Hey guys, thanks for tuning in to another
episode on ForgottenWeapons.com. I'm not Ian McCollum, he has
gone off in search of a gun. In fact I might be able to hear him coming now. - Nice gun. - Alright, well I am Ian McCollum, and I'm out here today at DriveTanks.com with
Mister Nicholas Moran who is "The Chieftain" from The Chieftain's ... YouTube channel. - Right, but I'm here today representing
Wargaming / World of Tanks. So let's knock out the legal bit out of the way, and then we
can go and have fun. This is actually a sponsored video. My company has concluded, I have convinced them,
that there are enough of you people who watch Ian's product that will be willing to download and try our product
- World of Tanks. - that it was worth it for them to pay for Ian
to come out and shoot the 76, and the .30 cals and the .50 cal, and everything else we're
gonna do today for your benefit and entertainment. - It turns out this sort of thing is kind of like
expensive to run and maintain and shoot.
- It is a little bit. - So we're hoping that enough of you will do this
that we can convince them that this was worthwhile. And if we do, they have other tanks here.
- Yes, they do. And all sorts of other cool stuff. So. - Click the link below.
- Yes. I actually played World of Tanks. I don't have
a lot of time to put into video games, unfortunately. - None of us do.
- Yeah, you guys do, but we not necessarily so much. So it was actually a while ago. It ... had nothing to do with
coming out here, but I tried it out, it's a fun little game. I like it. - If you have the time. ...
- And if you're a tank nerd, man, there is
like no end to the detail in that game. - And it's not a simulator. It's fun. It's not a simulator,
but all the tanks are perfect. Yeah anyway, so - Out of the way? Let's have fun. - So what we're gonna do out here is take a
look at all the guns that are in this thing. So I know my small arms reasonably well, but I'm
not really all that familiar with armoured vehicles. And so that's why you're out
here helping me with this.
- Right. - So I guess the starting point would
be like what's the purpose? People asked like what's the best gun for
such and such ... or what's the best gun? And the answer is always, well
depends what you're going to do with it. So if we're gonna look at what these guns are supposed to do,
we need to know what, like, what's the intention to begin with? - Well, it's absolutely no different. Each tank producing
nation had their own set of requirements that limited or created the parameters
around which tanks would be designed. So the Americans, their overriding problem was the fact that
their factories are several thousand miles and a little bit of water between wherever the fighting was. So it's all
very well for the Germans to build a 60 ton monster, they don't have to ship the damn thing anywhere, and it
doesn't have to operate in the Pacific atoll of Kwajalein, or wherever it is that you're fighting. This thing
had be built to serve everywhere and get there. So that was rule one is that the tank had to be reliable enough to
get to where it was going, and then keep going once it got there. - OK
- The second purpose of course is manoeuver.
The bottom line effect of a tank is steel on target. - OK.
- So again that's why you want a reliable tank, to make sure
that we can get to where it is to place the steel onto the target. You then have well what are you shooting at? Well, you've two categories basically: hard targets and soft targets.
Hard targets are other tanks and bunkers and things like that, and soft targets are basically anything else,
trucks, anti-tank guns, personnel and so on. So the tank is designed to deal with
basically anything that it meets on a battlefield. To do that you've got machine guns. So the ones that are inside the armour
are usually used against soft targets. You've got the main gun, which is used for
whatever it is that you're coming across as well that probably requires something
more than just a machine gun. And again, ... the 76 on this tank
was designed as an anti-tank gun, it still shot most of it's rounds against soft targets
because that's what was presented to them. And then you have the calibre .50 up top in an anti-
aircraft mount to deter aircraft from coming at you. That's the bottom line of why they are there.
- OK, let's take a close look at each
one of those in sequence. - OK.
- And then do some shooting.
- I like that one. - Alright, so the first thing that
we've got here is a bow gun. Now, you told me the very first
Shermans actually had two of these things. - No, they had one bow gun, but they had
two fixed forward firing ones as well.
- Oh, so they had that and also more.
- Yes. Which again was completely excessive to requirements and they
stopped building them very quickly. They realised it was just stupid. Plus it was a fixed machine gun. You could
only aim them by aiming the entire tank, which kind of disrupted everybody
else and really it wasn't worth the [?]. - I was going to say you're a little heretical for saying
there's such a thing as too many machine guns. But I do understand: not really that practical.
- If you can't use them, why have them? - We'll move on from that,
that arguable statement, but ... So what they ended up with that was practical
was a swivelling gun in a ball mount here. - Correct, your calibre .30 machine gun.
- This is a Browning Model of 1919A4. And one of the cool things about the Sherman
here is it didn't require specialised guns. These are all totally standard Browning 1919A4s. You can pull one of these things out, throw it
on a standard tripod, and it is an infantry gun. If something breaks with that gun, you can take an infantry gun,
literally just pull the pintle off of it, and slap it right into this mount. There were a couple of US tanks that had to have some
specialised guns, like the light tanks, the M3 light tanks needed to have the A5 version manufactured because
it was a little small to fit a standard gun in there. - But this is all regular.
- And it goes on to today, so the difference really between
a M240C and a regular M240B for the infantry, ... mechanically it's almost identical. I mean the buttstocks
would obviously be different, but that can be easily changed. The cocking system instead of a wire cable.
