Published on 12 Nov 2016
It’s time for another exciting episode of Out Of The Trenches. This week we talk about the Olympic Games 1916, how the Germans reacted to the first tanks and about barbed wire.
November 13, 2016
Olympic Games 1916 – Reaction To Tanks – Barbed Wire I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
Comments Off on Olympic Games 1916 – Reaction To Tanks – Barbed Wire I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
September 17, 2016
A contrarian view of the introduction of the tank
At Samizdata, Patrick Crozier gets all contrarian about the tank in a post he titles “Haig’s greatest mistake”:
On 15 September 1916 tanks made their debut at Flers-Courcelette, one of the many engagements which took place during the Battle of the Somme.
The battle marked the beginning of a sorry chapter in British military history because the truth – a truth that to this day few seem prepared to acknowledge – is that the First World War tank was useless.
The list of its failings is lengthy. It was slow, it was unreliable, it had no suspension and it was horrible to operate. The temperature inside was typically over 100°F and as exhaust gases built up so crew effectiveness collapsed. It was also highly vulnerable. Field artillery could take it out easily. Even rifle ammunition could be effective against it. While normal bullets might not be able to penetrate the armour they could knock off small pieces of metal from the inside – known as spall – which then whizzed round the interior wounding all and sundry.
That the tank was the brainchild of Winston Churchill from his days as head of the Admiralty should have alerted senior commanders to the possibility that it was yet another of his crackpot schemes. But they persisted. For his part, Haig being a technophile put a huge amount of faith in the new invention. His diary is littered with references to the tank and he seems to have made great efforts to secure ever more of them. In consequence, huge amounts of effort went into a technological dead end when it would have been far better spent on guns, shells and fuzes.
Not that such efforts were ever likely to satisfy the snake-oil salesmen who made up the ranks of the tank enthusiasts. In the face of tank failure after tank failure they simply claimed that their beloved weapon just wasn’t being used properly.
Comments Off on A contrarian view of the introduction of the tank
September 16, 2016
Beasts of Steel – The First Tanks On The Battlefield I THE GREAT WAR Week 112
Published on 15 Sep 2016
For years the British had developed the idea of the “landship” or tank and now it was finally ready for the first deployment during the Battle of Flers-Courcelette. And even though technical problems plagued the new invention, the British leadership was confident that this new weapon would break the stalemate at the Western Front for good. In the meantime Germany was focusing all offensive efforts on the Romanian front to mercilessly crush the new enemy.
Comments Off on Beasts of Steel – The First Tanks On The Battlefield I THE GREAT WAR Week 112
September 13, 2016
Tank Development in World War 1 I THE GREAT WAR Special
Published on 12 Sep 2016
The idea for an armoured vehicle that could withstand fire and travel across battlefields was already developed in 1914 after the Race to the Sea. The British “Landship Committee” developed the tank weapon in secrecy. The French were also trying out different designs at the same time. Learn all about the development and the invention of the tank in our special episode.
Comments Off on Tank Development in World War 1 I THE GREAT WAR Special
August 14, 2016
Captured Tanks – Bagpipers I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
Published on 13 Aug 2016
Indy sits in the chair of wisdom again to answer your questions about World War 1.
Comments Off on Captured Tanks – Bagpipers I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
June 29, 2016
Tankfest 2016 at the Bovington Tank Museum
Published on 28 Jun 2016
What I did on my holidays by The Mighty Jingles age 46 and a bit. TANKS!
The Tank Museum – http://www.tankmuseum.org/home
Upcoming Events at The Tank Museum:
Tanks in Action – 21 Jul – 02 Sep
Attack of the Daleks – 23/24 Jul
Warfare through the Ages – 06/07 Aug
Tank 100 – 17 Sep
Tank Experience Day – 30 Sep – 01 Oct
Access All Areas – 13 Oct
Comments Off on Tankfest 2016 at the Bovington Tank Museum
May 7, 2016
Tiger Day 2016 at The Bovington Tank Museum
Published on 4 May 2016
This weekend we popped down to the Tank Museum for a spot of big game hunting. Tigers, Leopards, Comets…. okay the analogy starts to break down a bit now…
Comments Off on Tiger Day 2016 at The Bovington Tank Museum
April 7, 2016
The Battle of Kursk – IV: Control of the Eastern Front – Extra History
Published on 28 Mar 2016
German divisions had not expected the level of resistance they met from the Soviets, and their planned advance was behind schedule. At the same time, the Soviets were concerned by the breaches in their first level of defense and by the Tiger tanks which so decisively outgunned their T-34. Fighting on the north side of the Kursk salient came to focus on the small Russian town of Ponyri, where the Germans saw an opportunity to break through and encircle the Soviet defenders. But every time they took control, the Soviets countered and took it back, until finally it became clear that they would never hold Ponyri and could only hope to divert troops from reinforcing the Soviet line elsewhere. But in the south, General Vatutin of the USSR had come up with a clever strategy: he literally buried his T-34 tanks up to the turrets, making them fortified anti-tank guns whose small profile negated the range advantage of the Tiger. His methods were extremely effective, but the Germans continued to fight forward inch by bloody inch. The Soviets needed to hold until reinforcements arrived. An attempted counterattack failed, but managed to slow the Germans, as did the sudden arrival of rainy weather that bogged down their materiel. In the midst of this, the brutal war criminals in the SS Division fought on with a ferocity best exemplified by Joachim Krüger, who once ripped off his pants to escape a smoke grenade and charged bare-assed at a Russian tank. But this wild back and forth could not continue. On July 12, 1943, the Germans sought a decisive outcome through a hard push at Prokhorovka. They did not get it, and the tides quickly turned against them. The Allies invaded Sicily, pressuring Hitler. He gave the command to withdraw the troops at Kursk, over his commanders’ objections. His general, Erich von Manstein, attempted one final assault just as Stalin’s long-planned counterattack rolled out in full force. The Soviets routed the Germans and collapsed their Eastern Front. Over the course of the war, they continued to push the German forces back – all the way to Berlin in 1945.
