Amazing Cross Sections- WW1 Trench, WW1 Tank and Lancaster Bomber Plane

foreign [Music] trench warfare trench cross-section World War One on the Western Front trench systems were developed into a sophisticated Network in 1914 trenches were quickly dug out by both sides parallel to each other from the North Sea through Belgium and France The Trenches would offer some protection for the troops from overwhelming enemy artillery and infantry fire entrenching was the fast method of creating a trench system by having soldiers dig foxholes this was dangerous as it would be done in the line of sight of the enemy a sapper could then transform this into a more sophisticated trench system that was deep enough for a man to safely stand up as the war went on the trench systems became more complex for permanent occupation the wall facing the enemy was called a parapet which was strengthened with sandbags to protect from enemy fire and wooden planks to strengthen the sides of the trench from collapsing in here there was a fire step that formed a firing position and a way for the soldier to step out onto No Man's Land an ammunition shelf was also dug into the side the wall facing the back of the trench was called the parados here were dugouts where the soldier could eat and sleep and seek protection from artillery bombardments more sophisticated protection came in the form of underground bunkers which could also be used for storage ammunition food and weapons as well as command centers for officers to communicate orders with headquarters on the floor were duck boards to provide secure ground and Aid in drainage to keep the soldiers feet away from the water which caused diseases such as trench foot in the muddy soggy terrain of the Western Front trenches were built in zigzags instead of straight lines so that if the enemy managed to enter it they would not be able to shoot down them a typical trench system was three lines approximately 800 yards or 730 meters apart the first line that was nearest to the enemy was the fire trench this was the most unpleasant and dangerous place to be they were about eight feet or 2.4 meters deep and six feet or 1.8 meters wide the fire trench was the main line of resistance with machine gun nests placed at strategic points and barbed wire placed in the front area known as nomad's land the sapper would also dig out a sap head which went slightly ahead into nomad's land to form a listening post second line was the support trench forming the second line of defense if the first line was taken away by the enemy a kitchen and a dressing station kept the men fed and treated for any wounds soldiers were rotated every week between Frontline and support trenches the third line was the reserve Trench these were connected to each other through communication trenches which were used to transport soldiers ammunition and Food Supplies and orders from trench line to trench line latrines were also placed along these trenches Behind these lines were artillery German trench systems tended to be better overall in comparison to British trenches because of a number of reasons one was that the British thought the trenches would only be temporary whereas the Germans accepted that stalemate would set in and put the effort into developing better trenches including more comfortable bunkers that were deeper into the ground away from artillery fire on the Western Front the Germans were also on Higher Ground than the British who were in The lowlands this meant that the British army would be in unpleasant terrain with high water levels and mud life inside a tank the Mark V tank 1918. the arrival of the tank in World War One heralded a whole new kind of warfare that helped to break the bitter and bloody stalemate of trenched warfare that had plagued the Western Front for years and it was the British who pioneered the way in the introduction development and use of these fearsome armored Fighting Machines they were first introduced during the battle of the psalm in September 1916 much to the shock and disbelief of the German soldiers British main battle tanks were a series of heavy so-called land ships that all had a very similar layout with over 2 000 of them being built before the war had ended in November 1918. there were five main models with the ultimate wartime one being the Mark V this was introduced in July of 1918 and had been designed by Major w.g Wilson a British royal Naval Air Service engineer and produced at the Metropolitan carriage and wagon Factory at saltly and oldbury in the West Midlands of England the Mark V tank was not a radical new design just more of an updated version of the earlier mark IV tank 400 of these Mark fives were built and consisted of two versions The six-pounder Gun version which was called the male variant and the all machine gun version which was called the female variant 200 of each were produced the crew compartment like all the other tanks in a series they were incredibly hot inside cramped and noisy with very little ventilation the crew of eight were forced to communicate by shouting using hand signals and write notes to one another to make matters worse the Mark V had a serious design flaw and that was the new engine layout which meant that there was the constant threat of carbon monoxide poisoning throughout the tank from badly vented exhaust fumes