This video was kindly sponsored by the
Great Courses Plus, but more of that later. At Tankfest at Bovington as well as tanks,
and living history displays, tanks, and armoured cars, and tanks, First World War tanks,
tanks, Second World War tanks, tanks, modern tanks, engineering vehicles, tanks, a Lindybeige meet-and-greet
(I'll be honest that was a bit weird.), tanks, re-enactors, tanks, jeeps, tanks,
battle displays, and tanks, there was also an exhibition of tanks
that could have been, or yet could be. Let's start with the oldest. If you visit the British Museum
you will be able to see Assyrian reliefs depicting what some say were the
inspiration for the Wooden Horse of Troy, mobile siege towers with battering rams. These images date to around 700 BC.
Some have four wheels and move up steep ramps, and others have six, as shown here,
and are clearly armoured. And this is the model maker's interpretation
of those images. Do you think he got it right? The armour is wickerwork panels, some
covered in wet leather to stop it all burning. A leather curtain protects the men at the bottom
who push it forward and wield the ram, and above them a place for soldiers to huddle in, waiting to dash up a ladder
and into the tower and into action. But it's not really a tank is it? From the period of AD 100 to 300 we have
the testudo, which just means tortoise. Some, the testudo arietaria, had rams hanging from
ropes and rocked back and forth by teams of men. But others were just mobile roofs for
getting men close to the enemy town's walls. Literary evidence suggests a layer of wet seaweed
in between layers of leather to keep the roof fireproof. They were not huge, as the figure for scale shows you. And this model has an incomplete
outer layer to show the structure beneath. Still stretching the definition of tank here I feel,
this is for sieges, not open warfare. The Carroballista, on the other hand, could be
used in open warfare. It was mobile enough. A Roman legion might have as many as 55 of these,
that's one for every 100 men or so. There are some pictured on
Trajan's Column, erected in AD 113. Our word catapult comes from the Greek kata peltes,
literally shield penetrator, yikes. They were small, probably drawn by mules.
And I have to say I disagree with this reconstruction. It has four small wheels and no steering mechanism,
which would be asking for trouble on rough terrain. And has a thick solid rear wall that would get in the way,
and no way to pivot the weapon for quick aiming. This one on Trajan's Column clearly has
two large wheels, far better suited to the job. These two appear to be about to shoot, suggesting
that they shot forwards without dismounting. This model seems to have been based on this
much later engraving from 1552. But at least it's more like a tank. An unknown artist, probably German,
in about 1480 drew this thing. The exhibition calls it the Boar Head Combat Vehicle.
It is pushed rather than pulled by horses. And although it could be steered,
it would be fiendishly difficult to keep it going straight. They did have breech loaders, so the crew
wouldn't have to get out to reload the front cannon. But there's no way to aim the main gun, and the
noise and smoke inside would have been horrendous just from the smaller guns firing to the sides. In a siege the horses would be vulnerable,
and in open battle it would be very slow. No. But I do like a tank with dormer windows,
we don't see that enough. 1485 now (the last year of the
medieval period if you're British), and Leonardo da Vinci drew this design for a tank. It had thick armour and 20 cannon.
Turret? One gun in a turret to aim? No, just have one gun for every
direction the target could be in. He reckoned eight men would
have been able to move this. Eight demigods would have struggled. He said it was for sending ahead of
the infantry to give them supporting fire. A ladder led up to a lookout's post at the top. Good luck seeing through all that smoke
that would be funnelled up towards him. Leo's design for the crank handle
and gears had a major flaw. Cranking the handle would have made
the wheels turn in opposing directions. The Tank Museum at Bovington has
a larger model on permanent display, and it has generously ironed out that kink by
shifting one gear to the outer side of one wheel. So, Leonardo, you were very clever,
but this tank design is rubbish. 1500 now, and a German knight called
Ludwig von Eyb designed this gun cart. It could be towed by a horse until needed for action, and then you could turn the horse
around and have it push instead. (While the enemy obligingly
refrained from shooting at it.) At the front the chirpy little cherub of a gunner
(aah look at him, he's loving it), was safe behind a wooden shield
and could blaze away with deadly effect. It was probably meant to be
a breech-loading swivel gun. I saw that front bit as a blade
to keep the enemy at bay, but the model maker has interpreted
that as a one-shot crossbow. And hasn't given the gunner
(aw, bless him) anywhere to sit. Ludwig also designed this thing.
