Chieftain's Q&A #9

okay quitting's oh so updates first and foremost of course we're right in the middle of a series of videos coming out a monster from wargaming and to know the two vehicles after the Panzer 4 and then I'm on my own so editing has started on the series of videos filmed in Sweden one vehicle so far completed the whole trip wasn't quite as successful as I'd hope only six vehicles covered but a good learning experience which I plan on putting the good news on the next strip which is in March so if you are in Rio Grande do Sul give us a holler particularly if you happen to me in the town of Santa Maria although I think Porto Alegre is possible similarly I do not expect to be a college station as I'm likely on an airplane to st. Petersburg for most of the week the one in Russia not Florida though only certainly not be a Q&A in June I get to spend pretty much the entire month in a swamp in Louisiana JROTC beckons I presume I'll need to bring along all the bug spray which will fit my ammo pouches may not have much time for a meeting but if you're in the area I'll do my best it does mean that I won't be at a keno weekend at this time and that's the event in Toronto sorry the army wins on the plus side I get released soon enough to drive home take a shower and then probably hop onto an airplane for tankfest if anyone knows a source of 58 pattern webbing in the US let me know doesn't have to be in great condition just needs the last one event anything I can find seems to be uk-based and has daft shipping George's and finally well another plug for my book apparently there are still unsold copies Amazon and Panzer X both have them and I think the Ontario regiment Museum as well anyway all that done to the questions and I need to go back on two items from the last video firstly it has been astutely pointed out to me in my response to the question about stereoscopic of coincidence range finding that I've been spending too much time in museum pieces there is in theory no particular reason why such a system cannot be electronically controlled by use of two cameras one on each the turret connected by a mere electronic cable to a small computer they would not be big they will not consist of a huge cross beam through the turret although I stand by my earlier comments but the velocity and trajectory of the rounds being these days unless of an issue for range estimation errors as I do the possibility of a choke or mill calculation reticle correction mill calculation ranging I must admit to not having completely fought the answer through if you do feel the need to put a coincidence rangefinder in I see no reason that it can't be done without any particular liability it was not sure it's worth it also I owed Kazuki K his or her questions from last month which I had to edit out due to an audio failure if one considers the original design intent would Panther have been a more reliable and strategically useful tank had WAP root 6 either demanded the earlier 35-ton specification or the Daimler ki 34 copy had been adopted instead I'd say they were hosed either way without looking at the exact figures I would think the Panther would have been about as problematic an opponent had the frontal Armour being one or two centimeters thinner given what was on the battlefield and that would have resulted in a few less tons to move around however I don't think a 35-ton Panther would have been the right result either it's too easy to knock out given German production rates they had to try for a qualitative superiority and that also is why the Daimler design did not get built the ma n design would be able to be placed in as a production sometime faster than the Daimler one even though there are definite arguments in favor the Daimler design which also in fairness is not really fair to say it was a direct t-34 copy with its leaf springs and a bigger turret her second question for his second question and this one comes out of left field is the tow launcher on a bradley electrically or hydraulically raised now I'm gonna go to electric for three reasons one for the life of me I don't recall ever seeing or hearing anything a hydraulic in the dirt the manual I have states that if you keep trying to raise the launcher for more than three 18 seconds damage will result and I suspect this implies motor burnout 3 unlike the hydraulic engine bay cover at the front which is raised manually by pumping a handle back and forth actually side to side technically the manual method for raising the tow launcher involves a socket wrench right here as for how much maintenance is given to the system nothing I ever had to deal with might be something in annual services but I never got around to those and so we moved to the questions for this month starting with one from Daniel Herndon which I seem to completely missed because I never checked at the right page on the subscribed star account sorry about that I said but most of these questions are from patrons but a few also come from comments on other videos so his question how fast did combat crews receive upgrades might they have had the same tank through the war was dry stowage ever completely eliminated the general rule of thumb was it took about five months for a tank to get from the factory floor to the frontline and yes that involves quite a bit of waiting around and rarely ARDS dockyards ordnance depots and the likes and of course the tanks competing with everything else waiting to go overseas it generally took a german tank about two weeks their supply line was just a little bit shorter and they didn't normally have to worry about things like d waterproofing after a North Atlantic voyage this thus explains why though the 76 millimeter m4 entered production in January 44 it did not get to the field units until May and even in that of course they were left behind due to lack of time for training and rejiggering though logistics it is worth noting though that the vast majority of US tanks which landed in Normandy were built with no loaders