitles ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Qs3SO7tVx84.html&pp=iAQB

Regarding the renaming of the tank: the Finns, who often fought and sometimes operated T-34s, called then Bluebills, because the tank's silhouette resembles a bird. I played around in a captured T-34 once as a kid, it was fun.

The issue for the Germans wasn’t the number of tanks they could build, but the number of tanks they could field. Making expensive tanks made sense for the Germans because they couldn’t actually get many of them to the front, so they ones they could were made to be as good as possible. Making 20,000 mediocre tanks would have been useless because they couldn’t even send them to the front and supply them at the front. The Soviets might have been better served with fewer, more user-friendly tanks. I’ve seen many instances of T-34s and KVs being underutilized (driven right into the sights of an 88mm gun) due to poor usability. The Americans didn’t really need to compromise, as the Sherman was numerous, capable, and fairly ergonomic, but they had 90 divisions with 200 divisions worth of equipment.

My uncle drove Panthers on the eastern front. One of the few stories he told was that his tank was once knocked out. He slipped out, crawled all over the battlefield, and then reported to his headquarters. "We have been knocked out, commander and gunner are dead" - "And? Is the tank still able to run?" - "I think yes" - "Then what are you doing here? Go and get it!" And so he crawled back onto to battlefield, crawled into the tank, and drove it in reverse from the battleground.

The T34 wasn't designed in 1934. It started being designed in 1937 and finished around 1940 and was immediately put into production. The number was actually arbitrary and chosen by the lead engineer after some soviet decree that expanded the armor corp of the red army in 1934.

"One way of looking at it is it's like a hand grenade, it's a disposable item." -- Presumably a point which was rather glossed over during the training of the men who would be crewing them, I would think.

22:10 The teasing reveal of the real number of sherman was genius. It had me dieing of laughter and awe. I was considering the implications of having 5 shermans to 1 tiger... but then he showed the real number. Wow.

“Hilariously bad” is something you definitely want to hear when you’re talking about the structural integrity of your tanks armor.

One of the best adverts I've seen. I actually watched it all the way through. Petition Lindy to start playing War Thunder and giving commentary about tanks as he plays.

You missed that there is an escape hatch for the hull machine gunner in the floor, you can squeeze out of that without waiting for the driver to bail

Oddly enough, the Soviet philosophy on tank design, make it last (for them) 3 months, also has been applied to Formula 1 cars which used to be designed to last around 200 miles for a race just short of 200 miles, so that the optimal compromise between speed and endurance could be achieved.

The only T34 in the United States used to be just a few miles down the road from my house. It was at the Military Veterans Museum in Oshkosh. Still operational - it used to participate in the WW2 reenactment down in Rockford. But the Smithsonian Institute took it for their Museum a few years ago.

The tank hammering it's own tread pins back in is peak Russian engineering

I was so happy to see this kind of content again on your channel. I love this and also the long stories like the Calcutta light horse (hope I've remembered the name correctly) type of content. Thank you.

7:30 According to what I have learned from (Lt.?) Col. Moran, a.k.a. The Chieftain, and other sources, the toothed track with pinned drive wheel design was simpler to manufacture and more tolerant of manufacturing errors where the toothed sprocket that grabs onto track pins has to be a lot more precise to function. It didn't catch on because the toothed track design has a lower limit of acceptable torque than competing designs thus limiting the power one can deliver to the tracks from the engine. I could be wrong as I am merely going by rote, but that is what I recollect about that subject.

Interestingly enough, both Shermans and T-34's were used in the Croatian Homeland War and in the Bosnian War, right through the end of the wars. Croats also had some Hellcats as well. The 90s in the Balkans featured a load of ww2 stuff in many regards.

Just fill this man with extra caffeinated tea and stick a microphone to him, let him talk for hours about world war two.

One thing to consider is that the germans barely had enough fuels for the tanks they did have, and that only got worse, so even if they had gone for a quantity over quality design it wouldn't have had much of an impact.

