The Greatest & Deadliest Main Battle Tanks of The 20th Century [4K] | The Greatest Ever | Spark

[Music] from the moment it appeared less than a century ago no piece of battlefield technology has left its track marks on history like the tank it has slugged it out in every major conflict of the 20th and 21st century and shows no sign of leaving the ring but which tanks are the greatest to find out we canvassed some of the world's greatest tank experts they include tom clancy world-class novelist tank fan and military observer war is about killing people and breaking things i think the olympics not supposed to be fair out there bruce dickinson front man from rock outfit iron maiden and amateur tank driver once you've driven 20 yards you really don't want to stop till you get to berlin and billionaire tank collector jacques littlefield i have about 220 vehicles of which uh 65 or so are actual tanks and from the sharp end of the tank business we have war vets it was very similar to just getting out in the dirt and having a nice time and the wartorn oh this is love the tank is about love now sit back and brace yourselves the top 10 greatest ever tanks and the technology that makes them mighty we all know what a tank looks like it looks like a sherman we all know what a tank does it does what a sherman does the number 10 greatest ever tank is the 33-ton fantasy tank that we recognize from newsreels comic books and hollywood movies i would definitely be someone who'd say i think the sherman tank is one of the greatest tanks ever made the m4 sherman is the tank that won the second world war for the allies in total nearly 50 000 shermans were built and the greatest ever reunited one of the survivors with three veterans for whom the sherman became their wartime home because during the allied campaign in normandy when these men were still teenagers they trusted their lives to sherman's state-of-the-art technology i haven't been one of these for 60 years but i'm willing to have a go i'm brian carpenter i was a driver on a sherman tank [Music] i'm nobby clark and i was a gunner my name is kent out i commanded one of these sherman tanks making its debut in the western desert campaign 1942 the american m4 sherman soon became the ubiquitous allied tank the brits hadn't the canadians haven't the french heaven the russians haven't the chinese have them and it manages to perform everywhere we're impressed by the size of it by the efficiency of it the guns operated beautifully excellent yeah the gun in particular 75 millimeter very much more accurate and a larger shell which meant that we could shoot at bigger animals had to have a good gun had to have good armor but its main key was mobility it had to be able to get fast into the enemy rear and exploit that breakthrough it was so fast and so easy to drive and it's a lovely ride almost as good as being in a modern motor car it's no surprise the shermans drove like a car they were built by the mighty u.s motor industry the sherman tank design was driven from the beginning by its produce ability the allies thought that we were going to have to out produce the axis so they were built by places like baldwin locomotive works by general motors by pacific car and foundry they were produced in vast quantities for every sort of contemporary german tank the americans were delivering about 10 shermans the sherman design was really a universal tank that was intended to be used by a largely citizen army it needed to be operated by somebody who knew how to run a farm tractor by somebody who could drive a truck and you couldn't have got any greener than brian carpenter a college student before he became a tank driver and i've got the two uh steering levers between my knees and i got a clutch pedal and an accelerator pedal and of course the steering levers act as the brake standardization is the key it's only really in the engine that these tanks differ this one and others like it had a nine cylinder air cooled radial actually an aircraft engine i didn't think an aero type engine is pressed all that suitable for a slow moving vehicle like a tank but of course everything was low geared and at full revs in bottom gear it would only do two miles an hour and in top gear fifth gear it would do 22 miles an hour but you need to be on a nice smooth level road a bit down here otherwise it wouldn't take it the sherman tank offered some unexpected domestic facilities when the lads were out and about we didn't have any laundry so you had to wash your own clothes and the only way you could dry your clothes was that you have an exhaust at the back which you switch the engine on and you can dry your laundry very quickly and while you waited for your socks to dry how about a cup of tea you could put a kettle on the top of the exhaust and boil the kettle once you've finished your tea and nature called the sherman supplied an unorthodox portable toilet empty shell cases the toilet arrangements this is where the empty cases come in you see if you find an empty case this is reused now you could get rid of it and best of all if you were caught short it was easy to resupply and there were times when there were no empty cases so they pointed the gun in the direction of germany and got mdk's nice one knobby but the sherman was much more than an exercise in improvisation everything about the tank's design was carefully considered the american philosophy was to use the tank as an infantry attack weapon so the armor is suitable for a vehicle which is highly mobile it's got to keep the enemy on the move but