hatch as that only started coming off the lines about November of 43 now that's not to say though that the tanks did not receive the benefit of a number of upgrades over their period of service life they could vary a fair bit so for example you could find that an early m4 would have the modification to the sight linkage was known for being a little bit unreliable later on a tank unit supply officer could find his taking delivery of Springs to make opening the hatches easier or perhaps one crate came with enough hatches and instructions for installing the loaders hatch into a tank which wasn't built with one this sort of work was well within the capabilities of the field ordnance units alternatively perhaps upgrades would be part of a replacement for example all the m4a4 s were built with the old 3-piece transmission housing as people now suddenly go looking for pictures of Firefly 5c photos to check yet on occasion you will find an m4 a4 with a single piece housing the latter of course being tougher and more reliable it's possible that this m4a4 had a transmission swapped out and they just found it easier to change out the entire assembly with the housing rather than to remove the transmission from the housing and then install it into a new one no one may ask why am force were not modified with upgraded suspensions as well I have heard an argument that the V vs s and H vs s bogies had different bolt hole locations in required welding but examination of a small hatch m4a1 with hvss indicates that this is not true some conversions are repeated to have happened but it seems to just not a being considered worthwhile bear in mind that factory produced hvss vehicles only started arriving in December of 44 it's unlikely that either enough spare bogies would have been around to install or the frankly that the ordnance crews considered it a productive use of their time given everything else that was going on so in theory at least a crewman could have started his war in a Sherman in North Africa with one tank and finished in 1945 in Italy in the same tank but one which would be somewhat upgraded to nearly distended of a tank built a year and a half later there's a famous enough small hatch m4a1 which made it to Germany before being knocked out quite early production you can see the center mounted return rollers and three piece housing but on the other hand it also has the full suite of applications command has been replaced by the far superior direct vision single piece hatch the reality though is that a crewman will have likely received a new tank somewhere along the line you will see veterans commenting on the occasional tank in the unit which losses from d-day to the surrender but also is an example of a rarity the chances were that a vehicle would have been disabled sufficiently by something be it an accident a mine enemy fire or whatever to require drawing a replacement from stocks while the crews original vehicle was repaired or that it had just run so much at a needed a major overhaul sufficient to warrant drawing a replacement and the tank would have been given more upgrades if available and then returned to the pool for future disbursement another possibility is that of cascading equipment so create neighborhoods for example is known for having commanded seven tanks in his war all of them called funderbolt of course Bay loss he had the privilege of rank and could NAB new tanks as they were delivered that meant though that his previous best tank would be cascaded down to a new crew unless a crew were particularly emotionally attached to their tank that is but I can't imagine many crews turning down a better vehicle just because of an emotional attachment so the oldest and least capable tank would be withdrawing from primary service dry stowage was never entirely eliminated Admiral Tiberius is asking what was the role for the 175 millimeter 2 or 3 millimeter and 240 artillery pieces in the u.s. inventory the two 40s were gone after Korea but you will not believe how many different T OES there were fulfilled artillery units in the 1960s so look for a link in the text below dated July 1968 from Fort Sill the general trend seems to have been that brigades had 155-millimeter battalions in support divisions had battalions of 355 batteries 1/8 inch battery and it would have to go up to core level to find a pure 8 inch battalions and the 175 millimeter battalions when it was developed the m107 175 millimeter was slated to become the primary heavy artillery piece of the army the m110 was brought into service mainly the ridiculous motivate inch ammunition that was available to burn through after a while it was planned that the 8-inch guns would be converted to 175 millimeter making a full m107 fleet however things turned out go in the other direction entirely and one of sevens had a habit of wearing out after only a couple hundred rounds and they were not known for their accuracy nor their rate of fire they could however be used for interdiction and counter batteries such was their range investigations prompted by the catastrophic failures of the 175 millimeter barrels were used to create new metallurgical techniques what were then applied to the m110 a to the 8 inch gun on the same mount this suffered almost none of the drawbacks of the m107 made a bigger bang at the far end and was only a couple of kilometers shorter range than the smaller gun eventually they were replaced in US service by mlrs commissar Carl is inquiring as to the british preference for shot m61 over shell m61 for the 75 millimetre gun the difference being that the one has over two ounces of explosive filler for post penetration effect and the other does not the British tended to use the one without filler it is not impossible that they filled some cavities with inert material to both reinforce the structure and increase the mass but they definitely seem to have fired them with a cavity instead of any filler at all one thing which is certainly true is that the british observed that if