10 Facts you may not know about Tanks

[Music] [Music] [Music] hello again everyone it is me Maximus and this rather odd looking guy peering out the top of the turret yes we are talking about tanks again today and particularly 10 things that you may not actually know about tanks now I say you may not know about many of you probably know exactly the things that I'm about to mention in today's video but there are some people out there who really have very little understanding as to how tanks work the tactics and the procedures that they use to make sure they can be battle effective efficient on the battlefield overall and get your crew home safe and sound now some of the things I'm gonna discuss are pretty self-explanatory and some of the things are not quite as apparent or as obvious as you may think now the information that is provided in today's video is purely an informative not educational video so please don't take this as word of mouth it's from public source and I am NOT a subject matter expert that in saying I am NOT a tanker that knows everything about everything in the world and I just thought I'd share a little bit of facts that you may or may not know to kind of give you a bit of a broader understanding as to how tanks work so on today's video I've decided to talk about 10 things you may not know about tanks and their procedures so coming in at number 1 is the engine shutdown procedure now no matter what strength level that you are in with your tank whether it be squadron troop company Brigade Italian whatever it may be tanks are very very noisy the engines that they have produce a ton of noise due to the inherent nature and weight and size of these things they need a big powerful engine to move them around the problem with that is they produce a lot of noise and with noise becomes detection if there are recce troops out there wherever they may be looking for you in a tactical sense you have a high risk of being detected or found out now normally tanks aren't really gonna be able to obscure that noise in any way shape or form because they inherently are the spearhead of the force knocking the punch through the enemy forces and there is no real requirement to be quiet the you know I guess the cat's been let out the bag at that point the tanks are rolling forward they're there to destroy neutralize the enemy however when you're moving into different locations and you're not under contact recce troops and other types of reconnaissance elements may still try to find you now for instance with the Challenger 2 in the beautiful sea v12 engine that it has with the twin-turbo diesel engine it produces a ton of noise and you can almost hear that vehicle from about 1.5 to 2 kilometers away just on its own let alone a squadron or troop level from long distance that is a huge amount of noise being produced especially at night where it carries further if you're working to travel to a new location whether a new harbour area or forming up position and you're not under contact or not going into it like it's a tactical attack you want to be as careful as you can as to giving away how many tanks are within your unit so what tends to happen is when you form up into a new position you're going down for the night or just parking up for the day the vehicles go into what's called an engine shutdown procedure now if you're in a tactical environment this is the procedure that you use to stop the enemy from listening as to how many vehicles are in your unit this doesn't just apply for tanks though folks it pretty much applies to any vehicle that has an engine that can be heard and pretty much all the vehicles nowadays can be heard with the engine that they have we're not running Priuses here when the tanks roll into a new position they tend to park off into a defensive location or run defense whatever it may be : staggered and they'll shut down the engine of the exact same time this prevents the enemy that are listening from distance knowing exactly how many vehicles are in that unit for instance if number one tanks shut down Bubba Holbrook another ones still running they can hear the tone of the engines changing as they shut down and the enemy can actually count how many vehicles you have from a long distance away without even seeing you they're just counting how many engine choke tone changes as you spool down that is something you really don't want to do so over the net they will do a short count which will basically tell them to shut the engines down on my command once they've raised shut down and shut down as a one-er and it's actually quite difficult to tell how many different out there there's a little factoid that you may of may not known number two convoy lights a lot of people always ask me Matt smus what is that weird cross on the back of the leopard - what's it therefore is a naming point is it in a reference point it is a reference point it is known as a convoy light and I myself when I went into the British Army had no idea what all these different sort of plaques were on the back of the vehicles I couldn't figure it out and eventually I realised it was designed for convoy use at night time folks we ideally do not want to be putting lights and shining them all over the place it gives you where your position almost instantaneously so what we tend to do when traveling in formation of vehicles is follow one behind the other very very tightly in a night routine when you do that you have risk of crashing into the person in front of you so vehicles are given what's called a convoy light the convoy light is a very small bulb or lamp that is shown on to a black and white square circle whatever it may be that can then be seen by the vehicle driving behind you that small surface area of black and white is extremely difficult to see from a long distance however still quite easy if you are using quite high-tech optics and the like however in the I guess most primitive sense it is a lot more difficult to see that tiny of the lamp shining onto that black and white stripe block than it is having a huge flashlight or glow stick or whatever else hiding all over the back of the thing all your brake lights and your red tail travel lights they're just not useful so a convoy light is shown onto those squares and on different vehicles in terms of variants NATO has all sorts of different kinds you know Germany has the cross the UK has the black and white lines and you know that's what they're there for they're not a unit indicator they're there for the convoy lights convoy lights when they go out is the most terrifying thing in the world when you're traveling at twenty thirty five kilometres an hour driving in a 52-ton vehicle or 35 tonne vehicle and you're about 15 to 20 maybe 30 metres away from the next vehicle and the light goes out it's terrifying it'll come hopefully straight back again once they get over the berm or bridge that they're going through but when it disappears you are very very nervous