But again, yeah, that's easily changed. But as you're saying, this is a 1919
... fires standard ammunition, nothing unusual. But different countries did have different opinions on
what the bow gun was for. So if you look at this bow gun, you will see ... there is no little sighting optic for example. This is,
I'm not gonna say spray-and-pray, but this is really suppression taken to the extremes. If you compare it to a German
machine gun, the bow gunner, he's got a full optic, he's got like a head mount to help
steady himself, it's far more accurate. But the Americans they just liked it for quick reaction shots, for
the guy with the Panzerfaust who pops up 25 metres to the front. Like, this will get on target. Even if it doesn't
hit him, your purpose isn't necessarily to kill the other guy at this point,
it's to make sure he doesn't kill you. And suppression fire from that
machine gun is very good for that. - It's a lot faster than trying to swivel the turret to
get one of these other guns [onto the target]. - And also ... this tank has the
stabiliser but still, this is still faster. And all the other tanks that didn't have stabilisers, T-34s,
the Panthers, whatever, they had their bow guns as well. And when the European Theater Operations were
looking for the new tank, ... what would become the
Pershing, they insisted that it retain a bow gun. And the only reason that the British got rid of their bow gun
on the Firefly was because if they didn't they wouldn't have any room for any ammunition at all. So they had to
pull them out and replace it with an ammunition rack. - OK. Let's hop inside and show people how this thing's actually
mounted, because this is actually like spring-loaded. It's kind of cool on there. - Alrighty, so I am now sitting in the bow gunner's seat. Got the
machine gun in front of me, and this is his primary duty really. We've got this cool spring-loaded mechanism right
here which ... basically holds the weight of the gun up. And this again is a totally standard Browning 1919A4, locked
into this mount that runs it through that pivoting ball socket thing. We would have our ammo can here, I don't have an
ammo cam in it right now, but that is what that's for. And then just to my right I have a big ol' rack
with all the rest of my available ammo. So that's like 3,000 rounds right there. And I can lift this right up
and see exactly what I'm shooting there. So my seat actually is two position.
I can sit down here level with the gun. Or if I unspring the seat I can sit right at this
level where I can sort of see what I'm aiming at. There is no ... actual sight on this gun,
I would be aiming this by tracer. I don't have tracer so we're gonna load this up, and
this is basically hip shooting with a machine gun. There we go. Wow, that puts a lot of smoke down here into the cabin. ... Actually, you know what, with tracers that actually
wouldn't be all that bad to do, you could do that. Especially considering this is
really a suppressive fire sort of thing. It is kind of cool. Getting your head up outside means you
don't get the massive smoke inhalation that you get inside here. - OK, so we've got a bow gun down there,
but we also have a coaxial gun.
- Correct. Also a 1919. -Right. Exactly the same gun. Interchangeable,
swap them back and forth.
- And better yet, shares ammo. - Alright, how much ammo is there inside this [thing].
- A lot.
- OK, thousands upon thousands of rounds. - More than the average infantry platoon
will carry around with them most likely. - I suppose actually it probably varied quite a bit. A lot of guys would
probably throw some extra ammo cans in if they could make space for them. - There was a problem that the British would try
to cram main gun rounds everywhere as well, and they tended to explode a lot.
Small arms, not so much. But the bottom line is thousands of rounds of 7.62
doesn't weigh very much if the tank is carrying it. So as you'd say, why carry a weapon
when your weapon will carry you? - Make sense to me.
- ... So the coax is pretty much the
primary weapon on this tank. - Really?
- And people think it's the main gun.
- Yeah. - Well, hang on a second. What
are you mostly shooting at? - That's a good question. I honestly don't know.
- You're most shooting at infantry, because that's
what's the majority of the enemy are there. Infantry, trucks, things like that, which
the calibre .30 will do very nicely at. And it's ... You're going to use that first, and then use the main gun
if it's something that the calibre .30 can't deal with quickly. - OK.
- So if it's an anti-tank gun, yeah, you're not
gonna muck around with the calibre .30, you're gonna immediately put a high explosive
round downrange as soon as you can. But for everything else the calibre .30 does fine. And what people
forget about when they talk about the stabiliser on the Sherman (which is very simplistic and it's only a single axis), is OK, it's not good enough to be firing accurately on the move with
the 76. But it's plenty good enough to be firing on the move with a machine gun. As you're spraying away with the minimal
stabilisation that you have. So as you're driving along remember the enemy ... you know, there's a bush over there.
There could be an anti-tank gun. Good luck seeing it at 200 metres,
even if you're head out of the tank. But if you're spraying away as you're driving
along, suppressive fire, or recon by fire, it is in the manual, recon by fire with the
stabiliser as you advance with the tank. - OK, so this can't move at all. This only moves
when the turret moves, or when the main gun moves. - Correct, so the gunner, who has the best optics,
is in control of the coaxial machine gun. And he's got two triggers, the right trigger for
the main gun, left trigger for the calibre .30. - OK. I want to see that inside. Let's take a look.
- We can go inside.
- Cool. - Alright. So for the target engagement process. Usually
we'll start, doctrinally, with an instruction from the commander. Now in reality if you see something that's about to
kill you, you don't wait, you don't stand on principle. In theory the command would have to
instruct an alert, which is who you're talking to. A target, ie what you want to deal with. Where
the target is with a description of the target. What you want to do about it.
And then command of execution.
- OK. - So we're now going to shoot the coax machine gun. - OK, and you are of course in the commander seat.
- I'm in the commander seat. - ... So on the intercom you are addressed as "gunner".
- OK. - And the guy down front with the hull machine
gun, he's addressed as "bog", bow gunner. - And then you've got "driver", simple
enough, and "TC", and "loader". - OK.
- If the loader is on the intercom system, [?]. - So, I see a target to my front left. I figure it is
something suitable for the coaxial machine gun.