you fired the shell at a vehicle with spaced armor you had a chance of premature detonation in reality though there weren't all that many vehicles which had it by dhow shirts in malone would detonate the base fuse another possibility is that the British felt that they had better things to do with their explosives than to put small charges and dandy tank rims don't forget in addition to pots and pan drives for aluminium or steel citizens were also asked to save cooking fat for use in explosives it's all part of the efficient war effort if you curious the conversions were that a pound of waste fat allowed for 1/3 of a pound of gunpowder or 1/2 pound of dynamite at any weight I have not encountered anything in the America archives discussing the British preference for shot over shell Alexander H what can I tell you about combat identification panels which I actually here's one you have it out of this here it's gonna have one on the m1 they come in a couple of different types some are simple of squares and others have these sort of louver effects the gist of it though is that the thermal imagers on the m1 and the m1 a1 in the late 80s and early 90s were very very good at finding targets but not so good at identifying them it's not a black and white TV screen image like in a lot of computer games or movies would have you think there is a lot of bloom and blur plus it pains me to say it but I personally consider it the standards a US Army AFV ID testing to be woeful I'm sure the British would have more to say on that particular matter as well the CI peas are a simple solution they're made of a different material to the armor and often times such as here there's an air gap as well between the panel and the armor itself this means that when viewed through a thermal imager there is a big rectangular contrast in the middle of the vehicle in times when generally speaking only you and your friends have thermal imagers this makes fantastic sense of course now we're trying to reduce thermal signatures overall in the first place so one can rely less upon this which does beg the question of iff systems so on the Bradley ODS there is a rocker switch for the laser rangefinder one direction if you kick forward it interrogate the target at the same time is ranging it however I have never seen a similar switch on contemporary and once and neither was there anything in the bradley about a transponder receiver system I can only assume that it was an idea that was never implemented and I cannot speak as to the current m1 and m2 s although I suspect that blue force tracker is supposed to deal with the problem anyway Jonathan Schreiber is asking my opinion about the potential utility of the fourth crewman as a systems operator or some similar to prevent information overload on the commander and I will refer the Honourable gentleman back to the whither the autoloader video I put up a while ago and I'll put it up as an end card many of those functions do not require a human to be in the same vehicle and the space taken up by the fourth body is probably better utilized by not being there in the first place make the tank smaller and tougher my personal opinion however he also asks given that tanks keep increasing in size is there a requirement for a new class of light tanks yes or no light tanks are still alive and well just knowing NATO as opposed to the fire support role such as the MGS or a GS look instead at vehicles like to type 15 from China or even the old stingray it's designed as a tank just one which operates where the heavier tanks cannot however there are also seems to be a recent trend for new tanks to be lighter anyway type 10 K 2 T $14 and under the 50 ton mark which makes them some 20 tons and more or less than the m1 and they're still considered to be MVPs even the clerk is 15 tons lighter than m1 I refer you back to the advantage of not having the fourth man still all other things being equal if the US can transport and use a 70-ton tank with the same technologies that are being used in the current sub 50 toners it would stand a reason that a 70-ton tank would be more dangerous of course it does beg the question what do the Chinese know about certain terrain and that the u.s. does not after all the type 99 a is still over 10 tons lighter than the m1 and they feel the terrain won't work for those which Botsford wants to know about thumpers current status and honestly i have no idea where it is I've done a little bit of digging I've had a document dated in 1998 which postulated the m1 a3 with a 140 millimeter cannon and autoloader and a stronger titanium turret though that document and a few others make mention of the significant power and capability of the 140 millimeter round with almost double the chamber size the limitations would be be able to stow only 30 rounds due to the size of the things and the ridiculous cost of the program led them to conclude that the slight increases of capability over the m1a2 with new ammo was simply not worth the cost i drew wants to know what british infantry tanks were supposed to do he postulates that given they had anti-tank guns have limited utility for supporting infantry that the guns would kill Armour and that machine guns would be enough for the rest he's entirely correct the British firmly believed that if possible the tank should have a gun capable of defeating other tanks after all they engage in tank versus tank battles in World War one and thus the use of the three pounder in the medium tanks of the 1920s yet note that Matilda came with only a single machine gun there really was just a self Abell machine gun bunker not particularly fast fairly heavy but where the Vickers Matilda too gave the tank a proper crew and an anti-tank gun I will again take this opportunity to reinforce that infantry support means dealing with things your infantry are facing which can include enemy armor still the majority of targets that were expected to be faced were to be the ones that the infantry were facing within rifle range and