Forgotten Weapons
Published on 4 Aug 2017http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
The MP40 is an iconic piece of World War 2 weaponry, and it’s about time we took a closer look at its development…
Thanks to the Institute of Military Technology for allowing me to have access to these three examples so I can bring them to you! Check out the IMT at:
If you enjoy Forgotten Weapons, check out its sister channel, InRangeTV! http://www.youtube.com/InRangeTVShow
October 26, 2018
The German WWII Standby: The MP38 and MP40 SMGs
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September 19, 2018
QotD: The “generations” of jet fighters
American warplanes like the F-22 and F-35 are often called “5th generation” fighters. This leaves many wondering what the other generations were and what the next one will be. The generation reference is all because of jet fighters, and the first generation was developed during and right after World War II (German Me-262, British Meteor, U.S. F-80, and Russian MiG-15). These aircraft were, even by the standards of the time, difficult to fly and unreliable (especially the engines). The 2nd generation (1950s) included more reliable but still dangerous to operate aircraft like the F-104 and MiG-21. The 3rd generation (1960s) included F-4 and MiG-23. The 4th generation (1970s) included F-16 and MiG-29. Each generation has been about twice as expensive (on average, in constant dollars) as the previous one. But each generation is also about twice as safe to fly and cheaper to operate. Naturally, each generation is more than twice as effective as the previous one. Increasingly it looks like the 6th generation will come without pilots. That’s because producing fifth generation fighters has proved difficult as well as very expensive. So far only the United States has managed to get 5th gen fighters (F-22 and F-35) into service. The Russians are still trying as are the Chinese, even though one of their stealth fighter designs (J-20) is technically in service (even though production has been suspended after less than a dozen were produced).
The Russians have said they will keep working on their 5th generation Su-57, although some of the derivatives of their Su-27 are at least generation 4.5. One of the reasons the Soviet Union collapsed was the realization that they could not afford to develop 5th generation warplanes to stay competitive with America. The Russians had a lot of interesting stuff on the drawing board and in development but the bankruptcy of most of their military aviation industry during the 1990s left them scrambling to put it back together ever since. At the moment the Russians are thinking of making a run for the 6th generation warplanes, which will likely be unmanned and largely robotic. As of 2018 they don’t have much choice because their answer to the F-22, work on the Su-57 was canceled (“indefinitely paused”.)
“Murphy’s Law: The Impossible 5th Generation”, Strategy Page, 2018-08-20.
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August 30, 2018
An Introduction to Perspective Drawing | Paul Sellers
Paul Sellers
Published on 29 Aug 2018300,000 is a big number! Thank you all for subscribing. Paul wanted to do this video for a while but since we ended up filming this right around the time we passed this milestone we are thinking about making the original drawing the giveaway. Would you like the drawing to hang on your shop wall? Oh, and if you haven’t already, please subscribe!
How do you get a project idea down on paper? Drawing is a great way of communicating your design to those around you. Paul has always sketched and drawn his own designs and in this video shows you how to create your own perspective drawings.
For more information on these topics, see https://paulsellers.com or https://woodworkingmasterclasses.com
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August 27, 2018
Critique of a retro-futuristic battleship design
At Naval Gazing, a bit of informed criticism of a September 1940 Popular Mechanics article on the future of battleships:
I recently ran across the following spread from a 1940 edition of Popular Mechanics. It’s an interesting study in the way that outsiders get warship design very, very wrong.
Click to see full-size image.
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August 13, 2018
Tank Chats #34 Chieftain | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published on 31 Mar 2017The thirty-fourth Tank Chat, this time presented by Curator David Willey after some help from Eli. https://youtu.be/T33hp0J-LAw
Britain’s Main Battle Tank for twenty years, Chieftain was one of the first true Main Battle Tanks, designed to replace both medium and heavy tanks in front line service.
To find out more, buy the new Haynes Chieftain tank manual. https://www.myonlinebooking.co.uk/tan…
Support the work of The Tank Museum on Patreon: ► https://www.patreon.com/tankmuseum
Or donate http://tankmuseum.org/support-us/donate
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July 29, 2018
A poor tank, a useless tank, and the worst tank in the world
Lindybeige
Published on 10 Jul 2018Tigers? Why talk about Tigers when one can talk about tanks that were even worse? More tank banter with The Chieftain.
Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LindybeigeA low-tech tank with fragile armour, a tank that never saw the enemy, and the tank used to teach how not to build tanks. Thanks to Nicholas Moran (AKA The Chieftain) and Matt Sampson, the cameraman at Bovington Tank Museum.
The third of these three segments was shot with my new camera, and it really shows.
Lindybeige: a channel of archaeology, ancient and medieval warfare, rants, swing dance, travelogues, evolution, and whatever else occurs to me to make.
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Twitter: https://twitter.com/Lindybeige I may have some drivel to contribute to the Twittersphere, plus you get notice of uploads.
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website: http://www.LloydianAspects.co.uk
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July 20, 2018
Tank Chats #33 Panzer III | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published on 11 Mar 2017The thirty-third Tank Chat, this time presented by Curator David Willey. Including a fascinating insight into pre-Second World War German tank production and how the Panzer III worked alongside its fellow Panzers.
To find out more, buy the new Haynes Panzer III tank manual. https://www.myonlinebooking.co.uk/tan…
The Panzer III was conceived in 1934 as the principle combat tank of the Panzer divisions. The Museum’s Panzer III went into action in the North African theatre of war and is believed to have been captured at the Battle of Alam Halfa.
