Top 5 Tanks | Chris Copson | The Tank Museum

hello I'm Chris copson I'm a researcher here at the tank Museum and these are my top five tanks they're not necessarily the you know the biggest or the toughest or the heaviest or anything like that this is very much a personal choice and I hope you enjoy it so let's get started [Music] [Applause] please remember to like subscribe or click the little notification Bell if you don't want to miss out on these videos and I'd just like to say thank you to all our patrons for making this possible please join them if you can now I know this is supposed to be my top five tanks this little Contraption isn't really a tank at all it's got tracks it's got armor but it's actually a carrier it's the card and Lloyd carrier it's also they're sometimes known as tankettes now these for the most part lots of countries had them uh we had the carton Lloyd later on during World War II the universal carrier the thing that's sometimes wrongly called the Brin carrier the French had the chenillet the Italians had the caravalotry which is a nice little um sort of flamethrower Contraption but what this is all about and why this is important to me is it's evocative of a particular period in the development of armored Warfare and combined operations now the Cardinal Lloyd as you can see it's very small vehicle crew of two it's actually got the engine from a Model T Ford car it's almonds he bought a Vicar's gun there um mounted on the vehicle to start with and there's a tripod here so if you want to dismant it news independently you can do that um from the war department perspective the other attractive thing about it is it only cost 400 quid so it's cheap you can get quite a few of these things um it's very rudimentary I mean if you sit inside um your head and shoulders actually protrude above the Fairly meager armor plate they were designed as vehicles for infantry support they ended up being used quite a lot of them by the raw tank regiment in a reconnaissance role now what this is all about is something a development British Army in the late 20s early 30s called the EMF the experimental mechanized Force now this is a period when you have quite a few you know very forward-thinking individuals in circulation and I'm thinking of Major General JFC Fuller bony Fuller uh basil little heart I mean guys like this um Martel who was in charge of the experimental uh bridging School um they are really sort of theorizing about the future of armored Warfare and what it's all about is effectively mechanization getting everything on wheels or tracks so you have fast moving hard-hitting armored columns and the number of vehicles available is is fairly immense I mean we have carriers we have got a light and medium tanks uh we've got the Birch gun self-propelled artillery uh we have armored and soft skin troop transports uh we've got the dragon tractor which is used as an artillery prime mover so I mean when you look at it we've got a picture here of the EMF drawn up in review order and this is 1927 and you look at it and you think that is amazingly modern that looks like my definition of a battle group and they put this to the test in some really sort of large-scale Maneuvers 1927 the Eastland versus Westland exercises uh if you want to look it up um Google the Battle of Beresford Bridge this is all about armored Warfare plus air Corporation as well because the RAF are in there assisting and what's going on um the problem is that this runs on for a few years but there are some pretty high bound characters in the general staff and eventually the idea is more or less binned but it doesn't stop there because there are foreign observers we have a photographed of Verna Von blomberg who has um popped over with some of his staff to come and take a look to and of course the Apostle of armored Warfare is Heinz guderian schnella Heinz um I mean he's watching what we're up to um the German general staff are very very interested they're also picking up um on the Russian techniques of deep battle at the time sorry I should have said Soviet not Russian they put those together they synthesize it and they come up with ronum's Creek maneuver Warfare they one of those things I'm nitpicking here they didn't call it Blitzkrieg that comes a little bit later on but what it does just go to show is the likes of little heart Fuller et al they are pioneering some work here with little Vehicles like this that really does cast long Shadow it sets the scene for armored Warfare in the future well into World War II and Beyond this time the shabby and this this is one I've got a a particular affection for um is an extraordinary Beast really is I mean you look at her and you think that's a World War one tank well no actually dated in the 1930s it's a World War II tank but it's got very much a World War One look about it the other thing you think is it's a beast bristling with guns uh massively heavily armored and you look at something like the little German Panzer too ever there and you think how did these guys ever lose but this is obviously it's a French tank and it dates or is in use um in places all the way through World War II in fact under different ownership come to that a moment um the tank itself as I said it's huge you've got a 75 millimeter gun in the hole the secondary elements is a 47 millimeter gun in the turret itself we start to run into one or two problems here though because the 75 um has got no Traverse so the only way you could aim and fire it is to point the tank at something so the job of the driver who sits here is to aim and fire the 75 as well as to obviously Drive the tank um the whole thing about this he's got quite a lot to do um that gun because there's no Traverse there's no way you can really engage a moving Target with that so it's what we call a bunker buster so in tank on tank combat you're down to the 47 millimeter gun in the turret now the problem here is that is a one-man turret it's the poor old Commander is massively overworked he has to aim load and fire that gun and also acquire Target sight up and the only way really to do that I can