if an anti-tank gun showed up well ante up three inches of armor of course events in the desert were to prove the death of this concept of machine guns being almost the exclusive weapon Christopher Whitmer what general advice would I give someone writing about and creating fictional tanks such as important considerations or capturing the crews experience for the record these will be magic based tanks which will engage tanks and fantasy creatures given these parameters it seems to me there is nothing in terms of technical guidance I can give you for all I know the track tension is magically performed you're gonna have to focus on the crew but I suspect that that interaction has been pretty much a constant since the first tanks and will remain a constant well into the future I see no reason why it should be anything other in a fantasy tank obviously you're gonna have to come up with your own constructs and crew duties given the fantastic kid abilities of the vehicle however presuming a hierarchical structure similar to a modern military you are going to have two levels of interactions the operational or rank based interactions could be first level and the social interaction will be the second although obviously the commander is the most important person for the functioning of the vehicle and for operational cohesion of the crew that isn't necessarily the case for the social cohesion of the crew the social center the person who's a central gel in making a tank will work could be the most junior person be it he's the jokester or the intermediary or whatever works instead of developing crew action to go along you need to plan out in advance the characteristics of the crew figure out what the T C's personality is first now remember though doubtless your writing will focus on the interesting parts of the tanks participation in the storyline and tank crew spends most of its time bored out of their skulls when they're not bored out of their skulls they are doing tracked engine complaining about why they're not bored out of their skulls or whatever and that's the foundation with sets of the basis for the interaction of the interesting bits that you actually are writing about once you can envision how your crew will interact off stress that should give you a clue as to how to react under stress and especially in little gaps or idle moments in or after the action black humour is always possible if you want to believe a magical tank well that's your best bet focus on the crew even bolos are appealing because of their thoughts and interactions not because of the weapons operable dot NL which I'm going to guess is a Dutchman how does one combat a deterrent monster well tradition holds that you must before your training exercise make a sacrifice to deter monster normally you bring along spare pain or something and you just drop it in the hope of saving the monsters hunger I have no doubt that the mechanics when mucking around is sub third floor have found many unusual items TN sheep my favorite meal whilst tanking in the field we've got some pretty damn good meals off the Iraqis I have to say the ones that weren't shooting at us were incredibly generous and the grilled meat was often very good although also keen on the camel stay away from the lactic acid though be warned it looks just like milk outside of that it's really just MREs the vegetarian manicotti was universally disliked I was particularly fond of the chili macaroni maybe because it was palatable tasting whether it was heated or not some meals you pretty much had to eat them the front slope by the way makes an excellent dining table not quite as good as a Humvee due to the slope but perfectly serviceable and the course defenders work well as well at least if you my height Kazuki K's question for this month is if there are any documented cases of vehicles with externally mounted bogies losing a bogey after a particularly sharp knock I can't think of any operational vehicles outside of those caused by mine strikes which were not uncommon and not just in World War two you'd see a Vietnam and the Mideast as well their mines would blow bogeys off vehicles as you hypothesize it wasn't particularly a major problem as bogies could be replaced as long as the whole structure generally remained intact it is to be noted that of course bogies are designed from the beginning to take a few knocks and they have plenty of bolts holding them in place if there weren't enough the chances are that it will be noticed in the testing phase and so the field units wouldn't be suffering bogeys just randomly falling off the other point is that the bogies aren't merely held in place by both they normally have a shelf which kind of juts out underneath the main hall so also reduces the strain on the bolts you will see this sort of thing for example on the Panzer for the Valentine and the Sherman striker 1959 wants to know about the T for which the US Army's armor and cavalry correction has been working on recently which seems to be a Christie tank indeed it is a Christie tank and I'm actually gonna reserve that question I think for a full answer in a separate dedicated video on the American Christie's timpleman are there cases where the recoil of a gun was so great that it would damage the tank itself or would topple over if fired from inside yes but not necessarily in the manner you probably thinking Knollys if did it's a problem from firing from the side it wouldn't get past testing anyway normally the bit that's going to break first isn't the tank itself but the meant the bit which transfers the force from the recoil system to the rest of the tank it would absolutely not be unusual during initial testing of new guns and MEMS to find that the mount is being cracked or otherwise failed indeed it may not even be because the gun is too powerful it could have just been that the new mount may be one designed to be lighter or more efficient configuration might have just been too weak but hey that's why they have testing the other