Curator Q&A #18: Rocket Attacks on Panthers | The Tank Museum

[Music] well hello again it's david willey for i gather it's now our 18th question and answer session um those of you as i always say know the format those of you who don't i'm answering questions that people have emailed in or put in the comments or well i think i can answer them i can't answer all of them i'm afraid but and we're doing that from home at the moment the tank museum the good news is we are back open you can come along to the museum now pre-book your tickets and have a look at the conditions online before you come not all the museum we haven't still opened the archiving library yet and some staff are still on furlough so it's not we're not fully there yet but we're getting there and if you are coming and thank you those of you who put comments down if you are coming um do let other people know because obviously it's really important to us that we get up and going again and get that income stream which is the other reason why i'm here at home as well doing these i'm trying to flock to you bits that help support us as a charity so i know most of you watch this if you've seen it before you understand it if you don't you wonder why this guy's sitting here looking an idiot trying to floggy things while answering questions and it is a beautifully perhaps just a little bit too hot day here in england at the moment and uh hence i'm sitting in the garden i've got up nice and early to try and do this various issues with batteries and everything so it's now about what are we 20 past nine and it's already baking so um hence i'm trying to keep a little bit out of the sun and those of you who again watch regularly will probably know i have the dog with me so uh um finn the dog joins in at different times but you know all that most of you so let's get on with the questions so questions so far that we've had in um mark and joan who came down hope you did enjoy your visit um thank you very much for uh well you thank you um rich 84 has made comment that the type 74 is coming out of service with the japanese defense forces now any of you happen to watching hear good contacts in japan we can go by the embassy in london but we haven't really got a modern japanese tank so it would be quite nice to perhaps try and ask that but i do know the japanese have major issues about import exporting military equipment but that's one of those ones we'd probably quite like to follow up on devon i hope your tiger model makes it to you in the end so i know you're um it's taken a while but thank you for the other people who've commented about you know finding the models and books and whatever they've been buying getting there nice and quickly sort of thing where you are around the world keep having a go as i keep saying go back have a look at the postage daniel ortiz asks a question which is one that comes up time and time again and i think it's probably worth a while having a little delve into ground attack in the second world war from aircraft so close air support as it was often called was it really as effective as has been indicated and what really was that effect because i remember i had to um we were consultants on a book on tanks and the artists had drawn these pictures of a tiger tank and he'd done it that the typhoon attacking it had bounced its rockets down the road to blow up under the belly of the tiger tank and you know when questioned he sort of said oh i'd read that somewhere and there's one end of those sorts of myths about how we were attacking ground targets especially armor in normandy etc and another end you know which sort of says it was a complete waste time they could they couldn't hit a bond or you know whatever um and that spectrum in between you know somewhere where's the truth and all of this now the good news is there's a lot of evidence because of a number of operational research surveys that were carried out during the war as the war went on to try and get to the bottom of what was really being effective what worked um you know what was the the the outcome of all this expenditure all these men's lives all these different things going on that were making up 21st army group the tactical air force etcetera and be from that chap who um if you're really interested in the subject um ian goodison wrote a book called air power at the battlefront force close allied air support in europe 43-45 now he gives an interesting history about how ground air cooperation certainly in the raf wasn't particularly good before the third the second world war and like with all these things you know it got to be good in the first world war with a flying corps lost its way in the interwar period as it were and then had to be re-learned um in the second world war but um one of the things that in goodison has done has gone through those operational surveys and put down again what the men on the ground were actually finding so again with places like the filet's pocket and the battle of mortaine etc counting out up the knocked out german armor and the abandoned german armor and realizing that actually the idea it was a claim from a hit from a typhoon et cetera is just not always going to be the case in that way and one of the things they did to actually try and demonstrate how accurate a typhoon could be they actually got a captured panther painted it white put it in a field in normandy and as a demonstration this was in front of some of you know the the big names um rocket-firing typhoons um i think it's two squadrons of them come over and ultimately 64 rockets are fired at this panther tank from three thousand and two thousand five hundred feet and the target was clearly indicated so as i said it was painted white there was no fire coming back so there wasn't they weren't having to avoid anything as it were and um and these are those famous 60 pound three inch rockets you see on the end we think we've got one at the museum somewhere um that were very devastating if they did hit your tank now it turns out that on those of the 