Comments Off on The Battle of Kursk – IV: Control of the Eastern Front – Extra History
March 31, 2016
The Battle of Kursk- III: Day One – Extra History
Published on 21 Mar 2016
The Germans planned their assault for July 5, 1943 but a defector warned the Soviets and denied them the element of surprise. Even without the warning, General Zhukov had found plenty of time to fortify Kursk with layer upon layer of pillboxes, minefields, and more. He planned to bloody the Germans with this staunch defense and weaken them for later. The new German tanks, such as the Tiger, arrived only to find themselves outnumbered by numerous Soviet T-34s and ill-supported by maintenance crews who were stretched too thin by the number and variety of new tanks being deployed. General Manstein ordered his strongest tank unit to push through, targeting the small town of Oboyan, but although he made the most progress along the line of the assault, even he had not expected resistance on this scale. By the next day, the Germans had barely reached the second line of Soviet defenses, and while they hadn’t been forced to retreat anywhere, they were distinctly behind schedule. Hitler needed them to win. It wouldn’t win the war, but he hoped that it would force the Soviets to withdraw, leaving him free to concentrate on the Western front and the threats from the United Kingdom and the United States.
Comments Off on The Battle of Kursk- III: Day One – Extra History
March 23, 2016
World War II: The Battle of Kursk – II: Preparations – Extra History
Published on 29 Feb 2016
Richard “the Challenger” Cutland, ex British tankie and military specialist at Wargaming, stops by to talk about the types of tanks involved in the Battle of Kursk! Early in Operation Barbarossa, the Germans didn’t expect much from their opponents. They did not know about the T-34 and KV-1 tanks, which turned out to be superior designs. The Germans deployed a special commission to study Soviet tank designs and soon introduced the Tiger, Panther, and Ferdinand tanks which Hitler believed were key to victory. The Panther in particular was now outclassing Soviet tanks, but it had giant mechanical issues and broke down frequently. The Soviets had produced a new T-43 model tank, but it was designed to tackle the old German Panzer IV and didn’t measure up well to the new German tanks. So they preferred to focus on the trusty T-34 tanks, which made up in speed and numbers what they lacked in range and firepower. The Kursk region also played to the Soviets’ advantage in Russia: the dust storms and mudfields hindered air support from the Luftwaffe and the advance of the Wermacht. Erich von Manstein, the German commander, decided not to advance. Instead he yielded ground to the Soviets in an attempt to lure them into overextending. He successfully caught them out at the First Battle of Kharkov, but even though the Soviets suffered heavy casualties there, it wasn’t enough to make a dent in their huge army. Manstein needed to do something more drastic. Both he and the Soviets recognized that the Soviet line had a weakness where it bulged out to defend the city of Kursk, making it an obvious target for the next stage of operations.
Comments Off on World War II: The Battle of Kursk – II: Preparations – Extra History
March 21, 2016
World War II: The Battle of Kursk – I: Operation Barbarossa – Extra History
Published on 15 Feb 2016
In June 1941, Nazi Germany launched an attack upon the Soviet Union. The German Reich had been building up forces along the Eastern Front for a long time, but the sudden aggression caught Soviet forces unprepared. Many troops were captured and the Germans quickly conquered territory from the Soviet states. But the Soviets reorganized, improved their communication structure, and pulled together a defense at Smolensk. Although they lost again, they critically slowed the German advance and halted their race towards Moscow. Instead, the Germans tried to lay siege at Leningrad, only to be struck themselves by insufficient supply lines and a brutal winter that claimed the lives of many soldiers. With that, the Wehrmacht withdrew and redirected its efforts towards Stalingrad. Josef Stalin refused to let them take any land “further than the Volga” in Russia, and mounted a stiff defense. Even when the Luftwaffe, the German air force, reduced the city to rubble, Soviet soldiers continued to wage war from the debris. Meanwhile, the Germans were so focused on their offensive that they let their defensive lines collapse, and in October 1942 the Soviets managed to surround and pin down the German 6th Army. Their commander refused surrender terms because he didn’t want to displease Adolf Hitler, but the 6th Army’s resistance inevitably collapsed in February 1943.
