Inside the Chieftain's Hatch: M3 Grant. Part 2

and welcome back to Karen's were in the Museum of Australian armor and artillery and looking at the m3 medium part two and you get a bonus this is a case of buy five get one free because he just had a stupid amount of people in this tank now the British version because the radio operator was superfluous as the radio was now accessible to the commander generally only had a crew is six but yes the American version Utley you had a seventh man in the hall this led to a small problem the service of course famously described this vehicle as the coffin for Seven Brothers which does a little bit of a disservice but you will trying to get back to that in a bit TCS position three-man turret so he's a little bit back on the left he has a rotating cupola which I have to say rotates very easily a simple two-piece hatch courses as the nod to silhouette issues the British got rid of the silly cupola and it very simply folds up and inwards and it is the simplest system for locking there Cooper the hatch shot that I've ever seen in my life he does have four 360-degree observation a rotatable periscope obviously the periscope itself has been dismounted but it does rotate it's not as good as a traditional vision cupola but it's better than just having a fixed for the left and in all fairness there is no obstructions on the turret roof to get in its weight that may be the antenna mount not much else to be said on the outside of this turret so let's have a look inside all right so now come into the vehicle and because of massive skylight claim you have had to shut part of the hatch here so yeah this is not a vehicle to standing open on the inside that said the commander seat which would ordinarily be here it's multiple attachment points it needs you to lift it up and down you can't be sitting in the other actually get off the seat to do it but you do have a lot of flexibility to where you're going to be now in terms of turret sights this is actually quite good the turret diameter is only six inches smaller than that of an m4 medium except instead of a big 75 millimeter or lots of ammunition you've got a small little 37 so it's actually pretty good although it's interesting to note that things are slightly angle if you're looking at the top down into this turf if the gun is facing this way the gunner is actually facing inward and so with the commander be if he's sitting down with his knees clear of the gunner and there's actually much for the commander to play with anybody has a bulge back here for the number 19 Wireless set and he does have the pistol port if the gunner does wallah shook and bastard jessamine I'm afraid it's the very simple position for commander so hop down to the go receive directly in front of me the gunner is located front left of the turret the feed of the commander it's got actually surprisingly reasonable amount of room Traverse is both power and manual the pump for the power system is actually located on the my sea elevation could be manual which I use the fashion hand crank or stabilize now the stabilizer system and this is an entirety has been removed from being a concept I guess shows you whether or not the Australians if their life the stabilizer function in order to apply to stabilize you would have to physically disconnect the elevation gearing turn on the stabilizer system and then the hand wheel will be used to stabilize the gun obviously only in elevation and it is not a case you're going to get great first round here suspicion or the 37 but it will at least give you a more reasonable chances but you do it some like 80 or canister or if nothing else you're going to be fast or laying on to a target because you won't have to reacquire the target when thanks doctor you already have a more or less in your side picture the site itself is a periscopic site it's the m2 with the m-19 it is a very simple system it's got a series of dots the centre dog is not the zero range as you would expect this actually six hundred yards ammunition is a pretty good variety action there is armor-piercing there's high-explosive or whatever put a 37 millimeter explosive round is canister blanks dummies and they're stowed all around this vehicle all sorts of room for it the gun itself 37 millimeter m6 it's basically a development of the m5 is that they have a semi-automatic breech you could actually put the m5s barrel onto it it's a saudi shorter barrel not recommended the manual specifically advises against because what would happen if you do that then the mount becomes out of balance it affects the stabilizer sure but it will even make the hand cranks a little bit more difficult to use you can see the manual trigger for the 37 here of course he does have the coaxial calibre 30 on the far side the SATA cell is actually pretty comfortable it's a bucket seat for lack of a better word you got the bolsters on the side to stop you from bouncing off to the side you got a nice high backrest and it is adjustable in height it's a sort of a you unscrew a clamp it springs up and then you screw the clamp back into place we're actually more like a vise than a clamp actually other features in here there is the turret Traverse lock located here you can see the teeth scattered around it has his pistol port here if she wishes to shoot with the 45 caliber if for some reason the cal caliber 30 and the 37 millimeter cannister doesn't do the job may develop a tional depression it's seven degrees down and sixty but six is zero up which is pretty good you can only imagine what this thing was used in the jungle fire canister to clear Japanese from the treetops and it does actually beg the question can you use 37 millimeter canister in the high altitude triangle and the aircraft roll I doubt it will have the effective range me probably want to be within 300 yards of the airplane when you shoot but you never know and well that's it for this side of the vehicle so let's have a quick look at the loader side not that as much there it's basically so hopping over to the