For my taste, Lindybeige took too many shortcuts in this film, I mean, mental shortcuts. He did not mention the Stug III and IV assault guns (and others, almost 13,000 in total), which destroyed the majority of Allied armored vehicles. What about the German tank destroyers, of which around 6,000 were produced? As for the T34s - they were built in at least 4 or 5 factories, from various components (there were even those with aircraft engines), in addition, each factory modified its T34s mostly independently of other factories. According to the memoirs of Soviet tankers, the worst problem with the first T34s was insufficient ventilation, which made the entire crew intoxicated with toxic smoke after a few shots, to the point of preventing further combat. The best thing about the T34 was the simplicity of repairs. Even heavily damaged tanks could be restored to full working order in 6 hours. Thanks to the soft steel (mild steel? don't know the correct term) armor (which was coincidental, as the Soviets had trouble producing large quantities of high-grade hardened steel), it was very rare for German shells to explode inside the T34 (except when the shell hit the ammunition) - they simply went into the T34, making one hole, and out the other. Tankers who stood in the way of such a shell were killed or wounded, but rarely the entire crew was killed. And the repair of the tank was just patching up the holes (and cleaning up the corpse). As for the Panther, Polish historian of World War II, Norbert Bączyk, wrote a book about it entitled "Panther, WW2's Worst Tank" (unfortunately, available only in Polish). And before anyone starts throwing stones at me - this man, instead of repeating war myths stemming from Soviet propaganda, as thousands of other historians have done over the past 80 years, has spent years studying Wehrmacht and factory reports, which are available in the Bundesarchiv. And from them it was clear that the Panther was the most disliked tank by German tankers and staff officers, and in addition it caused the collapse of tank production in the Third Reich at the climax of the war, which greatly shortened the war.

Apparently Hitler said he wouldn’t have invaded Russia if he knew of their tank production.

In military service I was trained as gunner on leopardII. the first time ever I got into the tank and checked around trying all positions, I was shocked about the amount of space an relative comfort. I had expected it to be much more cramped and rougher. you can do everything inside a leoII, cooking, eating, sleeping, partying... (it's got a phantastic radio). btw, "analysing" the world with that killer-IR while standing around (I mean holding position) waiting for orders was the best thing ever. whoever has ever experienced good PASSIVE IR...: rabbits! 😀

There is a very good reason that the Sherman always gets qouted as taking 5 Shermans to take out ........ A US Army armored unit had 5 Shermans per platoon. The smallest unit that tanks operate in is a platoon. Plus US units could always whistle up batteries of 105mm and 155mm artillery.

Some of the memorials are still driveable as far as I know. I have one in my town, standing proudly almost a century after it's production, with children climbing on it and people laying flowers in front of it. I like it that it's easily to find videos on T-34, and every now and then you can find a new one with another T-34 being resurrected by some village mechanic who found one sunk in the swamp. I wonder, how many automobile hulls can be made out of one T-34 hull melted into steel.

So.... T on the T34 stands for "Tank". Mind blown.

Great video! its a very graphic way of explaining why "military grade" is not the same as good quality, but closer to cheap and effective

The sad part about treating a tank as a hand grenade is that your tank crew is going into battle in a hand grenade. Even sadder is that this approach doesn't work most of the time.

Great to see Lindybeige back onto WW2 and tanks, his passion and sense of humour make his military history videos compelling viewing and are why I subscribe.

At last a pause from interviews with foreign fighters in Ukraine. There's plenty of that all over the Internet so this is really nice. 👍

A classic Lindybeige video, it's been a while! What a treat.

Takes 5 Sherman's to kill a Tiger... Yes, because they trained and operated in platoons, tigers, getting a platoon operating together was pretty much a miracle on its own.

Thank you so soo SOOO much for balancing the volume of the outro. I'm so tired of getting jump-scared by the outro music

6:35 I think the reason for the shoddy bolts and gaps was because that back plate was supposed to be able to hinge open if you needed to do maintenance on the engine/transmission

Its hard to express how much I love these jolly videos.

Interesting that in German, the word for "Tank" was "Panzerkampfwagen" (armored war car), and in French it was "Char d'assaut" (assault carriage) but it Russian it was plain old "Tank", which if you think about it, is one of those big things that holds water.

So glad to know that you still are alive and well. Thanks for the video.

