stev579 yeah, exactly like tom cruise's monotooth...once you know he has it, you look for it in every scene lol

then dont look too closely at the Abrams

@@Vibakari I knew already about the front of the turret already on the Abrams and that deeply unsettled me. It's weird how I automatically assumed it would be symmetrical

@@Vibakari and aspecialy the tiger 1 my life never got the same

stev579 the turret ring is also offset to the side lol

Lucky man, and great story... Thanks for that :)

Amazing. Thank you for sharing that! I hope your relative survived the war and had good life.

Blimey ! Lucky escape.I would add not all German soldiers were nazis.(Not a supporter of hitler but just an ordinary bloke who has no control over government policy or brainwashing and have served).(On my partners site so do not give her grief,in other words if you wish to give abuse i would request you do it carefully, to me).

@@gabrielleconway5219 true but most are too brainwashed by allied propaganda

@@gabrielleconway5219 The average German soldier was in with the Nazi’s enough to invade other countries, perpetuate a genocide and commit uncountable crimes

It almost makes one wonder what Germany would have fielded if Hitler didn't have his obsessions with huge guns and huge tanks. The 7.5cm/L43 could kill pretty much anything the Allies fielded short of the IS series or Pershing. I'm picturing a "baby Panther", with the 75/L43 instead of the L50 and slightly smaller, cheaper in every way.

@@polygondwanaland8390 If they slope its front 5-10 degs more...it would help alot with its protection...

Good way to put it

@@polygondwanaland8390 this would have done nothing to adress the Reich's biggest insufficiency, which wasn't as much the number of tanks, but the oil to drive them with. I get this "Hitler bad, so he must be stupid as well" shtick, but it doesn't hold true - a lot of German generals skipped taking responsibility for their own failures and blaming them entirely on Hitler. The Tiger and Panther were needed. For the same money one could have built more Panzer IV's, but not found the oil to drive them with. Furthermore, as the development of the tanks started much earlier than they were commissioned, and as the German tanks were still struggling with lots of Soviet armour and could reasonably expect the Soviets to make even stronger new tanks (which also happened -> IS), the risk of all of a sudden having to face tanks that were too well protected to be reliably taken out was palpable. TL;DR: The Reich favoured quality over quantity, because they had to, given the poor state of supplies.

@@jonesjohnson6301 yeah and things like going for Stalingrad instead of the oilfields made the problem even worse

WHAT? No Tiger? Same for me. PzIV best tank of WWII.

Sadly, not the cutest tank. That honour belongs to the PzKpFWgn II Luchs

Me too

"well proportioned" *turret is offset from centre*

:D

It became Germany's best all-round tank during WW2. But, the Germans realized that even though it can be upgraded, it has reached its very limits of effectiveness against newer Allied tanks. The last "upgrade", the Aust. J was more of a downgrade due Germany's waning resources. Still the Pz. IV, was last used by the Syrians in the Six-Day War which is impressive (where it was hopelessly outdated)

Couldn't agree more. Greetings from Germany.

Panzer IV: The Hawker Hurrcane of the tank world.

@@BHuang92 Not a single PzIV managed to score a kill in 1967... tsk tsk

@@talknight2 Yes they did, they knocked out several Israeli Shermans, The Scottish Koala made a video where he went into detail about the battle. The video is called "The last Panzers The Last Ever Battle Between WW2 Tanks" Also, the Syrians were nowhere near as well trained as the Israelis, and they mostly used their panzer 4s as pillboxs with turrets instead of tanks, not to mention the fact that they had to go up against more advanced Cold War vehicles in addition to the Shermans. Good kit is only good when used correctly.

"History Channel" quality where the History Channel has lost its quality.

This panzer 4 is my favorite, because it shows how germany took the older tanks and tryed to keep them in service.

@eLKy 15 this is one of those comments where I really cant tell if it's a joke or not.

@eLKy 15 I guess they look a little similar at a passing glance but if you put a Pz IV and Tiger next to each other they are far from identical. The Tiger is a lot bigger, more boxy, has different road wheels, a bigger gun etc.

@eLKy 15 they built a lot more Panzer IV's than Tigers but both were used a lot, especially in the second half of the war. The Panzer IV was produced first (the initial model came out in 1936) and they started designing the Tiger in 1938, though the first Tigers weren't produced until 1942. Tigers are very impressive machines, but they cost a lot more time and resources to build than a Pz IV. They used a lot more fuel and also tended to require more maintenance due to being larger/more complex; it was often hard to find parts and men with the knowledge/time necessary to carry out repairs in the field, especially during the later years of the war which led to a lot of Tigers being abandoned by their crew when they ran out of fuel or received damage they were unable to repair.

