Lindybeige and The Chieftain ramble over a Churchill tank (with added Sherman)

I'm here again at the Tank Museum in bobbington in front of I imagine you know this my favorite tank in and I'm here with do you recognize him this is the chieftain also known as certain Nicholas Morin who was in the Irish Army and then joined the American army as a tanker yes and I've been enjoying it ever since 911 work is wargaming World of Tanks is in-house historian for Tanks I'm not the only one but I'm the one for morning America ok of course wargaming is a company which produces World of Tanks or perhaps I should pronounce it world your chunks which is computer game and if you click a link in the description beneath this you'll you'll find a link they'll take you to where you can download this game and play for yourself I spent way too many hours playing it it said not the most realistic game but it is a lot of fun you have a problem that reality is not fun ah yeah yes it's a bit like tank warfare without all the death anyway I thought it would be hilarious if two very large gentlemen try to climb into one of these because you tell me you're 6 foot 5 and I'm i'm fairly tall myself not the shortest man yes so what would it be like for two people of this size to be honest we're both too big really to be tankers we should be 5 foot 8 or something be getting into this it's it but I actually am a tank are in the US Army yes alright so a World War 2 tank a crewman of this particular vehicle it's ok man ok although are you not actually technically a little bit tall to be a tanker yes but I haven't told anybody oh ok right and I can't imagine they will be watching right so let's see what two very large men in a small cramped tank is like I'm gonna get in the commander's side all right well yeah well you cool yourself with chieftain you know not chieftain here mate um it's gonna be a little bit tighter I'm stuck oh well here we are on the inside of a Churchill seven and bit cozy and it is cozy there are two of us and there would have been a third I'm at the moment in the Gunners position and Nick here the chieftain is in the lotus position with my legs directly where the spent shell casings would fall right I'm forced to the right here by all sorts of controls I've got an awkward diagonal foot pedal and behind me we see a seat here and this is where the commander would seat would sit so his legs and knees are somewhere here jamming into my back so yeah it was definitely very cozy and we are missing an awful lot of stuff in here there's no radio for instance so you know while I'm doing now reaching over here that would be impossible because I've been a radio in the way there's no ammunition in this turret either and so all these bins would have been filled with stuff and that's what everything was neatly done you know the periscope is coming down and here yeah in your head each one of these caches would have held in a periscope and those would have been shutting down here so the loads of things here to fasciae head off that's why we tend to wear helmets in the tank except you British guys didn't think was stylish enough or something Oh Lord no you don't wear a helmet on the inside of a tank oh it's wrong with a bear a lot of thanks I've got my water head bruises and not surprised to discover the people learn very quickly how easy it is to knock yourself out one of these things oh yes yes if this came to a sudden lurching hope that you weren't expecting there are a hundred sharp metal edges to hit to cut yourself wide open on yes but of course after the war there was this medical assessment by the British Army said that 60% to tank casualties were in the area of the head that would have been covered by the helmet had they been wearing one yeah but you know I've done I've done rock climbing and when you've got me a rock climbing helmet on your head is significantly larger and you can't get as close to the rock and and you can't fit through through gaps as easily that's when I was part of the argument actually there the RAC helmet was not very popular especially what the intercom system didn't it was designed for it didn't really work very well but I mean hey you you've got enough ways to kill yourself inside this thing yes without the enemy even helping yeah the the amount of room we've got here is quite extraordinary imagination most things spin with you which is nice at least we've got the luxury of basket a ting floor beneath us although of course it rotates relative to some other things which are outside it outside this gap here oh you've got the turret monster here these mobility but they're there there's a ring there's a the teeth of a ring all the way around us so when it does spin you got something to rip your fingers off and any bit of clothing that snacks well in fairness the turret monster doesn't have to be just a ring I mean if I accidentally need my foot out right here it gets it caught in between the suspending post editor appear and whatever that is I presume it's an ammo bin or something lots of ways for you to lose limbs and other parts of your Anatomy the I mean from the loaders side I'm just trying to figure out I have a 13 round stowage bin to my right and I figure out how I get the ammunition from here to here because I only have about three inches between the between the side of the breech and my front so I can I guess I can pass it underneath an interval I mean great a firearm well except that you've got a big canvas bag here that's a good badging these benches so it's got to come up over in front of my face and then back down and in well I'd like to think that you have one in the spout ready and another one perhaps in your hands and another one perhaps in some ready position somewhere around here you know and leave the