64 rockets fired on the first shoot of 32 rockets only one hit the target and that was on the engine deck at the rear on the second shoot so it was two technical hits as it were one hit the barrel didn't really do much but uh and the other one was a decisive hit on the uh on the turret so really what you're looking at there in essence of those 64 rounds in a plane daylight good visibility etc etc only three actually hit the target and they also looked at the panther and realized there's no benefit from a near miss in other words the splinters were not doing any serious damage to the tank so again let's sort of wind back a bit you know that idea of how many were being knocked out by typhoons by close air support etc the number of tanks you know that gives an indication this was not an easy thing to do but it doesn't or it shouldn't lead us to the conclusion that therefore that tactical air force those typhoons were pretty much a waste of time or something because what they are picking out is that it is doing enormous damage to the soft-skinned vehicles because of that blast effect even if they haven't haven't knitted directly and the sofskin vehicles of course are carrying all the logistics petrol fuel ammunition all those other bits and pieces that are going to be essential to keep that armored force going and one of the crucial things that comes out from the operational surveys as well is the psychological impact of the air power and the threat it seems to hold for the tank crews and again this has happened throughout the 20th century into the 21st century you know this idea of the threat of air power is quite often more sort of threatening than the actual effect it can sometimes have and what they actually found that the operational research survey guys found about 30 percent um of the tanks that were at maute that would be left afterwards were in perfectly good order but had just been abandoned by their crews because their crews could not cope with the fact of being under that sort of close air attack and again i'll just read this this actually comes from ian goodison's book and he talks here about um i'll read what he says this was an important discovery at the time in a contemporary raf tactical survey stressing the demoralizing effect of the three-inch rocket projectile or rp as it was generally called offered this explanation for the german abandonment of tanks and vehicles at mortan interrogation of prisoners has shown without question the german tank crews were extremely frightened of attacks by rp crews are very aware that if an rp does hit a tank their chance of survival is small it is admitted that the chances of a direct hit are slight nevertheless this would hardly be appreciated by a crew whose first thought would be of the disastrous results of a hit if a hit was obtained it goes on he says ian says prisoners of war data further confirm the demolarizing effect of the air attack upon tank crews german tank crewman questioned for a later joint raf british army study of typhoon effectiveness indicated an irrational compulsion among inexperienced men to leave the relative safety of their tank and seek alternative cover during air attack quote the experienced crew stated that when attacked from the air they remained in their tanks which had no more than a superficial damage cannon strikes or near misses from bombs they had great difficulty in preventing the inexperienced men from bailing out when aircraft attacked so again back to you know this idea of does the ground attack really do what we think it does um it turns out that they they statistically found that um the hurricane 2ds that were firing these 40 millimeter cannons out in north africa they were tremendously accurate fire will find the life out probably more much more accurate in terms of target hitting than the typhoons with the rockets later but because these 40 millimeter vickers cannons they were carrying slowed them down those squadrons and only two of them existed had higher losses so in the end they those they were abandoned they didn't actually go any further than north africa even though they were very effective and very accurate so again psychological impact you just have to think that one through that that idea of the potential impact of the air power leads crews to abandon the vehicles the actual chances of the typhoon doing an accurate hit on german armor is still pretty thin but that doesn't mean to say their attacks therefore were ineffective and you know we always talk about normandy one where again then there's um so there's close air support but then there's medium bombers doing their bid as well and things like again coming back to the germans may have had their tanks and armor there ready but if they're being bombed in on the loire valley the sane river there's one point where only one bridge across the loire is is still working for the germans so they're having to take all their ammunition around to get it through that way and there's a day in the normandy campaign where they actually run out of 88 millimeter ammunition that's how effective that tactical air force work and medium bombers etc would being on starving the battlefront um you know and again all these you know you read all the stories as well about that again that impact of how it's curtails german movement in daylight hours because of the threat of sometimes close air support sometimes medium bombers having a go so um anyway i hope that one kind of sort of answers a little bit that question it always comes around and again you're you know at one point when i was explaining this some years ago this guy got really affronted if we were somehow having a go at the typhoon pile it's nothing to do with that at all brave men exactly doing their job but with a probably the same result as if they'd been accurate as it were but the accuracy that's not their fault or anything it's that accuracy is not what perhaps we've subsequently been led to believe um right so that's that one i did have a look that ian good of some book