- OK. - Gunner, coax, doughs - is the first part of it. So doughs, as is D-O-U-G-H, is short for Doughboy, which was
the term that was used, ... today's fire command would say "troops". - What we'll do is gunner coax doughs.
- So I'm gonna tranverse ... - 11 o'clock.
- Traverse left a bit.
- 300 yards. - OK.
- Steady. If you're on the power system and you're swinging
fast I might say "steady" to slow you down, then "on". If I yell "on", that should mean that you are close enough that
with the unmagnified the part of your periscope on the left you will be able to see more or less where the
troops are. If I have to be more specific and say "second bush from the right of the red house",
or something like that you'll be able to see it. ... Well you can either fine-tune and use the magnified optic,
or with the coax because you got a lot of ammo, pull the trigger. - Just start hosing?
- Just start hosing. And then you can adjust the fire
if it's a close range target using the unmagnified optic. - OK, so I'm not even going to touch this guy for this.
- For a coax usually you don't have to. You can if you wish. And you can, it's not in the manual of the time, but it is
traditional to yell "on the way" as you pull the trigger. - On the way, OK.
- So it's "on the way", and then on the "Y" of way
is ... when you hammer down with your foot. And because it is a fairly precise geared system,
you have to then create your own beaten zone. There's a little bit of vibration in the mount,
but generally speaking you do a "Z" pattern. - OK.
- So this is still an area effect weapon.
It's just a little bit precise. So you've got to create that Z pattern
to make sure you got a beaten zone and ... you have a good chance of hitting
whatever target you're aiming at. OK, so we are now sorted out. We have
a loader installed in the loader's hatch working on the coaxial machine gun.
So don't forget your little Z pattern as it were. - Yep. I think I'm gonna do ... traverse. I don't quite have the
coordination yet to figure out how to do a Z with these two handles. It's like the rub your belly pat your head.
Yeah, that's my elevation, this is my traverse, - So I'm gonna try and traverse this
across the body of that car.
- OK, that works. So if we are all ready? Gunner, if you please, coax vehicle 200 front. - Got it.
- Fire.
- On the way. - OK. Very well, the vehicle still offends me, remove it. Gunner coax vehicle. - Got it.
- Fire.
- On the way. - I think we got it.
- That's a lot of smoke.
- Yes it is. - There is a ventilator fan in the vehicle,
which would be used if it was turned on. - OK.
- But yeah, there is a lot of smoke [?] around in here. - It's a wonderful smell though.
- You can get high on this. - Alright, let's get out and try the stuff on the top
where we have a little more room to play around.
- Alright, we'll do that. - Now we've got yet another .30 cal
Browning up here, another 1919A4. We've already got the one with the good
optics, like protected fire from inside, precise. And we've got the quick reaction gun. Why do we have yet another one up here? - Because American tankers are thieving bastards
and we will take anything that is not bolted, glued down, or otherwise welded in place
and we'll find a way to put it on our tank.
- OK. - So the "additional" calibre .30 was not
part of the basic issue of the tank. This mount was primarily (actually this one's been a post-war addition), the pintle on the back was the standard calibre
.50 anti-aircraft mount, but it was not unusual for an additional mount be mounted at the front
because where the calibre .50 is right now isn't
very much use unless you're out of the tank, hopefully shooting at aircraft. So if you're
shooting at infantry who are in front of you, you want to be inside your tank protected by cover. And you
would like to have the machine gun mounted further forward. Now the next thing is the calibre .50
was designed as an anti-aircraft gun. But against troops, which again are your
primary target on the World War Two battlefield, the calibre .30 proved to be perhaps a
little bit more popular. So it was not unusual for tank crews to either replace
the calibre .50 with a calibre .30, or just as I say scrounge another calibre .30 and put it on there
anyway, and use that as the primary pintle-mounted weapon. - OK, you certainly got a lot more ammunition,
you have to reload less often. - And if you get shot with a calibre .30 you're going to notice
it about as much as if you got shot with a calibre .50. I mean the difference, it's kind of academic at that point. - OK, so this was not original OEM gear, but
would it be common, somewhat common? - Not uncommon. - Alright, so this is ... very conveniently
located here for me as the tank commander. - Which is precisely why they started
welding the ... posts to the front.
- I like it, yeah. ... - I mean it's not exactly the accurate weapon, and it's
not something that the commander should be doing.
His job is to command the tank, not shoot machine guns. But if you need to ... deal with a problem really quickly like,
"Oh my god, there's troops 15 yards in front with Panzerfausts." - Hey hey.
- There you go and you're 10 feet above everybody so if they're
behind the little berm that they usually like to hide behind... - Not from this they're not. You ready?
- Yeah, send it. - You're high. - Short. - Yeah, I can see that being a very
nice quick reaction sort of gun. - So back here we've got the big boy. - Why? - After the Germans conquered Poland and France there is much made of the propaganda newsreels of the
Stukas coming in and blowing the hell out of everything. And the Americans realised that air defence
was probably an important thing to consider. So the simplest solution was to have a pretty hefty machine
gun that could be rather useful in the close range air defence role. If it didn't knock anybody down it didn't matter,
but if you got a company of tanks each of which
has a calibre .50 shooting tracer up in the air it's going to be a distractor for the guy trying to kill
you. So your job at this point is simply to stay alive. - OK, that makes sense.