possibility might be not because of the gun being too powerful but because maintenance issues now interestingly I can't seem to find a picture of it but if an m1 has a new gun fitted or there is significant work done to the recoil system the gun is proof fired on a range by use of a lanyard from outside the tank before anyone is allowed inside the tank when it fires if the gun goes out of battery the breech is gonna bounce around inside the turret and basically kill anyone inside three consecutive proof rounds that must be fired before it's considered safe to fire from inside I had one master gunner tell me that he had a tank fail on the third round despite the CEO saying stop wasting time after the second knightshade chrome what steering systems were effective on world war ii and at the same time reliable well effective reliable and easy to produce the concept of tracked vehicle steering is probably best left to an engineering channel and I don't necessarily understand it all the simplest system is simply clutch braking you pull the lever back a little bit and it disconnects the drive from power output on that side power goes to the outside track only pull back more and the inside brake has a brake applied inside track has a brake employed it's simple but requires lots of brake pads creates heat and so on the inside track has no power at any point during the term by the early 1920s controlled differentials have started to show up on the Cleveland tractor company makes them available they show up all around the world a break locks a set of gears for normal use and pulling back to release it basically that's the internal gears rotate freely reducing their effect and that slows down the track it's much easier on the brakes but also reduces the flexibility a bit a Sherman as a result has a fairly wide turning radius geared steering shows up at about the same time and a basically requires two gearboxes one for each track on the plus side there is always power go into both tracks on the downside you could be looking at quite a lot of stress in the system oh and there's two gearboxes there then you get to the double and triple differentials the Germans use doubles and after the Churchill the British used triples the general concept is similar to control diff but there is greater fidelity to the control system instead of just generally having a brake on or off further the output is reversible which means that the neutral steering becomes a possibility the British Merritt Brown gearbox is considered to be the best of the world war ii steering systems and i haven't heard any particular horror stories about maintenance on them if they were that bad i can't imagine that they would have kept them through half of the Cold War and then the green modifications on the type so for example the Sharpie won't use a hydrostatic transmission with a double differential resulting in an extremely capable steering system if it was maintained in accordance with instructions Andrew Sebastian wants to know what combination of 2020s tanks and ifvs I would recommend for a budget-conscious unaligned state trying to set up its first armored brigade it's interesting to see the encroachment of wheeled vehicles into what was previously the tractor domaine but you know them cv90 series is gonna be in the running anyway however I since I have not been granted permission to play around with the new stuff and nor have I been invited by any countries to visit comparative testing events anyone out there maybe I don't think my opinion is gonna be any more valid than yours on this matter so I'm just gonna skip it sorry Charles Chiron wants to know what was better irish rations or us fashions breakfast was definitely better in ireland as they came with bacon and beans the main difference was that the irish russians came in a 24-hour ration pack complete with little Axman tablets for flame heating whilst MREs come per meal and have the excellent flameless heaters complete with meme instructions I felt that the MREs were more practical and they also came up more multiples sort of thing by putting a spare ammo pouch for nibbling on the March that said I don't remember an Irish ration pack which I particularly disliked but several MREs I will go out of my way to avoid and again that manicotti is way up there so boom Aikido is doing some reading on black prints and since you have found a discrepancy between p.m. night's book and a David Fletcher's book either the fletcher book is wrong or keido's has misread it so reading from another book of Churchill's correction and not the book of that year's mr. Churchill's tank it states the ratios in the five-speed box had been thought by some to be too close but in practice to me driving a lot easier despite the fact that it was now an entirely manual operation a single shift from one gear to the next could be achieved in 0.75 of a second so this matches the p.m. night description of the transmission being quite reasonable however the Fletcher's book continues mind you that did not leave much room for error if the tank was traveling at 3.5 miles an hour and one wished to change gear it did not do to bungle it the tank was so silly wish that in 1/2 seconds the speed would drop from 3.5 mph zero which presumably is the source of your numbers so if you get your gear change right by the time you get into second gear the tank will have dropped to a little under one mile an hour what if the gear ratios are closed should be within the realm of acceptability for second gear spencer Loper is also prompted by the Black Prince video I guess particularly my comment that the British didn't stop the front partially due to difficulty in getting a good ball mount he wants to know what was so hard about it and honestly I have no idea the German says noted took a while to develop one as well so the early Panthers didn't have a ball man just an open gap which it's a problem for our more integrity due to the edge effect of nothing else note that eventually the Americans also