is around still if you look on amazon and some of the old book sites it's not that cheap but again it's it's a book you really need if you're interested in that topic area um christopher asked the questions were there any british tanks the germans were impressed with um and your partner i gather watches because offend the dog um so hello partner and yes the germans were there's um i should have dug it out beforehand but there's a couple of really good accounts of when the germans are first turning up in north africa they're meeting matilda twos valentines um they are assessing of those because at the time the germans have only got the panzer iii um hasn't got its long barrel 50 millimeter gun on necessarily yet you know so so they are actually seeing those tanks as being more heavily armored than their own and being effective with the two pounder gun on um so yes there is a point where that happens as the war progresses you know like with all these things there's there's times where the nature of the engagements in north africa that assessment of the enemy that sort of almost personal duel type thing um there's other parts of the campaigns where what's the other side of the hedge or what you're firing at becomes kind of less important in a sort of one against one scenario with the desert because of the nature of you know nothing else around um quite often that that sense of knowing the capability of your enemy becomes even more important um but again you know and again back to that just the general point of the question albert speer you know i mentioned it on an earlier tank chat he's quoted as saying when they look at the sherman these are better than our tanks he was saying and uh and you're back to as well what does it mean um you know you can be impressed by something etc is it the better one and you're back to this qualitative decisions on things um actually when we think about it you know obviously i would argue the sherman was a very clever american design one against one against the best german tanks of course it's not good but there was always that supply chain that was providing all those shermans so it was a completely different ball game quantity against quality um reese fugaca four acre um ask the question were machine guns used to attack other tanks um and yes because basically very early on a lot of the campaigns early with tanks were only armed with machine guns so that again spanish civil war into war period etc a lot of those engagements are only with machine gun armed tanks so that goes on but what you really meant to ask me was um i'm sure you meant to ask me didn't you was did anyone ever attack a tank with a pistol because i just love this so i'm going to read this to you um which is from the royal tank regiment george forty's nice pictorial history um this is about uh an attack in north africa um and uh this is what you can do with a little bit of oomph okay let me read this one so i'll read this one to you my recollections of be deformed start with a 36 hour run across the desert area the train we crossed to cut off the italians was terribly rocky as we approached bader form from my command my commander lieutenant norman plough told me to shoot up an enemy staff car but the range was too great and the tank was bouncing about all over the place whether i hit it or not i don't know but some of my tracer certainly surrounded it we then joined the rest of the squadron it was quite dark now and after some time my commander told me that we had to go out to spike some deserted enemy guns this was going to be my job we mounted and advanced along the convoy of enemy trucks we then got to the end and saw two italian m13 tanks stationary and we approached them from the side until we were about 15 yards away the operator taffus was then ordered to get the crews out i offered to set them up with my two pounder but lieutenant player rejected this because the flash would have shown up our position trippy hughes a minor son then in his early twenties takes up the story i crawled up past them and got behind them the first thing i did was to try a handle on the side of the first tank i tugged on it but i couldn't move it later i learned it was a revolver port i went around the back of the tank and over the top it was still firing i tapped my revolver on the coppola of the tank the officer heard it he shot up and as he came up he was right at the end of the barrel of my revolver and he never stopped he just shot out i took his gun off him and motioned him to stand away another two popped up they couldn't understand why the commander had left you see i got them all up then one at a time they were frightened and i thought i'll try this with the next one they were still firing i did exactly the same thing and got away with it i had a bit of trouble getting the driver out he took a bit of coats in but he knew what i meant my gunner was supposed to give me covering fire but he was firing over my head he was frightening them to death i marched them down this piece of road back towards our tanks on the road there was this big naval gun which had been mounted on wheels i was marching them past there and there was an italian officer in a beautiful powder blue uniform with goldbride everywhere i said to him fall in and there were some objections from him but i made him march back with his hands on his head as well my tank commander saw me coming back and i was loaded with their gums and bars of nestle's chocolate that they'd given them and they had given them to me and they were on about their bambinos and whatnot the message went back to my colonel and then to the brigadier these two tanks were a new type and we had never captured any of them before the following morning we destroyed that column and we wrecked eighty of their tanks with about 20 of ours and he actually gets a dcm medal for that but i just thought another angle of how tanks get uh knocked out in battle that sometimes we don't have a room so we'll take on board or think about that much you're right down