- They put a calibre .50 on bloody everything. And the only problem was that in
order to get the elevation and still aim, the only way they could do it was
by putting it near the rear of the turret. You have to stand as you are now on the
back deck to get the elevation to aim up. Which when the Luftwaffe wasn't really playing very
much because the Army Air Force and the RAF and everybody else was just doing such a
good job to keeping them away anyway, this mount became kind of redundant. Which
is why you end up with the forward mount and you shoot the calibre .50 from inside the turret.
- OK. - And that ... was basically it. So the British didn't like it for
whatever reason they often took the calibre [.50] off. - .50 off .
- Yes, you are correct. I'm sorry. So you'd see very few photos of British Shermans
with the calibre .50. I never quite understood why. - Interesting.
- But for Ma Deuce, again, it's pretty
much a standard ... infantry flex .50.
- Yeah. - And generally speaking, the American tankers loved it.
You know, when Ma Deuce speaks, everybody listens. - Yes, ... as they do. Yeah. - Alright, it seems like by far the coolest
one to actually shoot. But then again ... - I can almost never hit anything with it
though ... I guess I need more practice. - You'll notice I didn't say anything about hitting. - And there of course, you've got this critical
problem of if anyone decides to shoot back at me, the tank doesn't do a whole lot of
good when you're standing on top of it. - No, unless you're crouching down. So what
you do is you make a trade with the infantry.
- OK. - You say, "Hey guys, I'll transport your fireteam
on the back of my tank deck. All you got to
do is man the calibre .50 if we get shot at." - And you don't have to walk.
- And that's a fair trade, you
don't have to walk in the mud. - Perfect. Someone else gets to shoot
back. You get to stay nice and safe. OK. - Certainly makes sense to have
this as an air defence gun, I get it. - Let's see how it does look to shoot.
- OK. You first or me? - Me.
- Oh. - Since you asked. - So we can't actually try this for real anti-aircraft because ... - We are actually are by an airfield, they'll be flying around but ...
- They'd be annoyed if we actually shot down an airplane. - But ...
- Always useful in the ground target role. - In fact, I see a vehicle there downrange.
- You do, and it is a particularly tough vehicle
the calibre .30 is inadequate to deal with. - Fortunately.
- Fortunately we have infantry on the back of the tank helpfully
running ... the suicide mission here of running the .50 on top. - We give it a try?
- That vehicle offends me, remove it.
- Yes, sir. - Low. - Short. - Target. - All over the place. - And I believe I am out. I am definitively out.
- Well, that solves the problem
of whether or not it's still alive. But I can tell you you have hit it a few
times. And it is not a happy camper. - Excellent. Of course, it was kind
of a smoking hulk when we started. - We're making sure. No kill like overkill. - Well, conclusion one. That's a lot of fun to shoot. - ... Yes, it is. I prefer ... the smaller
one, a little bit more control. But there is nothing quite like it. And when you're
on the battlefield as I say and you hear this go off and there's a great psychological
effect, especially on the receiving end. In Afghanistan ... it's amazing that the solidity
of the mud walls they have, like two feet thick. - Uh-huh.
- And the 7.62 is not getting through that. A calibre .50 usually will. Not always, it really is that thick. But
the amount of dust and spray and everything else that comes up it is just an awesome weapon that people pay attention
and realise, "I do not want to be here any longer." - Make sense.
- And if they do want to be here any longer you can pretty soon make sure that
they aren't there any longer, regardless. - We are now going on literally a
full century of service with this gun. - Alright, so that's all of the many, many machine
guns that we've got on this thing. And that leaves
us with one very important weapon still to go. - The tracks. Driver tracks troops, drive and adjust. - I was thinking the gun.
- Oh OK, we can do that too.
- OK, let's try out the gun. -Alright.
-The real gun. - This is not the gun that Sherman started off with.
- No, they started off with the 75. Or eventually a 105. So when they were
originally doing the design requirements, they ... what they wanted to do, if you look at very early Sherman
you see kind of like a whole row of bolts around the mantlet, and they wanted it to be a sort of a modular design. On the
production line if they needed an assault gun tank, with the 105, they just stick the 105 mount in it. Or if they
wanted a general purpose tank to put the 75, and if they wanted a more specialised
tank killer to put the 3 inch.
- OK. - So the 3 inch was an old gun that was
kind of in the inventory from like 1918, and been sort of modified a little bit since.
And it was being used for the tank destroyers. ... The vehicles that would eventually use it hadn't
yet being built, the M10 tank destroyer, but they
were still using like the M5 for the T40 and so on. They were experimenting
with the 3 inch anti-tank gun. The problem was that when they tried
putting the 3 inch anti-tank gun into the 75mm turret, or the standard turret of the M4 it just
didn't work. It was too big, it was too heavy, forget it. So there was a development in metallurgy which meant that you can
make a gun that was about the same strength for half the weight, or you can make a bigger gun for the same weight. And that's where you have this
divergence between the 76 and the 90. So if you look at a 90 it weighs about the same as the old
3 inch, and a 76 is smaller and lighter than the old 3 inch. Fires exactly the same projectile at about the same
ballistic effect, but you could fit this into a Sherman. So by 1942 the Ordnance branch had developed
a 76mm that you could put into an M4 turret. And they said, "Fantastic, let's build 1,000 of them,
we'll have them ready for the invasion in North Africa." And this is one of those things, that there's this constant
myth that the Sherman was not designed to fight enemy tanks. - It absolutely was.
- OK. And the 76 was selected ... to give it
more anti-tank punch if it was needed. Now remember in August of '42, or July of '42,
when they were ... physically testing the M4 with the 76, there wasn't anything heavier than the
Mark IV out there. Except maybe the Soviet KVs. The Germans hadn't produced Tiger in the field yet,
nobody knew Tiger existed. Panther certainly didn't exist. And yet here's Ordnance signing off on building 1,000
anti-tank gun tanks just in case they were necessary. - OK, so actually kind of forward-thinking.