isn't necessarily slogging it out with other tanks but tank on tank action was an operational fact of life and by the time modestly armored sherman arrived in europe in late 42 it found itself on the receiving end from a new generation of german tank killers and german tank commanders soon got the measure of the sherman i saw him first time when i came to the western front there were no metros the very thin armor easy to its arm and into penetrator armor this tank uh a thousand meters the the the the shot went straight through from birth bad news for sherman but that's only the half of it of course you've had 140 gallons of petrol in the tanks they're full and of course they were penetrated the petrol went up that's where they got their name from the germans was tommy cookers yeah because they brewed up so easily but despite all its flaws in the end it was the sherman's original design considerations that proved decisive if we look at the second world war with hindsight it's quite obvious that the tank you can mass produce is going to win the war for whichever side when we encounter germans they didn't come alone they come many of them and then we didn't have a chance wow brilliant i never thought i'd do it again just as noisy yes because i'm older it's all seemed much harder like stiffer but feeling it was really good it all sort of came back congratulations it's the art of compromise that makes or breaks a tank and all the remaining nine greatest ever have made some tough decisions next up is the designer tank that leaps straight from the drawing board into the jungles of southeast asia the sheridan tank was built to satisfy the wish for an air liftable tank a go-anywhere light tank for the weekend number nine the dream of tank designers for decades has been to develop a tank that's lightweight easy to transport but has the firepower of a main battle tank this vehicle was unique in that it had more firepower than any other vehicle that you can think of that would be dropped from an airplane the transport aircraft flies over the ground at maybe about 100 miles an hour 10 20 feet off the ground the drogue chute comes out pulls the tank out it falls to the ground it's a frightening thing to watch this machine you're going to drop into a distant part of the world to fight let's call it a colonial war and in the context of 1970s america that can mean only one place vietnam i was part of a cavalry unit we were kind of search and destroy go out there and don't come back who better to give us the lowdown on the sheridan than two guys who experienced vietnam from inside the multi-talented tank first impression was very positive it did a lot of neat things it could be air dropped it floated all you could see through the window was water and fish the animal m551 shared my connection driver tricycle steering four forward speeds two reverse the manual said 43 miles an hour but yeah i think it could get more closer to 45 46. if you hit the rice paddy dykes just right you could actually get it to float and you could hear it slap when it hit the ground the sensational cross-country performance of sheridan was down to one thing armor anorexia every aspect of the tank is calorie controlled as soon as you start talking weight that's light enough to be dropped out of an airplane you're talking about a tank that's going to have to be around 10 tons or 15 tons and it's very difficult to do that with conventional steel armor the only way sheridan was going to stay in one piece was if it was made out of aluminium for a given level of armor protection you could get a much better structure that is something able to withstand the rigors of airdrop and the requirement for heavy firepower on such a skinny frame led to the showdown's most striking feature it has an amazing looking gun 152 caliber gun that fires missiles it would follow an infrared beam probably similar to laser beam today but it left the gun tube and you swear it almost hit the ground and it would fishtail all over the place but it never missed the target the same fat barrel was used to fire conventional rounds too pretty exciting in ultra lightweight sheridan this weighed 17 tons when you fired it all hell broke loose lift the whole front into the tank right off the ground hopefully you had a helmet on sometimes because your head be knocked around inside the turret i mean it really was a kick but the bouncy recoil created more than a headache if you fired the conventional round the recoil would knock out or knock out of alignment the electrical systems that would fire the missiles as well as a ruptured missile system another potential problem was the aluminium armor didn't offer much protection against well anything and the sheridan was stuffed with ammunition the driver is surrounded by ammunition on both sides then you have them stacked on the floor 28 rounds no smoking in the driver's whole place no smoking in the tank actually try to keep any sparks away from the ammunition or you'd lose your home it's kind of the swiss army knife of combat vehicles that is it could do everything kind of okay but nothing really very well one of the things they tried to do with the sheridan was to look at opposite design requirements you needed mobility but you had to have it air droppable it had to be able to swim it had to be able to fire a missile so it really does a very good job of putting all these things together granted they're all compromises but you end up with a vehicle that does have capabilities that was unlike anything else available at the time to qualify