Now something we learned from Mad Max films is that everything is improved by adding spikes. So this has a high score there,
and it has a vast number of cannons. As you can see it's utterly festooned in cannons,
something like 72 of them. The spears, even if they are just fixed in place,
might deter intruders. And as for the cannons, it strikes me that the idea might have been
to have so flipping many of them that you fired each one only once. And by the time you'd gone round and
fired them all the battle would be over. It would be extraordinary for a modern
tank to fire 72 times in one engagement, many don't carry that many shells. There's hardly room for these overlapping horses,
so there couldn't be many men inside. And those horses would be extremely
unhappy once the shooting started. Not a practical design. But it's good to see that
sloping armour was already understood. Ludo drew another one, this time it's some sort of
armoured personnel carrier complete with camouflage. No panicking horses this time,
the crewmen have to push it themselves. Thick wooden walls for armour with
a couple of loopholes each side for shooting. And a pointed prow for smashing into enemy
formations or knocking aside barriers, apparently. Six wheels with two in line ahead at the front. This
model shows no means for the men inside to push it. However, I suppose you could roll it down a hill. And it's a fourth one from Ludwig,
popular chap at this exhibition. He was a very experienced soldier who fought in
many European wars, went out to the Holy Land, and ended up with his own castle
before writing treatises in about 1500. This is his picture of his tank concept,
and it requires a fair bit of interpretation. Exactly what shape is that top platform?
How exactly are those guns at the front and back arranged? He might have been a good soldier,
but his depiction of perspective was rubbish. He seems to have decided that the shape of a corseque
was the ideal one for repelling close assault. Personally, I see all those spiky bits as liabilities. If just one snags on a bush or a fold of land,
then this under-powered vehicle would be stuck. Archers on the top might have had
a decent freedom of movement. But the men underneath, struggling with the
weight of them, and the armour, and the cannon, would be having a miserable time. I can believe it possible to move
something like this on a good metalled road, but across country, nyah, forget it. Forwards now to the geometrically precise plans
of 1769 drawn up by the French Ministry of War. This was an attempt to harness steam power
for use as a military gun tractor. This is also France's claim to
having invented the automobile. The main snag was that the engine was so heavy and
inefficient that it could move nothing more than itself. Also, it could run for no more than 15 minutes, then needed to be refilled with water
and then brought back up to pressure. It was far slower than walking. Personally, I wouldn't want to go into battle immediately behind
a thin-walled, high-pressure vessel filled with scalding hot steam. The drive was through the single front wheel,
so grip wasn't marvellous. Which might explain how he managed
to crash into a wall in 1771. Its designer, Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot,
may not have been the inventor of the automobile, that was Karl Benz (Ja!), but he does have a strong claim to have
invented the motorised traffic accident. (Sacrebleu! Aagh!) 1855 now, and the Industrial Revolution
has taken off in Britain. And James Boydell has invented a
practical steam tractor with footed wheels, and James Cowen applied this to warfare using efficient
steam engines, and modern steel plate armour, modern guns and rotating scythes, because ... Boudicca! Legend has it that the barbarity of these additions
was what caused Lord Palmerston, the Prime Minister of the day,
to reject the proposal. I look at it and I see a horseshoe crab, The Kraken Awakes, a submarine, a Bobby's helmet,
and a crushing victory over the French. This actually would have been able to move across country,
but crew conditions would have been horrendous, the scythes were a silly idea,
and gun aiming more than a little approximate. 1903, and H.G. Wells designs the Land Ironclad. Ironclads existed at sea already, so why not on land? Again he used footed wheels or "pedrails",
a proven design to prevent sinking in soft ground. This design inspired Winston Churchill
who championed the idea of the tank. There's no main gun, it's more of an infantry transporter
with little loopholes for firing from. "Open 2 3 out 2 3 bang 2 3 bang 2 3 bang 2 3 in 2 3 close 2 3." Wells considered steam power the obvious choice. You wouldn't want to be next to a
petrol tank with explosives flying around. They would have been very heavy and slow.