ammunition lying loose it let us fall off when you hit some rough terrain not that this was the fastest tank to be bouncing over terrain Ian but still well yeah he went about 15 miles an hour and when you see four of these rocketing along fifteen miles now it looks really fast it's a strange illusion and anything does I got pulled over by MPs in Iraq for speeding in my tank and I swear I was not speeding but the MP thought I was its we have an interesting discussion possibly it's to do with how quickly can go its own length that can be and or a judge how far something is going and you just aren't used to seeing such big things move or maybe it's because the track I'm the top half is going twice as fast as the tank is going because yes I might do it I probably you can see much of the track on this tank either yeah sure you got the machine running your toy don't you yes here I've got the safety you must squeeze to be able to engage the trigger type thing on the back of the the grip and so yes that would that would cause the machine gun the bees out to shoot and I've got in front of me a little holy here for the brow pad which is missing but though the press my head up against that and look down my sight and I've got an extremely awkwardly positioned periscope as well but at least I've got a game Paris very important to be able to see what you're going to aim at before you expose a turret and let everybody know hey there's a target over there or there is a threat actually I saw you you were jiggling the Machine a little bit it's one of the problems we have it's not just a motorist that the whole machine gun it's a cylinder of some sort attached to the back of the machine gun alright sounds the machine ideally you want to have a little bit of looseness in the machine gun because if it's too tightly in all you're doing is is sending every single bullet in the same place and if you have a little bit loses a little bit of vibration which means that you get a proper spread and a good beaten zone with the machine gun okay but if this is the coaxial that we're using for aiming with then you're not not on this now you know your thing you like the range of machine gun on the chieftain that sort of thing and and on the on the tank fury that had arranging 50 Cal as well that was matched thee that's what the man told me he contradicting the man I have I have in have video footage which I could cut in at this point of him of his telling me that yeah politically matched to the main gun but also down there for firing the ranging gun so you say that that very small foot pedal is for firing the coax it can fire the coax yeah as well yeah but you also called it the ranging gun range like the thing the thing is if the coax machine gun were hitting the target and it's perfectly coaxial with the main gun then the main gun wouldn't hit so this 50 Cal if this is actually hitting the target then yeah this which is perfectly parallel with it is also hitting the target that's right yeah so the coax of the m4 is a 19 1984 caliber 30 there were some later American tanks like the m47 II had the option of putting a caliber 50 M but even that wasn't ballistically matched by someone of the tank museum who would do that I'm sorry well he said that the fury the the particular version he said he had a ballistically matched 50 Cal the Americans didn't put it in there okay right so here we have a visa which is unusual in that it fired seven point nine to draw an ammo base yeah it fired the same rounds that the Germans were shooting so as we were going forwards from the 1944 onwards and capturing German ammo that was a use for it yeah you said yeah but I've never actually heard actual evidence for its the swap being named well I mean it's not just the bullet size it's also the the belt it's the belt the same design as the German belts oh I suspect they probably had to take everything out of the belt and yeah that I can see okay was president so some of the first are 75 millimeter armor-piercing rounds that was effective in North Africa the American design ammunition didn't work so well and what somebody realized was if he took the German seven point five millimeter armor-piercing round you mated that to the shell casing of the American 75 you actually have a round that was capable against the panzer 4 Yeah right and it took about the same amount of time to convert the captured German stocks as it was for the Americans to desiring ammunition that actually worked hmm okay so the field modification one of many people would add Hawk put something together that now if I were to use this periscope and and my commander has just said okay we're going to pull forward over this little little rise here and I want to look out for a big red barn because that the targets hiding behind it I've got to somehow here and if I want to look to my right I'm in big trouble because the outside the outside of the gets in the way and of course if I wearing a helmet it would be hopeless and then of course you probably have a tommy gun or something like that on the left hand side let's hear it as well don't you yes because there was a lot of other stuff in here with us in fact if you bear with me just a tick I've got it written down I've got a little list of all the stuff that was in here with us because the internal stowage there was a Bren gun and we all like Bren guns don't we and that was used for protecting the vehicle at night they would set it up outside and we had Thompson machine guns for that for the the crewmen and they are pretty bulky submachine guns as well the fun to shoot though actually taking electric I have never shot one there was a map board there was a signal pistol with 12 flares there were gas capes and gloves for all the crew I wonder how much time they spent