Merkava: The perfect Tank?

time to look at another modern tank and this time the director of the trim and panther museum munster will give us a brief overview on the history and technology of the israeli america 1 2. hello everyone we are today here at the german panzer museum and here is the director of hearts my pleasure hello and we will talk about the makava the merkkava as i learned from the wikipedia okay yes probably is not my strong to as you might have noticed my neither and i i guess the israeli fans are already typing so from the pronunciation help of wikipedia it seems to be merkava but help us please our make videos and send us a link how it's properly pronounced so but we know the meaning chariot kriegswagen so it's a relatively uh generic term it's just uh it's a chariot it's the chariot um the more interesting name is the iron wall of zion taken from the um zionistic movement from the 1920s consciously taken as as a symbol that this first original israeli tank design should be the iron wall of the state exactly and i guess we talk about all that's special about this thing right yeah the origin a bit and then some special ah so just the whole just the whole package okay people sit down now i make i'll make it show the basic points okay um the basic points are after israel was founded um they needed to have an army quickly obviously so the first thing they did was to buy old tanks naturally they bought all german tanks later updated german tanks then they bought french amx tanks they bought british tanks they bought whatever they could problem was when you can buy a tank it's usually outdated or it's much too expensive so they they had their tanks in the idf the israeli defense force but always one or two generations behind so first thing they they became were masters of renovation they massively remodeled their tanks the the israeli shermans are nothing like all other germans it's very interesting what they what they made with what they had um very interesting actually a video of its own for you but um not the point here thing is what they really wanted was something a tank which was modern at the time and that was always available not just by sheer luck if there's something left over from other armies so what they wanted to do was as a second step to make a cooperation with the united kingdom great britain and the idea was that they would support the chieftain program of the british and then build it as a licensed model in israel so they had would at least even it's a foreign model an own factory to build their own tanks autonomously um sadly politics came in the way or the the bargaining about oil with the arabs and the israelis and the british led to the fact that um this whole concept didn't come through so once again the israelis were standing there and saying okay we need a tank we really need a tank now especially since the uh the newer soviet models were delivered to the arab states in the neighborhood at this time so what they did was okay we take the money we have and we build our own tank and the machava is the product that came out of it um timeline first was relatively quick um they went to the drawing board the idea was born in 1970 an own tank of for all needs or special needs the design started in 71. the plan was to present the tank in 79 so roughly eight years and they kept the plane they presented it at the day of independence in 79 and then far more interesting thing is they cut costs um they were allowed 100 million by the israeli parliament and they just used 65 million so they they left over a third of the money they got that's incredible if you know anything about tank history yeah [Music] it's more more more and then fail and then fail exactly uh main battle tank 70 comes to mind always more expensive same time and then project is dead thing is they did not only keep the time plan and cut cost they also built one of the best tanks in the world so first of all the the overall assessment of the merkava is always one of the best tanks in the world usually followed by but because it's designed for a very specific role which is nothing bad but it has to be said if if people want to talk about the best tank in the world we always think about versatile all roles main battle tanks and the makava is nothing like that the makava was built especially for the needs of the israeli state and everything in it reflects that so with this segway we come to the technical aspects of the tank because it's really interesting it's one of the most interesting tanks we have in our collection i'm very thankful if you have it um our mekhava is a is a answering uh give answering uh gift from the israelis in 1998 um the germans um gave a leopard one i guess or two one leopard i don't remember as a present to the israelis and in 2004 we received this merkava as a return very nice what we are seeing here is a merkava one slash two the israelis don't throw away anything they just upgrade and upgrade they are now i think at the mecca of four version three or so uh so this is a merkava one with added aspects of the um of the model two um we get into detail in the next moment the main thing about the mekkava is always crew first the survivability of the crew is the main thing everything in this tank is designed to rescue to save the crew it even accepts that a mobility kill that the system breaks down that the system can't be used any further uh that the chance for this is higher main point is this is one of the very very few tank designs in which the engine is