gave DUP on the slope the ball mounts from m26 on the hole gun was more mounted on the vertical axis on the end of a bulge extension from that sloping front as for the mechanics as to why it was so difficult I honestly couldn't tell you it doesn't make sense to me but I'm not an engineer chase walls will I be a tankfest this year I referred to the commentary I made towards beginning in this video Bill Halliwell is a 1 to 48 scale modeller who wants to model and Ozzie Abrams was the closest scale and I should say it 148 aircraft your best bet is 135th although there are 148 and 181 bottles out there it's a bit of an odd scale for tank models it was around a long while ago and also it so scale for model railroad types but 135th became the default and for those who are absolutely no room on the shelves at 1 to 72 maybe about 10 years ago a little longer there was a bit of a resurgence of 1 to 48 Armour to fill the gap between big enough for detail or old eyes and small enough to fit more than a couple of things on the shelf and the number of kits in this scale is increasing most of the armor behind me here is one 235th however although there are certainly aftermarket decals and parts for aussie m ones and one 230 v i am not sure if there are any for one 248th being still something women already scale I could have sworn I'd sent you a link on Facebook or somesuch where I'd seen that question before but if not let me know and I will resend Jackson Fox kuba vegan versus Jeep he claims the kubal is underestimated in many areas often overlooked in comparisons and generally gets a bad rep it doesn't deserve of course the primary areas compared to is the fact that the jeeps are 4x4 and the coupe of vagon isn't and most people will just stop there now I will agree with you the coupe of agony is an incredibly simple vehicle not fitting in with the German reputation of over engineering things but I think the extra complication that the Jeep did not outweigh the dramatic increase in capability of course there is a little bit of apples to oranges Google vacuum was never designed to be the jack of all trades that the Jeep turned out to be it was a liaison vehicle and one about the Allies got all that and much much more out of a Jeep now if you can afford to have one vehicle as a runabout and one is a tactical vehicle then yes there is a place for a cooler vagon type vehicle and you will see all sorts of bizarre runabout vehicles tested by the US like three wheeled jeeps or sidecar scooters all of which were cheap and not particularly capable of towing things or going off-road so why bother with ruthless efficiency the u.s. standardized on the light truck which could do everything it was perhaps that had been over capable for some purposes though is he--oh 896 how come the US did not use the m6 heavy tank well they did for propaganda and a see-through worth the Japanese put out an intelligence bulletin on the best place to place satchel charges on the Thames to destroy it however as for in the field it didn't deploy for two main reasons firstly they couldn't quite get it to work I have issues with the suspension which was HIV SS but with external guide horns instead of centre guides the crew configuration was also a little bit dodgy complete with a 37 where they probably shouldn't be one more to the point though is just really dead big that's has been commonly observed you could get two Sherman's into the space of one m6 assuming you can even get the m6 onto the ship into the first place I mean remember the thing just came in a little under 60 tons it was also shot down by Devers the head of the armored force now his objection was interesting bear in mind that when the m6 heavy was built the 3-inch gun was basically the most powerful tank gun known to be on a tank anywhere and that's a matter of fact as Tiger hadn't been built yet it probably was in rejecting m6 Devers said that the improved fire power provided by the heavy tank was not worth the increase in armor weight fuel consumption etc that came with it he was viewing the m6 primarily in terms of what punishment it could put out not what punishment it could take John Rae Berger wants to know how often tank units train with other units and the reason he asks is he was an infantry officer in 1st Armored Division and he rarely trained with tankers and that was generally my experience as well I'll be at over 10 years ago back in the day tank battalions and in fatigue battalions were entirely separate and only ever met up really for joint maneuvers of Brigade or higher sides these days tanks and Bradley's are at least in the same battalions so in theory joint training should be far more common but still you can bet that for at least half of the time such as gunnery cycles they're not any closer than they were before now of course the tank school moved to be closer to the infantry school naturally the two schools are at the other ends of Fort Benning still I would assume that at least the doctrine ears could benefit from being able to walk down the hallway to maneuver center headquarters to talk to their opposite number from the other branch perhaps a current a service chap can fill in the blank here for cross-training RA W and I don't know if that's right W or just R aw what was the first tank to have modular armor packages such as merc of f4 and Leclerc i have a suspicion it was t-72 now the Soviet idea of composite armor was basically to make in the main shape of the turret which could then be filled in with stuff usually a composite stuff of various different materials which would cause a penetrator to twist and which could attenuate shaped-charge walk arounds now whether or not that material could be pulled out again afterwards and then replaced I'm not sure m60 a ones were also designed to have stuff in them and that's why they had a neutered shape with flatter sights the silica-based armor came in sheets never happened obviously once you have the slab-sided tanks though like m1 and eppard that's where