inside the tank I suspect they probably got shot of those that's one thing that they didn't really need six grenades until you really need it oh well then yeah morning a pair of binoculars a rangefinder a clinometer Henderson lamps a cooker fire extinguishers the rations of course you actually have to carry a few days rations for everyone blankets water bottles 15 tins of biscuits I imagine that was a popular inclusion let's say you had two drinks each supplement you team absolutely something to dunk spare periscope prisms I don't know how many but a fair few two stretchers not entirely sure why they where they went there's there isn't a 6-foot length of room in direction here so there must have been folding with a bit collapse yeah yeah and then the smoke cartridges 20 smoke bombs two-inch more too much this is a bunch of heroes sixteen of them in this little box here so that was operated by the loader breech-loading thing here yeah sixteen rounds and this is the box here and he said there's another four around here somewhere yeah and there's some it was had it doesn't swivel but it had fixed ranges it could be set to 20 yards 70 yards or 110 so mostly that was for projecting smoke forwards perhaps in support of infantry that you're trying to help out or perhaps defense this is defense one for supporting the infantry you would have a smoke round for the 75 and that would be done very nicely yo and some of it was Willy Pete as well if I recall certainly the American 75 had white phosphorous Willy Pete I have seen have seen Vietnam movies yes but this is British tank as you can see it's painted silver on the inside which was the British habit to keep visibility good and also to see any leaks or any anything else like that if you have a hydraulic system and therefore the power Traverse then there's a leak you see how a nice bright color inside a tank me so much easier to see that you're leaking but yeah so the amount of smoke and noise produced by two machineguns a 75 possibly a smoke mortar going and that's that's just the the the noise that you're generating regardless of what incoming fire and artillery is doing and you go about one little film extractor a little fume extractor there there'll be a we were actually missing the motor for it but they would have been a big motor here fed by these warriors and that was drawing smoke from the guns at the top but when you had hatches down if you've been firing the machine guns for a length of time your eyes would be streaming from the fumes and be gasping for fresh air I mean there's not really much else to be said about so I mean the next thing to do is just to imagine you're inside this thing for hours at a time days even yeah your legs are gonna die and we just it's like well yeah where does the commander put his legs this this is a quite a thin ash that's not a very strong spring but possibly it was stronger once flat and that is what stops you from getting your arm taken off for the recoil of the now this does go in fairness this does fold up out of the way when you're not using it so you have a little bit of room there true as soon as battle looks imminent that's going to be well here's the thing so as a commander I mean I'm 65 I'm usually sticking my hand at the top anyway right so only in the most extreme circumstances would I get down into the tank and in such a case my temporary discomfort was really not very high on my list of priorities at that moment in time well you get in and make sure that your legs aren't taken off by the recoil yeah it's granted was much else to be said about this turn I mean it is it's actually a little bit smaller than I was expecting and I didn't ever usually have great expectations but with the reputation of Churchill being such a great tank and such a fightable tank and so on yeah I guess it depends on what you're used to I mean I'm used to Sherman sized things and this is definitely not Sherman this is a lot more cramped than a Sherman definitely but we've also got thicker armor which is nice you do and quite like being behind thick armor yeah and easy easy steering for the driver it's very drivable tank you had the the mare brand gearbox for the steering so you can neutral steer on the spot mm-hmm so that's why this is so nimble sorry oh you didn't lock the tight fit for you it is a bit of a tight fit for me and I am going to have to move the commander's seat that was difficult as I thought it was gonna be I'm just imagining your nice big thick woolly coat and don't have too much in your pocket there we go ah these hatchets oh dear I'm afraid the sound is rather poor here this is because the leads on our radio mics were disturbed each time we climbed in and out of the tank still why not use this opportunity to note the position of the two periscopes in front of the drivers position which is the position I'm climbing into actually these these hatches are wider than I was expecting and I feel comparatively comfortable now so downstairs you've got a bit more room obviously the heck can you can you grab the handles wait your knees in the way like that yes yeah okay I can so on this is the steering tiller and I've got my three pedals got my gear stick there and I said it's air assisted steering as well so it's not like an old fashioned tangle you have to really hammer back on the on the killer to steer this thing was mechanically assisted power assisted steering basically is what I was yeah and I've had Churchill tankers described as being able to set the whole tank down as though landing on an eiderdown so I've got a nice big flame thrower here of course it's the crocodile version mm-hmm so I'd have this big big big huge of flammable material going all the way to the back of the tank and out into the trailer that's so you can see how you