in the front um i don't know if any serious produced main tank model where this is the case maybe you do there are prototypes oftentimes but it's never been done normally the the engine is always in the back so the israelis or more to the point israelite the main responsible person the general who designed this with a designer those two were the the big minds behind this thing um and the idea was okay we put the tank the engine in the front of the tank has a massive shield and yes this means that as we know uh sixty percent of the fire are concentrated on the front of the tank normally in the statistical um case and uh oh we have to move because the motion sensors here okay i i think okay if we are i think we have enough light yeah okay enough so um get used to the color change um where was i they put the engine in the front um yes and accepted that even if there are multiple hits and the engine is killed the crew will still more likely survive because they have this shield in front of this massive shield and as a bonus they can get out of the tank in the back because the one thing that was made possible was that there's a big clam hedge on the back i'm going to show this here this hatch opens in two parts it is a big door it goes up and down and the main idea people always think is to get the the wounded out of there and to get people who have to flee out of there quickly and that's a bonus that's all it's in any it's um it's one point they had in mind when they designed this main point of this clam hedge in fact was to get ammunitions into the tank quickly because the idf tanks were character characterized over the time as snipers they're very good at shooting this is the main the main asset but they burn through ammunition so quick they oftentimes ran out so when they designed the sayings yes this added to the survivability but the main point was to get ammunition in there quickly but again second point for the crew even if the tank is a mobility kill they can get out quickly there they don't have to go through the hedges over the top one thing that's pretty counter-intuitive which you wouldn't expect is it's actually a big ball of fuel everywhere in this tank and the turret and the side even in the in the hull and the downside everything everywhere is a layer of diesel and the first idea is i've got diesel will explode no it won't it it may explode but diesel has to get two hits one hit to open the tank so that oxygen can enrich the diesel and then a second hit everything in the mecha was self-sealing so this this risk is quite low but if you have these hollow structures with fuel in it with a liquid in it you have a perfect effect against heat charges against heat ammunition everything in there if the heat hits the main cover there the heat ray will diffuse in the in the fuel uh or in the in the um in the air they are also basically composite armor that's the point i was aiming at it's composite armor because they didn't have chop m armor when chopping armor was um invented and the natto uh finally distributed amongst it they didn't give it to the israeli friends so they have to invite uh invent something in themselves so that's the version of it um interesting thing is the diesel this way is very um very well um distributed so the weight of the tank is quite good which is needed because the front engine makes very top-heavy very front heavy and the list goes on and on for example we are talking about desert warfare here so the crew needs water and instead of improvising something with water on the person or throwing it there's a 60 liter water tank designed again as a heat barrier so everything there is for this for this aim let the crew survive normally you say fifty percent of each part in tank um contributes one way or the other to the protection and the mekawatt said it's uh 75 so everything makes the people survive and the numbers actually support this thing um the israelis are very some some people say fetishistic about number statistics because they wanted when the mercator was designed they wanted to know how are tanks stopped how are they destroyed which angle does the ammunition hit which ammunition does it what happens after the ammunition hits and the rough numbers are uh that all the pre-merchava models of the israelis had a chance of sixty percent that um a hitting shell would penetrate the mekava only has forty percent that's a third that's very good but the more interesting numbers are that the um the um the danger of fire fell from 30 to 13 so even if the tank was hit the biggest fear of the tanks the fire in the tank was massively reduced um this is added by the fact for example that um in the in the um in the um when they looked at the statistics of the of the prima cover tanks they saw there were very very many um burn injuries for the crews because the hydraulics in the turrets tended to rip and produce an aerosol which then burned ignited so the crew was sprayed with with hydraulics and then this thing lit up or they better said the the the air in the turret was filled with the arizona then this lit up um so what they did was they designed an electric hydraulic turret mechanism and everything hydraulic is back in the turret basket so there is no fuel no fluid in the turret just the electric parts and the list goes on and on and on uh for example the the the turret basket in the back is not just a thin iron it's actually armored steel so again it's it's again for especially effective for heat but also for kinetic energy shells orbit laser