there dog a bit hot for finn as well there we go right um right let's carry on find some more questions sim crawford um i would be very careful about this thank you so much then for buying things but do not buy stuff from our shop when you're drunk um so just again think think carefully you know do it soberly well done for buying from our online shop but uh i can't recommend doing it when you're drunk um the quiet craftsman did the americans called the sherman the sherman in world war ii this was this other interesting question because in britain of course we name the sherman or the american tanks after american civil war generals did the americans now they do ultimately absorb that into their system but finding contemporary accounts of american soldiers calling a tank the sherman like get those shermans over here it's more likely to be get those m4s over here um i've started having a quick look i think there is evidence of them calling the sherman but that's what i throw out to you guys out there you might ladies you might want to have a look and see where you can find it because it's again we always call them shermans don't we that name is now stuck um it was a british name in the second world war and how much of that had integrated into the american system and the language of the troops before the end of the war is another one that's a bit hard to judge but you'll probably be able to have a look and find nice quotes out there but otherwise what were they calling them were they calling them mem4s etc um which touches on something else you see when you've got an m4 is it a sherman or is it something else that could be an m4 model for in a different run so the example is here's a nice model i was going to show you a little bit later on absolutely cracking 116 scale this m5a1 um so we called those general stuarts um the light tanks that one the first model was the m3 and they were going to the next model sherman was going uh stuart was going to be the m4 obviously as they were going through the models but they jumped the m4 went straight to the m5 because they thought it would be too confusing for the troops to have a light tank and a medium tank both heavily in service both being called the m4 so they jump so this becomes an m5 when it goes into service so they avoid that confusion so um again you can you know have a look come back to us if you if you find nice examples where they are actually calling the tanks shermans in the actual war um michael fuller asked the question any interesting finds in vehicles when we've restored things um i think yes we we've certainly my time we've found some interesting stuff ammunition small arms um i know the americans when they were going to restore a panther at one point they opened those floor plates and suddenly there was the ammunition the main gun ammunition had been lifted in the second world war um one of the things that sometimes comes up is you know these little sort of what's been left in that cubby hole because no one's actually opened this box or it's rusted solid for ages and everything so what's actually in there um with us in the museum it's always interesting where because they've been in the museum for way longer than their ever service life was um you know so so it's what the public have done to those tanks so they've been posting their sweet wrappers through the engine louvers and you know you find old old coins and all sorts of bits and pieces that have got nothing to do with its war service one of the things i know the workshop guys do find you know is occasionally you'll find that big gunky layer of grease with a spanner stuck in it and it's very hard you know it could be a wartime dated spanner but they were being used you know for a young later has it sat there all that time since the poor guy lost it or dropped it in the engine bay you know decades before or was a little bit more recent that's very hard for us to tell sometimes um one of the interesting ones it wasn't actually a tank but when we were looking at these uniforms one time we just were checking through the uh pockets of this smock and uh in one pocket out came this crusty solid um field dressing soaked in blood you know and it got all hard and everything which uh of course is with bodily fluids and all that sort of stuff nowadays you have to be so much careful but um what you know how that had ended up in there in the sense of all these years you know and everything else so uh so yes we do find interesting stuff but um yeah and we try and save that of course if we do find interesting things you know there's um we've got a lovely first world war corn beef tin that was found in one of the first world war tanks that slightly rusted through and everything looks a bit odd but that was still in the t in the tank um right what else we got here just ian asks um the cavalry never commissioned from the ranks um but the rtr do how what's the sort of numbers um well i just don't think you're actually right there the cavalry do commission from the ranks and the head of the british army in the first world war um robertson he started life as a cavalry trooper and became got to the right to the top so it does go on um i think you have to be careful about that sort of like you know mythologizing too much of the cavalry always being you've got to be some sort of aristocrat or landed gentry etc um but i couldn't find in the time i was looking this morning i couldn't find any actual uh stats for you about how many um came through the ranks but first world war and second one was just a sheer need um for officers because they were being got through such a great you know mint that it became much more egalitarian than perhaps it was in times of peace um douglas doug jb brings up the very important topic of beer and the war talking about anything about beer he says well okay let's talk a little bit about beer in the war um india pale ale ipa was made mainly for the troops in britain it was made strong because it had to last out to go 11 000 miles around the world to