- They were. The problem was that they were doctrinally forward thinking, but
the bodge that they created just was not suitable for Armoured Force. Because if you compare this turret to the earlier Sherman turret
it's much smaller. Well, this one is bigger, the old one is smaller. And Armoured Force were not happy with the ergonomics
of sticking the big 76 into this small tiny turret. Now people are gonna say, "But the British did it with the
17 pounder." They did, and the ergonomics in it sucked horribly. I have my own opinions on Firefly, they are a minority opinion.
They are not shared by many people, especially British people. And I think really arguably though, you
get a decision point. You can either have perfect when it's ready or, you know,
we'll take good enough right now. There is nothing particularly wrong
with the American philosophy at the time because as far as they knew they
weren't having trouble killing the enemy. And if they were going to spend all the effort of
building thousands and thousands of these things, then shipping them thousands of miles overseas,
by god they were going to work as advertised. They were going to be as efficient and effective
... and that was sort of the bottom line for everything the Americans sent overseas
pretty much was it had to be bulletproof. And the British decided, "You know, we like the
idea of having something really, really big right now. We have the 17 pounder already in our inventory.
Let's not wait for the 76 to come out anyway." And in the end it turned out that it didn't really
work for them. They did get some 76s, went to Italy. And they accepted the compromise of the fact that this is not a
good tank, but it does get a 17 pounder into the field when we need it. - So I wanted to clear something up and that is
75mm / 76mm. They're actually the exact same bore. - Alright?
- I believe they are, yeah. - This seems like it's like a .38 / .357 Magnum sort of
thing. This gun, the 76, has a larger case ... capacity, higher pressure, higher velocity. And it's the higher velocity
that makes it more effective against enemy armour. The old 75 is effectively the exact same sort of projectile, but
less powder, less velocity, slower, less effective against armour. - It's mass by velocity squared if I recall is the formula. - So the idea in naming this a 76 ...
- Was to make sure it didn't get mixed up with the 3 inch. - Which was also 75mm in diameter, but using
yet a different case that wasn't interchangeable. - Correct. And so you had to mark it 76 to make sure that you
didn't get 76mm ammunition show up at an M10 tank destroyer unit. - Where it wouldn't fit.
- Correct. - OK. Or 3 inch ammunition show
up for one of these guys ... - Where it also would not fit.
- It does fit but would be a bad thing if you fired it right? - I honestly don't know. I don't know of anybody who's
actually tried to put 3 inch ammo into a 76 or vice versa. It's one of those things you kind of try to check beforehand. - The problem is that the venn diagram of
rednecks willing to do that sort of crazy thing and people who own Sherman tanks, who can afford
to own Sherman tanks, there's not much overlap. - Not much, but ... so they still have the problem
that they have to get a 76 onto the battlefield, and the Ordnance were told,
"Go back to the drawing board and give us a tank that's effective and usable
and works as a general purpose tank as well." So they had to also develop the new T23 tank. It was
going to be a replacement for the Sherman, didn't work out. It had a stupid electric drive system.
It was a baby of Ordnance, didn't work. But the turret for the T23, which mounted
the 76, was specifically designed to take the 76. And gee whiz, it has same size turret ring as the earlier 75, so all you
had to do was stick this new turret on top of the Sherman chassis. ... They'd also modify the chassis. So this
is a late-war Sherman with large hatches, a slightly lesser sloped front slope. The original Shermans
had a much greater slope on it, but it was very inefficient. So they reduced the slope and that's another thing,
"Oh, the T-34 had slopes on it." Excuse me, the Sherman had slopes on it from the beginning
as well. People seem to forget that, I don't know why. They also added wet stowage. So the ammunition
was now protected by a sort of a [glycol] liquid. So that if the ammunition bin was penetrated hopefully the fire wouldn't
start in the first place, but if it did then the liquid would put it out. So the burn rates for the Shermans, especially
the wet version, like 5% to 10%, very, very low. Very survivable tank, ... one of the more
survivable tanks of the war if it got penetrated. So we now have the 76 in a turret big enough
to carry it. By the time this entered service, ... it's approved September '43,
enters production January of '44. But just because it's into production doesn't mean
that it's being fielded. So it still has to get from Detroit to England in enough numbers and with enough time that
you can then train up the troopers in the new equipment, set up your logistical supply trains and so on. The end
result was that when the Americans went into Normandy they left 200 or so 76mm tanks behind.
Because nobody thought it was worth the effort. They were soon proven wrong. They ran into a lot of German vehicles that
the 76 would have been very handy to have. So they're, "Quick, let's get the 76 into theatre."
So they go back, they bring over the 76s. They start shooting them at German tanks and they realise,
"Ha, they're still not doing what they were supposed to." And the problem with this was that there was this honest belief
that the 76 was good enough to deal with whatever it came up against. Well, it wasn't. The Germans were stupid, they built big,
heavy tanks that would break down most of the time before you got to the fight. But, if they got to the fight,
then you had a problem that was very difficult to deal with. And so they did develop the
high velocity ammo, HVAP ammo. ... I think this is a great failing of Ordnance, they didn't
develop it before somebody said, "Guys, we need this." And it was always in the plan. It's if we have to go for
more punch, we need a higher velocity was the answer. Because again, velocity squared. As opposed
to going for the bigger gun, the 90mm. Which did exist. But if you do that, that means you carry less ammo,
you got a slower round, it's slower to reload takes longer to reload. And so by developing the sub-calibre ammunition you
get more punch and that, in theory, fixes the problem. The only problem then was just building enough of
them, to get overseas, to be issued to the tank crews. And as a result a lot of tank crews, if they ever
saw a HVAP at all, it was only one or two rounds. The saving grace was that it was very rare that they
ever ran into something that needed HVAP to begin with. Because most German armour was
not a Tiger, if you know what I mean. Panthers were a problem, but again,
they also had very weak side armour. And we cheated, we just got on the radio,
called in artillery and then went round the side. - My god, the concept of combined arms.
