Inside the Chieftain's Hatch: T-55A Part 2

okay we're back for part two of the t-55a just going back briefly to the infrared side it always has this cover on it you have to unscrew yeah actually takes a couple seconds but you're not going to be doing this in combat on the fire anyway the retaining pics and you can now reveal the searchlight as you can see it is a simple searchlight with a film an infrared film on the inside of the lens which is obviously folded away for one reason or another very simple system not the most effective range a few hundred yards but certainly better than nothing or better than using your simple night vision sight without the assistance like to call what I was saying a bit earlier about how Western tank commanders tend to fight open hatch this is one of those cases where you really wish your western tank commander okay my legs are directly beneath the Gunners sight that's bad even for somebody with long legs now my length has absolutely nothing to do my width I'm in terms of width of relatively narrow chap and I am absolutely wedged in here between the recoil guard and the radio to my front the DBK you to be it is a by five sight and come to the choke rangefinder replace an earlier by to model for night vision you could pull it out and replace it with an infrared sight little device here I believe from tracing the cables is an intercom switch once you're down here to see around in addition to it by five he also has two periscopes in the in hatch ring in hatch itself are two more periscope switch ain't pretty much off to one side or the other he appears to have no rear visibility with AD stan whatsoever which is I'd call that a problem outside of that to his left has mentioned he does have the radio bear in mind that if this is a command vehicle say TV for life K he would have more radios in here to give orders to very simple levels of formation one last comment about the legs there is a footrest here it's it kind of flips up out of the way and my feet are on it absolutely mandatory there is a turret platform which rotates good for the loader the problem is that not everything in the hole clears where the turret platform will go so as I'm looking down here there is a cylinder of some sort which overhangs the turret platform by about this much if my legs were hanging down and a turret reversed well there goes my foot so one of the things that you're trained to do if a crewman goes down is go to a three-man crew so on the m1 for example you have the Gunners sight extension and the commander's override you can shoot from the commander's position however you're supposed to leave it at the high magnification because in theory you can't reach the Gunners control panel I actually can just about do it for the give you an idea just how close the Gunners seat and the commander's seat are I am sitting the commander see my feet are on the Gunners footrest and I can lean forward to the side and the controls no problem whatsoever you know it's probably easier if you just do this as a three-man quilt and get it over that way so moving forward to the gunner's seat proper by fate again on a footrest and as mentioned mandatory the TC would have a little bit of room I probably want to shop a bit further forward to put my head to the side and it's it's actually quite a comfortable position I guess I mean I don't know if I want to stay there in for any huge length of time but the one advantage to not having an actual basket and just having a platform is that when the tank is not in combat and because I generally control the turret I know it's not going to swing I can stretch my legs forward I have all the room in the world of course in combat not so much power Traverse and elevation is by a fairly standard post-war control system unlike Western vehicles where this is like a steering wheel to control direction the Russian system is more of a turntable but up and down is as you would expect a small problem for people who come with on exchange with the US Army this is not the laser this is the trigger for those of you who don't know Abrams tanks its laser trigger we had a Romanian exchange student come over and he went lays boom whoops the laser was a the index finger so it's what you call a lace boom when you when you try to lay the target ain't good boom all right other features there are manual backups of course there is the manual Traverse very smooth I have to say very well-balanced search and the manual elevation as well which also is extremely light and very quick to go into a powered mode there is actually a manual d clutch when I hit that then the entire gun breech move let's see what happens if I try this again yep it is now free-floating and I can push the gun up and down it shows you just how well balanced this gun is in the meantime let me put the clutch back into place so now we are back into a geared status and controls for the main gun and coaxial selector there is a handle here to the direct front that has absolutely no use whatsoever that I can think of it is just a fixed handle azimuth indicator to his left he has three optics to look at off for just daily view he's got a unity periscope it's a buy one and it just gives him a broad view of the battlefield fairly nice he has a direct vision scope and he has periscopic scope the periscope of one can be used for infrared this is purely a daylight one there are graduated scales for four different types of ammunition and the coaxial machinegun this one with power down so I can't see anything to his left by his legs are some of the some of the rounds of ammunition