india from britain ipa india pale ale that's um what we still drink around the place today that's because of the army out in india and in the first world war the whole story of booze food alcohol licensing now you know there's a massive topic there because basically what happens is lloyd george is so worried that british factory workers are putting themselves at risk by getting drunk they're drinking too much beer before the first world war is a much higher specific gravity than it did later so in other words it's much more potent much more alcoholic um and lloyd george then brings in the licensing hours that then sort of blight britain for the rest of the century in the sense of you know whenever you wanted a drink the pub was never seen to be opened or had weird hours and all sorts of funny bits and pieces um 37 million barrels of beer are drunk in britain in 1913 by 1919 only 19 million barrels are being drunk in britain um so it does go down during the war years and lloyd george of course is t total um so he's sort of not too bothered about the fact that alcohol becomes less of a problem there's another whole story about how men were given rum rations officers with a whiskey bottle all how you got alcohol during the at the front line and how you know that totter run before an attack etc that whatever you want to call it dutch carriage a little bit of oomph um you know and there's there's lots of different stories how medals have been won by people that we probably nowadays call them you know technically they were drunk at the time um so giving carriage helping people to cope with the stress you know huge subject area about our column war and of course in the modern era you might call because you know we find alcohol seemingly acceptable nowadays it'll be you know drugs and everything else you know what keeps people going and doing things that way but um the one i was i was interested looking at that because in the second world war as well um again production of beer it kind of does go up but um the brewers are already being affected by you know what their access to foreign barley all sorts of things going on that way in britain in the first and second world war the actual strength of beer goes down so it's alcoholic content tends to be weaker at the end and there's a point which nearly made me fell off my chair in um in amazement having drunk some american beer and wondered why i was bothering actually american beer in world war ii that was being imported some of it was actually being stronger than british beer which was quite um quite an interesting phenomenon sort of thing going on that way there was a committee formed in 1942 called beer for the troops and some of the brewers you know supporting the lads but also not bad publicity we're doing things like 500 cases of beer was sent out to the defenders of trebuk and that was done as a bit of a thank you and a pat on the back and lots of publicity was made about that sort of thing um so um when you've got the opportunity when you come to the museum have a look at our new world war ii display and jake wardrop i've mentioned him already he does this wonderful diary and he there talks about how they're squirreling away beer um for a session because it's all very well being issued with one bottle or you know something else that way what's the point let's wait till we've got enough booze together and again he goes on at length about the horror of the fact they managed to abandon one tank they're under fire and the biggest tragedy of all was a bottle of whiskey broke in the um in the in the process you know and that that sense of loss that this blooming whiskey had been missing um right so that's uh something about beer let's carry on a little bit um ajk asked the question that we have a slurper mike sorry am i getting cold coffee here am i nice by the way still available um i love tanks mug from the tank museum stone cold so i should of course have been putting it in my i guess you're all thinking this is a canister round or something no there you go it's a flask like a if you're a shooter like 12 ball cartridge or similar organs and say what ball that is that's 75 mil or something other so anyway there you go so if you fancy getting one of those from the shop that's one of those flasks um so you don't get cold coffee like i've just had um so what was i talking about yeah the ergonomics of the firefly so what do you want to talk about the firefly um the firefly um we often use this as a kind of for modern soldiers and innovation um one of the things that uh i think it shows is what you can do if you are in a push and the idea was we know the story the ministry supply said the 17 pound of this fantastically effective new anti-tank gun especially when firing disguise in sabo has great penetration we can't get it on the sherman we're not too sure we're going to build the a30 challenger great big slab sided thing try and get the gun in there but it won't fit on a sherman tank and the witheridge another chapper the gunnery school down at lol worth they then go to church see have this idea let's see if we can do it and basically get a sherman tank and make it up as they go along so the 17 pounders recoil is so great that it will smash the radio they can't buffer it enough to stop it getting that far back so what do they do they take the radio out they weld a box on the back of the firefly and put the radio in there so it's now got enough room to recoil they the ammunition is too big for the normal turret stowage get rid of the co-drivers position we'll put the ammunition down there simple you know what's the problem this is how we're going to face up to it it is a badge but it is a bodge that works superbly the ergonomics inside are a disaster in the sense of that 17 pounder barrel coming all the way back and the recoil amount of it really separates the turret you haven't got that spacer at the rear there as you would have had to go around in a normal 75 millimeter or 76 millimeter gun sherman um you've lost your co-driver