The reason germans had to go hard on quality over quantity with tanks is lack of fuel, also had mass produced models at beginning of the war but had to scale down their production after it became clear that they wont reach oil in causasus

6:26 with the huge hinges on the back plate you would think he realised that its supposed to be able to be opened when needed and not welded shut

Germans: "our tank is the best, it will take 5 of your tanks to match one of ours." Americans and Russians *laughing in ,

Just wanted to say... I normally fast-forward through adverts to get on with the content of most RU-vid vids but.... After 30s I stopped and paid attention. Your ad was actually so interesting and informative that I rewound and watched it all the way through, paying attention throughout! I hope they appreciate your added value and offer you a better rate next time!!!

ahaa yes, the ancient Roman tanks were impressive machines indeed

The old thing about it taking 4-5 Shermans to take out whatever enemy armour, my understanding is that that comes from US doctrine at the time was that any armour contact would get a response team of 3-5 tanks to flatten it and roll on to the next or handle however many it turned out to be once the report had made it up and down the chain and the team had actually gotten to the contact point As for the masses of tanks(German KDr on T-34s would have won the war without Lend Lease), sloped armour, LazerPig has a very good video on the T-34s that I enjoyed enough that I have it on my phone to watch whenever I don't trust hotel WiFi... so fairly often

At 22:34 you can see T-34 that is knocked out. The hulk of metal on the back is in fact a SPARE gearbox and braking system I believe. The friction materials were so bad on the first production tanks that they just carried a spare strapped to the engine deck.

The Russians apparently called the Sherman an "Emcha" because that's kind of what the M4 looked like translated into cyrillic, so they'd probably nickname the T-34 something like Techa.

The oft neglected tank attribute: ease of production That a tiger could probably defeat a Sherman or T34 in one-on-one combat is almost completely meaningless when they were being outproduced a hundred to one

Man this has to be the most honest world of tanks ad ever made.

One important thing to mention is that the T-34 was made in a hurry, contrary to other Soviet designs from that time. They rushed many things and couldn't refine it properly before the war started. It would be interesting to see a comparison between the T-34 and the KV-1, two tanks designed more or less in the same period, but the KV was more better finished. By the way, the Panzer III looked better than the Panther. Way more sport tank, it looked almost as if it was possible to go rallying with the thing. Lancia Stratos of the tanks. And in terms of hand weapons, the Steyr Scout.

Jolly good. I have this man to thank for a) not having a DJ at our wedding in July and b) having the confidence to start the proper dancing and c) not doing a bad job of it either. Cheers Lloyd!

4:20 i heard that a big problem with french b1 tanks was that having space just for 1 crew member in the turret made it hard to aim and navigate simultaneously.

Lindybeige, tanks and 20m+ video? You just made my day Lloyd

A few things to note about the T-34; For one thing, that little slab to knock the pins back in wasn't added until after world war II. and another, one might look at stats on places like wikipedia or the tank's official specs, thing is that no T-34 during the war was ever built to those standards, a combination of corruption, and corner-cutting to get them out as fast as possible. Also, not all of the T-34s were actually built during the war, almost a third or so of them were built after the war. Another is the problem with the heat treating involved in making the steel plates for their armor, a method of strengthening steel to improve its toughness without needing to add more. Trouble was the Soviets heat treated their steel to over 600 Brunel (more than twice that of all other nations that did that), and this had the effect of making the steel, yes tough, but also very brittle, meaning sudden shocks like, say, a shell hitting the armor hard enough, even without penetrating, could easily cause the steel to snap and fracture. Which is why you can find a lot of photos of T-34's with large chunks of their armor missing in places. And despite what is said, the Germans weren't *that* shocked by the T-34's appearance during Barbarossa. A lot of their standard lighter tanks like the Panzer I and II and their early tank hunters did have issues fighting them, but the Panzer III could reliably knock it out (most T-34's destroyed in combat were destroyed by Panzer III's, in fact.). The Germans encountered and fought T-34's and KV-1's en masse from day one of Barbarossa, the idea that it was some new war winner that surprised the Germans is a product of the memoirs of German officers after the war, where blaming soviet "Superior" technology was an easy scapegoat to cover for their consistent tactical, operational, and logistical failures once they lost the initiative. It had awful speed, It also had a horrible gearbox that required massive amounts of force to move to third gear, and fourth gear was basically impossible without the aid of a hammer (yes, that's an actual thing. No, it's not a myth, this has been proven) Also, despite that bit about the Panther Comparrison, another issue with the T-34 was that Soviet logistics was a complete and total nightmare, spare parts were few and far between, almost half of the T-34s lost during battles were breakdowns prior to the battle even starting. Which is one of the reasons Germany managed to capture so many. As for the 'driven straight into battle', there's a handful of anecdotal stories claiming something to that effect with a couple of tanks, not nessecarily T-34's, but even if it is true (which seems unlikely) Tractor Factory 183 in Stalingrad (Which produced over half of all the T-34s during the war) did not produce ammunition, so the idea that they'd go into battle right from the factory seems absurd. And while the 76mm and 85mm guns were good, it's ammunition proved not to be. It was proven to be low-quality, not as accurate as it should've been, and in cases had a nasty habit of cooking off early if the gun wasn't left to cool first after firing too many times. Some sources even state that, given its comparatively narrow tracks, it gave off ground pressure not dissimilar to that of the Tiger despite the weight difference, T-34s often got stuck in the mud if they had to cross it, despite what pro-Soviet shills will tell you, there's photographic evidence to prove it. I don't pretend to be an expert on how ground pressue works, mind you, and historians can't really agree on that. So grain of salt on that one. Lazerpig's video on the T-34 is quite informative (though by his own admission he's not very happy with that video because of various production and quality reasons, but the major majority of his points are valid and accurate) I highly encourage anyone interested to check it out. It's called 'The T-34 is not as good as you think it is'