Made in 1/76 & 1/35 scale?

Even morons get lucky sometimes.

well the Israelis actually used pz4 during some of their conflicts

That's part of why the 1948 arab israeli war is so interesting to me. Both sides used just about anything they could get their hands on. Even obsolete early war French R35s saw service

Don't know if tha LAST Pz4 knocked out in the Six Days War was killed by an israeli Super Sherman (could have been a Centurion or M46) but it did happen in that war.

@@anthonyhayes1267 Especially the Israelis. They took every obsolete armored fighting vehicle they could get their hands on and put a big gun in it. Ironically, like the Germans in WWII. Beggars definitely couldn't be chosers in those wars. As for the Arab attackers, they had the latest and greatest armor courtesy of the Soviets. And the latest Soviet aircraft. They did a lot of damage to the Israelis, but lost in the end.

truly the 3 most influential tank designs ever created. every modern tank can draw lineage from one of them if not all 3

@@mattdickson2 No. Modern MBTs are more like Tigers and Panthers, not light, cheap mass produced averageness.

@@lyndoncmp5751 I don't know. They seem to use assembly lines for modern tanks.

@@dongiovanni4331 They had assembly lines for Tigers and Panthers too.

@@gomiyaro Read my post again. I said they are NOT light, cheap massed produced averageness. They were highly expensive, finely crafted, state of the art Rolls Royces of the tank world, just like the Abrams, Leopards and Challengers.

🤗

Very well armored and armed tractors. For combat plowing.

Nudge nudge

Is your wife a goer, eh?

@@lakrids-pibe more of a mover and shaker .

How to lies your enemies? British: Water tank German: Tractor America: Car

You are absolutely right, and Hans von Luck, one of Rommel's senior commanders would often use this on purpose. In high stress situations, he would often play games of Solitaire, and his subordinates would think, "if he has time to play card games, it cant be that bad".

Yep

Can't "forget" the Panther and Tiger! Without those and other strong AFV's, the Battle of Kursk - and Germany - would have been lost much more quickly! Yes, the PzKpfW IV made up the backbone of all tank divisions, but it was the Pz V and VI that helped to counter the T34, the JS and KV tanks, not the Pz IV's... which would have been pulverised without their successors in support to both take and deliver the big punches.

@@johnny_pilot Eh, the big cats were pretty overrated imo. They were prone to breaking down, and even though they were tough, they were hard to replace. Being difficult to repair and being too expensive and complex to mass produce effectively. Most of Germany's heavy tanks were lost to their own technical difficulties rather than combat. And and since the germans were fighting a war of limited resources and fuel, they were probably more costly than they were worth. The light and medium tanks and the cost effective stugs were the real peak of German engineering during the war.

@@nbewarwe the usual comment again, :-)) and as usual not that true.

AFV is an apt translation for Panzerkampfwagen: Pzkfw

@AKUJIRULE you first

​@AKUJIRULE youre point being?

(Sad Elefant noises)

AKUJIRULE maybe they should have used their brains when designing the panther with a sealed hull lmao

@@Vibakari they did. where do you cross rivers when most bridges (in the east mostly made out of wood) can only support 25tons. Sealing up the engine and add deep wading capabilities was pretty clever. If I watch the Swedish post war tests of panther and sherman, the panther continues to climb slopes and hills, plows through deep mud and snow without catching fire, while the Sherman fails on most obstacles.

"It could have been 8,352.8 or 8,353.1, we're not sure, so it's about that many." - is what I was thinking. 😁

Meanwhile the US and USSR build tens of thousands of their tanks

@@awkwarddoggo05 49 thousand Sherman and 64 thousand T-34, yeah, I guess there were more of those.

@@imrekalman9044 The Soviets built 85,000 of the crappy T-34's alone. And the Germans destroyed 55,000 of them. Counting the tens of thousands of even crappier light tanks and the heavy KV and IS tanks destroyed by the Germans, you've got tank Armageddon for the Soviets. It's basically human wave attacks with crap tanks instead of rifles.

@@haroldfiedler6549 Not really -- the (human) loss ratio was only about 2:1 for the Soviet Union to Germany respectively, and most of that discrepancy was from the early stages of the conflict. The Red Army was probably the most capable land force in the world by 1944, and certainly by 45.

I still prefer the king tigers (probably because of associated badarseness) but yeah the Panzer IV is iconic. A bit like the halftrack.

Did you ever look for journals, diaries?

Either the Panzer IV or the Churchill. Seems like the Turret basket was first introduced on the Panzer IV ausf F which would place it at the same production year as the Churchill mk1 which was 1941

M2/3 Stuart has'em all beat.