and it wasn't unusual for crew members to collapse unconscious inside the tank the driver's cabin the one revolutionary and unique feature of this new model was that it was controlled by Just One driver using a gearbox with four forward gears and one reverse gear this was unlike earlier models that needed four gear men two to control each of the Tank's tracks this previously clumsy setup had led to much confusion when driving the tank resulting in many mistakes and accidents the mark V's driver had just a small slit to see out of so if the tank was not operating in battle conditions the tank commander would often get out and walk in front of the vehicle signaling to the driver where to go and pointing out any potential hazards sat next to the driver was a gunner who operated the forward firing machine gun toilets and showers or lack of them despite the attack being 26 feet or 8 meters long there was simply not the space to install any kind of on-board toilet or washing facilities and it didn't help that the tank was already woefully overloaded with all sorts of equipment and Ordnance so despite missions often lasting for days all that was provided for the crew were some rags and buckets for washing and other bodily functions to empty out one of the buckets a crew member had to open the escape hatch to throw out its contents but in the middle of combat these waste-filled buckets would have to stay inside for hours at a time adding to the stench of sweat and fumes in the poorly ventilated and hot interior dinner service often food like bacon and eggs could be cooked on board by being wrapped in tin foil and placed on the top of the hot engines to slowly cook but the ability to make the all-important cup of tea in a British tank didn't occur for another 30 years with the introduction of the boiling vessel in the British Centurion tank so the crew had to boil their water outside of the tank and makeshift petrol burners the engine 29 ton tag was powered by a massive 19 liter six-cylinder inline Ricardo petrol engine the engine produced 150 horsepower which is the equivalent to that of a modern day Harley Davidson motorcycle just gave the Mark V a top speed of 5 miles an hour about the same speed as that of a person walking briskly fuel tank despite holding 93 gallons or 420 liters of fuel the tank only had a range of 45 miles and though the fuel tank was armored it could easily be penetrated by enemy heavy machine gun fire as the tank was powered by petrol it could explode when hit setting the tank on fire disabling it completely so many crews were incinerated in this way that specially trained Salvage Crews had to be formed to retrieve their bodies out of the charred Hulls the starting handle the tanks had to be crank started internally using a large starting handle that had to be vigorously rotated with both hands in order to get the tank engine to start the semaphore system the semaphore system allowed for communication between tanks using a primitive signaling system of levers and discs on top of the tank but this relied heavily on good visibility therefore adverse weather conditions like rain or early morning fog made it next to useless Battlefield smoke was also a problem too the tanks also carry wicker baskets containing carrier pigeons that would have messages strapped to their legs and were released outside of the tank to fly back to base with messages armored exterior the mark V's armor had 16 millimeter or 0.63 inch thick steel plate on the front with 12 millimeter or 0.47 inch on the sides along with eight millimeter or 0.31 inch on both the rear and the roof this meant that it was totally immune to all types of small arms fire and it could also withstand heavy machine gun fire and grenade blasts on all but the rear and roof of the tank steel plate was just normal industrial grade and therefore quite brittle so if the plate was penetrated it was prone to splintering if this happened it resulted in small red hot shards of metal shooting around the crew compartment with devastating effects the crew would wear medieval looking chainmail masks to protect their eyes and gas masks were always close at hand weaponry the male variant had a six pounder gun in each of the forward-facing portions of its sponsons as well as a further 4.303 inch machine gun scattered about the tank one machine gun was located on each side of the sponsense another facing backwards at the rear of the tank and a fourth in the driver's cabin facing forward female variant was the same except the six pounder were replaced with machine guns six Pounders wore a short barrel version of a British Naval gun so they didn't get stuck in the mud as they crossed the trenches or shell craters the machine guns were the Hotchkiss m1909 which could fire as many as 10 rounds a second in short bursts but the drawback was that the odor from the cordite propellant used in the machine guns rounds though smokeless caused irritation to the eyes and lungs of the Gunners inside the cramped and poorly ventilated interior of the tank ammunition [Music] the 207 rounds for the six-pounder gun was centrally stored whereas the thousands of rounds from the machine guns were distributed about the tank next to the weapon ports for quick and easy access the side sponsense turrets for tanks had yet to be fully realized therefore sponsense