imagine the full Guy opening the hatch at the back of the turret sitting out on it with his binoculars looking for a Target ducking back in loading the gun and then the target tank he'd see oh where's that gone so there's a couple of sort of problems there really but it is a Hocking great thing and it could take a huge amount of damage um the reason I'm really sub into this one is I spend quite a lot of time on a battlefield a place called favion down towards the Arden and this is all about this is the story of 1940. a bit of background um so um the story we were always told is the French had built imagine a line they were going to sit behind it they weren't interested in armed Warfare that is absolutely rubbish the imaginary line is designed to stop uh incursions from Germany into France and it runs up to the border with Belgium but the French army in fact was moving steadily you know towards the modern use of armor they are forming units called dlms divisions Light Armored diversions and especially dcrs division curaca de reserve and that's an Armored Division equipped with things like this um what happens in 1940 they're not really quite got far enough down the road and flavion the premier DCR the first French Armored Division encounters 7th and 10th Panzer the movements um the problem is that it's an Armored Division equipped with really rather good tanks like this and this probably isn't the best tank that the French were Fielding they bought the somular which is a cracking little medium tank as well but their Logistics their G4 is not that great they're relying on things like tracked fuel tankers to actually try and keep these very thirsty beasts fueled up and mobile the Tank's there of the first DCR are more or less out of fuel they're sitting docks seventh and tenth plans are used there Mobility above anything lighter faster tanks and they effectively destroy uh the first French Armored Division which is one of the Premier assets of the French army in 1940. um these things do though well um commanded these things are actually capable of doing great things it's quite a famous story but a place called stunner uh Captain Pierre bilot took his sharp B into an engagement with German armor and knocked out two pans of fours 11 pounds of threes and took out two pieces of artillery as well his tank was hit 140 times to very little effect and it still went home under its own Steam so Pierre vilot he's a very good tank commander he pays a much better tank commander than his dad was a general if the story is uh is is told but we haven't got time to go into that now the shabby has got one real Achilles heel and that's around this side there is a louvered fitting that is the radiator it sat there on the side of the tank it's quite a large Target if you put a round into that the whole thing stops however ah shall be interesting history uh was captured by the German Army in 1940. somewhat improved so we've got extra armor basically boxes full of concrete added to the front we've also got a radio aerial Mount we've got a jack these were things that all uh added by the German Army and the tank itself was sent to the Channel Islands as um I suppose most likely sort of static pill box over there um I think the German armor are also responsible for the peculiar finish on the turret the Apple Works it almost looks like tar or bitumen or something of that sort and I do wonder whether that's um designed to proof the tank against the Sea Air of you know the coast of Jersey or Guernsey when the Channel Islands are retaken the British army um liberate this tank and she's taken back to the UK for evaluation and the part final part of her history is painted on that side you can just see the word long cross and long cross chertsey was the military vehicle experimental establishment where this vehicle was taken for evaluation post 1945. so this tank is uh the chieftain British Army main battle tank this is a bit of a personal one for me because I remember back in the 1980s seen these things in Germany and on Salisbury Plain and places like that where we're on exercise and being massively impressed by the sheer sort of um uh bulk and noise and everything else that comes with a main battle tank um now the chieftain is a very long serving tank um started off with British Army in 1963 I think went right way through to the late 90s so it's a true Cold War vehicle and it went through quite a few Evolutions I think we're up to about Mark 12 or Mark 13. so the chieftain changes during the course of its service this embodies really what is the British Army's ideas on what a main battle tank needs to be able to do which is to knock out the enemy and absorb punishment so we have got a very heavy thickly armored tank and we've got a massive 120 millimeter tank gun that at the time that's the most powerful tank gun in the world this is at variance to what other people are doing the likes of the West German Army leopard is a lot more a lot lighter a lot more mobile um the French AMX is the same but the British army is really favoring Firepower and protection over Mobility now the mobility thing is probably just as well because the engine in the back of this tank was legendarily awful this is the British Leyland l60 multi-fuel now Leyland Motors British Leyland if you asked most Brits about that um you'll get a rye expression and memories of some of the cars they've built uh things like the Austin Allegro and the Morris Marina and these are Dreadful Dreadful cars and I'm afraid um a lot of that possibly not the design but certainly the build quality goes into this uh diesel engine um the thing itself when you take it out it's I mean it's got advantages it's not just an engine it's a power pack see what the engine plus the cooling systems everything like that in a big block so you can put a crane in lift out of the back of the tank and stick another one in the bad news is you'll probably have to do that quite often because they had massive problems uh oil leaks General sort of debilitation Chieftain was a tank that broke down even more than most tanks that's actually saying something if