you slow right down you God is he is the lab Cornell is he just stopped I've got to crash into the bathroom very nerve-wracking stuff and when you do get into a driving tactical sense trust me when I say this you're gonna be very very cautious as to what you're doing your vehicle in the vehicle in front when that convoy light is on number three same track driving this is pretty much taking onto the same kind of point with the convoy light however with tactical sense we always want to make sure that no one can detect how many vehicles are within our unit when you're traveling in a convoy on any kind of formation you want to try your best to minimize the amount of track coverage of your place on to the surface area driving over what I mean by that is when the vehicle is traveling across a muddy terrain desert sand whatever it may be you don't want to be leaving too many tracks behind you again enemy patrols to walk across or drive across these areas and count the number of vehicles in your unit this is very bad for the overall battle group image / picture because the enemy will automatically know how many vehicles all forces they have to bring to the battlefield to counter your attack or your Patrol that you're sending out so we do what's called same track driving it is quite a skill to master and if you don't know how to do it trust me after a long time of training you'll get used to it the idea is to follow the tracks as perfectly as you can of the vehicle in front it is not an easy task and you'd think it would be when it comes to off-road driving in these vehicles it's not as simple as it seems ruts both sides water bogs whatever it may be really want to fight you in trying to keep that track in the same rut unlike snow where when you get in the right you can never get out of it mud likes to shift a lot and water just really throws on top of that so ideally when you're trying to follow a track and the tracks in front of it it can be quite difficult to do however that's not saying it's impossible the idea is to really rely heavily on your command and potentially your third man if you have one to tell you where your tracks are you'll be laying across but immediately in front this again is to try and improve overall situational awareness for your troops as they go across the ground because the same thing applies for the vehicles they are able to look out rather tracks around that aren't from your own troops your third man your commander are looking for those tan tracks that they know fine well or not from your vehicles it applies to both sides and it's something as a vehicle commander that you should be aware of when you go through potential tactical environments so coming in at number four are wire cutters or wire splitters these are horrible devices that are used to try and potentially decapitate crew members of the vehicle they are spread across urban environments or basically anywhere environments where tanks are going to be traveling at speed where it's very difficult to see these wires and they will cut the head off of anyone that passes through it at high speed it's not really something that I've ever actually heard happen and I'm sure there are instances of it happening now I'm not always are these kind of things placed in in environments that are on purpose sometimes you're driving through areas or you know situations where cables I've been blown off you know telephone wires electrical pylons whatever it may be that are no longer conductive or have power on them and they're draped over you know different compounds or walls or entrances and openings and if your vehicles driving through there and your driver or Commander you're not paying attention and that wire catches up in the vehicle there's nothing really stopping that wire dragging across and potentially chopping you or your crew members heads off limbs whatever it may be so what vehicle crews have installed on vehicles aren't wire cutters or wire splitters and I can ask that question a couple of times in the past that's most what is this thing on the front of the vehicle well this designed to catch that cable and hopefully with the tensile strength of the wire and the metal hook cut it before it reaches the crew member it is not there as some sort of you know antenna which a lot of people have asked me before that's there's a lot of special kind of antenna no it is purely for protecting your noggin so in at number five is the smoke screen engine capability of course many of you are probably aware that some main battle tanks have the ability to produce a smoke screen from their exhausts however if you're so used to seeing smoke dischargers coming from the grenade boards on the side of the vehicles you may not be aware that smoke screens are produced in a secondary manner the smoke screen is produced on to the engine exhausts which basically means that hot diesel is squirted all of the exhaust ducts that produce a huge plume of white smoke this smoke is used to retreat back into or to tactically withdraw conceal or hide you or enemy in some cases of your position there is some risk with using this system unfortunately when you squirt a lot of hot diesel on to exhaust they get extremely hot and sometimes in some cases catch fire I have seen this happen before in Challenger two someone left the smoke dischargers honor they're running a huge gun run they didn't quite realize until they're about two kilometers down the road where so much deal have been squirted onto the exhaust the turbo would actually sucked it back in and caused a huge amount of damage to the turbo and a huge flame that came out the side which honestly was absolutely hilarious to watch in at number six is the tank telephone now this is a kind of technology that really isn't used very often anymore but tank telephones were quite common back in the day specifically in the Vietnam War where infantry and tank support was very common on the front line when tanks required to communicate with interview soldier wasn't always practical to use radio communications because of the fact that the antennas were really always getting interrupted by signal from rain jungle environments it just really wasn't very practical to try and use radio communication between vehicles and infantry soldiers so they decided to use tank telephones basically they put a telephone box on the back of vehicle open the little shutter out comes the phone and you can talk to the crew inside to this day some vehicles still have this capability unfortunately it's really not as practical in today's modern environment because infantry are relied very heavily upon high-tech radio communications is this a pro or a con you decide let me know in the comment section below in at number seven is secure your death vaults your decks are basically the metallic superstructure that protects your engine compartments or other compartments from indirect fire or direct fire or most importantly I or mines when