The Tank Museum
Published 27 Aug 2021In this latest episode of Tank Chats, Curator David Willey details the German Marder. A post-war Infantry Fighting vehicle.
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December 9, 2021
Tank Chat #135 | Marder | The Tank Museum
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December 1, 2021
Tank Chats #134 | Centurion | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 20 Aug 2021David Fletcher is back with another Tank Chat on one of the most successful post-war tank designs, Centurion. It was the primary British Army main battle tank of the post-World War II period.
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November 27, 2021
Armored Vehicles of Operation Torch Pt. 2: America and Britain (and France) – by the Chieftain
World War Two
Published 26 Nov 2021Part two of Chieftain’s return to the North African campaign. Here he looks at the armored fighting vehicles of the British and Americans with a small bit on the French as well. We see the introduction of the iconic Sherman and the varied fortunes of British designs.
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November 24, 2021
Tank Chats #133 | Renault UE Chenillette | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 6 Aug 2021In this weeks Tank Chat, Curator David Willey talks about the Renault UE Chenillette. A light tracked armoured carrier produced by France between 1932 and 1940.
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November 18, 2021
All the Guns on a T-62 Tank (with Nicholas Moran, the Chieftain)
Forgotten Weapons
Published 5 Aug 2021Try out World of Tanks with a special bonus tank using this link!
Today Nicholas Moran (the Chieftain) and I are at Battlefield Vegas courtesy of Wargaming.net, to show you around a Soviet T-62 and all its various armaments. This particular T-62 was built in 1971 or 1972 and initially sold to Syria. It saw combat in the Valley of Tears in 1973, but survived as was eventually transferred to Lebanese ownership. From there is was captured by Israel and eventually imported into the United States via the UK. The T-62 was the last of the “simple” WW2-style Soviet tanks, and equipped with an extremely effective 115mm smoothbore main gun. In addition to that cannon, we will discuss and shoot the coaxial PKT machine gun and the loader’s antiaircraft DShKM heavy machine gun.
If you enjoy this video, check out World of Tanks – and maybe they will send Nicholas and I back again to do the same thing yet again on a third tank!
For videos on the detail of tanks like this one, check out The Chieftain:
https://www.youtube.com/user/WorldOfT…
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCp4j…0:00:00 – Introduction
0:06:02 – Coaxial PKT
0:13:12 – Antiaircraft DShKM
0:20:25 – 115mm Main Gun
0:28:43 – Firing the main gunContact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle 36270
Tucson, AZ 85740
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November 17, 2021
Tank Chats #132 | Morris Light Reconnaissance Car | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 23 Jul 2021David Fletcher is back with another Tank Chat discussing the Morris Light Reconnaissance Car.
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November 12, 2021
Armored Vehicles of Operation Torch Pt. 1, by the Chieftain
World War Two
Published 11 Nov 2021Chieftain returns to the North African theatre to talk us through the armored fighting vehicles in action around the time of Operation Torch. This episode is part one of two with Chieftain covering the German and Italian vehicles. Here, Chieftain looks at everything from the fearsome Tiger to the nemesis of LRDG: the Sahariana.
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November 11, 2021
QotD: War and human capital
… perhaps there is a parallel between the state of human capital in the American elite [today] and the German elite during the war. The German soldiers were the best in the world, but the people further up the line were not the best tacticians. At the upper reaches, the strategists were terrible in all sorts of ways, starting with Hitler, who was laughably inept at running a war. Winning was never an option, but the Germans could have avoided total obliteration if they had better leaders.
The blame for this is always put on Hitler and that’s a good place to start, but the Germans had a brain power problem throughout the planning layer. This is obvious in how they went about making tanks. Instead of going for a tank that was cheap and easy to produce by a civilian workforce, they tried to build tanks that were complex and required specialists to produce. The effects of allied bombing raids were amplified by this strategic blunder in production planning. This is a very basic error in planning and execution.
One possible cause of this was that the middle-aged men who would have been sorting these production and design problems had died during the Great War. The German army tended to “use up” their units, rather than cycle them in and out of lines. That meant that a lot of experience with supply and logistics was lost in the trenches. The British and the Americans rotated units in and out of the lines, thus they came out of the war with a vast number of people with experience in the nuts and bolts of war fighting.
The current ruling class needs the Germans to be seen as the ultimate in super villains, but the truth is the Germans were dumb about a lot of important things. The Russians came up with sloped armor, for example, and the Germans never bothered to steal the idea, even after Kursk. The Germans got their hands on the Churchill tank, but never bothered to learn anything from it. They never learned from the Americans how to use communications to coordinate their artillery and their armor.
In many respects, the story of the tank in the war is a great proxy for the story of human capital and cultural intelligence. The Germans had the best trained military on earth, but they lacked human capital in the strategy and tactics layer. Either the culture was unable to produce it or there was simply not enough smart people to create the necessary smart fraction. That was ultimately why Germany was wiped from the map. It’s probably why no new culture has arisen from that place on the map either.
The Z Man, “Tanking It”, The Z Blog, 2019-03-01.
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November 10, 2021
Tank Chats #131 | Kanonenjagdpanzer | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 9 Jul 2021Curator David Willey discusses the German Cold War tank destroyer the Kanonenjagdpanzer or Jpz 4-5 for short.
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November 4, 2021
Anti-Tank Chats #2 | Panzerbüchse 39 | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 2 Jul 2021Welcome to Anti-Tank Chats, a brand-new series on the history of infantry weapons used in Anti-Tank warfare. In the second episode, Archive and Supporting Collections Manager, Stuart Wheeler explores the Panzerbüchse 39 Anti-Tank Rifle.
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October 28, 2021
Tank Chats #130 | Ikv 91 | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 18 Jun 2021Curator David Willey discusses the Cold War era Swedish Ikv 91. Short for Infanterikanonvagn 91, this tank destroyer was developed to meet the operational requirements of the Swedish Army post-WW2.
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October 21, 2021
Tank Chats #129 | Marmon-Herrington Mk. IV | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 11 Jun 2021David Fletcher examines the Marmon-Herrington Mk IV, an armoured car produced by South Africa and used by the British, among others, during the Second World War.
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October 14, 2021
Tank Chats #128 | Panzer 61 | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 4 Jun 2021Curator David Willey examines one of Switzerland’s first indigenously designed and produced tanks, the Panzer 61, put into service during the Cold War.
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September 30, 2021
Tank Chats #126 | Guy Armoured Car | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 21 May 2021David Fletcher MBE looks at the rare and most interesting Guy Armoured Car, thought to be the first welded vehicle used by the British Army.
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September 29, 2021
Feeding the Meatgrinder – The Red Army – WW2 Special
World War Two
Published 28 Sep 2021What is left of the Red Army after the smashing offensives of Operation Barbarossa and Fall Blau, and what have Stavka done to rebuild it? As the war on the Eastern Front goes on, more men and materiel stream to the frontlines, stemming the onslaught of the Wehrmacht.
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