Support the work of The Tank Museum on Patreon: ► https://www.patreon.com/tankmuseum
Or donate http://tankmuseum.org/support-us/donate
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July 4, 2018
Tank Chats #32 Cromwell | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published on 24 Feb 2017The thirty second in a series of short films about some of the vehicles in our collection, presented by The Tank Museum’s historian David Fletcher MBE. The Second World War, British, Cromwell tank was one of the fastest tanks of the war.
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May 31, 2018
Admiral David Beatty: “There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today”
One of the outcomes of the Battle of Jutland was that naval opinion finally crystalized over the notion of battle cruisers: the loss of three British battle cruisers during the battle (and near-loss of a fourth) proved to most that the design was flawed and that this class of ships should never have sailed into battle against real battleships. A recent post at Naval Gazing begs to differ on this judgement:
Explosion that sank HMS Queen Mary at the Battle of Jutland, 31 May 1916
Image via Wikimedia Commons.
David Beatty’s famous remark about the destruction of two of his ships by catastrophic magazine explosions during the Battle of Jutland sums up the traditional attitude towards one of the battle’s most famous aspects. Of the 3,326 men aboard the battlecruisers Indefatigable, Queen Mary, and Invincible, only 17 survived. It’s long been believed that the ships themselves were to blame, as they were built with only relatively light armor. Shells supposedly penetrated to the magazines and set them off. Recent research has revealed that this was not the case, and the ships were lost primarily due to defects in operation, not design.
The basic problem with the conventional theory is that no German shell penetrated deep enough into the surviving ships to have been able to set off a magazine if it had hit one. The magazines take up a minority of a battlecruiser’s deck, so if such hits were common, then at least a few of the surviving ships should have seen shells reach their machinery. Instead, German shells were found to detonate with 16-24′ of their first impact with the structure. At the 20° angle the shells were falling at at the time, this puts them no more than 8 feet below the upper deck upon detonation. The only case where shell fragments reached magazine was a hit on Barham at 1758 when fragments from a 12″ shell penetrated the deck over the 6″ magazine. Despite leaving a 12″x15″ hole in the 1″ deck, the fragments had no effect on the powder stored under it.
So is there a different potential cause, one that happened to a surviving ship? A survey of the damage to Beatty’s battlecrusiers reveals a promising candidate. A hit on a turret, such as the one suffered by HMS Lion, could cause a flash to propagate down into the magazine, which would then deflagrate in precisely the manner seen during the battle. A careful examination of Lion‘s damage shows that she came very close to suffering the same fate.
Turret explosions are hardly unknown aboard warships, either as a result of accident or enemy action, and a great deal of care goes into making sure that they don’t set off the magazines. Powder is stored in metal cans or tanks, and flashproof doors and other interlocks are used to make sure that fire does not reach the magazines. Unfortunately, the British had systematically undermined these protections in the search for rate of fire and ammunition capacity, and their magazine practices during the battle can only be described as suicidal.
After the Battle of Dogger Bank, Beatty decided that the reason he was unable to destroy the German battlecruisers was insufficient rate of fire. Not only would opening fire early and firing quickly lead to early hits, but it would also distract the German gunners. However, the British were not particularly confident in their long-range fire control, and began to stuff extra cordite into the handling rooms and other spaces that had been designed to provide flash protection. This was made much worse by a other changes intended to increase rate of fire. Normally, the cordite cases were kept sealed until just before the charges are sent to the gun, but the crews chose to open many of the cases early, take some cordite out of the cases before battle to make it easy to access, and even stored extra charges completely unprotected. In a final effort to make the turrets as dangerous as possible, the majority of the anti-flash safety doors were removed.
The only ship which strongly resisted this trend was Lion, and the efforts of her Gunner, Alexander Grant, deserve most of the credit. When Grant came aboard, he found the situation described above, and quickly reintroduced the traditional magazine safety regulations with the support of Lion‘s captain, Ernle Chatfield. He managed to train the magazine crews to the point where they could provide cordite to the guns faster than the guns could fire it, while observing full safety procedures.
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May 24, 2018
Tank Chats #30 M3 Grant | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published on 27 Jan 2017The thirtieth in a series of short films about some of the vehicles in our collection presented by The Tank Museum’s historian David Fletcher MBE.
Tanks of this type were first used in Western Desert in 1942. The M3’s were mechanically reliable, but soon superseded by Sherman.
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May 16, 2018
Crusader Tank | Animated History
The Armchair Historian
Published on 25 Jun 2016
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May 12, 2018
The Disaster That Changed Engineering: The Hyatt Regency Collapse
Tom Scott
Published on 13 Mar 2017Today’s guest video is from Grady at Practical Engineering! Go subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/user/gradyhillhouse
The Hyatt Regency Hotel collapse was a disaster that changed engineering: it’s taught in colleges and universities as a way to make it clear: you check and double-check everything. Something that seems like a subtle change can cause a catastrophic failure if it’s not thoroughly checked first!
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April 30, 2018
The Ferdinand: What Not To Do When Building a Tank
Potential History
Published on 11 Mar 2018A brief history of the VK 45.01 (P), or the Porsche Tiger, and the disaster it later became.
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April 29, 2018
Tank Crew Training – More German Tank Prototypes I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
The Great War
Published on 28 Apr 2018Chair of Wisdom Time!
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April 8, 2018
Tank design: two overlooked aspects
Lindybeige
Published on 6 Apr 2018I discuss a trait of tank armament that deserves more attention, and The Chieftain contributes his own tank design aspect that gets underestimated.
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