spin the turret round you can get it right so you've got a big hose if it goes up the middle of the tank oh all right go undecided go out of the way the turret basket does a couple inches underneath the turret basket mmm eh they can sneak out yeah okay so yeah it's easy for us to get out of our side escape doors well relative lumen the the chair is hopefully the seat back goes away yeah because you can imagine trying to sneak out with a seat back behind you and you always have this wasted space back here I mean presumably put 15 tins of biscuits Oh dog is somewhere fair point and one of the other problem they had was see you still talking about vertically vertically facing Armour here mm-hmm I mean yeah it's thick at six inches thick well why didn't you put a slope to it but that would ruin the look it's going for the big bulky look I mean I love how you had the old-fashioned porthole but if you had it exactly when if this was sloping at the porthole B's staring into the sky and obviously at all have you know is strictly in front of my face and yes if there's incoming small arms fire that would make me nervous now it's an S in I always kind of confused me a bit so you go to the drivers visor for combat and you're now looking at your two periscopes neither of which is directly in front of you right so so between them i wonderful around you yeah but you're driving what your head to one side or the other well I've got the commander almost all the time with his head out the turret saying there's a tree in the way there's a tree in the wait seriously there's a tree in the way left left your other left I think I've actually got a better view out of this and I have a driver position in most tanks that I've been in okay all right it is fun when you're reversing and you're trying to give instructions to your driver you know right or left because doesn't know you left it said the trick is he cross your arms when you're the commander so when you're facing to do here you have your arms cross and you want to go that way and you wiggle your hand your app left so driver go left okay I'd like to think that my sense of direction is necessary but you you would but believe me from experience it's a lot more reliable they do it that way especially if specially if you're in stress because were you in combat you're drawing things quickly and your stress factors go through the roof so anything you can do to simplify it and reduce the chance of error it doesn't matter if it's stupid but it works it's not stupid point I know basic drivers d'Arles over there yeah yeah it's got a bank of rev counters and speedometers and a myeloma 200 going to this it's done point nine of a mile so it's the brand new fresh off the floor yeah it's not a well traveled tank this I mean after about five minutes sitting here my back is starting to hurt a little bit well it's not adjusted view you're at all gentlemen I'm good one how do I actually shut this hatch I'm going to guess it's this ah there we go right so I've got this big lever which I swing to the right yes and that swings it in and hopefully you're not ever down its slope and you're pushing against gravity oh there's that without to the challenge quite considerably wouldn't it still they they made these cruise album out of leather clearly because I mean for making from someone of my height actually um if I lurched forward I would smash my head against the roof reasonable padding on it on the on the hatch covers I mean look at its padding here to stop yourself bashing your head to hide now one of the things I do notices these hatches are not spring-loaded and it's kind of later war that you start coming across things as spring loading out it was 43 when I started putting in on Sherman's for example yes axe edged is how I've read these described that work these come down with a big plane but don't want to get your fingers anywhere near but of course if you are trying to get out because the tank is on fire you can be well motivated with the strength of adrenaline rush Oh get me out the axe ages don't matter so much it's getting in in a hurry that's only slam slam that's when you take take your own fingers off this fault compartment is painted white which doesn't match the silver behind us which is an adult or interior decoration error isn't it yes I think so actually I can't see trace there is some silver in here beneath the whites are possibly the white should be disregarded so I mean this has been one of your great goals to get these to a Churchill now that you've done it is this a case of dope meet your heroes or are you do you think are you still as Churchill mad is he where before you got in know I've heard the inside of a British tank in World War 2 described as a stinking haven of human affinity and as long as you got on well with the rest of your crew and I imagine that they probably did not just because they had to but if they didn't they would swap crews around so the people who did get on were in the same crews it's it's a nicer place to be than just about anywhere else on the battlefield true when the shelling starts you're in a pretty much artillery proof box I'm far more likely to live and go home and see my my folks back home again if you're in the Churchill if I'm in the Churchill if I were me the tank but particularly Churchill it's one of the safer tanks possibly the safest yes the smells would have been external we're missing the smells here I read of one memoir where one of the the crewmen had some medical condition which meant that he had to pee very often thinking he was always peeing into used shell casings and the others complained yes you would be covered in oil covered in smoke and probably didn't get to bathe that often so yes this would be a stinking haven of human affinity but but