so you're now down to a crew of four and that means extra stresses on the crews you know in terms of maintenance everything but by d-day one in three on average of the british commonwealth forces going ashore their shermans are a firefly and that has a hitting power so that barge ends up working but it is not the tank inside that was originally designed it's not a well laid out spacious as many people called the sherman um and again that's all very relative as you can understand so it's it's one of those ones that um yes but think about it it's bound to be a box isn't it um you know when you're squeezing something that wasn't designed for that vehicle in there um and this is a big gun the 17-pounder when you look at it and there was the other issues which again if you read some of the accounts they quite often had um they quite often had back flash so in other words the powder hadn't finished burning off before on the recoil the breach is triggered to open so sometimes you'll get a backflash so again part of their firing orders is when they're firing firing now and then everyone closes their eyes just so that you don't potentially get a back face on your eyeball which but otherwise they just might you send you a bit of your hair around the edges and there's all the old lines about you know the firefly clues didn't have any hair below the berry line because quite often that flash would have taken it off um if you're unfortunate enough that one happens that way um so again you know firefly was an improvisation um and no two ways about it the ergonomics inside it were pretty poor but it works um what have we got winnie j1 bought books from our guys and then broke my knee i hope you're not indicating there's some connection between you breaking your knee and buying the books but i hope the books have a consolation for you um bill d in iowa bill d in iowa he says when we fire when you fire a round out the gun or you put the wrong round in so you've got smoke in and actually now we need our ap do you have to fire it off or can you open it most tank guns slight differences here and there most tank guns will allow you to open the breech and there's either a tool or there's a trigger mechanism which actually springs it back so that you can then remove that round and put in the round you do want you don't have to fire it off all the time there's a whole different procedure as if you try to fire around and it's a misfire how long you're supposed to leave it if you're under combat situations what are the issues that way um because again that's another one of these things you know is it actually just a misfire that's slow burning and it will go off and the last thing you want to be doing is opening a bridge and then have the the the round go off but most tanks actually if you look at their procedures they'll give you an opportunity to be able to remove the round and replace it with a different type if you need that um gary nelson asks the point about the pointy front on the latest leopard tanks on leopard 2a 5067 isn't that creating a shot trap what's actually going on there there's a gap in the armor so you've done this the idea being that the air volume and i won't go into the physics of this because i don't understand the physics of it but the volume space in there as long as it's long enough to have the whole length of the long road penetrator when it penetrates through that v at the front it will go through but the air gap causes um a lessening effect of the penetration when it then gets to the main armor so it's really there to stop it's almost like a false front um that's going on there so the idea of it may be bouncing rounds down it might do that with light caliber but if we're talking about don't think of it as being the solid piece of armor that might actually deflect around downwards this is actually there as a as a special type of spaced armor not as something that's going to deflect things down because actually the um it's there to stop thing rounds and the thin round will penetrate it or it's help there to help stop the thin rounds and it's only when it's got into that space will actually its effect be starting to fully work um so the idea of something actually at the end of its trajectory or something other just happens to bounce down that's a you know that's a random chance but it certainly isn't going to be solid enough to actually deflect rounds downwards of the type of thing it's designed to actually stop so i hope that answers that one um otto weston i think someone's already answered online you know you saw that gun carry the churchill three inch gun carrying all kind of at the side of the car park at work you know what what what happened to it was its story all the damage on it no gun carriers went into action all the damage on it is when it was a ranged target so it's been fired at by goodness knows what over time hence all those little you know whether their lord light anti-tank weapon ones holocharge things etc that's why it's peppered in the way it is it um you know it's not got some great dramatic story behind it i'm afraid on that one um i've missed one because i did get out here we got trial 779 said what did the germans um think of the churchill captured at diet now i again was having a run around i can't find i know there's a whole load of photos on there and set dietrich climbing over some of those captured churchills i think i've seen reports somewhere of them so if i do come across that i'll come back to you on that one but i did think i just have interest i found um touching on that boy panda issue and thank you for everybody bringing up the fact i completely failed to mention north africa where actually of course britain and commonwealth is we did use a lot of captured italian tanks at one point or intended to even if they didn't always get into action so that was an area i kind of forgot about there and also thank you if we consider europe those of you talking about the m3 grant do we consider russia europe because of course the americans did