Top 5 Tanks | Lazerpig at The Tank Museum

hi my name is laser Pig we're here today to talk about tanks Nature's most ferocious of predators but even these Majestic hulking behemoths are under threat from man's Relentless push forward every year thousands of tanks are left abandoned by their former owners left outside to offend for themselves against the harsh Wilds of Nature and many simply won't survive but foundations like this the tank Museum here at Bevington have worked tirelessly to bring these proud and Noble and Majestic to creatures in from the cold and offer them Sanctuary where they can feel safe and Thrive once again and with your help might finally one day be released back into the wild come with me now as I laser Peg God's greatest mistake hubbles through this Majestic Cathedral of armored Warfare in a desperate attempt to find just five things that I can talk about in a vaguely comedic way on this one part award seeking documentary that means now come on now come on I've got a pie in the [Music] oven this video has been made possible by our supporters on patreon our YouTube members and our super thanks donors please join them if you can and support the tank Museum and thanks for watching now I know what you're thinking laser pick you might be smashing in frustration angrily into the comments pausing only briefly to wipe some Cheeto dust from that one comfortable t-shirt you always wear or trying desperately not to chip your delicate black nail varnish depending on which of the two sides of my demographic you fall into laser pick you're a serious a semi-serious historian you L the charge against the verbus and that great myth of German technical Supremacy during the second world war so what what are you doing standing in front of a King Tiger declaring it to be one of your favorites let me tell you a little secret de your child your favorite tank does not need to be the greatest tank in the world it can in fact be any tank you want it does it doesn't need to be Tales of her it heroism sung around the campfires at night it can be your favorite tank for whatever reason you want justifiable to reasons only to yourself self and so it is with the King Tiger by race this is an absolutely awful tank it was ridiculously heavy I mean apparently they have problems with the floor cracking here every time they move the damn thing this is solid concrete by the way it was overwhelmingly underpowered it was extremely expensive it was incredibly unreliable It could only be used on clear days with hard ground and it was manned exclusively by people who had been taught how to pose heroically in front of cameras more than how to man a tank but that's not the point the point is it looks magnificent look at it it's huge look at this gigantic Cannon look at this huge sashy that it's on it looks ferocious you look at this thing with the same manner that you look at a monster truck I mean yes a monster truck is not a practical truck I wouldn't want to help my friends move uh move house and one but that's not the point when you see a monster truck crush a Ford Anglia in an arena it ignites something within you that that that childhood's wonderment deep deep inside you and that is what the King Tiger is if you give a child a crayon this is the tank that they will draw I I I I want the biggest gun and and the most amount of armor and I want it to be bigger than my house and I want it to be bigger than Kevin's house and I want to sit up there on the top lording it over all the peasants in their smaller inferior tanks that is why I love the King Tiger this is the Matilda 2 by rights this is not a very good tank now that is going to make a lot of people very angry in the comments I can see you it's fine I know but it's not very good I'm sorry it's small it's cramped it's expensive it was ridiculously hard to maintain it was always breaking down and yes this 2 pounder gun this 40 mm an absolutely brilliant gun back in the day in 1940 as any British person will tell you the second you mention it in fact I'm generally surprised one hasn't popped it already but besides the point the two pounder gun fantastic though it was back in the day as an anti-tank gun that wasn't really the problem the British were having in the desert contr to popular belief when the British and German tanks met each other in those great clashing jewels of armor in the desert it would be typically the British who would have the upper hand the Germans would then Retreat and the British would charge in after them like the great C Cavalry Charges of old like the days where we fought against Napoleon at waterl charging in fighting the Germans and following them straight into a Minefield or into a predesignated artillery strike or in more often than not into an ambush by those gigantic 88 mm flat cannons which would go through most British tanks like they were made of paper and in spite of the two pounder being one of the best anti-tank guns of the 1940s trying to hit a flat gun the big gun though it was about a th000 MERS away while half of it buried in a ditch to try and cover it with your little 40 mm solid Shot firing gun was like trying to Dart a fly while sitting on a spacehopper not an easy task but the good thing is the Matilda is actually it's Saving Grace in fact is its armor 60 mm at the front which is Cass which thanks to the laws of energy exchange is actually a bit more bit more effective than flat plate and it's this armor this stubbornness which made it quite slow which meant that the lighter armored faster British chanks would charge in to fight the Germans and would all get taken out and then the Matilda twos would Rumble into view and at that range at the same range the fl8 actually had trouble penetrating that frontal armor more often than it would bounce off or just cause massive huge dents and the Matilda commanders now seeing a battlefield with explosions going off around them shots hitting the front of their armor and a legion of friendly tanks in front of them all dead and on fire they would all simultaneously look at each other and go no thank you and leave thus saving the lives of the crew so it would be the crew who would always look at the stubbornness of the Matilda as their Saving Grace hence its name the Queen of the Desert but by the end of the desert campaign the Matilda had been regulated to secondary roles by the time Italy came along it was basically just a glorified mind sweeper and by the time Normandy had come it was basically regulated to non-combat roles or phased out entirely unfortunately the tank only exists as a sort of way for tiabo to Lad up the the proess of the Great British tank during the Desert campaign just to rub it in the face of all the