new lindybeige video always makes my day , thank you so much man

Anyone else want to watch a whole video of Lloyd playing world of tanks?

TankBearPig is my suggestion for a name for the T34, or Panzerbärschwein in German

Looking at the craftsmanship of T34 you could say that recently sunk titan was a military-grade vehicle.

Even a crappy weld is still better than having a shell bounce off the riveted plate and still endanger the crew inside by popping the rivets. The T-34 is also lucky to be known as 'T-34' all the experimental vehicles that never fully made it to production that a lot of people love nowadays, were only ever called "Obiekt (number)" Like Obiekt 279, the UFO tank designed to survive nuclear war.

I remember a russian guy telling me a story about how the soviet tanks were superior to the Germans, because (according to him) the Germans made the effort to grind flush all of the welding seems whereas the Russians did not bother to do that - and that meant that when the German tank got hit all of the armour would fall off. I am not quite sure how true that is 🙂

7:30 when I was a kid, I had a lego that had rubber tracks with that same design, with the protuberances on the treads

'Why paint something that's likely to be a flaming wreck within half-an-hour?' That's a bit of a harsh way to talk about electric cars.

The T-34 may well be the source of the Soviet proverb: 'The Best is the enemy of Good Enough'.

Lloyd: have you seen LazerPig's video on the T-34? Would have been potentially useful to watch before you made this. He covers the properties you discuss like sloped armour, mass production, hard vs soft stats, quality of steel etc.. I feel like you're in for some blow-back

That was a lot more gaming in a LindyBeige video than I thought possible. Amazing

The T34's armor was very hard, but brittle. This would result in spalling inside the crewed area of the tank if it was hit, and caused many casualties on its own. The external gas tanks were opposed to it's other version of fuel storage, which were housed inside the crew area, causing massive survivability issues. The T34 was also only decently fast on paper. Like you mentioned, the transmission was notoriously difficult to manipulate, which meant it rarely ever got out of second gear. And just the sheer number T34s caused enormous supply chain issues. Yeah there were a butt load of tanks, but very few had sufficient fuel, spare parts, ammo, and supplies for the crew.

Surprising how primitive the T34 was, but it did the job.

Also having so many tanks at your disposal meant you had the means to work on tank doctrine as well and quickly improve there while the germans had to look after theirs

NUMERICAL ADVANTAGE fks up most enemies. - Sun Tzu

Well to be fair the germans did produce some 8500 panzer IVs and 10.000 StuGs and it's not like they had the building materials to match the allies.

Another way of looking at it is that in a "normal"tank track you have a more carefully crafted sprocket with a specific tooth design and a more rude tooth on the track. The Russian T. tank has the opposite the "sprocket(which isn't a sprocket) has the more rude roller/pins and the toothdesign has to be put on the tracks. The obvious disadvantage of this design is that the tooth on the track will be damaged more easily

I'm earlier to this than the Russians to Berlin

Watching Lindy play world of tanks at 5 fps and marvel at some very mediocre graphics might be the highlight of my week haha

The panther was not similar to the T-34 it was vastly superior in every conceivable way, I mean it was specifically designed as a counter to it. This is especially true once they ironed out some of the reliability issues from the early models, although of course every German tank was mired by such issues.

21:00 The Chieftain likes to call those gears "The Turret Monster"

Looking forward to part 2 of Brandon's interview! Slava Ukraini 🇻🇳❤️🇺🇦

“BANG GOT IT!” Don’t ever change Lindy