the ammunition is scattered all over the hole and the pan shop probably get a lot of it do it right the d-10 100 millimeter rifle fantastic gun for its time it has range charts of relevation marked on the side so it looks like this is the manual trigger when you're electricals don't work just push down on this I suspect this works in conjunction with this little system up here which as you slide back I believe we the firing pin so if you have a fitted fire recaulk with the manual hopefully that will clear your problem that's about it for the gerber station and i have to say it's very well laid out outside of of the fact that it's really for small people this one definitely gets a passing grade outside I have no complaints about it whatsoever now let's see what life is like over for the loader so coming over to the loaders seat and probably with the describe one word ammo so I'll start off with the seat that he's on themselves actually very clever design so it's in addition to being the sort of fold up seat that you'll be used to you stand up and a spring-loaded it folds away you also have the option of moving it around so you simply lift it out of these little hooks and there is an additional place if for some reason you want to be seated in a different location maybe we're different size or something let's try putting a toy around then you put it here and you can sit down facing to the front now I don't know if loaders would have preferred to load sitting down or standing up there's arguments both ways either way he has a lot of ammo but it seems that when actuality it is only about thirty four rounds when they removed the whole machine gun the ammunition still went up the rounds are stowed as you can see everywhere there is one two three four this five on the rear turret wall there are two beside me there is four on the floor next to them in the lower rear turret they're stowed and you'll see all setup they're stowed nose to tail as they're stoned vertically so the base of one round is on top of the projectile another round and so on and they do that because the rounds are tapered so you can fit more into the small space the downside with this though is that it actually makes manipulating events a little bit harder because there's no there's no one muscle memory shall we say that the logo learns in order to get around in the tube faster still it's not it's all that bad there is a course he's standing on the platform which rotates so he doesn't have to worry too much about where his feet are going especially given he doesn't actually have much room to work with the breech is on one side and this ammunition on the other but if he does grab around you can see how long this is it has to come back over the tert ring to get into the breech where it can then be shoved in and because I'm not sure if these rooms actually work well with this which I'm not going to slam it all the way in the gun the d-10 already mentioned this particular version is a d-10 s stabilization was a vertical later on there was two axis stabilization added to 55 series tanks in fact if you go on even further then you also have the audacity and anti-tank missile which could be launched from upgraded versions of the t-55 although I'm not entirely sure where you put it let me put this out of the way again hey stay as he looks at the front and see here the coaxial machinegun the was NSG now to PKK feeds up from the right comes down and spent casings are collected in a canvas bag underneath the gun he has excellent access to the front hole ammunition there's about 15 rounds 16 rounds directly to my front here they're stowed locked in place by a very simple lever system bring the match no problem as long as the turret is facing forward he does have a periscope it is rotatable it is adjustable in elevation gives a loader a fairly good field of vision when he's closed hatch we do have another of these handles here there it seems we won for every stations one for the commander is one for the gunner I mentioned already and there's this thing and honestly I still haven't figured out what it's for well maybe somebody will write down in the comments maybe a an old g55 crewman would be able to help me out on this my cameraman has just made an observation was mentioning about this handle here earlier he used the term believe some people call it the oh crap handle some people also know it it's a Jesus handle I mentioned earlier have this tank lurches around and if you look for the the type 59 360 virtually inside a tank video you can see my face practically plants against the camera which is mounted on the machine gun up top so I suspect that this could be used to for grip as the vehicle is bumping around that doesn't explain the handles over on the Gunners side or TC side though because they just have so much more around them and in fairness the TC doesn't have any room to bounce anyway just looking very briefly at the breech it is a horizontally sliding breech block operating handles here you lift up to swing it around it doesn't force you a bit of a battery it is a bit annoying to get back into place there is a internal travel lock simple cotter pin comes up here intersects with the lock on the roof don't light nothing else of immediate note that's it for the turret of the D 55 now we'll try the drivers hole so I've come into the drivers position and I've been a worse but not by much now the seat does raise or lower the back is very simple system you can adjust the angle of recline so as I'm currently sitting with my head behind the hatch I was having sunny more reclined