Americans who like to tell us that we didn't have a decent tank until the Sherman came along I digress but if the tank is so bad why do I love it here's the secret I've been to many a wargaming model hobby tabletop wargaming stores in my life from ones in America to ones in Germany to one in St Petersburg to ones here in Britain to ones in that most despised horrid pit of Humanity Birmingham and in every single one of those places you will always find people who look a bit like well me minus the uh minus the drip of course overweight and a little bit beardy and each and every single one of those beardy history boys and their Cardigans starting every goddamn sentence with well here's the thing and going off a long hourong temper tantrum rants about the second world war using facts that only they are exclusively qualified to talk about will eventually turn and try to judge your position in this social hierarchy and they will ask you what is your your favorite tank this is not an honest question they are asking this just to judge you they want to judge you based on your choice but I've often found regardless of who you're talking to regardless of where you are in the world if you tell them my favate tank Matilda too they'll always look at you and go H nice choice it shuts them up that's why this will always be one of my favorites in the days of old when the stonemasons guild was actually a guild for stonemasons they would start an apprentice stonemason off by giving him a brick a solid plain brick usually made out of granite and once that Apprentice had managed to hone his skill enough and carve it into a perfect sphere then his apprenticeship was decreed over and he was declared a master in our am yet dramatic historian Society anyone who is just getting into the weird Whimsical and wonderful yet very sweaty world of World War II history will be told that the tiger is the best tank of the second world war it had the best gun it had the best armor it was the best tank that Germany could make at the time in fact in its debut in 1942 it was practically Invincible almost nothing could take it down it was the most powerful and the most advanced tank of the war for about about two years and then you're told that the Sherman was overall a better tank the sh with its weaker armor and weaker gun you've just been handed a brick and by the time you can explain to us why the Sherman is a better tank than the tiger you'll have crafted that brick into a sphere and your apprenticeship will be decreed as over you have become the master but of course we don't have time for you to carve bricks into spheres so I'm just going to tell you what the answer is anyway you can pretend that you made it up and and then everyone will be very impressed with you anyway now yes you can get a a tiger and a Sherman and a field have them point at each other over open sights and the tiger will win that battle each and every time so why does that make the Sheran a better tank well let me tell you the secret dear child you see when the Sherman gets destroyed its crew statistically survive they get out of the tank they walk back to the depot and they get another Sherman and then they get five of their Sherman buddies to come along because hey there's a tiger in that field let's go get it and then when the tiger gets destroyed the crew get out they walk back to the depot and there isn't another tiger there waiting on them in fact there probably won't ever be a tiger there waiting on them in fact most tiger Crews would spend the latter half of the war Manning field guns or for being infantry you see the problem is the tiger is a very very complicated machine as I'm sure the maintenance crew here at the tank Museum will happily tell you it required special Imports mainly tungsten which had to come from Turkey it required special Craftsman with special dedicated tools and special precision machine equipment to build and when it was built it required its own special train Carriage which required its own special tracks to be moved from the factory it needed its own special crane to hoist set up onto said track or onto a onto a boat if it needed to be moved for God knows whatever reason it needed its own special maintenance crew who needed their own special vehicle and so on so forth you get the picture the Sherman however didn't need any of that the Sherman could be built in a car factory by semiskilled labor in around 3 hours give or take well some factories claim they could do it in an hour but I wouldn't like to test that theory it didn't need its own special rail Carriage it didn't need its own special crane it could be placed on any rail Carriage you want it could be lifted by any crane that you'd typically find in any us dockyard therefore it could be shipped by pretty much any boat anywhere it could be built in the thousands it could be shipped in the thousands and it could be deployed in the thousands crewed by pretty much anyone and maintained by pretty much anyone with just a little bit of training whereas the tiger took about two weeks to build the Sherman on the other hand could be built shipped Across America shipped across the Atlantic outfitted for combat in England and then shipped to the front lines in less than a week the tiger took two weeks just to build alone which meant that by the time that tiger was finally arriving at the front lines 700 Shermans had now arrived in France and that is the beauty of the Sherman that is the genius behind its design it's it's very easy to build big and say I want the biggest gun and the most amount of crap and the the most amount of technology and a on a huge sassy that's like a gigantic Behemoth than it is to build small and build clever than it is to build using what already exists taking advantage of existing technology existing things that you can find around you existing infrastructure and then build it in such a way that it could be cruded by by anyone and maintained by anyone with nothing but a hammer a spanner and a roll of duct tape and that is why I love the Sherman and that is why it's a better tank than the tiger this Choice may seem controversial but I am if anything a man of controversy this is the T of 2 in my opinion one of the worst tanks ever mass-produced of the Modern Age so why is it my favorite allow me to explain because you're probably confused so some of you in the military analyst community may be aware of a group of individuals called politely the reformers started by started in the 1970s by a pentagon Think Tank called the fighter plane Mafia These are a group of individuals who rely far too much on Grand expensive unproven technology techologies these unproven Technologies being of course radar and missiles