- Crazy. - Instead of a simple honourable duel, tanko a tanko, at
40 paces or whatever it is. You don't fight that way in a tank. So that's how you end up with the 76. And remember this is the
exact same gun that they put on the tank destroyers, on the M18. And ... you don't hear many people complaining that
the M18 was not an effective tank killing weapon. Yet somehow people complain that the
Sherman was not an effective tank killer. - Doesn't work that way.
- Those people should watch more of your channel. - They do, and then they complain
in the comments how I'm wrong.
- Ah, right. - What we should do I think is shoot it. I think we've
got a round of ammunition for this somewhere. - We might have one somewhere. -Alright, so we're inside, go ahead and show the loading
process for the main gun here. Now, this is a dummy round. - This is a dummy but it's the same size
and weight, as you would expect. So 76 rounds, as I say they
were all stored in wet stowage. I misspoke earlier, G word, whatever,
ethyl-glycol is what the things are surrounding in. And the rounds are stowed under the turret floor, slightly
forward. You reach down and you withdraw the round upwards. - There we go.
- And out. Not the fastest process. There is a small
ready rack which isn't in this particular tank. So you would have I think it was 6 rounds
immediately to hand that were not safely behind water, but you have to make a compromise somewhere. But what you would do then is when you had a lull
in the battle, you would restock the ready round [rack]. Once up, and the nice thing about this is you can do this all
from the seated position. It's a sliding breech block horizontally, so it's very easy to put the nose in. And
you simply slam the round all the way in. Dummy round, of course it's been
battered around, doesn't fit very well. Slam it all the way in, as it gets to about
here, move your hand up out of the way because you don't want your fingers anywhere
near where the breech block is going to slide. Two ways of doing it. I've always done a sort of a
palm with fingers up. The other way is to use a fist. Either way the operative rule is wherever your fingers
go, they don't go anywhere near the breech block. - So the setup there is you've got a pair
of extractors that ... the rim of the shell (because these are rimmed cartridges) catch the extractors,
push them in, which releases the breech block here. - Which slams over with a significant amount of force.
- Yes, I expect so. - Once that is done, the loader often didn't have
an intercom, but what he could do is with his feet he could reach over under the gun and he can kick the gunner.
Because remember the tank is a loud, noisy environment. In theory, yes, you can yell "up" as loud as you want,
but if you kick him ... there's no problem with this. And it's the same, I heard people say that ... to
tell the loader which the next round would be if you hold up your fist it means load AP, if you hold up your
hand spread like this, if the loader sees this it means load HE. And then you get smoke and things and it gets a
bit more complicated, but that's the general gist of it. And of course, it is an automatically
sliding breech block, so after it recoils the breech block is opened, the extractors
then send the round down onto the ... there is no bag here. But there would ordinarily be, just to prevent the
shell casing from bouncing around all over it inside. Now you will see that this is only a half basket. The loader doesn't have a turret basket of his own,
... because ... he's got to access the ammunition. So he's got to be a little bit careful as he sits
down that his feet don't get caught in anything. But because he can do everything from the seated position,
it's not as big a problem as it would be in a lot of other tanks. Whereas where you are right now you got a turret floor,
so you don't have to have any worries about your feet
catching anything as the turret traverses, pretty quickly. - So I've got an optical sight right here.
- You've got two of them. - Let's see, OK, and we can almost see downrange there. There we go. So I've got a cool little crosshair.
I've got ranging hashes. I've got windage hashes. And we're aiming pretty much dead on that wreck
of a car. So we might actually be able to hit it. - Well hopefully you are aimed
a little bit over to the right. OK, so this is the problem that small
arms tends not to come up with too much. - But are you familiar with the parallax effect?
- Yes.
- OK. Look where the sight is and look where the gun is. - The sight is significantly offset. And it's not just above, it is off to the side,
off to the right maybe, what, 14 inches. - And that's assuming that you're using the direct
vision optic, and not the optic that's to your front. - Ah, this is also an aiming optic. - Oh yes, it is. So this is a periscope.
- Correct.
- It goes up and then it's also got a little aiming tube that is magnified. Not a lot but a little bit.
- Should be a by 3x.
- OK. Yeah, that seems about right. - OK. So when would I use ... this.
- That is actually your primary vision sight.
- OK. - ... This one at the bottom left is supposed to be
the backup sight, the auxiliary. Although in
practice, because it was closer to the gun tube, it has a couple of advantages and it also had a higher
magnification. So it became de facto the primary in use. But the idea is the combination periscope there
is un-magnified and magnified at the same time. So when you're scanning
around you're looking for targets, you're looking for muzzle flashes, you're looking
for movement, you're look for anything that OK, you don't care if it's high
magnification, you can identify it. But at least it lets you know, I want to
look at that. That's your wide vision.
- OK. - Swing the turret onto target and then you use
your right eyeball to look through the magnified
periscope, and that should tell you what it is you're actually aiming at. And you can
aim at it if you wish. And you're doing all
this, if necessary, from behind a wall or behind a hill because the sight is above you.