nicer than most muddy foxholes I thought and it's your home we tankers have a great affinity toward a wheel over a tank it is our home it's like an extra member of the crew so my tank in Iraq was my fifth member of the crew right so to that extent yes on the other hand this is not the only tank you've being in and then you got the question well if you have to fight a war and stay alive do everything efficiently win the fight Churchill or Sherman or Cromwell or be satisfied with this you're doing a job this is an infantry support tank so you'd be working with a company or battalion of infantry that would be assigned to work with you there's an infantry telephone in the back and you yeah I think you would feel useful you're doing a job you're protecting the the poor bloody PBR yeah the PPI is the guys with the boots on the ground who actually have to go forward and take the ground and you've got the tools to do it you can get this over almost any terrain because it's got such fantastic ground covering capability you can get against you can get it forward against almost all opposition because of the thickness of your armored they need something pretty big to stop this tank and of course most of the time people go all along about the German 88's but most of the time they didn't have anything what do you want up against yeah and then you've got a very good high-explosive shell you've got white phosphorus you've got smoke various types to cover the infantry you've got Beezus to give them terrific support for taking out machine-gun nests or I mean for or in this case of flamethrower so yes you I think you would feel very useful and and even possibly even loved infantry who has called to you but the weird thing is that the infantry never seem to be jealous of the people in these vehicles the infantry would would see that these attracted fire from all directions and couldn't be stealthy yeah whereas they could be stealthy they could creep around themselves really small throw themselves into a ditch and they were seen as less of a threat and so it didn't attract nearly so much fire so even though the infantry were suffering statistically way more casualties most infantry seem to say I wouldn't swap places I'm getting one of those deathtrap tin boxes for all the tea in China so all in all then you're happy with it yeah thick thick solid metal and I've got this I've got this lovely tiller in front of me and with cue shift oh there it is there is the option for the way that's something else entirely ok yeah [Laughter] I've got something I've got my pocket caught with the hatch there you go tank crewman Dixon suit so that that doesn't happen and then they get there go you see I'm a dancer that was deft wasn't it right so this is the last Churchill ever built Churchill seven it's got a cast turret at least the outside witnessed is cast when it's got slabs of steel weld along the top which means that it's got a reasonably thin roof on it whereas cast fully cast are extended to be a bit heavy a bit thick at the top so it gets the advantages of the strength of one piece around the edge but not too thick a roof and I think it's the first tank to use that construction method we're in an ideal position to have a look at the commander's vane site here so the commander whose head will be poking out this hatch could look through this and you can see that these two veins are narrower than these two so that would presumably act as a sort of rangefinder rough and round I wonder if it's a mill if it's on a mill scale are you familiar with the mill scale yes yeah could we a tank off or building of known size should fit into into one of these at a particular distance well I again this comes back to mill so four Mills what an object delineated by one degree at 1,000 metres no no my mom a mill is the angle delineated by an object one meter wide at 1,000 meters right but they would calibrate it to something a bit more useful of one meter wide surely like the width of a typical tank or or the length of a tank or what have you yeah so here we are on the rear engine deck of the Churchill I like the the mesh here so you can get some sleep nice warm engine heating up overnight and it just radiates heat for a couple hours I suppose it could be used for that yes or you could try lots of stowage to it I don't think these were standard I don't see many photographs of these in World War two examples possibly they decide it later couldn't tell you this is the exhaust pipe here and they've got the exits for the exhaust pipe there so anything immediately there would get very hot in City yeah I think there used to be extenders on this just judging by the sport because otherwise for me you have the exhaust coming onto the big fuel tank don't have to be fine don't worry about that you got the air louvers behind here then have to be unbolted you take them off and you slap them on the back deck when you're taking on a train yes because the the requirement for any British tank design in this period I'm completely confident that you know this but you might not was that you had to fit through a railway tunnel any railway tunnel in Britain because you don't know where that tank is going to be needed and of course a lot of railway tunnels have got a curve in them which limits the width of the tank to a specific measurement and this tank was designed to have removable air louvers on the side so that it would fit through the the narrowest of of tunnels I have read of troops in the our den so it's the battle de-balled it's probably cold snow everywhere and they had a long journey to make to to rescue that the poor Americans had got into trouble apparently but don't worry there is something something they do not sir yeah or not yeah we can look it up and they loved standing on