loader side of his first of all he's primarily responsible for the coaxial it's a name 19 1984 caliper 30 machine gun gonna shank should have four thousand and eighty four rounds of 30 Cal stowed mainly for the coaxial the American tanks with the caliper 33 Navy where they had 92 hundred rounds in terms of the 37 millimeter you see it's scattered all around the turret here in interesting need stowed nose down and it's 128 grams or carry that an American tank would have 178 not least because you don't have the radio in the back so you can just stow more 37 millimeter ammo to actually load it's actually pretty simple because the round is so small pull it out lift it up and just slam it in with your fingers fingertips basically the ammunition for the caliber 30 is stowed on the far side of the main gun who's actually a feed chute that comes over the top to is right we have stowage for the 2-inch smoke bomb so this fits through a hole here and it looks like a big pistol put your smoke bomb in here fire it out and hey presto you have yourself a bit of a smokescreen obviously later on this would turn into the smoke grenade launchers which are mounted on the outside that we all know and love today in addition to the stowage inside the turret there is an additional rack for more than I want to count rounds to the front left of the turret and you can also have a good access here through the third floor the panels all open up and you can access the batteries which run the turret basket there's also additional stowage in between the turret basket and the side door so this single-cylinder job here is the auxilary motor it's got a two and a half gallon fuel tank just above it and this is used primarily the power generator so we have electrics going to the systems without the use of the main engine which adds where that's fuel usage it is also connected to the heater the heater can be used to preheat the main engine if you're trying to start on a really cold day or amazement of amazements you can use it to heat up the crew compartment a little-known luxury the back in the early 40s if you let your battery drain a little bit too far you can remove the housing on top of the Magneto it reveals a rope for hand starting the vehicle just like on an old lawnmower forward instead of back you have ammunition racks again for a 37 millimeter loads of 37 in this tank if you want to open up one of the pistol ports see us a little spring-loaded catch and you just push down lift it up sort of locks into place you spray away with your forty five thousand and thus when you don't lock it back into place you all right so if you wanted to get from the turret to the hole there is two ways of doing one is that the turret basket at the left-hand side of the turret is actually pretty much open to allow you beginning for the whole door so you can spin the turret over to the three o'clock position and that gives you a pretty good access however you can see they've actually left a hole here at the front of the turret so it is possible if you simply camera straight down and which I'm about to do now assuming I don't kick the cameraman in the face because it's a tank it's actually still pretty claustrophobic in here one knock on the head already do I go and I ready so immediately for to the turret basket this worthy seventh man would be if he wanted to have a seventh man in the tank it is the radio operators position here they would have a backrest here cushion obviously with the radio being in the turret on the grant there is no need for the man or the seat hello I guess you could put one if you wanted especially if for some reason you did wish to retain the 30 caliber in the bow you can see the interior fitting for it here adjustable in elevation no way of aiming so near as I can tell this little periscope up here it does rotate but it since the gun doesn't Traverse might as well just have it facing forward so the radio operator will be adjustable for elevating the gun the driver would be responsible for aiming the gun azimuth completely inefficient wasted space waste of money with weight of everything of interest here is a tank to my left here and this newest I can tell it is a water tank for drinking water very useful in the desert I don't know if to talk my head if this was a standard feature just look at the British and Australians added a little bit later I can see why it might perhaps have been taking up space before a radio this is a fairly big tank but a very nice thoughtful feature - is right the driver - is further right - all three are in so divided triangular formation is a 75 gunner so next thing we'll do is hop into the driver's seat and you can see the relatively unfortunate position that the driver has suffered so as he hop into the driver's seat you can see he sits astride the transmission one on one leg on each side and I don't know maybe motorcycle riders are good with this this is something completely unusual for me and I don't know how long I could I can handle it and there is a pedal on each side the clutch on the left hand side the accelerator result the right brakes are controlled by the steering killers so you put pull both back and battle stop there is a parking brake then low on the left hand side but that is purely a lock it's pretty much a physical locking transmission is your attack you tell from the manual so there's a recent manual says do not use the parking brake as a service brake now most of the m3 tillers on the very top would be the triggers one on each tiller for each of the two machine guns you can imagine why they were being removed together with the with the rest of the machine guns but that was how you fired them but that's just pretty much a standard - very simply laid out so you got the booster on the starter switch this is for your headlight wipers I kid you not it says wipers and I'm not entirely sure what it is they're supposed to be wiping making doing it at the service fuel cutoff so when you dull with the engine hit the fuel cutoff and engine dies may need a