modular armor really starts to become a little more reasonable and so then your question becomes what's modular is it the entire outside of the tank can be removed and replaced or is it that you can upgrade what's inside such as just adding depleted uranium atom Schindler how do I see ubiquitous digital cameras changing how a crewman sees outside his tank could a the commander's a selfie stick become the new nametag defilade could hold down morph into every tank concealed while a drone buzzes overhead well we're sort of heading in that direction now I don't believe drones really the rate forward even if they talk just autonomous he fly in a fixed relationship to the tank eg 20 feet above and forward to the crewmen viewing that and may as well just be another sensor on the tank it's basically what a CI TV is now if you look basically any tank with the CI TVB stage is right at the very top of the tank so should be the only thing showing operation of such a system with the drone would be no different to CI TV use basically monitor in front of you this is a course entirely different from flying a drone around and if you want to go that far you want to drill an operator in another vehicle probably with a shared output to all the tanks that said there is also something to be said for restricting access to this feed to prevent paralysis by over analysis mast mounted camera is obviously exist as well and they perform the selfie-stick function although they tend only to be mounted on come vehicles and if you think about how much it seems gonna be swinging on top of a 20 foot foot pole on a moving vehicle you can understand why they normally are only used from the halt CITV and crows seems to be a pretty reasonable compromise between simplicity and toward an advantage and of course it's close enough to be a practical use I mean if it's something that you're looking at that needs a 20-foot pole to see as opposed to just taking your CITV over the top there's an argument that the tank crew doesn't really need to know the specifics anyway and it can be something which gets fed through the Intel chain as long as they know the basics of what's out there they can figure out the specifics closer horizontal volute there's a Sherman or Stuart fan name if ever there was one why didn't they do to the 19 millimeter or 17 pounder what they did to get the 76 millimeter from the three inch gun lop a couple of inches off the gun to shorten and lighten it and add propellant charge to make up the difference well I'm afraid your first problem is that they didn't the 76 millimeter gun m1a1 is actually a couple inches longer than the 3-inch gun m7 and the older gun also has almost a pound more propellant in a chamber a third bigger than the later gun the reason that 76 was so much lighter was advancement in myrtle urging they simply didn't need as much metal to do the job and that said one may inquire about the idea of basically sub-caliber in the 90 millimeter round so if you look at a 17 pounder cartridge it looks almost like somebody crimped a 3-inch round into a 90 millimeter case why not just basically stick in 90 millimeter breech on to a 76 millimeter barrel and make an American 17 pounder equivalent well really there's no great advantage to it the reason that the US tried to keep the 76 millimeter as long as possible as I mentioned before is ammunition capacity and ease of handling you can get a lot more 76 millimeter rounds into the same space than 17 pounder rounds and they're a little quicker and easier to handle inside the confined space of a turret so if you're gonna have a big fat round anyway why not just use the larger caliber cannon that way you can get a much better H around and you can still get the increase in penetration of velocity of a smaller projectile by use of H fab or Sabo of course you can always take the ratio of case size to projectile to extremes look at the point 22 Yogesh glotón Louden boomer yes that's a real round and in theory they could make it in tank size but by that point you've likely reached a point of diminishing returns you need to have some significant mass in your projectile partially to retain velocity over distance and partially to make sure it doesn't just get converted into energy at the far end if you look at a modern 120 saber round it's a much larger case than a 76 millimeter but the projectile barely an inch and a half or two inches in diameter doubtless the engineers are still refining the length to diameter metallurgy question for further improvement damn with the gradual change in doctrine towards conflict in built-up urban zones and a super cities my tank design eventually shift towards snow heavily armed and armored vehicles as opposed to the fast MBT geared towards fighting in open terrain at range I doubt it even as the cities grow more and more the planet's population are living in them there is still in most cases quite a bit of open ground between one city in the next and you need to have a traditional MBT for that I think it'll be quite a few years before we get to mega cities but if you want to have an exercise and having a mind blown go to Google Maps turn on satellite view and take a look at Singapore you'll see is almost entirely built up then ask yourself where in the hell is supposed to keep a hundred and eighty tanks 2,000 APCs and 150 artillery pieces let alone actually use them in combat yes I know a good portion of them are kept overseas for training where there's actually room to train but still about the only major open areas on the 30 by 17 mile island are open because the Air Force needs to have places somewhere amongst those a five and a half million citizens from which to fly there are 100 fighters and basically it's fighting in cities and that's it oh and a couple of golf courses yet you will notice that although they have certainly toughened up their leopards a bit as have all the other leopard 2a4 purchases out there these days there I have these are still in the 30-ton range they've seen no