for the list of greatest ever tanks imagination counts for something but it's performance that rocks out and the sheridan couldn't put its metal where its mouth was our next battle tank could not be accused of such underachievement from the outset of world war ii germany demonstrated ruthless tactical superiority and engineering excellence in its tank warfare the nazis created an armored force to which the allies had no answer and made it their business to stay one step ahead in 1943 german tank technology found its ultimate expression in the panther eighth greatest ever tank [Music] this is the last remaining operational panther in the world and the greatest ever brought this panther veteran face to face with the big cat he commanded over 60 years ago this thing is from outside in perfect shape it couldn't be any better you know i could hear it and smell it again you know yeah that's exciting very exciting the panther was a big shock for the us army and for the british army it's an upsurge or evolution in tank design compared to everything that had preceded it the single most important feature on the panther was its firepower it had a superb gun the long 75 millimeter gun that the panther introduced was probably the best all-around tank on of world war ii okay move the panther gun was purpose designed as an anti-tank weapon it achieved its power not by going to a larger caliber but by going to a longer barrel and a larger powder charge the gun itself it's a very long barrel the size of the barrel is important because the longer the the shot is in the barrel the higher the speed the higher the muzzle velocity like every other panther commander wolfgang sterner was impressed by the awesome power of the gun you can destroy this thing an enemy tank broadside at two thousand meters without any problem anything it has an excellent first country mobility excellent this suspension we had if you go over a bump you see how the road wheels are going up and down you know and that inside you have a relatively smooth ride other things your brain comes off you know if you go first keeping wolfgang's brains in order was down to the panthers running gear this is the panther suspension what we see here is eight road wheel stations the innovation on this tank was to have large rolling road wheels for low rolling resistance but uh interleave them so that they could be placed close enough together to evenly distribute the weight so as we go down here what we see is alternating pairs of two together too far apart two together too far apart the panthers original design came as a result of germany's experiences on the eastern front in 1941 german tank tactics fell apart when they encountered a new breed of russian tank which they were horrified to discover was much better than their own shamelessly the german response to their new foe was to copy it and the first thing they nicked was its sloping armor this type of tank is the first thing we had in germany with a sloped armor this this armor has a size of about 80 millimeters but you choose a slope it has a protection ability of 100 millimeters because if you get a front hit it bounces off not satisfied to merely copy the soviet tank the panther design aimed to improve on it as we look at the front of the tank you may notice this rough appearance this is not shoddy workmanship what this is is a pretty sophisticated piece of counter mine technology it was a paste that was traveled on purposely trialled rough it was then hardened with a blowtorch and its purpose was to provide standoff from magnetically attached mines the improvements didn't stop with the armor the germans took pride in giving the tank a complete engineering makeover whereas a mechanism in a russian tank might weigh a hundred pounds to do a particular job the germans could take that hundred pounds and get it down to maybe seventy pounds here you have the casting for the engine block for the panther and as you can see here from looking at it this is an incredibly intricate casting it's got lots of thin sections it's been very carefully engineered so that i would say a comparable russian or american unit to this would be heavier and larger it might be somewhat more rugged but this is designed so it's right there on the edge just very beautifully built and designed they would do things in a manner that was better but sometimes was very complex so the command comes now panzer marsh go the complicated panther saw its first action at the battle of kursk the biggest and meanest tank battle of world war ii but from the off things started to go wrong most things broke down before seeing any action they were not ready for combat they were much too early to brought to the front it was not a very impressive situation the first the problem with the complex engineering was not only that it was prone to failure it also wasted precious time and resources these are the main bearings for the mybach v12 engine that powered the panther they're a beautiful piece of engineering they're designed to last for years the problem was the panther lasted weeks or months in combat and it's one of the reasons that the germans lost the war they just couldn't back off from engineering excellence in every aspect of their weapons the german national character seeks to greatly after perfection when perfection is not only not needed it's counterproductive it's said that if germany hadn't gone overboard with the engineering and built simpler tanks in larger numbers the war could have had a different result still one nil but to the other side