the rear engine deck because their their costly war their cold feet it would warm up their boots lovely the trouble is they then had to requisition new boots every one because all their leather boots got wrecked do not force dry leather it's not good for it they're mysterious I've always wanted about this mysterious angle on the turret bin here which looks as though it's been designed to miss something as the turret spins but that's pointless because if it's spinning around and you need this much clearance you can need this much clearer and safer or on the bit well I have no idea why they did that but seems to be a waste of space it's a mystery but I can tell you what went into the turret bin because I know you're curious and I have it noted here inside the turret bin there were covers for all the guns five great coats a waterproof cover for the tank ok camouflage net for the tank a match it in a sheath and oil tin ropes for changing the tracks three staves and an intermediate and stave end no I don't know what those last things are but they were in there and they must be impact extremely well yeah that's a lot to fit into that I mean most tanks would have sponson bins and snow which bins around Churchill does not it looks like everything is either in that or just hanging off the side of the turret yep more blankets and and ground sheets would be in rolls on the side oh and that do you know what that is that tube there just behind the commander's hatch dude hell yes he's being very polite because I know that he doesn't know yeah this is a tube that would have signalling flags in it and so the commander who's here will be able to reach behind him and whip out a signal flag and signal to his comrades a message I don't know if this has ever actually done in the field they were trained to do it but I've never heard of it actually being needed use radio just on the range if you're going downrange in training you stick a red flag on to say that you're gonna live and you're going downrange now that said I mean if you know there's lots of radios a lot of the old technology was still used like the wire reels for example so if you're in a larger all the tanks would actually be telephone wire connected because that way you're not broadcasting your unsecured lines you don't have to speak in code and if you gotta go and hurry me loose some wire you lose some wire it's not the end of the world so the old fashioned technology is still very useful even though everybody focuses on the radios mm-hmm yes and the course is also the guy on a motorbike was a common way of getting a message from one place to another true but there is no way of knowing that does he go where yeah that you that you got miss what can you do about that either I was a big problem in 1940 during the fall of France messengers were being sent and not getting their units did not realize that there was an order that they had to get and so they just sat there and the Germans by the skin of their teeth are just punching through everywhere because nobody been told ya you were order to go stop them but for a but for want of a nail I am a fan of the m4 I think people who watch my stuff know that I think this is one of the most underrated vehicles of World War two because of just what it had to do when we name another vehicle that served in every combat theater another tank every combat theater tank or I imagine you've probably checked in advance and you realize if you trapped me here because there isn't one well there are two possibilities one is the Stuart Stuart might have shown up in the China Burma India theater right and the same mathilde to Matilda two showed up in the Pacific showed up in the Soviet front just in the western front up I haven't found reference to it being in the CBI that's not to say it didn't happen the groundstroke Lee doctor Eastern theater and Norfolk but not Western Europe so this tank had to be supported everywhere in the globe and I had to work so I mean you can imagine that for a tank to work in the humid wetness of the Pacific and work in the frigid coals of the Soviet wastelands right that's some pretty good engineering a lot of vehicles would but were they were they planning this in advance though were they designing a tank for use in Europe and or North Africa and then later Oh we also needs to work here and it also needs to work there no they just started in the immediate and of course America is so huge you got thrusting everyone you got swamps in Louisiana you've got the Alaskan cold he got the deserts of Nevada right so they could test this vehicle for operation every way before it got released for sale right and also for just general uses well so the m48 cost in 1942 one of the best tanks in the world they operated over time a perfectly good 76 not quite as good a hole puncher as a 17 pounder but a better overall gun for general tank work okay you know one coming from so of course we're in front of Furies an m4 this is clean this was just the m4a3 was what this vehicle was supposed to be the 17 in 42 this is the diesel powered version uh-huh and the Americans didn't like the diesels very much the Marines use them just because they were available but we gave all the diesel power to the British and to the Soviet so as I said the m4 showed up the Soviets love this mm-hmm I mean I'm not sure they loved it better than the t-34 so there are arguments as to whether or not some units preferred it right there is a book Dmitri Loza wrote a book it's called commanding the Red Army's Sherman tanks it's very easy read I highly recommend it I recommend I haven't read it I will confess it's worth it's it's the main three arrow read it's it's just so pleasant to read it's a series of memoirs it's not a historical assessment and it's just his stories of