supply m3 grants to russia so if you look at it that way yes the tank does see service in europe if you think of the eastern front as being european so i'm happy to be corrected on these things um but anyway the what i did find was um there's a reference to a german report what happened to some of those churchill tanks and surprisingly but it kind of backs my point i said earlier they do actually issue them as part of a german tank unit two of the churchill um threes were repaired and used by panzer camp company 81 and letter later incorporated in the panzer regiment 100 um one operational churchill three was reported on the 24th march 1943 both churchills were last reported uh on the first of december 43. so my gut feeling is is when they start breaking down they're not much use because again the supply spare parts to keep them going as an active tank unit what again you'll also see is then that repurposing whether it's scrap metal back to make uh into munitions or turret systems used as static defenses some places as well um but anyway that that was an interesting case there which which making the point you know that yes the germans would use stuff but it the vast majority as i said last time that boy japan's is the ones where they've got access to the factories so they can make spare parts and keep the things going um otto weston now i've mentioned him harry warren he said when he was young he had a dinky toy of a dingo it was his favorite toy i didn't i haven't i haven't found the dinky toy of a dingo but this is one of those um this one's called a corgi joyner jr so that's um for and as we mentioned the other day running around um what's the difference harry warren but having a favorite toy as a youngster and having a favorite toy now have you still got that dinky toy there's all those people collecting dinky toys but you still get a dinky toy dingo without too much money is that one of those things that now's the time in your life where you need another dinky toy um so you can play around with it or have it as the um i don't know what is it like a stress reliever you know like i was saying about driving over the bread clothes and everything but um anyway um it is funny how certain toys sort of stick in the mind um and uh remained with us all that time and of course being big boys we're only just really sort of like kids slightly older aren't we so we still like playing with those toys which brings me on to some of the things that we have here for you so um if you're not interested in buying us anything now's the time to switch off or you might be interested because there's one or two of the things we've got here i think we don't normally there we are we've got the ships that's one of these a massive great halfway there's one of these kobe block built ship so what you got there uss iowa so if you're interested in that i mentioned it a little bit earlier on our stuart tank we've got here again big heavy kit here we've got 116 scale um etched metal parts as well and everything else so there's some um you know right across the range we've got uh again look on the website for the other kits there if you're served in the warriors like warriors um there's one there with all its added bar armor t-shirt down the front lots of different t-shirts you can see on the site so if you go back to if you play your cards um tank museum ones have different tanks different periods ins on the back of each one there sort of thing so that's um tank museum sort of playing cards rock so you can always add that to the thing which is um i think i explained last time i'm sure if every country has its own version of rock but there we are it has a name through the suite at the end still selling well and i believe we've got new newer patterns coming as well but there's our tank museum socks new colors if you like your tigers there's our hanging wall sign for the uh or from the tiger collection as it was done i've mentioned uh i've mentioned about the flask overnight other books we've got going i've mentioned it before um max hastings how the germans come up from the south and that's reich to join the battle in normandy and the issues they have on the way and what that leads to which i was um not giving gameway too much sort of thing but it's worth definitely worth a read 3.99 um i know a lot of you out there if you like your um off-road vehicles or military vehicles military land rover another one of those haynes manuals or cracking illustrations as those of you you know we've said before about the haynes ones and luckily lots of you come back and agreed with us 899 the military land rover one if you like your literature if you haven't read it you just should read memoirs of an infantry officer um by siegfried sassoon so he did three volumes um what is it memoirs of the fox hunting man i can't remember the third one this i was really impressed by this this is a reprint of the original faber and faber publication with illustrations by barnett friedman who was one of these british book illustrators 20s and 30s like a golden ear of book illustration as well in many ways eric revilia said wood board and all those guys who then became worn artists like um barnett friedman did so it's um it's got his lovely illustrations in there and the key thing about sassoon is he's a great writer uh and again i don't want to give the game away too much but soon famously as one of those guys he gets a military medal he's as brave as anything he he records he's he's the quality of his of his writing it's just staggeringly good and he's friends with robert graves again he's got his own memoir as well that he writes so i'd you know that's a great first world war memoir and of course sassoon gets to the point where whether depending on how you look at it he's encouraged to or led astray or whatever he gets to the point where he says this is just wrong this war is being continued by people for the wrong reasons he believes and writes to the paper and supposedly throws his medals in the river terms etc and um disagrees