so whichever way you look at it this tank rightly deserves its ranking at number eight overtaking the stationary panther is a machine that if it didn't exist we'd have to make it up if satan produced a tank it would be the t-72 seventh greatest ever tank the seventies was when the gulf between soviet and western ideologies seemed to be at its widest and the symbol of ruski threat was the t-72 tank the t-72 is a tank that was built by the soviets to fight world war iii the t-72 was designed to form the spearhead of a soviet push into western europe the ultimate attack tank the t-72 was definitely something to be worried about it had thick armor good mobility a big gun and a very low profile it's about a foot lower than a british tank at about 18 inches lower than the contemporary american tank so it's a difficult target to hit especially if it's coming at you fast in great numbers fully tracks up with infantry behind it oh well that sounds pretty exciting you look at the 272 it's wide it's squat it's got a big gun and when you're driving it you actually feel aggressive you just wants to get up and go you feel part of the tank and it's fun to drive the biggest surprise that we had with the t-72 actually was its gun which was 125 millimeter caliber gun and that would have caused just big problems the soviet barrel was five millimeters wider than western barrels and that meant bigger shells and more armor penetration but the revolutionary bit was that the gun was fed shells by an automatic loading system the big green lump is the back of the gun which is also a couple to an auto loader right the ammunition comes up through these two flaps in the floor which is lifted up to about here rammer comes out the back of the turret pushes the wall head in with having an auto loader you don't need the loader which means you can reduce the size of the tank you can make the tank smaller which is a harder target to hit removing a crew member immediately reduced the weight of the tank by about 12 tons the weight of the armor needed to protect a crewman this increased the tank's speed and maneuverability but the t-72 went further shrinking the interior so that even the remaining crew had to be specially selected if you're taller than five six about here my wife's taller than that you can't fit inside a t-72 it's munchkin land all right the t-72 seemed to fit perfectly into the western stereotype of the soviet tank a brutal efficient killing machine but was t-72 really all it was cracked up to be intelligence officers are scared for a living intelligence officer looks at the piece of soviet hardware and goes oh my god the russians have finally figured it out as the deadliest thing on the battlefield we're screwed if we have to go against then we get all of it we find it's a death trap like everything else the russians ever built for starters there's the trusty auto loader there's an unfortunate habit of trying to stuff the gunner into the gun it wouldn't be unknown for the crew members to lose their arms with the autoloader picking up the sleeves and trying to ram that in the gun run the shell but there's much worse t-72 has its ammunition exposed and it means look very often if it's struck with the right to being coming around the whole tank will blow up the death machine deford's own crew the likelihood that the crews of the t-72 feared the tank almost as much as the pentagon did has got to count against it in the great scheme of things t-72 makes it to number seven while mutually assured destruction was making everyone miserable on both sides of the iron curtain the loved-up swedes tried to find a way to reform the image of the tank as an instrument of peace the unique s tank comes in as the sixth greatest ever tank the pacifist choice when the tank world first saw the s tank they collectively shook their heads in disbelief i think s tank astounded everywhere it is so unlike the conventional tank that it was bound to have people's chins dropping for a while when they got to terms with it the ass tank is one of the goofier ideas that's come down the pike in the past 50 years it caused us to rethink what is a tank and what is the essence of a tank from its turretless snout to its protective fence twin engines and built-in swimming skirt the s-tank is quite simply unique and its audacity surprised even the swedes well i was shocked when i first saw it because i haven't seen that kind of tank before i was the first soldier in the swedish army on the ash tank in 62. the greatest ever went to sweden to find out what all the fuss was about if we look at sweden it's a neutral country and it's caught between the warsaw pact on one hand and nato on the other so it needs a posture of robust defense so that no one's going to invade it i think s tank is designed for an attack by russia swinging north about down through sweden to even the most casual observer the s tank has one particularly striking feature no turret it was intended to fight in forested terrain narrow forest roads don't lend themselves to a fully turreted design there's perhaps not even room to swing the gun around so the first thing the swedes said was perhaps i don't even need a turret the absence of a turret makes the s-tank just over seven feet tall very handy if your main tactic is concealment an s tank had this ability to literally dig itself a hole all you see sticking over the top leads the gun battle hardly anything more it was designed to shoot and scoot under onslaught from large numbers of enemy tanks you can take a few out you can then roar off in