Comments Off on World War II: The Battle of Kursk – I: Operation Barbarossa – Extra History
January 30, 2016
Tanks – WW1 Uncut: Dan Snow – BBC
Published on 17 Apr 2014
Tanks were invented by the British during the First World War. Historian Dan Snow traces their development, from prototype to battlefield fixture.
Comments Off on Tanks – WW1 Uncut: Dan Snow – BBC
July 3, 2015
QotD: “US tankers were notorious for identifying everything as a Tiger tank”
When you read unit accounts, whether it’s the actual unit after action reports or the published books, everyone talks about Tiger tanks. But in looking at it in both German records and US records, I’ve only found three instances in all the fighting from Normandy to 1945 where the US encountered Tigers. And by Tigers I mean Tiger 1, the type of tank we saw in the film [Fury]. I’m not talking King Tigers, the strange thing is that the US Army encountered King Tigers far more often than Tigers. That’s partly because there weren’t a lot of Tigers left by 1944, production ends in August 1944. There were not a lot of Tigers in Normandy, they were mostly in the British sector, the British saw a lot of Tigers. Part of the issue is that US tankers were notorious for identifying everything as a Tiger tank, everything from Stug III assault guns to Panzer IV and Panthers and Tigers.
There was one incident in August of 1944 where 3rd Armored division ran into three Tigers that were damaged and being pulled back on a train, they shot them up with an anti-aircraft half-track. And then there was a single Tiger company up in the Bulge that was involved in some fighting. And then there was one short set of instances in April 1945, right around the period of the film, where there was a small isolated Tiger unit that actually got engaged with one of the new US M26 Pershing tank units. They knocked out a Pershing and then in turn that Tiger was knocked out and the Pershing tanks knocked out another King Tiger over the following days. So I found three verifiable instances of Tigers encountering, or having skirmishes with US troops in 1944-45. So it was very uncommon. It definitely could have happened, there are certainly lots of gaps in the historical record both on the German side and the US side. I think the idea that the US encountered a lot of Tigers during WW2 is simply due to the tendency of the US troops to call all German tanks Tigers. It’s the same thing on the artillery side. Every time US troops are fired upon, it’s an 88, whether it’s a 75mm Pak 40 anti-tank gun, a real 88, a 105mm field howitzer, they were all called 88’s.
“Interview with Steven Zaloga”, Tank and AFV News, 2015-01-27.
Comments Off on QotD: “US tankers were notorious for identifying everything as a Tiger tank”
June 25, 2015
Building A WW2 Tank: A Defense Report On Film – 1941 Educational Documentary
Published on 20 Jun 2015
Activities at the Chrysler Tank Arsenal in Detroit. Wheel suspension units are milled, wheels ground, gun mount gears cut, armor plate put through a punch press and drill, sprocket gears cut by an arc torch, gears heat treated and immersed in oil baths, armor plate hydraulically riveted, the tanks assembled, armament installed, and the tanks lifted from the assembly line by cranes. The tanks are tested at Fort Knox, Kentucky.
Comments Off on Building A WW2 Tank: A Defense Report On Film – 1941 Educational Documentary
May 14, 2015
A new application for “dazzle” camouflage
RMS Olympic by Arthur Lismer 1919 (via Wikipedia).
Military History Now looks at some of the more eye-catching camouflage schemes of the world wars and suggests that something like it may have a modern application:
… nearly a century after the advent of dazzle, Dr. Nick Scott-Samuel of the University of Bristol believes that similar camouflage patterns painted on the sides of today’s jeeps and armoured cars will make it harder for enemy combatants to get a fix on military vehicles.
“Scott-Samuel, is the first to find evidence that dazzle camouflage can affect perception of speed – but only if the camouflaged object is moving quickly,” says a spokesperson with the British school. “These findings suggest that, while it would probably not have successfully distorted ships’ speeds in the two World Wars, dazzle camouflage could play a role in today’s battlefields where fast-moving army vehicles frequently come under attack from shoulder-launched, rocket-propelled grenades.”
Scott-Samuel arrived at his conclusion after putting volunteers through a series of visual tests. Researchers asked subjects to estimate the distance and speed of camouflaged objects in computer-simulated environments.
Participants observing virtual objects with dazzle patterns believed the targets were moving as much as 7 percent slower than they really were. Those who viewed unmarked objects were more likely to correctly estimate their speeds.
Scott-Samuel says the results indicate that military vehicles bearing dazzle patterns would be harder to hit than those painted with ordinary drab colours.
Comments Off on A new application for “dazzle” camouflage