than most but then hey I've got longer legs when the hatch is closed there's simply a rubber pad up top nothing nothing to interfere to see out he has two yes two periscopes one straight forward and one angled slightly off to the right for night driving it would be possible to remove one of the parrots coats replacing with an infrared underneath he's got a little compass and you wonder well how can you have a compass at a big metal thing and look at compasses I guess so the pedals on the left you have the clutch it's a fairly heavy one middle one is brake and to apply the parking brake there's a very simple rationale every gear parking brake applied parking brake released and finally of course the accelerator of interest you can see that all the controls there there are mechanical levers or rods that as you manipulate the various controls you can see them moving steering is conducted by use of the two tillers one on each side it is an epicyclic gearing system for saw appearance with the kv-13 onto the ISS and Russian tank generally had it ever since it won't neutral steer but the nice thing about it is that it does keep power going to both tracks as you go around the corner transmission itself is a 5-speed with one in Reverse the shift pattern is kind of odd the first is back Center two is left near three is forward left four is all the way to the right and four and five is all the way to the right and back with reserve reverse forward Center not entirely sure why speedometer is located to his left in the position where actually you can see it with your driving head out the instrument panel however you cannot see as you're driving head out but it does have your various required items so looking at the drivers panel I believe that's the start button over here no idea what went there looks like the tachometer a pressure temperature presumably for the engine and transmission ammeter up top we have old fashioned fuses master power is located just off to the camera right master per se traditional Soviet design on/off he has a dome light other controls towards left are the controls for the compressed air starter system the bottles are actually on the sidewall not forward looks like there is a fuel tank forward of the ammunition I guess you would count it as extra armor there are other tanks that have a similar philosophy use the fuelers armor wrap the fuels burns and then the ammunition blows up I guess I'm comic that would never assigned to a t-55 units of because I don't fit in them but now you can't condemn a vehicle for requiring two people if you have show people in the army that you can use them although it does perhaps limit your town to pool a little bit on the other hand it's a little bit cozy for effective combat it it's not bad it's big everything seemed to be well laid out but you don't be fighting this for incredibly long period of time I wouldn't think for alergy vehicle to drive it's sort of world war ii technology brought to its ultimate extent and again people forget that this is a very very old tank and if they're expecting modern standards of comfort and ride quality they'll be in for a disappointment so you can't really knock the t-55 for that anyway that's how about it for in here I think we'll head out close up the t-55 is probably one of the most ubiquitous tanks in the world there's a couple of reasons for this firstly they just build a whole heck of a lot of them most mass produced tank ever and not the most mass-produced armored vehicle that honor goes to the universal carrier series the other reason is because well I call this the tank version of Top Gear's Toyota Hilux you can't kill it if you have basic mechanical skills if you understand suck squeeze bang blow you can probably keep this thing running so as a result in places that have limited technical support capabilities particularly let's say in Africa or some parts of Asia you can keep this thing running basic toolkit you know what you're doing it's still viable now by today's standard yeah p55 is not what it used to be and it's frequently looked down upon its nothing but cannon fodder for today's Abrams leopards and so on this is true but it's also a little bit unfair considering this is basically a World War 2 tank that is still in service today it may not be the best tank on a battlefield but if you're able to get one to the fight and your opponent has a Kalashnikov it's going to be good enough another example that jassi's versatility is simply insane amount of variants that were based upon it there were bridge layers heavy armored personnel carriers firefighting vehicles you name it they built it the other point to note is how many countries built the thing it was licensed produced in China as a variant of the type 59 of the WZ 120 other countries Romanians did a variant of it it's absolutely an iconic vehicle which you have to respect anyway that was the t-55 hope you enjoyed the tour and we'll see on the next one you

Channel: World of Tanks North America

Views: 324,363

Rating: 4.9539075 out of 5

Keywords: wargaming.net, wargaming, War Gaming, wga, wg, wargaming official channel, pc gaming, video game, PC, computer game, world war II, mmo, multiplayer, world war I, WWI, WWII, Free To Play, freetoplay, F2p, FTP, Free to win, FTP Games, F2P Games, game, gamer, gaming, military, Military simulator, Historical game, WW2, combat, wot, world of tanks, World of tanks official channel, armored vehicle, tank, tanker, tanking, Tank simulator, yt:cc=on

Id: TEDhB9evPvw

Length: 20min 31sec (1231 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 23 2016