particular need to go to the heavy APC system that the Israelis are famous for if there is ever military which could both afford and need heavy high angle short-range systems such as the BMP T it surely would be Singapore but they just haven't seen a merit in it and of course even at under 500 meters a 120 millimeter cannon is still a pretty effective weapon so your answer for megacities probably lies in there somewhere keep a further eye on Singapore maybe the first judges will show Regan Thomas Slatter when did the US come up with a system to fill their vehicles in the field besides jerrycans World War two sort of of the half million or so CC kW two and a half ton trucks approximately four and a half thousand of them were built as 750 gallon tankers with a hose to a nozzle just like today's refuelers however the vast majority of them went to the Army Air Force for refueling aircraft you think it tank has a lot of fuel even a p-51 carries almost twice as much as a Sherman and heaven forbid trying to fill the b-24 with jerry cans as a result if you were fueling your m4 medium you're almost certainly using jerry cans to do it that said the Germans also had fuelers for ease of operation and it is hard to imagine that nobody in the US Army saw one and said to himself hang on a second and then promptly led a raid on the local army airfield still the official answer for the US Army didn't show up until the early 1950s unlike the earlier CC kW truck tank gasoline the 1200 gallon m.49 was designated as a truck tank fuel servicing and it came with a pump capable of dispensing 80 gallons per minute it was soon joined by the m2 17 although the two 17s pump was only 60 gallons per minute but on the plus side you had an automatic transmission either way you would be looking to be a tank crewman refueling or one of these in Korea but it might not be entirely and heard of Andrew last name unknown once to know what's the point of lahat and the other gun launched atgms well for the Soviets who was to provide accurate long-range shots but primarily at missile vehicles were a heat or Haiti man might miss but you could certainly try it at a tank or a helicopter Soviet missiles were far faster than a tow as for why the Israelis have them though that's a very good question one of my patrons was in Israeli tank commander and he didn't know either although his Merc was an earlier version with that one it's not inconceivable to do some long-range shooting in the area there were some places with very long lines of sight it probably requires information that the Israelis aren't releasing however to answer this one possibility might simply be akin to the m1a1 not returning a ballistic solution beyond 4,000 meters either way for now we'll just mark that down as a watch this space Virginia artillerymen I'm gonna have to reserve your question for the next Q&A I have it on the hard drive of a laptop I have an AR from Italy which was a survey of fire Direction systems by tank destroyer battalions but that laptop is currently about 100 miles from me and I'm not gonna get it back until next week sorry Timo Phoebe what I think I of the tankette concepts such as vessel 2 and ever makes sense why don't other countries use them that's not a tank it's weapons carrier the difference being really the tankettes were a primary maneuver system but weapons carriers merely provides support to other elements mainly paratroopers I know Wikipedia specifically identifies it as a tank end they cite tank encyclopedia but I disagree still it is an interesting question why is it basically only vehicle of its type in service worldwide the su 57 is the closest thing I can only presume that other nations have other solutions to the problem the u.s. of course just throws dollars at the problems people have javelin missiles to shoot a bunkers or entire attack helicopter brigades which the paratroopers can presumably call armed for a little bit of a hand or light vehicles mount until missiles could be an option say VBL on the other extreme there's the m551 which stayed in front-line service until 1997 still apparently the US has decided that having something with a cannon isn't the worst idea so a little over a year ago the 82nd airborne reactivated 4th battalion 68th armored regiment using lab 25a twos otherwise for missiles and the like wheeled vehicles Humvees vbl etc seem to suffice at the other end the mobile protected firepower vehicle is much more capable than a visa but accordingly far bigger and heavier the two contenders are supposed to enter testing later this month in the blue corner is yet another warmed-over mah yes and in the red corner is General Dynamics inhuman lovechild between an Abrams and an AJAX then again the US has plenty of c---seventeens they carry two things honestly though I would think that if a country didn't have the resources in the US but they did have enough money to add in another vehicle type I would think they don't do quite well would feasel I'm not sure what the British parachute regiment makes you at all if they feel like they're missing out on something finally connor Dodman wants to know if i think tank designers will start using transparent aluminium for protected optics i have no idea it comes down to whether it's more expensive than the stuff the currently using or if it's any better or not one also needs to ensure that it is not going to negatively affect special optics like thermal imagers it is a question that a metallurgist will have to answer sorry so that we have a next stop at Brazil which should get me a few more vehicles to add to the Swedish line if it'll keep me going for a while after the monster series from World of Tanks ends so that done that we found it interesting and informative take care or I'll see you on the next one

Channel: The_Chieftain

Views: 94,909

Rating: 4.9644494 out of 5

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Id: Mjqorh4rcc0

Length: 50min 34sec (3034 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 04 2020