you know about tanks although a friend of mine who spent a substantial part of his career on Chieftain said that as long as the tank was worked and worked hard he was fine the engine just needed to be kept warm kept running if you put the tank in a tank shed and leave it there for three or four months you are in for a world of pain and grief but if the tank is run constantly then um not so many problems by a long talk anyway as I said this is a tank that effectively saw the British army through a substantial part of the Cold War served in British Army of Iran and in various other places um the other thing I would just like there's a mention in connection with this tank is something that is the bane of the life of any tank man this is called track bashing now a lot of people don't understand the fact that tracks were appallingly badly and quickly so you've got track links car steel and then you've got the track pins that actually run through to join them together those little holes and the pins themselves where the tracks generally stretch um and it is pure abrasion and eventually you can't adjust them out anymore you actually have to um take effectively yourself take one one the adjusted down and actually take a link out because the track has worn that badly um if you've ever come here you can see at the degree of abrasion on this tank not on the tracks but actually on the sprocket wheels at the back now another thing a lot of people don't understand is that not all the wheels of a tank are powered in fact there's only one set generally which is um powered which is attached to the engine via the final drive those the sprocket says the tooth Wheels sometimes at the front sometimes at the back but if you look at sprocket wheels on this one there's one new sprocket which has got nice Square teeth and there's one old sprocket and the teeth are worn down uh to a frazzle they're very very pointed so that's Chieftain um periodic problems but this is a tank that I've seen on exercise always been impressed with one of my favorites so next up is this this is a very very rare Beast indeed this is the last surviving intact Sherman DD Sherman duplex Drive tank um now a little bit about the Sherman to start with a lot of people rubbish the Sherman uh I don't I mean the Sherman M4 1942 that is the best medium tank in the world arguably and it is a tank that's capable of mass production it's capable of evolution I mean it's being produced a number of different plants so some have cast holes somehow welded holes um you've got some composite ones it's capable of up gunning so it goes from a 75 millimeter gun to a high velocity 76. um and it's got a number of different engines because they couldn't find I mean the numbers you're talking about the Sherman are huge 50 000 tanks they couldn't fit frame engine to each says half a dozen different engines put in these things including some quite odd ones like the multi-bank um and a Reagan engine so that's the Sherman um I know it's not as big and tough as some of the later German tanks but certainly in the early part of the war it's more than capable of taking care of Panzer one two three four you get problems when it comes to the likes of tiger and panther however what this is all about is Dean day Operation Overlord the Allied invasion of Europe and what we are doing here is to kick in the front door of festung guropa Fortress Europe the West Wall this is going to be a massive undertaking in fact if any of you guys if you've not been to Normandy you really need to go because only when you get there you appreciate the scale of the operation if you land at Western porticon that's the Eastern end of The Landing beaches and you drive down to the other end down to point du Hawk and west takes you just in your car just driving down the road it's a couple of hours this is a massive massive undertaking now this was going to be tough and bloody because the wehrmacht and the Craig's Marine had had four years to prepare for what they knew was coming so as you go down that Coast you see countless gun positions artillery batteries pill boxes to Brooks things like that the whole Coast is absolutely crammed with defensive assets so when you think about this landing on an enemy occupied Beach is going to be the most difficult and dangerous thing you can do I mean you've probably all seen Saving Private Ryan now most of that film is the story is a bit of a fairy tale but that first 22 minutes that's an accurate depiction of what it was like uh landing on a hostile Beach like Omaha now if you can get armor onto the beach at an early stage it's going to save you a world of grief and pain and that's exactly what we have here so enter stage left um a slightly eccentric um but brilliant inventor a guy called Nicholas strassler he is Hungarian and he figures out how to make 28 tons of metal Sherman tank float all you do is you put a screen around it this massively increases the displacement of the tank if I sort of hangy underneath the boat effectively it's braced on the inside with scaffold and inflatable tubing crew actually have to stand on top they brace themselves against it because when you launch this into the sea it's a very very dangerous undertaking in itself because if you get a wave over the top of that 28 tons of metal sinks very rapidly indeed and unfortunately that's what happened quite a lot of the American tanks in particular they launched too far out the current took them they broached and they sank but those that got ashore did very good work now if you think about the approaches to D-Day you're a German Gunner you're on your Cliff top you are the ultimate Target Rich environment down there you have got lcis and lcts coming in Higgins boats destroyers dashing them out lots of things to shoot at if you think about this when it's in the water looks like a little brown boat you can almost ignore it until it hits grounds the crew fire the explosive bolts to drop the screen and that German Gunner is turning around to his mate saying hang on there's a tank down there just as an he Rand comes in through the slit this pillbox so as