with what's going on and then gets sent to craig lockhart where he's with wilfred owen and certain other people he meets he's writing poetry as well at the time but ultimately as again am i giving the game away he goes back and fights because he realizes he must be better off at the front with his men than um doing what he was doing back on the at home as it were but a really really great read so 499 um and a really nice reprint one as i was saying so with bob friedrin there i've mentioned it a number of times before troop leader tank commander story bill bellamy and if you do read it those of you thank you again those who have been making comments about it really worth coming and then visiting because we've got some bill bellamy items including the famous audrey that you'll read about in there is now on display another one of our cheap one 399 wings on my sleeve now those of you who've liked your air stuff you've heard of eric winkle brown an amazing character only died a couple of years ago you know flew everything could speak german um interviewed the german luffa for high command at the end of the war flew captured planes i think he's down as having the most carrier landing they are record-breaking 2407 aircraft carrier landing some american pilot tried to beat him some years ago and gave up but yeah a fantastic story and like it says actually on the blurb it does make you laugh when you read through his life sorry it makes james bond seem a bit of a slacker but definitely one worth reading there hobart's funnies 79th armored division of war invention innovation inspiration by richard doherty so richard doherty great writer on armor lives out in northern ireland um again i you know if you're a 79th armored division person wanna know about specialized armor anyway that's definitely one that's worth picking up on and i mentioned the other week we got hold of that um history of the german 507 of another really beautifully put together book and it's a translation of the memoirs of von rosen who's one of those panzer commanders very heavily illustrated with all his personal photos etc he's the one that's fighting in normandy as well and ends up um with those king tigers you remember that that german propaganda footage of all the unit driving off with these king tigers over this heathland and that's one rosen in the turret there that's his unit there so again if you like your german tank stuff that's another one of those memoirs how it was from a significant figure in the story as well and um yeah that's 12 pound 99 so that's a pretty good saving i think you've gotten that from the original there we are 25 pound published price so we've been able to get hold of that one um other models what was the other models i've got down here so oh that was it berlin camo very popular flavor of the month at the moment again because we've painted some challenger twos in the british army back in berlin camo so there you've got a chieftain we have i was trying to hide it so it didn't melt in this sunshine we've got here today tank museum tiger day chocolate or sherman chocolate so um you know just for those of you with a sweet tooth uh fin toy still going and we've got the plushies i believe on the website as well the toys the longer one are inflatable shells still going strong so again have a look at those ones there and i think i've covered pretty much everything and i know a number of you it's been a bit hot today so he's not been running around quite so much wanted to see some footage of finn actually instead of me you're throwing the ball seeing finn recovering ball so we'll tap something on at the end so i hope that's answered a number of the questions i hope you're enticed to go and have a look on the website have a look at the tank museum shop and see if there's something you can buy thank you if you've already done that don't worry if you can't afford to buy anything we'll try and keep these going as i keep saying we'll be keeping the question answers going for a fair bit they're doing us a favor as it were the tang museum but look at those other ways you can support the museum someone came in and said look if you do end up going to amazon why would you go with amazon we've got our wonderful shop but if you do end up there there's you can actually give a percentage to a charity when it prompts you so the tank museum is one of those charities you can give that a little percentage too we've got other schemes you can join you know get our track link become a sort of friend of the tank museum as it were um join patron and someone was sort of asking the other day why don't we get notified you've got to subscribe if you want to watch these youtube things regularly subscribe to it you know what you're doing if you know about that or if not i'll get someone to help you and then you'll get notified about our youtube content so that's another way to make sure you've got that so that you'll constantly get to see all these things when we when we're putting them out and otherwise i'll um have a good time i'll see you next time and try and get out this very very warm sunshine bye-bye wait wait wait go on in these difficult times obviously your support is really valued so please do keep following us on social media do subscribe to our channel and and if you've got the opportunity perhaps order something from our shop uh join one of our schemes like patreon or our friends organization and we'll try and keep going with giving you some content to keep you informed and entertained

Channel: The Tank Museum

Views: 33,317

Rating: 4.9587851 out of 5

Keywords: the tank museum, tank museum, bovington tank museum, david fletcher, david willey, military tank, david fletcher tank chats, tank chat, tank chats, tank chats david fletcher, tank museum bovington, the tank museum tank chats, q&a, david willey q&a, tank museum q&a, german ww2, british ww2, panzers, panther, tiger tank, sherman tank

Id: culwQNmFLls

Length: 48min 9sec (2889 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 04 2020