the opposite direction dig yourself in again in battle conditions the s tank would be buttoned up all the crew protected inside the tank but when the greatest ever were in town posing no obvious threat everyone could stand up and have a good look around extra eyes for the driver it's very easy to drive and even fun when if you're driving on a road you say about 50 55 kilometers per hour you can turn around 180 degrees in less than a second if you're good enough it's more like the inside of a fighter aircraft than anything else in that you're literally using the controls on a stem everything right at the edge of your fingertips one of the s tank's most astonishing concepts is the reverse driver it's his job to drive the tank in reverse after it's taken a pop at a russian tank column you want to keep the gun in the armor still able to engage the enemy you didn't want to turn the tank around a solution therefore was a rear-facing third crew member but he had a duplicate set of driving controls which faced to the rear the tank could in fact drive as rapidly and as easily backward as it could forward but the jewel and the crown of the s tank is its unapologetic main weapon the fixed gun the whole problem with the fixed gun is that you've got to manipulate the whole tank to fire you had to be able to aim the whole hull in the same way a fighter pilot aims his whole aircraft the design breakthrough was a controllable hydropneumatic suspension swedish innovation was to be able to control these in such a way and in such precision that they could be used as a gun aiming device to tilt the gun the first and fourth pairs of road wheels move relative to the other wheels because the length of the track is fixed it means that the tank has to tilt up and down what you can see here is the the arm that the first rod is connected with and that one moves when you move the hull the elegant and sophisticated s-tank was fated by the world's military they loved it but nobody bought it it was intended to fight a russian army on swedish terrain using swedish army tactics it was so well tailored to uh to that mission that in fact it wasn't a very good fit for anybody else in the world in particular there was one insurmountable problem the disadvantage of the tank is that you have to stand still when you're firing because the hydraulics are shared by the suspension and the aiming system the gun cannot be fired while the tank is moving making it less versatile than other tanks the s tank was doomed to sixth place to get into the top five greatest ever tanks you can't just sit around on your borders you've got to be prepared to go and kick ass you've got to expose yourself and for that sort of thing you can't beat the british our first five favorite tanks were expecting trouble on a grand scale but if your intentions are more modest which tank offers the best value for money centurion fifth greatest ever [Music] first seeing action in the closing days of world war ii the centurion is the longest serving main battle tank in the world a favorite of cut price armies in low-budget wars from the early 50s right through to the turn of this century you'd find centurion in a battle somewhere it was the best tank in the world for a good 15 years colonel john gilman has spent his entire career at the heart of british tank development and the centurion was his first love when i joined my regiment way back in 1968 and my first vehicle was a mark 62 centurion very like this vehicle here and we drove it for three and a half thousand miles which is an awful long way and colonel gilman knows better than anyone that the key to success for any tank is battlefield maintenance the crew can keep this vehicle in the field fighting the whole vehicle was designed from the crew point of view around two spanners one was the quarter five teeny weeny spanner and one was for the track adjusting nut on the front between those two there aren't any other spanners virtually you need centurion's common sense approach extended to a unique method for hitting the target the ranging machine gun is absolutely ingenious it's linked to the main gun so it means that a gunner simply has to fire three rounds of tracer from the machine gun and when one of them strikes the target is picked up at once by the main gun and you get a first round hit it's a very easy tank to get into and turn the engine on it's just like a car but then the nightmare begins if you think back 60 years to motorcars this is a crash gearbox so you have to match the revs absolutely and double the clutch going up and down at the same time despite colonel gilman's 30 years of experience with the intricacies of the crash gearbox the centurion still puts up a fight it's like learning to ride a bicycle backwards [Music] the centurion may be a bit of a handful but it's the fuel economy that really hurts you're chalking going cross country at least five gallons a mile five gallons a mile it gives you a cross country about a 40 mile range before you start getting worried and have to refuel you don't have to have everything great on a tank but if it goes fast it's maneuverable it can blow up other tanks and not be blown up itself as a pretty good tank if you're in combat in this vehicle you're highly likely to survive you're going to win in a world that seems to crave bells and whistles the centurion remains true to its principles keep it simple stupid with the handling characteristics of a mule and a range of only 45 miles on a tank of fuel centurion makes it to only number five [Music] in 1917 finding