were used at first there was one located on either side of the Mark V tank each house two weapons one on the front of the spots and that had a very limited Arc of Fire and could only fire at Targets in front of the tank the other was on the side of the spots and could only fire at Targets to the side of the tank depending on the variant the gun facing forward would be a six-pounder gun on the male version or a machine gun on the female one side facing gun on both barriers was always a machine gun after the war these clumsy types of mountings were discarded as designers introduced more effective turreted designs but a notable exception was the U.S stopgap tank of World War II the M3 Lee Grant observation post an armored cabin on the roof of the tank was used for all-around observation using a series of observation slits there was also a peephole on both sides which the commander could also fire his six-shot service revolver through if he needed to these tanks were reasonably successful though after the war they were gradually phased out of service to be replaced with new tanks that had gun turrets and smaller crew numbers and proper dedicated suspension like the Vickers medium Mark II that were also equipped with radios some Mark fives were used in the Russian Civil War that ended in 1920. the last recorded use of them was in August 1941 when the Red Army used four of them as dug in fortifications during the defense of Talon against the German Invaders the Avro Lancaster bomber cross-section World War II flying low under the night sky the British Avro Lancaster bomber quietly crossed the English Channel in route to Germany taking fights straight to the heart of the country for the final three years of World War II the Inception of the Lancaster the British Avro Lancaster was a heavy bomber that was primarily used as a nighttime bomber during World War II and spearheaded the Allied strategic bombing campaign devised by RAF commander-in-chief of bomber command Arthur Palmer Harris against Nazi Germany intended as the answer to issues with the Avro Manchester the Lancaster was designed by Roy Chadwick in the Avro team with the first prototype deploying in January 1941. a year later in March 1942 it was used operationally for the first time in a production run that lasted until 1946. needing a seven-man crew over 7 377 lancasters were built requiring a massive 1.1 million men and women involved in its production across 920 companies only 3445 lancasters survived the war as they usually only manage 21 missions before being lost in action although it's most instrumental and important period of use was during the war the Lancaster was refitted updated and improved after the war continuing its use by the RAF bomber command and Royal Canadian Air Force conducting among other things aerial surveys and long-distance flights by the time it was retired in 1954 and replaced by the better developed Avro Lincoln 15 variants on the original design had been created now only 17 lancasters remain with only two capable of flight one of them flies in formation with a Spitfire and hurricane in the Battle of Britain Memorial flight at air shows in Britain and special events a Lancaster MK1 composition the Lancaster Bauer measured 69 feet 6 inches in length had a wingspan of 102 feet and stood at 20 feet 6 inches in height off the ground wait the Lancaster was heavier than the average plane and much heavier than the standard German bomber at the time weighing over two times as much when empty the plane was approximately 36 900 pounds or 16 738 kilos but was capable of carrying almost its whole weight again being able to haul 33 100 pounds or 15 114 kilos in fuel and bombs this also meant that it was one of the only planes capable of carrying the raf's largest bombs including the deadly 12 000 pound bunker Busters these features also allow the dam Buster's raid codenamed operation chastised to take place which wouldn't have been possible without the Lancaster Superior bomb holding capacity modified to fit British engineer Barnes Wallace's bouncing bomb underneath the fuselage it was the only plane capable of carrying out the mission thanks to its elongated Bombay engines the Lancaster was powered by four Rolls-Royce Merlin xxv12 liquid-cooled piston engines driving three bladed propeller units each could produce up to 1 280 horsepower and 954 kilowatts of power this meant that at 15 000 feet it could cruise at 200 miles per hour but also had a top speed of 275 miles per hour six fuel tanks were located in the wings and could hold 2154 gallons of fuel between them so this averaged out at nearly one gallon used per mile with a bomb load of seven thousand Pounds its range was a lengthy 2 530 miles and the Lancaster has a service ceiling of twenty four thousand five hundred feet a huge improvement over the Manchester's Avro engine but as the war went on engine production became more difficult due to a shortage of supplies and was forced to turn elsewhere to the British Hercules variant of the Lancaster which used air-cooled radial engines instead however these were vastly inferior so the issue was finally resolved by importing brand new Merlin engines from the US after they had joined the war this popular variant of the Merlin engine was also used in several other RAF aircraft including the Hawker hurricane