um yeah did i forget something there are so many aspects about this you you noted about they looked at the numbers what what blue skill and i think these chains yeah that's then exactly so we we now move to the what makes america one slash two so many things were changed after the cover had this first um battlefield experience which were by the way very impressive the mekava in general held up over the decades very well very few were destroyed um yeah and one thing they found out was that there was a attribution typical functional typical shell trap beneath the turret so um and their main the main danger was always the rpg because they they had to to um to take this in consideration so they added this ball and chain system so what we are seeing here is a relatively lightweight it's not it's not massive armor it's just this material it's it's metal i don't know if you can hear it's very massive and and it's not intended to stop anything it just intended to make the make the heat charge ignite so that it starts the work of destruction too early and then fizzles out in the air beneath the turret works very well another added thing is that they added some kind of gravel on top um it's everywhere on the on the top um surface of the tank and in german it's the wonderful word glensgraad it's how how polished the surface is and how it reflects the sunlight so instead of making color camouflage they make structure camouflage so if this thing stands somewhere in the desert it blends the very well in if you look even if you look from above it doesn't reflect anything yeah we mentioned the turret basket that came with a with the second one the mekava also has because urban comet was always an option or a danger both for them the commander has actually a mortar to its suspension yes and um they in the beginning they had a 30 millimeter motor and then they generously upgraded to a 60 millimeter motor just for the location you need it you you see an anti-tank team behind the ditch or behind a hatch or something and then you just pound into it interesting thing the commander has an umbrella hitch so his he can open all sides of his hatch and is still protective overhead which on the other hand is pretty ironic because one of the main problems for the israeli defense force are uh actually decapitated commanders because um shirley commanders always liked to to see and feel the battlefield so they made the classical move and got out of the hatch which is a technically bad idea on the battlefield filled with splinters and ammunition um yeah but there you are they they made a risk assessment and they thought okay i think the the tank has a better chance to survive if i risk myself and see what's happening because as we all know you're pretty much deaf and blind inside the tank generation and awareness in the tank situation awareness another point exactly um the tank is never alone if that happens something went bad very very uh strongly um you always have your infantry with you and you know the classical pictures from from every war commander looking out platoon leader of the infantry standing there and there yelling at each other the israelis actually bought built in a telephone um i don't know if it's this case or this over there because we don't have the telephone it's been taken out but uh if you're an infra squad leader and you want to talk with your tanker you just go up there get out the telephone and talk to him because it's coupled it's um coupled with his headset um brilliant easy design um strangely never copied by other main battle teams i mean we should end and here in the cold war because the the united states headed in the second world war i think yeah but then we talked about this before but it it seems it was never yeah and not a standard feature i find it very strange because it's so cheap and easy to realize and you always have this problem of of on the point coordination between tankers and infantry but what do i know my my thesis my my my my educated guess here is i assume that nato and the soviets were too much focused on on large-scale warfare for in the cold war mainly and and that didn't that wasn't a mere detail for them probably i guess you could say that but on the other hand one thing that they really had on their mind was the the nuclear battlefield as a rubble field it's always it's always about how do the soldiers survive and fight in the nuclear wastelands which if you think about tactical nukes and the big nukes on the cities you will always have broken ground which makes infantry even more important even if there are no cities left how long can can infantry survive in such a battle suit outside anyway yeah they have to go out fight and get back but they have to call it yeah but now we're hitting on the point that i find most interesting when that has nothing to do with cover that they never thought the nuclear battlefield really through if you look at the at the forge rift and the manuals for how to use tactical nukes it's always do it but there's no how and for what it's just yeah just more bang for the buck and then use it as classical artillery but there's the problem you just mentioned about the just we will do it okay we we do aggress um so i think um aya one thing that made was made possible also by the engine in the front is that in the back side there's a very large space in which the crew actually large space for a tank yeah agreed but it's because i was inside yesterday and i was like i thought this is a large tank and actually yeah for a tank