itself without a friend in the world and surrounded by iraq neighbors the israeli defense force decided to create a tank of its own at number four merkava the diy tank from the mountains of the golan heights to the urbanized gaza strip israel faces a unique set of defensive demands the macava is a very successful vehicle because it does two things it can fight in close urban combat but it can also do the traditional job of a tank and fighting open country on the golan heights the murkova is a creature of israel usually when you design tank you have to compromise between firepower protection and maneuverability in our case protection the survivability is the most important thing survivability is a big issue for a country with a population smaller than london's and a conscript army made up of both men and women my name is eleanor kushner i'm a tank instructor here in the school of armored forces i teach soldiers how to be drivers actually [Music] this is my favorite part of the tank the power unit the engine and the transmission together in the front of the tank that's why the tank is called the milk which means in hebrew chariot just like horses were in the front of the chariot they were the power unit of the chariot so is the engine and the transmission a power unit of the tank now if a shell hits the tank it would hit the power unit and not the people that work in the tank the driver that sits over here is moved to the side i don't want to sit in the middle right in the front where a shell can hit me i'd rather sit on the side see perfectly well where i'm going without having shells hitting me i have the whole desert for myself when i'm driving it's an amazing feeling i mean you could go so fast and it's just a monster it's this powerful monster one of the things that makes the mercerva so unusual is that it's in a continuous state of evolution reacting to the unique requirements of the israeli army according to our experience there are a lot of small innovation in order to make the tank and the suspension suitable for area like the golan heights especially the area is very rocky the unique spiral spring suspension on the mirkova has increased its efficiency by allowing the springs to separate completely from the running gear when it goes over a particularly big bump the arm of the road wheel is not connected to the spring when it goes down it disconnects goes by gravity down the tank free falls back under the suspension arm this increased travel makes for a much more pleasant ride the suspension is also taking part in protecting the vehicle and as you can see it covers most of the side of the tank the tank was developed virtually in a combat situation this is quite exceptional all those lessons that are learned on the battlefield are streaming in while the things being designed well another thing is these chains they're called serratulamite which means in hebrew the hairs of chulamet which is a girl's name the most vulnerable point in the tank is where the turrent and the hull meet so what these chains do is that if a shell hits them they just change the whole course of the shell so that a shell won't hit in the most vulnerable point of the tank because a tank without a tan or a hole not worth a lot much and with the engine at the front there's space in the back for some friends another thing that i'm really excited about is the fact that you have loads of room now in the tank you can have parties in this thing now you can have the whole unit go into the tank move around have some drinks have something to eat it's a lot of fun and it helps a lot because now that you have room you can operate much better it can carry a section of infantry in the back that makes it unique amongst tanks and that you've got an armored personnel carrier and a tank rolled into one now i don't know of another tank that's that versatile so why isn't everybody driving mercs across the deserts and high streets of the world's trouble spots you've got to bear in mind it's designed for use in israel and you don't have to worry about the need for airlift capability it is a big heavy vehicle ideal for israel yes but for an expeditionary force too big too heavy some people would beg to differ this is the best tank in the world nothing will stop this tank from driving if it wants to go on it will go on and if it find a target i don't want to be there in that target instead of you i won't argue with that our number three greatest ever tank didn't just go back to the drawing board t-34 invented it this is 100 the best tank in world war ii it was just one of those breakthroughs in weapons design that happens only once a generation the t-34 is the tank that won the great patriotic war for the soviet union it incorporates innovation but with the lowest common denominator so you get a rough and ready design that you can mass produce the whole essence of the russian military philosophy was that if you're a peasant from the fields you should just be able to jump in it and just get on with it and drive it as you can see you know i'm only one step removed from a peasant the greatest ever put the reputation of the t-34 to the test by giving rock star bruce dickinson a ride in his very own iron maiden what i love about tanks is the fact that it's an individual combat it's almost like a fighter pilot except it's on the ground and also the way in which different tanks and gunnery systems evolved to counter the advantage in technology that's what i found attractive about tanks the star qualities of the t-34 tank begin with its characteristic