DividedByZero Higly doubt that, Almost certain no M2/M3 stuart had a turret basket, Can’t even find a blueprint that suggest it..

@@kshatriya1414 Tank Chats #72, friend. Edit: Ah, the A1 is a 1942 production though. Thought it came in earlier.

DividedByZero Sorry, meant non before and not non at all haha. But either way all of the tanks we mentioned are all beautiful machines and it doesn’t matter who came first with the turret basket because in the end they all did make the life of their crew a little bit better :)

Hitting a sherman tank before wet stowage.

Simple aiming device.

Love your nickname!

Who is Zaloga?

@@maade9642 this is why Bovington sucks. Fing WoT kids that don't know anything.

@@maade9642 apologies for the strange answer before. I ment to share the most relevant book he authored. Steven J. Zaloga is one of the most prolific writers in this area. Well regarded and one of the board members of wargamings operation think tank Q/A. Here's another recently relesed book that might be of interest. books.google.se/books?id=9hazDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=zaloga&hl=sv&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj1_N_9yeTrAhUdi8MKHQ7FDGUQ6AEwCnoECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=zaloga&f=false

@@MGPW01 thanks

@@MGPW01 and I agree with you, the Panzer IV is arguably the best tank of this era.

Yes, well said. A lot of footage that I have never seen before.

I wonder why I never heard of him?

No time stopped with them No sloped armour

Darren Young we would be speaking German

They would have stood infront of the factory without fuel

Nice one 😄

If they had build it in the same numbers...

Against the Soviets, USA and British Empire? It wouldn't have mattered.

No, PzKpfw IVs were actually good tanks.

Tanks were insignificant in the overall scheme. Artillery, airpower and sheer weight of human bodies won the day.

I mean if you have a tank that can take 252 hits from all sorts of Soviet caliber guns and makes it back to friendly lines 60km away even with a damaged suspension. A gun that can take out enemy tanks at around 2 miles and a fearful reputation you'd also make more documentaries about this thing.

Depends on what you consider 'good' really. If that means reliable and/or efficient then the Tiger definitely wouldn't be the first good German tank.

@@sam8404 It was the first tank to virtually not have any competition for like what, at least 2 years? Give or take.

The Germans never caught on to mass production (then). It was as if they were building BMWs. Continual improvement can be a good thing, but the number of minor, incremental improvements added greatly to the maintenance burden in the field.

When shell/bullet leaves barrel any remaining gasses, that previously accelerated it forward, expand uncontrollable in every direction, including backwards, creating additional recoil. Muzzle break is meant to control this expansion, redirecting most of it those excess gasses sideways instead, as bullet passes thru areas with baffles, venting gas thru them, resulting in significant reduction in backward motion, aka reducing recoil and sway. Since baffles are placed in pairs, venting gas acceleration is cancelled by two streams going in opposite directions. Average reduction of recoil is ~30% with muzzle break having ~75% efficiency, but there are quite a lot of factors involved. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/j8hlobKb1tzbeWw.html

It is quite obvious

@@Erwin_Von_Heidenheim Percentages are quite obvious?

@@uegvdczuVF yes

You should see the massive muzzle brake on the Barrett .50 cal sniper rifle

Zagskrag The weight is always an issue. Have to remember also that if you add extra armor on front, you also need counter weight. Engine, gearbox and chassy also have their limits. Tigers really suffered that. Thicker armor and bigger gun made everything bigger and heavier.

Foresight. You'll already see it fitted on photos of very early models.

The Germans overengeneered everything from the beginning. ;-)

@@ulissedazante5748 A radio arm is hardly overengineering. Other tanks from other nations had them too.

Think it was said earlier in another chat that 3 of these could be made for the cost of one Tiger. Just like the Sherman and T34, it was a numbers game.

@@flybobbie1449 Cost was not really the limiting factor for germany though, and germany was from the beginning exoecting to be outnumbered in tanks. They biuld the best tank they could, and in the 1930s, that were Pz 3 and 4.

I am not dissing Fletcher, but Willey is on another level.

DW: And here, once again, we see evidence that towards the end of the war German tank design was becoming more simplified due to the chronic shortage of raw materials needed in tank production, due to both the success of the Allied bombing campaign and, particularly from the beginning of 1944 onwards, the Soviet advance into areas like the Donbass industrial region. All of these factors combined to place huge pressure on men like the German Armaments Minister Albert Speer, to come up with ideas to keep the production lines open. And that's when we start seeing factory modifications being applied even while the vehicles were still being built. DF: Now all these shortages meant that the Germans had start cutting some corners during construction. Now if you look over here you'll see the bow gunners hatch, with the offset long-barreled 75mm gun sitting right over the top of it, totally preventing the poor sod sitting under it from having any chance of getting out of the tank in a hurry at all, say in the event of a fire or some other form of Teutonic catastrophe. Not the best way to design a tank modification really, but there you go.