a high explosive blast is placed underneath the vehicle or around the vehicle in such a way that the decks are affected by the blasts the decks could potentially turn into a projectile not only that but if the crew members head is pointing at the top of say the drivers hatch and the decks are part of that compartment it could literally decapitate that driver deck bolts are there for a reason that to insure the decks are not going to fly off if you're engaged remember that the deck bolts are actually securing pieces of your armor although that superstructure is quite thin and not the most important part of the armour of the vehicle it still protects some of the most important components such as the engine and your driver for instance on the Challenger 2 the decks are actually extremely heavy weighing at almost one and a half tons combined it's very difficult to obviously lift as a crew and must be lift off as a crane the crew can't split them down just like many other vehicles out there for their own decks but these decks must be secured back down in place when going on any kind of tactical patrol if you are an armed and crewmen please don't neglect those deck bolts I have seen incidences where the decks have come off say such as a CB RT and caused some serious damage not only to the vehicle but to those around it at number 8 we are going to talk about the Challenger main battle tank side skirt and dust problem initially there was a major concern for dust ingestion into the challengers main engine bay during the first deployment of the challenge one to a desert environment challenger crews were having huge problems with the filter packs sucking in mass amounts of dust and debris choking out the engine of its own air supply the problem was that the engine pack was actually sucking in air through the filter pack at a perfect moment where the dust was being scooped up by the tracks at the back vortex of the engine bay this caused a huge influx of dust and debris into those filter packs blocking them and choking the engine engineers and design drawings were placed into how they could figure out a - solution to try and fix this up before they looked into a bigger solution later on they looked into producing side skirts these side skirts were placed down the running gear and road wheels of the Challenger one to make sure the dust was sent only the rear final drive into the back of the engine bay so that once the engine was fired up the extraction fans would suck the dust out the back and fire it to the rear of the vehicle causing no problem to the air intake to the engine that being said there really was still huge problems with this engine trying to suck in that dust even with the side skirts but there was a huge improvement once they made this design change in at number nine is laser rangefinders overheating now of course laser rangefinders nowadays are highly complex and very high-tech on main battle tanks however there are many vehicles out there that still use quite primitive laser rangefinders being the fact that using so much energy to send a high-density laser beam towards a target to reflect back sending you a range distance this can actually cause you problems if you continue to laser target over and over again the power consumption of some of the older laser rangefinders could actually cause it to severely overheat if you continually press the button to laser range find an to your target that's why in the olden type vehicles and older tight laser rangefinders crews were told to not overlays when you overlays the system couldn't cool it down enough and potentially overheat short serve didn't fail that would be a situation you would not want to be in when you're about to engage a target using your laser rangefinder in your ballistics computer and all of a sudden the laser rangefinder is giving you no option to actually get that range and you're gonna have to do it manually and finally a rather odd slash peculiar factoid about tanks is never bring apricots on a US tank now this is a rather interesting folklore / myth that says that if apricots are anywhere around or near or on a u.s. armored vehicle tractor specifically then you are going to get bad luck the superstition started in World War two this is because every time a tank broke down ironically apricot rations were always on board this was really not anything to read into though and crews really just brought it into superstition this would make most sense though as rations were generally distributed evenly among armored crews when they were given out from stores and statistically if a tank were to break down you most likely would find the fruit inside ever since then tankers and armored now crews have definitely been afraid of the apricot coming towards their vehicle a modern take on this has transformed apricots into charms which are a candy like the apricots in World War two charms today would be fairly evenly distributed between all rations and would likely be present in the event of a mechanical malfunction however the fact that apricots go in the American armored fighting vehicles is a bad omen actually is hilarious well that's it everyone that is our 10 facts that you may have not known about tanks hopefully there's something new that you got from that I know they're not the most common factoids out there in the world and maybe some of you like Matt Smith's everybody already knows that and that may be the case but at least I can kind of showcase some of the experiences that I've had with those particular facts I really appreciate each and every one of you for supporting my channel and even just watching today's video if you do wish to continue supporting my channel please first of all hit that Bell button so you can be notified of any upcoming military content videos and if you wish to support me even further go check out my patreon account is in the description box below if you wanna have a little chat with me I do have a discord channel which you can also join can hang out play some video games discuss military topics or just say hello and I also have Facebook guys thanks again for watching all the best and have a wonderful day bye bye [Music] [Music]

Channel: Matsimus

Views: 354,602

Rating: 4.9178743 out of 5

Keywords: tanks, tank, main battle tank, abrams tank, armata tank, T-14, T-14 armata, M1A2 abrams, M1 Abrams, Challenger 2 tank, challenger 2, leopard 2, leopard 2 tank, tank tactics, tank facts, facts, top ten, top 10, matsimus, matsimus gaming, military, tank guns, tank battle, best tanks, top 10 tanks, tank fest, tankfest, world of tanks, war thunder tanks, army tank, army, armoured corps, armored tanks, tank armor, tank armour, 120mm smoothbore

Id: SW2f3yCOeWY

Length: 19min 7sec (1147 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 11 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Maxicozie]

Funny since this Youtuber pointed out in several videos that he does not care for war thunder.