shape t-34 invented sloping armor which in turn affected other parts of the design of the real innovations in the t-34 was the weapon this thing uses a 76 millimeter gun at a time when most other tanks had much smaller guns they thought we have to have a weapon that's strong enough to defeat a tank that's armored as well as our own t-34 so they basically designed the gun to be as efficient as the armor very thick cast turret very simple construction it's sand molded and you can still see the mold marks on it and and it's wartime why make it look pretty if it works use it and start killing people with it the t-34s extraordinary qualities were put under pressure when germany tried to push eastwards in 1941 in the long and bloody confrontation on the eastern front t-34 became recognized as the premier tank of its day he 34 was the best thing at that time he was the ideal compromise of armor protection firepower and cross-country maneuverability that was the best thing period all other tanks were far behind that powering this vehicle is a v12 diesel old diesel airship engine from the first world war six cylinders on the left six on the right and the fuel injection pump in between very simple very lightweight very easy to maintain these were manufactured basically from the 1920s right up until the present day the t-34 may have been a great weapon but it was a horrible tank to serve in when you have a big 450 horsepower engine immediately behind you bolted straight to the floor all that vibration gets passed through the metal up your legs it's very unpleasant inside of it i'd say sci-fi the all the tracked type vehicles i've ever driven this one is the most fun and the filthiest which is the same thing really t-34 transformed russia from a peasant economy to a superpower a tank capable of that deserves some respect t-34 third greatest ever tank the penultimate greatest ever tank has so many bells and whistles that no tank in its right mind would pick a fight with it the abrams has to go looking for trouble number two the tank is big it's very well protected it's extremely fast and has a darn good gun it's just a stunning piece of technology it's scary to think how much better it is than tanks were one generation ago a single abrams can take on one or more of any other tank on the battlefield and still win the m-1 abrams you have a rolls-royce of modern tanks that's seen the americans through several wars i was hit in the side the front and the rear right in this particular area right here is where i was shot we went downtown baghdad knowing that we could be shot at from above we fired that by heavy machine guns and rocketped grenades i mean rockefeller grenades are designed to destroy vehicles rocket-propelled grenades are tremendously destructive weapons able to burn through up to 30 inches of steel armor but the abrams tank is covered with a new generation of laminate armor lightweight and more than capable of dealing with an rpg its top secret composition saved lieutenant montgomery's life the first it actually took hit right in this area it exploded took out my 50 caliber machine gun as well as all the ammunition that i had stowed here this is where i was standing the hatch was actually down in what we call open protect and that's when he fired the tank did exactly what it was supposed to do absorb the impact yeah it was a good shot but it was the last thing he ever did the tank from behind me shot him but the abrams is much more than an armored shell the m1 is designed to be user friendly and enemy averse it's got a fire control system that i call i wish he was dead theoretically in less than five minutes on m1a2 abrams can kill off an entire battalion of its enemy keeping the 68 ton abrams moving is a 1500 horsepower jet engine take the governor off the engine the m1 tank will go over 70 miles an hour once you get on it'll take a couple seconds for it to kick in but once it does it feels like i mean there's nothing that's going to stop you until you put the foot on the brake the use of an aircraft jet engine has been a source of controversy ever since the abrams first visited a gas station the m1a1 has approximately 504 gallons on a full tank it gets about a half a gallon for every mile takes approximately eight gallons to start the engine which is quite a bit i just think it's absolutely barking mad putting a a gas turbine engine on a tank it's the most incredibly thirsty engine on the planet i mean you need an oil refinery following the darn thing up the road to basra fuel economy aside the jet engine also creates a super heated exhaust this of course you've got a great big jet eflux going out the back like a little blowtorch well you know you're going to get yourself a heat-seeking missile straight up your jacksie not very nice despite such quibbles the fact remains that abrams is a heavyweight message that tank warfare is alive and kicking in the 21st century 2003 will be the last time anybody even thinks about tangling with united states military in a set piece battle watch this space from 10 down to number two we've seen them spit and bite we've seen them swim and snarl we've even seen a tank fly but now time to reveal the tank that ranks number one in the greatest ever after the break nine came close but when it comes to the greatest ever tank there can be only one [Music] germany had been banned from making tanks after world war ii they just hadn't played nice with the ones they'd had but by the 1970s a new germany was allowed back into the tank shed and the technological excellence that