KZfaq has become something of a treasure trove of extremely high quality videos on WW2 vehicles. If you haven't watched it, I would strongly reccomend the Chieftans Hatch video on the Pz IV. He really going into detail of the excellent ergonomics the curator mentions in passing here

All german tanks had ignition keys. And I imgine they would not get lost more often that your keys for your private car.

@@zafranorbian757 Bit less often given the importance and consequences I'd imagine.

was Grand Theft Tank a problem back then?

@@alexroselle I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult to hotwire one.

How many different key barrels were produced? In the tractor world there are usually only a few different key shapes for a manufacturer’s tractors. So tractor thieves have an easy time starting up and stealing commonly used tractors.

Ah very true, but still David is a far nicer bloke than Don Burke.

Burke's shows were always for low brow normies. This channel is where one can learn something.

@@southerncharity7928 you can say that even though you’re watching a channel about tanks - you miss the whole point the guy is Burke’s doppelgänger

Maybe Burke shoula done a segment re: suburban camouflage for family vehicles using naturally grown foliage........

Tell us all about how you came up with that number.

@@iatsd Majority of land warfare took place on the Eastern Front as Wehrmacht rolled thru Europe in less than 2 years, taking minimal losses and then was stuck fighting Red Army for almost 4 years. Eastern Front saw the most brutal fighting during that conflict, with most major tank battles taking place there. In addition to that, even after D-Day, despite Americans liking to believe how they won that war(or at the very least were critical to Nazi defeat), number of divisions engaged on the Eastern Front was around 300, to around 50 in the west. With latter also being mostly in subpar condition, as France was used for recuperating, rearming and resupplying units that sufferer heavy losses on the Eastern Front. While Western Front saw some properly equipped, trained and experience units, like Panzer Lehr, those were few and far between.

@Tom Sanders _Eastern Front seemed to lack the Battle of the Atlantic and the strategic bombing offensive._ Battle of Atlantic was not a priority for Germany, as Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine together were only getting about 40% of all military funding. Main push and priority was on Wehrmacht. _In June 1944 40% of the German army was not on the Soviet front._ Nice try. Two can play this game. Excluding anything but France, taking in account total manpower of Wehrmacht during that period, extrapolating... In summer of 1944 ~85% of German army were not on American front. _In June 1944 the greatest concentration of German armour was in Normandy._ By what standard ? Total number of tanks was roughly equal between Westers and Eastern front. While Germans did not have a lot of tanks in Normandy itself, they brought in reinforcements from other parts of the France. Granted, they were scraping bottom of a barrel, so it included completely outdated machines as well. _If one looks at where Germany spent its treasure it was in systems which were most actively engaged against the West - high tech stuff like radar, aircraft, rockets, U Boats._ I have and the answer is "no". Radars were used all over. Luftwaffe received about 28% of all military spending. Rockets were fun, but there were nothing more but pet project, especially in second part of the war, as Germany was concentrating on weapon systems that proved their effectiveness. U-Boats did a lot of damage, but it was due to their good design and crew training, plus abundance of targets. Total expenditures on Kriegsmarine were around 13% of military budget. _and 70% of single engine day fighters ended up in the West_ No, majority of aircraft, at this point in time, ended up in Germany. Not that there was much left of them at this point. _Even that supposed sideshow of Italy peaked at almost 29 German divisions - quite a lot for a rather small length of front!_ Tessin work is considered to be competent, but he was dealing with quite limited data(considering how this rather extensive summary was released in 66) and hardly conclusive, as even in this article it is stated on multiple occasions that many numbers may not be accurate.

Well, if the Nazis and Soviets would have simply moved the eastern front to France, SHAEF could have rolled them up together and smoked them both.

@@sjent. Some of the best panzer divisions were in Normandy, including 5 of the 7 Waffen SS panzer divisions and 3 of the best Tiger battalions including the most successful of all, 503. Around Caen, the British Commonwealth faced the densest concentration of German armour ever deployed in WW2. 7 panzer divisions and 3 Tiger battalions in just 20 miles of front. There were no outdated machines in any of these divisions and both the King Tiger and Jagdpanther made their combat debuts around Caen. 2/3 of German WW2 expenditure and material resources went on their air and sea forces and these were largely destroyed in the west. Already by the end of 1942 only 25% of German fighters were on the Eastern Front. Most German army divisions on the Eastern Front were second rate horse drawn non mechanised rabble.