what he thought of what they called the MPA right and that was an m4 a two just like this vehicle they were happy with the gun and again there's very little on this that the 76 couldn't kill yeah yes you had an issue with a panther from the front or a tiger king tiger from the front but how often did that happen compared to how often would he need rapid fire rounds at something other than a panther from the front yeah so and if you think about this is the same gun as on the m18 hellcat nobody ever complains about the m18 hellcat not being good tank destroyer well that's cool a tank destroyer so it must be good the logic is in EM is completely undeniable but I mean this is one of those vehicles that if you think about what the designers had to do to sustain a vehicle thousands of miles in the factory and they had to set up several factories making it as one Fisher plan Detroit Arsenal there was American locomotive company were billion press steel and the peak production they were making one every half an hour and yeah no other country was matching that except Soviets and the t-34 is an excellent tank for the Soviets but I don't think the t-34 dessous did the Americans just because of the situation Americans were in so yeah it was this the best tank World War two you can argue the point was it the best tank for the Americans in World War two that's the big question answer ah I see your point yes for the particular requirements industrial logistical and so forth then you've got to look at it not as an individual tank in the usual squaring off who would win between this and a panther scenario but actually in winning a war strategically how many of these could we get into the right place and the right and have all the spare parts ready for and all the necessary fuels and so forth right so if you get the tank over here I mean let's say you were supporting an infantry battalion you want to make sure that your entire company shows up so you don't tell one infantry company sorry lads one platoon broke down so you and you you companies you get tanks support and some poor bugger infantryman is gonna have to charge a machine-gun nest because his tank broke down that sherman would not break down like that you knew that you would have tank support when he needed it reading accounts of battles in 1944 in places like France over and over again the Germans get a tank knocked out and then they put a huge amount of effort into recovering that tank and over and over again an allied tank gets knocked out the crew gets out most of them alive usually usually walk back to the depot and they and by later that afternoon they're in a new tank yeah there's a whole lot of myths about the the death rates inside Sherman's these are very very survivable vehicles perhaps not as good as your Churchill's but compared to anything else it is amazing how few tankers were killed yeah in all of World War two in the entire US Army its 1,400 every single type of tank every theater of operations 1,400 tankers killed and in in the carnage of World War two it's barely a blip oh yeah in percentage terms if you're an infantryman you've got something like an eighteen percent chance of getting fatally shot whereas if you're in one of these it's more like three percent yeah big steel boxes are nice safe things to be in yeah and this one of course is a very famous steel box because it has a word that's fury yeah mr. mr. Bradley Pitt was in this tank for a while that's a great tanker movies it as a tanker now you distinguish it between a historically accurate war movie and a tanker movie about the crude that the opinions that you have this is my hell okay Rob we are a family yeah did the scene where all these tanks are lined up and they're just blazing away with the coax the caliber 30 the caliber 50 and it's 76 and they're all in line that's why we became tankers it's just an attitude I think I mean right okay yeah I'm sure the infantry have their own attitude about tankers and we have our own average do by the infantry and everybody rides on the military police but change the transmission on this you've got a line of bolts along the front that's it and so we just unbolt the easel those pull this off all comes out pull the put on the new one water back together you're done so much easier than a panther or even worse the jagdpanther yeah you run over a mine you need to change ie suspension 16 bolts hold on the bogey pull off the bogey put a new bogey back in action compare that to the torsion bar systems where you're dragging broken torsion bars out at the bottom of the tank right so I mean positives and merits but in terms of reliability and repairability this thing is hands-down win it right so again in the one-on-one sherman vs panther you might think well I'll be in the Panther thank you very much but in a war winning situation think ah yes right but the usual who would win thing but like who would win between a knight and a samurai or whatever and you imagine they're standing on a flat piece of ground and each one has declared I am going to fight you and they both then deploy oh I'm the candidate very well and yeah and then they go for it whereas of course tank warfare is not like that and we were having this conversation earlier he who fires first normally wins right because he who's decided to fire first and less he's an idiot has already got himself into a good position loser to believe that that first shot is going to be pretty decisive and he can do that because he got the whole combined arm he got the reconnaissance troops telling where you are he got the infantry supporting the tank so he can sneak into position and after the war the American army the ballistic research labs they did an assessment and they they concluded that on the attack the Sherman was I