created the panther spawned a new generation of big cat leopard the greatest ever tank [Music] it's an excellent machine you compare it with other tanks and you'll see that it's smaller lighter and faster i think it's the best combination of firepower and mobility on the planet at the moment the perfect tank it's got to be mobile it's got to be armor protected it's got to have firepower leo 2 does all those in spades it's an excellent tank maybe german engineering but the leopard 2 is a statement of european identity it is a combination of the best firepower the best protection and the best mobility in the world today leopard 2 must be a contender for one of the greatest tanks ever not just a contender leopard is the greatest ever tank and here in sweden 280 leopards prowl the countryside after the demise of the s tank sweden abandoned making its own tank and went shopping for a replacement the german leopard knocked the spots off the competition but would you let your 18 year old kid take it out of the garage my name's johnson i'm the driver i'm the commander my name is christian yanzo my name is chaz kelly i'm the gunner my name is joseph rosen and i'm the loader of this tank i'm also the chef the greatest ever joined these swedish army conscripts as they began an 11 day combat exercise getting to know the leopard's world-class technology six months ago they left home for military service and probably they had never been driving before [Music] they've swapped the family volvo for 62 tons of killing machine and it's the leopard's world beating user friendliness that lets these youths tear up the tundra with confidence no steering levers or crash gearboxes here it's almost like driving a car but it's a bit heavier today we are gonna drive like a maniacs the steering wheel looks like a car steering wheel a seat here very comfortable to sit in a sports car type of seat produced by recaro very simple compartment looks quite much as a car the big white pedal in the middle that's the brake you can stop 62 and a half tons about nine meters we are gonna drive the tank to its uh bitter end i will make them feel confidence with this tank the attitude is to get them to be hunters to feel the tank the extraordinary performance of the leopard is enhanced by its radical modular design it's actually an enormous kit of parts all easily replaceable and just like your mercedes when something goes wrong you don't reach for your wrench you grab your laptop for my maintenance i have a laptop i connect it to the separate modules and i can test them individually so what i'm going to do now is to plug in this cable to the sensor logistics and then i plug it into the maintenance computer and i can see what's wrong with the tank and then i change that module so you could say that this computer is like the normal test computer on a modern car but for instance if you should have a problem with the powered unit you take the whole unit out you take the gymnast to the workshop you get a new unit instead put that in the tank is ready and the rest the leopard's engine is another world beating factor nothing new or fangled just massive and reliable this engine is uh quite common industrial engine and uh marine engine as well the engine has about 1500 horsepower a v12 engine 48 liters and 15 times more torque than a normal car if you're worried that treating the leopard like a giant skateboard is going to bust the tank fear not the leopard is one of the few tanks in the world that comes with a manufacturer's guarantee as long as the factory supervise your maintenance then you're okay for a good 14 000 kilometers which in tank terms is an awful long way to help stop the conscripts from running into each other the swedes use a state-of-the-art tank command control system it's an elaborate version of the system taxi firms use to check on their drivers and now just move around this map of course i can center the map on my own tank or on somebody else's tank that's no problem at all and they can also broadcast anything they want in text or icons it's innovations like this that keep the leopard one step ahead of the pack because by keeping most information on the screens and off the normal radio system they can keep radio conversation focused on the important things almost 100 percent of the radio talk now is about the enemy as it should be i just need to find the enemy and go kill him that's fighting talk the greatest ever decided it was time to put the world beating performance of the leopard to the test against the local champion a volvo over a treacherous 400 meter slalom course [Music] with the greatest ever tank it's not only about winning it's about destruction so there you have it the top 10 greatest ever tanks each with its own unique character but sharing the same grim intention from the moment they first stumbled across no man's land the iron cavalry created mechanized warfare in its own image the tank has become the face of war be afraid be very afraid

Channel: Spark

Views: 135,519

Keywords: world, abrams, tank, the darth designer, thedarthdesigner, tanks, top 10, tdd, oninemesis, military, top 10 tanks, best tank, best tanks, biggest tank in the world, best tank in the world 2014, biggest tank, top 10 tank, best tank in the world, top ten tanks, best tank in world of tanks, top tanks, اكبر دبابة في العالم, world of tanks best tank, new tanks, the biggest tank in the world, missile, anti ship missile, railgun, rail gun

Id: SLCJ4qMNKug

Length: 51min 34sec (3094 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 19 2021