it's large and for me it was like yeah on the one hand but for tankers it's luxurious it's lush for example when the when the israelis presented this tank on the parade they made um fun of the world the way they um they drove on the battleground on the parade ground and showed the tank and then they opened the climb hedge and out came 10 fully equipped infantry soldiers which agreed had to sit like this in there until they got out but they did it uh in the first one or two years um the world wondered if this is actually a main battle tank slash armored fighting vehicle for the infantry in one that means there's for the normal crew much space in it which on the other hand is as isn't as it's an israeli tendency filled up with even more ammunition so they are i think the the stock number for them is 62 shells and they go up to 88 if they use every corner which they tend to do that's a lot that's that's the last medium small caliber not small color like world or two around yeah um but the one thing is um and again that goes back to crew survivability it allows the crew to work properly they are not exhausted by just sitting in the tank and operating it like in so many t-tanks where the crew is just grinding through and exhausted after the after the um after they went in this tank they actually can live which is needed too because um oftentimes the macava are used in stationary fighting so that you live in the tank every tanker knows that you have to make your tank some kind of your home so this is pretty cool and additional effect is the driver is seated classically in the front on from here the left side and unlike in other tanks he's not com compartmentalized he's not shut off by armored wall because the the armor wall is replaced by the engine in front of them he is behind that and they decided to left the the way to the driver open two things first the driver can escape if it's needed and the team is together such factors were highly valued it's not it's not all about techniques it's how do the the crew members work together how they can see them and they can look after each other and they can pull each other out without going out and then reach to the hedge like it's normally done so that's another point and if you add all this up and i'm sure i've forgotten some points it's a it's a tank that's unique not because of the yes also because of the technical solutions but in the viewpoint to optimize everything to let the crew survive and in doing it very well wow i think that about covers it i think i don't have any more questions no no classical gun in the front one one and five okay in this in this case i don't know if the upgrade is with the four yeah 105 and 8 is a lot yeah yeah and ah yeah disadvantages um there are not many but one thing is first of all it's very as i said front heavy which has to be uh compensated and the driver always has to has in mind and one thing is you have this message massive engine in front which gets hot and which kind of plays funny with the thermal optics sometimes so they have this healed field heat field in front of you so that that's one problem but um obviously since the macava is still in use it's it's been solvable or it's acceptable um but i felt comply to say at least one disadvantage because it's not a perfect tank it's just the perfect solution for their problems and their needs yeah that's a good password as always it's very important i mean i want scott the question how you would think infantry doctrine would like in the next 20 years and basically answer the question with what is your strategic situation and on what is your your goals and objectives and about this and you always what are your resources you have there's no general solution for for something correct is do you fight in a in a tank on open fields in europe or or an eastern front or yeah or like in the desert and and urban combat is regular or something it's to support your point um behind this camera where you are now sitting is the s 103 the s tango of the swedes built roughly in the same time complete different design looks like two looks like a computer game two different sides with different technologies but also again completely optimized for their needs at this point so um speaking this way it's just it's actually surprising how similar main battle tanks are in general it's surprising that they are not more specialized versions but then again that costs money and it has the the potential of failure one main difference between the two is this i think has proven itself in combat and for this we don't know if it would have worked out yeah because uh there's there's i think one pre-world stuff i read in ncupidio where they discussed i think different aircraft types and one guy just wrote well the discussion will be solved in the next war who was right the the proponents of a or b yeah and we will see and sometimes in this case we know for the s tank it could be perfect for the situation but it could also fail because something in practice doesn't work out correct or the service would have decided to just nuke speed yeah could have happened too okay okay thank you very much my pleasure thank you thank you for watching and see you next time bye bye

Channel: Military History Visualized

Views: 308,722

Rating: 4.8821721 out of 5

Keywords: Merkava, Israel's Tank, IDF Tank, Merkava I, Israel's Chariot

Id: xW8cvel5G1w

Length: 23min 35sec (1415 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 12 2021

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