and spitfire fighter planes bomb sites initially lancasters used the mark 9 core sitting bomb site also known as csbs this was a rudimentary design that had been in production since its creation by Harry whimperus in 1917. it involved squinting through wires that had to be manually set meaning they lacked flexibility and the ability to easily change and adapt but by 1943 this was replaced by the mark 14 vector-based bomb site now recognized as the first modern bomb site it allowed the bomb aimer to input information at the start of the flight and a computer to automatically and continuously calculate the trajectory of the bombs and adjust accordingly during missions this was instrumental in making the Lancaster a big time part of the nighttime bombing rates crew something that is often forgotten in the war films and the media is the actual age of the average Soldier although slightly older than those on foot bomber Crews were made up of seven barely adult men with an average age of just 22. they each had their own role in flying the plane the pilot of course flew the plane and assumed the leadership role while the engineer who looked after the engine sat next to him behind them sat the Navigator and wireless operator who plotted the plane's course and monitored radio messages respectively the other three crewmen operated the weapons there was the bomb aimer who sat at the front and doubled as the nose Gunner guiding the plane into position and the final two operated as the rear and mid-gunners of the crew the rear Gunner was the least likely to survive as he was physically separated from his parachute meaning that in the event of a bailout he needed to both access and correctly put his parachute on before exiting the Lancaster armament the Lancaster was armed with 8.303 inch caliber Browning machine guns across three hydraulically powered turrets two sat in the nose turret two in the dorsal spine and four in the powered tail turn unlike the American bombers the Lancaster excluded the addition of a ventral belly turret although a few variants did have one but these were phased out by 1942 as they were not very successful bomb load as already mentioned the Lancaster's true uniqueness lay in its bomb carrying abilities outstripping and the other plane in the World War II Aviation sphere and allowing for Superior nighttime raids and attacks over German soil in total the Lancaster had a 33 foot long Bombay and was capable of carrying a 14 000 pound bomb load at a speed of 200 miles per hour this also meant it was able to carry some of the largest high-capacity cookie bombs weighing between one thousand and four thousand pounds alongside these the Lancaster would carry high explosive general purpose medium case or smaller incendiary bombs such as 24 30 pound or 236 four pound incendiary bombs later they started modifying the Lancaster Bombay doors to make them capable of carrying even larger eight thousand and twelve thousand pound HC cookies the drawback of the bomb load and the Bombay doors was the lack of an easy exit route for the crew with the hatch being smaller than those on other aircraft and far more difficult to get out of and almost impossible wearing a parachute it meant that the crews of stricken lanecasters only had a 15 successful bailout rate compared to as high as 25 in halifaxes and 50 percent in American bombers Communications with one of the Lancaster's primary occupations during the war being part of the masked nighttime bomb rate in Germany Communications between the crew of the plane and other aircraft and even base was essential the wireless operator who sat behind the Navigator monitored radio and Communications as the plane had a radio receiver and separate transmitter that could be used for voice and Morse code messages part of his job would involve identifying Friend or Foe in the night sky and giving false signals to confuse or derail the enemy if they entered active combat part of his role would also be acting as a lookout through the Plexiglas canopy at the back of a cockpit in order to notify the pilot and Gunners of any enemy aircraft activity the rear Gunner was also instrumental here as the Germans often attacked from behind meaning it was he who would see them first and be tasked with alerting the rest of the crew the pilot would often then guide the plane into a corkscrew turn to avoid enemy fire during the late 1940s the RAF continued to use the Lancaster to carry out reconnaissance and aerial surveys of Central and East Africa it was finally superseded by the development of the Avro Lincoln which was essentially a refined version of the Lancaster but it wasn't until December 1953 that the final bomber command Lancaster was retired and the final reconnaissance Lancaster in service for the RAF also retired less than a year later in 1954. overhauled lancasters continue to be used by four squadrons in The French Naval Aviation for another 10 years on reconnaissance and search and rescue missions before finally being retired [Music] [Music]

Channel: Simple History

Views: 80,104

Keywords: simple history, animated history, educational, education, Cross sections, cutaway, lancaster bomber, ww1 tank, landship, trench, ww2, detail, interiors, crew

Id: 7m9XIXyT5_I

Length: 22min 57sec (1377 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 03 2023