I'm not sure why the roof is so tall. Possibly this was just force of habit -
familiarity with rain-shedding roofs on buildings. H.G. Wells. Yes, he's a more
significant figure than perhaps you realise. We all know him as a very famous and influential science
fiction writer, you know, War of the Worlds and all that. But perhaps you didn't know that he's
often quoted for his philosophy of politics. And he's also one of the fathers of wargaming.
Yes, he wrote one of the first ever wargaming books. It was called "Little Wars".
Didn't have any rules for tanks in it. I'm going to be forgiving though,
because there weren't any tanks in his day. Anyway, I've been learning more about him
in a lecture from the Great Courses Plus, which is my sponsor.
So doesn't that all fit together nicely? The course was called
"How Great Science Fiction Works". And it starts with the likes of Mary Shelley,
then you've got your um ... Oh, sorry, what? Oh, you don't know what that ...
sorry, okay, fair enough. I should tell you what the Great Courses Plus
is other than merely my sponsor. It's an online lecture service. You become
a subscriber and then you get access to thousands (over 11,000 last time I looked)
of lectures on all sorts of topics. Darwinian evolution, how to draw, history, and sci-fi.
And I know that a lot of my viewers are interested in sci-fi. They're based quite near Washington,
which is pretty handy place to be because it makes it easy for them to team up with, say,
the Smithsonian, which is based in Washington, and the National Geographic also has an HQ in,
yes, you guessed it, Washington. And of course, you've got the
Ivy League universities in that area. And now you may think that
Ivy League university just means prestigious USA university,
but ah no, it's a sporting definition. They are all in one fairly small
geographical area by USA standards, which makes it practical for them to compete
against each other in sporting competitions. So it's actually a sports based
and not academic based definition. But they are I'm sure jolly good universities. Anyway, so a lot of lecturers on the
Great Courses Plus come from them. And anyway, so where was I? So you've got Mary Shelley,
you got Jules Verne, you got your H.G. Wells. And then he goes on to the pulp fiction stuff,
... like the Buster Crabbe Saturday morning serial stuff there was Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. And then you get your harder
science fiction like your Isaac Asimov. And then more up to date you've got your cyberpunk.
All the various genres that you would expect. And it deals with certain themes as well,
like aliens, and invasion and religion in sci-fi. ... Ah, but I know what some of you are worried about. How, how ... has he got the moves? How are his
gestures? Has he got some good scholars' cradles? Well, let's have a quick look. He opens there with a basic prow, which is fine.
And, oh yeah, and a count off. Yep, all looking quite comfortable here,
some basic parallel waving, that was good. And oh, and into an interlace there.
So yeah, I think this guy knows his stuff. Later on in the same lecture,
a nice pulsed front cage there. So yeah, I think you're in safe enough hands. So the Great Courses Plus, how would
you get your hands on these lectures? Well, you can, my viewers, get them for free!