I say getting armor onto the beach at an early stage and the British Army in particular 79th armored there's a whole range of different weird Contraptions to make that job easier that is the Sherman DD over DD bit should have mentioned this earlier at the back it's not just a boat it's called propellers they operate off the main drive so this is a Contraption not only floats it swims comes onto the beach does its job we are incredibly proud to have the last original surviving intact Sherman DD in this Museum being a first world war historian this British mark IV had to be my number one tank every time it is tank was built in 1917 more of these were built than in the other type of tank in the first 1200 of the things and also there's something slightly peculiar about this more British tank crew and more German tank crew went to war in the mark IV than any other type of vehicle I'll come to that a bit later but first of all what is about these tanks I mean I've spent an awful lot of time on the first world Battlefield places like the Som and kombre and these just really compelling machines they really are totally revolutionary for their time um now in atoms this isn't really a tank it's not a high Mobility weapon it is I I tend to say it's almost a bit more like a medieval Siege Tower than anything because this is a slow moving machine on the road it can manage four miles an hour off-road probably about two and what it's got to do is plod the few hundred meters across no man's land flatten the wire knock out the machine guns and let the Infantry through behind um in terms of the operation of the vehicle it's pretty horrific for the crew as well because you've got a crew of eight now this is a male so she's got six pounder guns or should I say he it's got six pounder guns either side the females have machine guns so that takes care of four that crew they are Gunners and they occupy the sponsors are inside of the thing but where are the other four well you've got the commander and the driver up at the front but they can basically they can put the brakes on and make the thing go forward that's about all they can't steer steering is down to the remaining two crew members at the back um the gearsman and they can also part at one track at a time so the tank can actually be steered so what you've got just a recap there is a vehicle that is steered by a committee of four I have enough friends who have problems with a single steering wheel in their motor car this is absolute nightmare and inside the conditions are horrific it is um incredibly hot it the air is full of carbon monoxide cordite smoke oil sprays everywhere the tank pitches about and get burned on the engine uh knocked out I mean they are health and safety would run right on these things they're appalling environment to go Ward but these guys still did they were incredibly tough incredibly Brave and they wanted to do their job now the other thing about this one mark IV this is the tank of conbre and combre if anybody knows anything about the Royal tank regiment um comrade is the first effectively big tank attack and it takes place in November 1917. by that time we've got these things on Western Front in numbers and it's an attack by 420 odd tanks but there are other things brought in it's combined operations so we have tanks we have an artillery fire plant we've got infantry trained to operate the tanks and aircraft trained to cooperate by strafing bombing carry out and connoissons so it's the it's the first time really where all these elements of Modern Warfare come together and the mark IV is right in the middle um the tank itself you know had major problems um it's not exactly an unfried weapon system but it's unreliable and it was prone to um come across from Battlefield so we have things to assist us and a lot of these were actually created by the tank or invented by Tank men up on the top there that's a fasi it's a big bundling logs mostly put together by the Chinese labor Corps in fact and the idea is that you drop that into a trench to help you get across because this will cross a gap up to about three meters wide any wider shall fall in the other thing are on ditching beams that help you get through mud I mean as I say a lot of these are inventions of the tank men themselves so they are brave tough and also resourceful now combre is a massive success in some ways we knock a hole in the Hindenburg line toughest bit of the German front line which is six miles wide and four miles deep doesn't go well after that but I won't go into that now um but the whole thing about it is that an awful lot of tanks are left abandoned on the battlefield and some of them are recovered by the Enemy by the German army and they rearm them uh mend them refuel them and then send them back against us now you know I mentioned that more German and British tank crew went to war in these vehicles than any other that is because of kombre the German Army built a tank the a7v the stunt pans it wasn't really good they didn't build many 20 odd but there are getting on for a hundred what they call boyta Panzer um captured tanks uh captured by the German Army and used back against the British army so as I said this is a remarkable vehicle more British and more German tank crew go to war in a mark IV than any other so that's my top five tanks um I hope you enjoyed the choice if you can please subscribe to our YouTube channel or support us on patreon foreign foreign

Channel: The Tank Museum

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Keywords: Bovington, Dorset, Tanks, Tankfest, tanks, tiger, chieftain, tank museum, second world war, world war two, top five tanks, tank chats, david fletcher, british army, tiger 131, royal armoured corps, tank regiment, RAC, tank museum bovington, tanklife, bovingtontank museum, military history, ww2, ww1, armoured car, tankchats, army, veteran, wwii history, world war 1, world war ii, war history, royal navy, ww2 history, royal air force, wwii museum, wwi, ww2 tanks, ww2 weapons

Id: 6pIXyXL_kWM

Length: 30min 51sec (1851 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 17 2023