and what have you and that these weapons only exist to fill the retirement paycheck of some fatbottom Pentagon General they instead believe that in order to win a war against say Russia or China we should instead be concentrating on rugged and reliable Technologies and therefore we should flood the battlefield with cheaply made simple and basic weapons and win a future War entirely on numbers against Russia and China I'm sure you can see the flow in their argument but thankfully in our reality the reformers lost the argument they spent most of their time in the Pentagon rallying against the F-15 and wasting all this taxpayers money and building their own version of the F-5 fighter jet they called project Redbird which they attempted to sell to Congress by whipping the public and the Press into to a frenzy calling it a turkey saying it was too heavy to dog fight blah blah blah it would never win a fight against the rugged and reliable mig21 and then of course the F-15 turned out to be the most successful fighter jet of all time with over 200 kills to absolutely zero losses at the time of recording that could change so then they changed tactics they went after the M1 Abrams it's a turkey it's too heavy it's too stupid it's built on all this unpr able technology the M60 is far more reliable and the M1 Abrams will be completely decimated by Saddam Hussein's Legion of rugged and reliable Soviet built tanks and then Operation Desert Storm happened and not a single Emron Abrams was lost to enemy action you may question where I'm going with this be patient you see while in our world in the west while the reformers lost and were left humiliated only recently made a Resurgence when they replayed all their old material about the F35 you know it's a turkey it can't fly it can't dog fight blah blah you get the picture in the Soviet Union they won the Soviet reformers believed that Russia's greatest strength has always been its ability to outp populate and outproduce its opponents and in war yes having a professional Army and having expensive and Brilliant equipment is perfectly fine but attrition does happen and those losses take time and take a lot of money to replace eventually you're going to be down to Peasant Farmers with AK-47s in their hand screaming Ura and charging across the Minefield so any technology that is beyond their ability to understand is not particularly worth the money and thus the t72 was born this is a product of ego Euro blatantly refused to produce a tank of a leading rival KV this foreign government in Ukraine building their own tank absolutely not so instead he took a t62 lengthened the chassis put a better t in it gave an autol loader and called it the eural just to make sure that everybody knew he made it not someone else and then he marketed it as a sort of Cheaper mobilization variant of the the t64 which was going through some problems at the time forgetting of course to mention that by the time he'd actually built the tank that we now know and love as the t72 it was actually more expensive than the t64a but don't tell anyone that okay they get angry at you and for that expense you don't exactly get much you get an autoloader that will reload each round at about 10 seconds by which point the ABS has fired back at you twice it is infamously cramped it is ridiculously hard to see out of and the most advanced technology on board is its spaced armor which means there is a gap between the armor it's a fancy we have seen which would have been very impressive had the Nazi Germans not been doing it 20 years previously in spite of being the poster child for the rugged and reliable it is in fact famously unreliable it has an engine that's a supercharged variant of an old V2 engine from the t34 the vibrations of which were so bad the hull would actually start to crack in half which mean the whole thing had to be reinforced and they had to build these massive rubber road wheels onto the tires the vibrations of course would continue to be a problem the tank can barely fire while on the move it is in fact slower than many tanks which are heavier than it and if it takes a shot to the armor the entire turret launches into the stratosphere merily chromating its crew over a wide radius as seen very recently all over the internet and it gets worse production variants of these things were not standardized t-72s that were built in Czechoslovakia were completely different to t-72s built in Eastern Germany which were completely different to t72 is built in the Soviet Union Russia which meant that the crews couldn't exchange spare parts they couldn't Exchange exchange tools they could barely exchange crew members which meant the great Union of the Soviets couldn't share supply lines you can see a flaw in their brilliant plan to take on the west so if this tank is so bad why do I love it so much that's the thing can you imagine how differently things would be going now if the Soviets had made the correct economical choice and decided that they needed a large large professional Army complete with some of the most powerful and some of those brilliant weapons that they could produce at the time can you imagine how differently Desert Storm would have gone if the Abrams and the Challenger had met tanks that were their equal can you imagine how differently things would be going now in the battlefields of today if Russia's Army was the equivalent of the United States and not equipped with things like this something to think about I've decided through my might and majesty and completely non British bias that this is my favorite tank the Challenger to the greatest tank in the world currently fighting in Ukraine with a attrition loss of exactly one to a mine if you disagree leave a comment I won't read it Slava Ukraine and that is the story of why Little Hitler did not get any prison presentence that year hello my name is Bean laser pick I've been allowed into the tank museum for reasons I'm sure they are now currently regretting to talk about tanks I am a self-proclaimed historian I am a self-proclaimed expert on tanks I know everything because of that and if you disagree I'm here you're not this is the tank Museum supported on patreon please remember to like comment and subscribe support them if you they've told me to say support them on patreon if you can I'm not saying that I'm saying support the tank Museum on patreon do it now you goddamn cowards do it right now or you know what will happen I'm coming after you I know where you live I'm laser Pig

Channel: The Tank Museum

Views: 622,027

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, #lazerpig

Id: lKrxmwAJhgg

Length: 22min 21sec (1341 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 24 2023