- Right. - And then you can do your entire engagement process, and you
can see it's a very simple elevation system, this mechanical linkage. - Yeah.
- So the sight will go forwards and
backwards together with the gun. - OK, that makes sense.
- Now the reticle is a simple reticle. - Yes, it's literally just a crosshair and then some hashes
to give you indications for windage and elevation. - Yep, and the one down there is
a little bit more complicated. Now the advantage to the one down there though is
when you're moving forward to your firing position, (you are now hull down), so you're advancing out from behind
the hill and you want to make sure your gun tube is clear. Use that sight, because if that sight is
clear the chances are your gun tube is clear. - You could have an obstructed gun
whilst you have vision there.
- Which is a classic M16 thing. Especially if you put an optical
sight up on top of the carry handle. I have watched people shoot directly into barricades because
they're seeing their target, and they're not realising ... - I've seen them shoot out of cars and into
their car doors and mirrors as well.
- Yes, absolutely. So to move ... the whole deal in order to aim the gun,
... like there's no movement to the gun, I move the turret. - Correct.
- And I have a power joystick it looks like,
and then a manual elevation wheel. - You do indeed. So if you start with the primary
control handle there, the gunner's control. - This thing?
- Ah, I'm trying to see where you are. Yes, that should rotate to the left and to the right. - Yup, OK.
- That's it, that's power traverse. - The tank is currently off, so it's not going to. - But it'll do a full 360, if I recall, in
13 seconds. Something pretty fast.
- That's fairly fast, yeah. - And it was a very smooth traverse. It was one that
could be used not just to get the gun onto target quickly, but also for fine ... aim. A lot of other tanks you
had to use the power traverse to get on quickly and then you would use hand cranks to
do fine aim. Not necessary in the Sherman. The actual control unit is forward and to your right, you
see a couple of big white pipes going into something there? - There.
- Yes.
- Yeah. - So that's your actual traverse motor. And they
came in hydraulic and they came in electric. ... All of them were very reliable. The oil gear
system was considered to be the best though. - OK.
- And that's for traverse only. Now for elevation
you're looking at the hand wheel on your left. And that is currently set for manual elevation.
But that would also be, if you disconnected the gearing ... and you enabled the stabiliser,
that could also be used for power elevation. So you can do everything by pure power and
with the stabiliser you could do it very quickly. So, if we go back yet again to our situation where
we're in ambush. You see your target in that sight, you turn on the elevator, you move forward,
you track the target as best you can with that sight until the tank stops. At which point you can then move down
to this one, and you will already have your gun on target. So ... from exposure to shot fired is going to be extremely quick.
Whereas almost any other tank, especially in a German tank, (OK granted, the British and Soviet
ones you probably do this as well), but if a German tank was doing this, the first
chance that the gunner would have to see the target is once that lower sight, which granted is
on the other side of the gun, would be clear. So that's another advantage to the Sherman a lot of people don't
pay attention to, because again, this is a system, it's not just a gun. If you just looked at the gun, you know,
OK, you can argue the German gun. But the entire system that uses the gun,
it's something that's better for Sherman. Now, if it breaks down, that's what your manual traverse
is for. So that's the crank handle to your right there. - Forward, forward, put your hand forward.
- Oh this.
- Yeah. - Oh ho, and that is in fact set up and moving. - And you already have the the manual elevation enabled.
Again it's a toggle switch. So that's your backup drive. - Alright. - So and even to this day that's how we
traverse the M1, with those manual handles. - Now the original trigger is on
this power traverse pistol grip. - That should actually be ... so if you look down at your feet.
- Oh, yeah, I've got two ...
- You got two pedals. - One of those is the machine gun, isn't it?
- It is.
- Alright. - I believe you said the left one is the machine gun. - And it's easy to remember because the machine
gun is mounted to the left of the main gun. - Right.
- Let me get the camera down here now. - Oo, this is tight.
- It's not too bad, there are worse.
It is a slightly adjustable seat. - Ah-hah, there we go, now we're talking there, alright.
So l get to rest my foot there, so I don't accidentally ... - Accidentally effect a discharge, correct.
- And that's the machine gun.
- Correct. - That's the main gun. Now
there is again a manual backup. - So you should have... I going to have to
reach over here to make sure I can see it. - Oh.
- I suspect our manual backup has been reconfigured. - Yes, it's been mucked with for ... the lanyard pulls.
- The way that we are actually going to shoot this is with a lanyard coming out through
the little hatch in the side of the tank because for safety sake we're not ...
gonna fire it from inside the turret here. - But there is usually a manual release, ... often a big
red button that you slam. That will release the firing pin because it is percussion fired.
- Right. - Here we go. - Three, two, one. - Sweet. - Were we a little bit high, or did we actually hit it? - I think you hit the target, honestly. - Cool.
- There you go, good aiming.
- Thank you. - Not exactly how it would have been
done during the war, but safety first.
- Safety first. - Alright, so there were some
small arms in a tank as well. - And people get all wrapped up about what is the
best personal defence weapon. What should ... - This is not a sophisticated weapon.
- That's a very kind way to put it. - Yeah, I mean the sole purpose of this is to keep the other
guy's head down while you run away and get another tank. Because you're a tanker dammit, you know, you're not supposed to
be mucking around with machine guns and pistols and whatever else. - They spent a lot of time training you to run that
thing. Not to jump around without your armour. - So the cheapest, simplest thing that goes bang and
keeps the other guy's head down, if it's not accurate OK, so be it. If somebody is shooting this in my general area I'm not
gonna stand up and go charging at you, or at least mostly, I wouldn't. I know there's
always a couple of nutters out there. And it's small enough. ... M4s originally
came with racks with Thompsons. - Right, in fact they had one.