At least for a short trial period. If you go to
www.TheGreatCoursePlus.com/Lindybeige you'll find out all about that trial period offer. You could actually just click the link in the
description of this video, which is much, much easier. Anyway, The Great Courses Plus. Thank you very much
for sponsoring me, and now back to tanks. 1915, the British Landship Committee designs
an armoured railway carriage on pedrails. It was really a troop transporter more than a tank,
and could carry an impressive 70 soldiers. It never went into production, but the Mark IX heavy tank,
as described in one of my other videos, was a very similar idea and did get made. Over to Russia now in 1915 during the First World War. And what must have been the
biggest wheel on a tank, ever. The Tsar Tank. This thing was an
astonishing 30 feet tall and 40 feet wide. The idea was that if you had a wheel big
enough it could just roll across a trench. Each wheel was driven by its own
British aircraft Sunbeam petrol engine. And the smaller wheel on the stalk at the
back was there for balance and steering. It had guns in the side sponsons and more
were planned to be added to the central belly. So did it work? No. They built one prototype and it was rubbish. The rear wheel kept getting stuck, and the
front ones weren't powerful enough to pull it out. And the whole thing was a colossal artillery target. It doesn't exist anymore.
It was broken up for scrap in 1923. 1917 now, and the Yanks give it a go. One of these things was actually built,
and it has a turret with guns, so it's definitely a tank. The hull is an upside down ship's hull, and it is moved by a
Best Track Machine Model 75 steam tractor underneath it. At the front there's supposedly a wire cutter,
useful for modern warfare. With a single wheel at the front,
low ground clearance, and a pointed prow, this would almost certainly have become stuck in
the muds of Flanders pretty quickly. But thanks for joining in America. The only military use it was put to was
recruiting for the war effort in California. 1918, and this American design uses the miracle of electricity. The design appeared in Electrical Experimenter
Magazine, which featured real and fantastic designs. This had no heavy armour to slow it down,
but instead it would evade enemy fire by whipping along at a dreamed
of 37 miles per hour, thanks to its electric engines. The side suspended gun turrets would have swung
all over the place, making aiming a fun challenge. And the idea was also to drop bombs from these. It would be kept stable by a gyroscope
whooshing around the central axis, and slight alterations to the course of this
would enable steering. Beyond the Thunderdome! Strangely, no one ever built one. 1936 and the Tumbleweed Tank, invented
by a Texan called A.J. Richardson, who published his design in Popular Mechanics Magazine. Its ball shape enabled it to be small and strong.
The inner section was supposedly stable and gas-tight, important against poisons. And the two outer
hemispheres rotated independently so it could steer. It had an anti-aircraft machine gun pointing skywards. And three more machine guns would
wreak havoc amongst the foes and friends of the crew. A.J. had neglected to
add any means of seeing outside the tank, which would probably have proven a problem. The Germans came up with something similar and
actually built some. The mysterious Kugelpanzer, or Ball Tank. These were one-man things sold to the Japanese
and used in Manchuria, possibly for reconnaissance. Next to nothing is known about them,
but one that was captured in 1945 is on display now in the Kubinka Tank Museum in Russia. The first thing I thought of when I saw it was this prototype Dalek which is on
display in Copenhagen's Danish War Museum. 1942 now, and the Soviet empire develops a flying tank, the Antonov A-40 glider tank. The idea was that a powerful aircraft would
tow the gliding tank behind it and then let it go. The crew in the tank (knees knocking
in terror presumably) would then deftly glide the tank in to a gentle landing,
shed the wings and spring into action. So did it work? No. They built one, but found that they didn't have an
aircraft powerful enough to get it properly airborne. The towing aircraft, a Tupolev TB-3, struggled
and was forced to cut the glider loose. It seems though that the 7 ton gliding T-60 tank
plummeted with a fair amount of style. Although to get it light enough they
had to remove most of the fuel, and the headlamps, ammunition, and the armament. So springing into action was never really on the menu. The British had a go at a similar idea
with the Baynes Bat, a tailless design. The prototype flew very well in 1943,
but it never carried a tank into action. It was decided instead to go with large gliders that could carry
all sorts of things, including small tanks, inside their fuselages. No talk of tanks that never were would feel right
without something German and wildly excessive. So get ready to feast your viewing-eyes
on the 1942 Krupp Land Cruiser. You may have heard of the farcically oversized Maus (meaning 'mouse'), which weighed a laughably impractical 185 tons. Well, the Ratte (meaning 'rat')
would have been 1,000 tons at least. The armour was up to 14 inches thick. The main turret was the type designed
for the Gneisenau class battleship, or possibly the unused turrets
made for the Scharnhorst refit. These would have 11 inch naval guns. See those little turrets there? Those are the turrets of the Maus
with 128mm main guns. You also see there the
anti-aircraft turrets from Wirbelwinds. The designs, apparently, showed bays
inside for two motorcycles for scouting, storerooms, an infirmary and an inside loo. Did they ever build it? No! Even if they had had the resources to build it, it would
have been useless. How would you get it into battle? It's too big for rail transport. And no bridge would be
strong enough to carry it, and it was wider than a road. Once the enemy knew where you were
(and it's not a stealth weapon) he could then fly over it and drop massive bombs on it.