control so left right or both or off high compass yes I make netic compass and you kind of wonder how can they have one in the tank well yet same we have one and shipped curiously there are actually there is on any metal object a point of neutrality I remember the exact name of it but if you place your magnetic compass on this point it's not going to be affected by the metal of the other vehicles so if I recall correctly and a scorpion is actually the British TV RT is actually located pretty conveniently top of the turret between the commander and the gunner as we keep on going it should be noted that in early world war ii the words and attempt made inertial navigation system that the tank itself would remember by job I use gyroscopes where it was and on the map and if you think about a member in North Africa in the desert there's no navigation feature to mean the one do looks pretty much like another and of course in you haven't before GPS you're stuck with celestial navigation you're basically using a sextant with the Stars or the Sun or if you have the inertial navigation system and fantastic of course in practice the AI NS didn't enter service I have an article open the chief and such about it but we move on and there is a clock if you want know what time it is and I guess it's it's a wind-up clock cool edge it hours oil temperature oil pressure voltmeter ammeter speedometer goes up optimistically enough to 50 miles an hour and the tachometer which goes in reverse so idle is on the right-hand side and all the way to the anti-clockwise position is a 3,000 rpm which should be limited at 2400 gear lever is on his right hand side is a fairly standard a pattern so you have to release a latch to put it in the first or reverse on the left hand side the first gear is really just for special circumstances you're mired you're towing something really bad you're going up an incredibly high hill ordinarily your gear pattern is going to be to the 4 so 2 3 4 5 very easy so as you're steering it is a controlled differential and what this means is that on the good news there is always power going to both tracks as you're going around the corner the bad news is that there is a minimum radius in this case it's 31 feet I want to get going half the engines cold you've got a fuel primer here obviously courses as mentioned before you want to hand crank the engine a couple of revolutions just to make sure that the oil is nicely spread out go ahead prime it head first head start quite your master set for both otherwise that's not going to work I live at about 800 give it a give it a rev test and just like if you're playing around and assess that you check your mags so both the right and you see that there's a drop of about 75 revs go back to both good elf you drop at 75 revs and that is just tested your two banks of Magneto's after a warmup period of about two or three minutes go ahead put it in a second and away you go when you're done pretty much reverse you stop your idle for a couple of minutes you let it cool down obviously you in neutral you set your parking brake feel put off you're done to see how the driver has his vision poor obviously this is in the I'm not getting shot at position it when you are in combat you'll have to release this locking support it's kind of frozen into place so I can't do it this a swing to visor down and there is a small little periscope except a scene looks Adam of course I am way forward I guess in theory if if you're a wolf or two sized person and you had to get out in a hurry you possibly could squeeze out through here I'm not sure it's ideal but if you did have to get out of this tank and hurry and you're in either the radio operators position or the drivers position good luck um this is probably not the easiest thing to get out of well your fault for getting hit in the first place alright so next thing I do is gonna hop over one more seat to the right and check out the Gunners position for the 75 okay so we're not seated behind the controls for the wonderful 75 millimeter gun m2 and dear God you don't want to be a tall person guarding this I have hit my head so many times off this I have to be wearing a hard shell and I'm actually I was talking to camera on a little early about this bag developing is sort of a sixth sense for when your head is about to hit something and my little alarm bell is perpetually going off as I'm sitting here so I'm not gonna move my head around too much I hope and forgive me about fear if I appear after the concerned about my safety all right so and Traverse and elevation controls here and here that easy now curiously this is one of those issues that comes up when you're doing research and I may mentioned before how primary source documentation differs there are two manuals which cover the system one is the manual for the tank medium m3 and according to that the gun Traverse on this is 15 degrees to each side maximum depression is 9 maximum elevation is 19 okay fantastic but then there is also a manual for gun seventy-five milliliter m2 mounted in tanks basically fist because it's the only tank we did the m2 is mounted it says 14 degrees to each side seven and a half down and 20 up make it out what you will so the m2 fired an AP round at about eighteen hundred and fifty feet per second the haiti round is 1,400 however the u.s. lack of proper experience with the large caliber tank gun really began to show through when they ship these over to the British and the British started using them the first problem they had was with the hey chief uses the a chief users were decided to be fired from artillery so as you can imagine the rand would land more vertical but not and it was all very good for the fuse that set off however one fired from a tank at infantry at ranges as close as 300 yards and what's going to happen is that the the round is going to basically graze the ground and the fuse may not detonate this was considered to be a bit of a problem and the other problem that they had was that the m-72 shop which was he the basic