think three point six times more effective than the Panther right and on the defense it was like a 1.1 well maybe I had that the wrong way around maybe it's one point one times on the attacking three point six and either way mathematically they concluded that the way the Sherman's were being used their overall real-world effectiveness was better than that of a panther right and this thing's got a faster rapid rate of fire and it can acquire targets more easily it's got a faster turret Traverse it does everything a tank needs to do better yep then pretty much any other any other tank until he gets it essentially under insurance though good you can't argue it anyway well m4 the Americans did try to argue because this particular tank this actual physical vehicle was sent here by the Americans in the hope that the British would buy it but by this point the British had developed the Centurion so this was actually this actual individual vehicle was made obsolete by the Centurion but most World War two tanks were made obviously by the Centurion in all fairness that was that was an outstanding design was a bit of a cracker but I take your point as a war winning tool the Sherman takes a lot of beating it does all right so since we're standing in front of this m4a2 I'm gonna do a little bit of a plug here for World of Tanks even just to say so the fury tank people may know it's already available in-game so we're gonna do where it's mentioning the Demitri loads I tank oh yes and it's the m4a2 and the way you tailed it between an m4 a2 and an m4 III is the engine deck because the grille is slightly different so if you're if you're happy to want to fight for the Communist Russians in a Sherman then the Dmitry loads our tank the m4a2 is one to do it okay so these were sent over as lend-lease to the the Russians correct now there are some people to think that the the guards armored units preferred the Sherman over the t-34 I I am suspicious of that claim because I think what happened was that the the units just got whatever tanks were available right but I don't speak Russian I don't go into the archives so take that with a grain of salt well I think a lot of people prefer the tank that they've got they learn how to use their tank they they have their own unit pride and their own equipment pride to some degree and I say no actually we've got these tanks to work quite well and they're they're very good tanks because we use them properly and that was actually as a design question that the Americans had when they were developing equipment the question was do we in America decide what is good for the troops in the field or do we let the troops in the field decide what they want and one of the concerns they had was that the troops in the field who knew the equipment that they had and trusted it would be reluctant to request new improved equipment that they didn't know and trust ah so that was a question that they had and that was part of the reason for example that when d-day happened in the Americans go overseas into Normandy they don't bring any 76 tanks along they have a couple of hundred and seventy-six is sitting in England in two storage depots right but as far as they knew the 75 was getting him all the way across North Africa through Italy all the way dead met Panthers by then there are met Ferdinand's and they were still winning why rock the boat why bring a new type of ammunition why retrain Gunners or mechanics to operate this new 76 tank if what we have works and they left them behind in England and then they had the the Panther panic of June 44 oops yes in a word yes yes but they you know they got past a musket stage at least I think they did someone high commander said you know what I think these rifles will might catch on but again if you think of my own only a war gamer particularly said I want the biggest possible gun and they don't think about the logistical than the training and the maintenance requirements yeah every time you change a piece of equipment all this hog back behind the tooth to tail you got a huge tail that all has to change and is it worth it and at the time they said no one turned out to be an error and they could you could say the same thing of other weapons when there when the Jim P Thada general-purpose machine gun of the British Army was no longer issued a lot of people really liked those guns and they stow them away in in attics and when the next war did come along a lot of these guns has apparently been discontinued just reappeared magically but you want to start a fistfight near us just came that the nine-millimeter is better than 245 as a sidearm there will be a lot of people that are 45 fans and say we should never gone away from the 1911 and gone through the m9 beretta now person he has a tanker Mike but I'm using a pistol to keep the other guys head down while I go away and get another tank I don't worry about the lethal effects Kay right now when we started this we think we're going to be more two sentences yeah we got a little a little bit sidetrack there didn't tell you let's go get I'm calling a halt here okay everyone come on let's go [Music]

Channel: Lindybeige

Views: 544,832

Rating: 4.9427195 out of 5

Keywords: tanks, tank, churchill, sherman, men, two, Lindybeige, ramble, talk, inside, turret, hull, interior, comment, discuss, ww2, wwii, world war two, bovington, museum, loader, sight, periscope, room, space, crampt, chieftain, world of tanks

Id: yc78EZqHA3U

Length: 46min 36sec (2796 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 22 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/newsri]

Master rambler

[u/MavenCS]

After seeing a few of Lindybeiges videos on medieval weaponry, I can't say I'm surprised to see the word "ramble" used to describe a video featuring him