The end. Was it even ever a serious design? Well, given how much room you
need under a naval turret like that for all the rotation mechanisms
and ammunition-handling rooms, which in a battleship are as tall as
about a five-story building, very probably not. The TV-8, a sci-fi tank of the future? No, this
was Chrysler's design from 1956, the nuclear age. It was thought likely that small tactical
nuclear weapons, perhaps fired by tanks, would feature on the battlefield.
Some wargame rules from the era covered this. Here you are watching a 1953 test
in Nevada of a nuclear shell fired from a gun. What would tanks have to be like
in a world of nuclear weapons? Well for one thing you'd have to protect the crew
from the searing flash of an atomic explosion. So you'll see that there are no vision slits,
and instead all viewing would be through cameras. Given the state of video technology in 1956,
it's difficult to think that that would have worked well. Supposedly the shape of the turret and the small hull was to
help protect against the air pressure wave from an atomic bang. All the crew sat in the hermetically-sealed turret,
which weighed 15 tons and the hull 10 tons. So it would have been a bit wobbly. The gun was nothing special, just a smoothbore 90mm. That's a remote-controlled .50 cal on the top mini turret. It was meant to be amphibious with a
water-jet engine at the rear of the turret. And the hull and turret could
be separated for air transport. Various main engines were proposed,
including a nuclear-powered one. Never built. The Ground X-Vehicle, a design for the future by the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. Perhaps this is the future of tanks: small, light, fast, with sensors picking up incoming threats
early enough for the vehicle to take evasive action. This design has a one-man crew
and a largely automated main turret. Even now there are devices that can aim a gun
accurately on the calculated source of incoming fire. It reminds me of the B1 battle droid
from the Phantom Menace. If it proves as deadly as those, we're all as safe as houses.
"We are a bit rubbish." So there you have it, 21 proto-tanks
and tanks that never were. And in most cases probably never
would have been, nor should have been. Bye. [ You may have seen a lot of Dutch
writing on the displays shown. That's because it was originally a Dutch exhibition,
on loan to the Tank Museum at Bovington. ] Lindybeige! [ While checking the facts for this video, I found that much of the
information written was wrong, so do be careful out there everyone. ] [ Still... TANKS! Marvellous. ]
I don't know how you can type the name of this one in anything other than all-caps
THE GYRO ELECTRIC DESTROYER
what does it do?
DESTROY
"This prototype Dalek"
He dropped that so casually it got a belly laugh out of me.
I never had any interest in tanks before Lindy
I will always have upvote Lindi Beige
Can someone please help me name a movie I once saw. It was about a guy designing a new military transport vehichle but the army kept wanting to add more stuff like, a bigger canon, more ammo, thicker armor and so on.
Tog II II, Tier 8 premium, sweet
Nice video, but why is that man so sweaty?
Bottom right is 100% a Marienburg Landship from Warhammer.
Great video