armor-piercing round at the time had issues with the face hardened armor of the Panzer 3 and panzer 4 once he went over about 500 yards the the round would shatter wouldn't penetrate and think about it depends of threw me out like five centimeters of armour and this is also considerably a bit of a problem the brothers solved both problems for the round what they did was they found a stock of French 75 in Syria they shipped that over the French artillery round the fuse is a bit better and because the American 75 is basically derived in the French round it was a simple matter of unscrewing the one screwing on the other and you know had a functioning 75 millimeter AG round to solve the AP round issue and they turned to the Germans they had captured about fifty thousand tons worth of munitions on the drug to the bone and amongst this haul was a whole bunch of AP rounds for the Germans 7 point 5 centimeter l24 is fired on the panzer 4 and British officer realized that what you could do with the guys name was major Northey and was just by tweaking the driving band on the German ammunition you can mount it to the American cartridge and all of a sudden you get a better APM so they did a whole bunch of those they also at the same time got the the improved American m60 one round and they tried those off and they realized that the two hands actually had a much better amount of penetration at a thousand yards you could punch through a Panzer force front fantastic the German round is still preferred though because the German round had a bursting charge so once you punched through it did more damage the American round just made a hole and basically adds falling and significant emotional events I mean what's bad you don't have a 75 going bead around bouncing around inside your tank regardless of whether it explodes afterwards or not anyway um the gun was fully stabilized as mentioned you you did have to have the counterweight on the front the aim the gun the primary side is the m21 periscope this was graduated to 3,000 yards in 500 yard increments for AP only if you want to be true hey Qi maybe you took a best guess and I guess a burst and adjust method was probably required to finally put rounds on the target now there was a problem with this the linkage between the sight and the gun wasn't great as a result later model m3s came with the direct vision telescope it's t 15 it's basically a coaxial telescope that was considered to be a lot more accurate linkage problems did continue on we had exactly the same problem with the early versions of the m4 Sherman as well solve exactly the same way but a direct vision scope the last thing I'd point out is that the Gunners seat is attached to the case-mate so as the gun is rotated the Gunners seat moves with it which is fine because it keeps his head in pretty good position compared to the sight and let's say he's got enough room for his leg that he's not going to get too badly crushed so that's it for the Gunners position 1 or 2 go the last position in the tank number six or seven of any wood version you are the loader for the main gun 75 millimeter it's a god-awful position I'm afraid to say it's remotely a little bit of fear the egg Panther 380 he is directly behind the tube in his job as to get rounds 35 of which are stowed down here ouch and then forward and into the tube now there are 65 rounds available to the British loader 35 of them here I'm not entirely sure where the others go hopefully it's over by the radio comprar fire radio operators compartment and just removed from this vehicle here we have stowed for yet more 37 millimeter so you can imagine which was supposedly the primary used weapon half the time American tanks say only have 50 rounds of 75 that's why I'm coming with this conclusion that perhaps the British x-ray will come to the deleted radiogram above whom we do have the roof hatch another way of getting in and out and frankly if you're driving along in the desert it's probably great to stick your head out and get a bit of fresh air it's the driving of wind blowing through your your helmet there is record behind them another pistol port and there is a fuel tank gauge just here to the left behind the basket you can also see the propeller shaft which is covered where the protective housing so the loader doesn't have his legs delete it that's it for the interior we're gonna hop out close up of the approximately 5,000 667 approximate number accepted it from the factories lend-lease took the majority of them British received just shy of 2900 and the Soviets about 1400 the m3 was very well accepted in the British service it was reliable they had a good gun things that British tanks did not have the Soviets had a more mixed opinion on the thing yet was reliable it was well built but didn't really suit Soviet terrain and frankly the Soviets were already building some pretty reasonable tanks of their own so it's much less of an improvement the vehicle they continued ici service of course was made obsolete by the m4 medium the Sherman but if you went to East Asia and the jungles against Japanese who frankly didn't have great anti-tank weapons to begin with and certainly the tanks were pretty miserable the m3 was still a very capable vehicle and so it's all serviced pretty much through to the end of the war initially the production one was only going to be 350 vehicles however the demand from the UK in particular was so great for 75 millimeter gun tanks that they couldn't afford to stop producing tanks on the factory to retool to build the better m4 so it wasn't until later when more tank production fans came online that you are finally able to phase out production in the m3 and move to the Sherman which would serve the Allies for the rest of the war how is it I hope you enjoyed it tour of the m3 medium what's he on the next one

Channel: The_Chieftain

Views: 284,772

Rating: 4.9324727 out of 5

Keywords: Inside the chieftain's hatch, M3 Medium Tank, Grant, Lee

Id: juluyzxVSZY

Length: 27min 19sec (1639 seconds)

Published: Tue May 31 2016