They had a Thompson 1928A1. - Which by the end of the war, by '42 or so they started swapping out the racks in
the Shermans from Thompsons to the M3s. - Right. It's interesting to me, they actually
went from one Thompson to five Grease Guns. - So everybody got one of these.
- Right, but as long as the cost wasn't too bad and you
didn't take up too much room inside, what the hey? - I think five Grease Guns was actually
cheaper than one Thompson.
- Wouldn't surprise me. - And even today there there are usually one
or two rifles officially assigned, but in practice we'll get loaded down with all sorts of rifles
because you never know what's gonna happen. But again, ... if you are using older equipment
without the latest optics, it doesn't matter. He's got an M16 with no CCO. Whoop-dee-doo,
he's a tanker, this is an emergency backup system. - And you're holding the other
emergency backup system.
- Everybody gets one of these. - Pretty much. And you wear it
on your chest in a tanker holster, because if it's down on your leg holster or on your hip or
whatever, it will get caught going in and out of the hatch. Or it will get meshed in maybe with the turret, with the
inside of the hull, with the turret ring depending on your tank. All sorts of nasty ways you can lose body parts with
a tank. So if you keep it here, ... you can't quick draw it. - Who cares?
- But you don't need to.
- No, you're bailing out of the tank and
shooting one way and running the other way. - So that pistol port in the side of the turret, not
really a useful thing for shooting pistols out of? - Not really. And in fact, it was deleted in production.
About halfway through production of the Sherman it was deleted, because they realised it was useless as a
pistol port. But then there was complaints from the troops, bring it back, because it's very useful for loading
ammunition or ejecting spent shell casings. -So it kept the name "pistol port" but in
actuality it was anything but pistol port.
- OK, that makes sense. - So the bottom line, you can get wrapped up in this,
there's no point, it's a defence weapon to run away. - But since we're here, and since we're on a live range.
- We have them, it would be a shame not to shoot them. - I'm going to shoot one.
- I think you should. - That's it, you'll be out.
- That's it, I am out. But I have kept the other guys head
down long enough that I can run away. - Well, I've run away. You're still here for some
reason, but I ran away to look for another tank. - This is only the second time I've ever shot an M3. Actually I found it a lot more controllable than
the first time, I think because I was ready for it. - OK.
- But it's, I don't know. This is not a precision weapon. I
wouldn't go into a three gun match with this I don't think. - I would. But that's just ...
- That's because you're you.
- I do that sort of thing. - So I was never a huge fan of the 1911s. My unit got commemorative
ones made, by Para Ordnance, same basic principle. - OK, now I didn't want to say anything.
- Hmm. - But so far you've said we
have too many machine guns.
- Yes. - You don't like the 1911.
- Not much. - My accent may not be entirely American.
- Yeah. - We'll, we'll overlook this. - Yes, I am sort of evil contaminated
European, I like the 7.62, I like the 9 mil. - As I say, I own a .45. I respect
the gun. It is a well made gun.
- OK. - It's just not for me, and I find maintenance
on this is a royal pain in the arse. - It is a 109 year old gun now,
108 year old gun now. - True, and you have to respect the gun for still
being effective considering how old it is. Although there are many dents in my ceiling
now from this damn bushing thing going flying. - But the problem with this as a
defence gun is this magazine.
- Well it's only got 7 rounds in it. - Right, so 7 plus 1 in the tube. That's not very much
suppression compared to the Grease Gun that we just fired. - Very well. My 7 rounds of suppression. - And I've run out of suppression already.
- Yeah ... you've sort of suppressed
something out there. - Point of fairness, I'm shooting at something the
size of a car, so something is likely to have hit.
- True. - Alrighty. I wonder what the drop is on .45
ACP at like 200 yards. The answer is a lot. Yeah, the answer is like 10 or 12 feet. - Ah, well that was a tremendous amount of fun.
- It was. It's never a bad day sending
steel downrange in a tank. - It really isn't. This was my first time trying it,
so you've been doing this for your career.
- I hope we'll be able to do this again. - I hope so. So of course this is
DriveTanks.com down in Texas. And if you're interested in doing this
yourself, they offer this to you and everybody. Open to the public for a fairly large fee actually,
this is not a cheap thing to do. No getting around that. If you check out their website you can see the whole list
of vehicles they have, because it's way more than just this, along with machine guns
and all sorts of other cool stuff. If you can't afford it, or just don't have the
time to come down here and do it for real, of course, your next best option is ...
- World of Tanks. - Driving tanks on-line on your computer
with World of Tanks and wargaming.net. So a big thanks. Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching.
Since there’s no code for established players, I’m debating starting a new account just to give these dudes a code usage.
But I love this so much.
Gun Jesus AND the Irish Giant? Truly we are blessed on this sacred day
What is this, a crossover episode? /s
But seriously, I've been waiting for this for ages
According to an m4 tank commander I was listening to in a podcast episode of “warriors in their own words”, a big part of the reason the Americans had such puny tanks was due to the Army doctrine. Doctrine stated tanks were primarily used as troop support, not tank vs tank. I guess they didn’t see that thicc German steel coming. I thought it was interesting that Moran stuck with the shipping size & weight issue. I think the Pershing was an option at the beginning of the war. Edit: grammar, Pershing
Excellent episode, hoping for more.