Armored Vehicles of Operation Torch Pt. 1: Italy and Germany - by the Chieftain
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- Опубліковано 26 вер 2024
- Chieftain 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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Hosted by: Chieftain / thechieftainshatch
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Written by: Chieftain
Research by: Chieftain
Edited by: Miki Cackowski
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Sound design by: Marek Kamiński
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We want to give The Chieftain a huge shout out. He is by far one of the most rigorous and professional historians on UA-cam, which we are reminded of each time we work with him. The author of this pinned comment actually had the pleasure of meeting Chieftain in person at a tank show a few weeks ago, and he was every bit as gracious, intelligent, and fascinating to speak to in person as he is here on UA-cam. It's very rare that we at TimeGhost do collaborations like this, mainly because it's very rare to find someone as pleasant to work with as he is. Please give him the full TimeGhost Army round of applause and go check out all of his videos over at: ua-cam.com/users/TheChieftainsHatch
Will do
I have to agree, so many myths about armour, that have sprung up over the years, have been busted on his channel through the old expedient of trawling through the archives for primary sources.
I'm just here for the AMC 57 MM gun carriage
I was just about to go type "Hi Chieftain, Indy sent me here" but then I remembered I was already there... Ow bugger my brain is on fire
Love the chieftain episodes, can't wait for part 2!
Also can't wait for small arms, planes and also maybe ships to be covered like this by specialists as well.
"He's also a great dancer and he's fun at parties". You know that means we need conclusive video proof of both those statements 😃
there is a video of indy at a wedding belting out while playing a ukelle, kiss's " hard luck woman"
@@andrewfischer8564 Link please! 😋
Few people have witnessed this and survived with their sanity intact. Ia! Ia! Chieftain Fthagn!
Since he is a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army they should have him dance in his dress uniform
The mental image of Indy and the Chieftain dancing together is as haunting as it is disturbing.
Yay, an episode from the Chieftain. I have to admit that I only knew recently on the fact that The Chieftain was actually one of the military expert advisors on the Girls Und Panzer anime series.
Always liked hearing from the man himself :)
Did they declare that in this particular video or have they mentioned that in passing in previous videos?
@@tomppeli. You mean on him being involved in Girls Und Panzer? Well no actually, but someone in the premiere livestream earlier actually mentioned this fact and it was actually real when I went to fact check it up.
Say what now ?
@@tomppeli. he is literally credited in the movie
ua-cam.com/video/JZG2XscrI18/v-deo.html
The "Sahariana" is so awesome and good-looking. I'm happy they did mentioned it.
If I remember right Erwin 'Desert Fox' Rommel was positively impressed by courage and skill shown by Bersaglieri, Italian light infantry and most likely their most skilled formations. Seeing that he appreciated bold, offensive, death-or-glory tactics (he made great use of them) they must have been really good troops.
Even in Russia the Bersaglieri were considered quite reliable. The 3rd Bersaglieri had a very good reputation.
Italian self propelled guns were actually very good considering the rest of their equipment. The Semovente da 75/18 was a reliable and powerful platform.
The photo at 7:12 is interesting. While it does show an Sd Kfz 233, the graffiti on the wall says "long live the commander of the 4th operational zone, comrade Vicko Krstulovic". It is a revolutionary graffiti of the Yugoslav partisans. The photo was clearly taken in Dalmatia, although I can't say which city, possibly Split.
If a tank's main gun is 5cm/60, like the PzKpfw III, that means the barrel diameter inside is 5cm (50mm) and the length of the barrel is 60X that or 300cm, meaning 3 meters. Longer barrel means higher velocity, better penetration of the target, and larger/fewer shells carried by the tank.
Longer barrels are also more accurate.
@@Kyle-gw6qp The trajectory is flatter, making hitting something a bit easier. The accuracy is more depending on the spin and weight of the projectile and its aerodynamics.
The Tigers appearing in small numbers now before increasing later is like that early fight with a boss enemy that shows up as a regular enemy late in the game.
Ow they'll still remain an oddity with only a 1000 produced. The panther will be the regular enemy soon.
So about Italian armoured Divisions.
132nd Ariete and 133rd Littorio (which was converted from motorised division) had 3 armored battalions armed with M14s and Semovente Gruppo (Assault Gun Battalion, basically) which each had 2-3 batteries with 5 Semoventes in each battery (later increased to 6). And despite heroism both divisions would be destroyed in El Alamein. Some thirty or so tanks that survived El Alamein would form up into a separate armoured group facing British.
So majority of Italian armour was held by 131st Centauro post El Alamein (as they showed late to a party) and would end up fighting Americans in Tunisia with some success. While majority of tanks would had been still M14/41s, experience (and desperation) while facing more common American medium tanks led to Italians having Semoventes integraded to tank battalions (besides the Semovente Gruppo). At most half the Italian tanks would had been Semoventes (including the 47/32 version) but in actual numbers it is not a lot.
Sounds like the Italians had good recon and lighter vehicles. Mostly suffering when they needed to have heavier armoured vehicles for fighting enemy tanks.
Remembrance Day here in Canada today, and indeed throughout the Empire. #lestweforget
Worldwide actually, though in America we call it Veteran's Day
Lulz, “empire”.
Is there any chance for an airplane version of these kind of breakdowns? It’s so wonderful to see this!
I would also love to see this - would be great to have Chris/Bismarck from Military Aviation History on to do a few aircraft-centric specials
Can't wait for The Chieftains coverage of the soviet Mammoth Tank. I'm also wondering how well that tank armor will stand up to Tesla Coils.
“The majority of AA equipment used was toad.” Snicker. But seriously, well done as usual.
Thanks!
For those wondering, the tank featured at 4:00 is in fact the Carro Commando M41 (command tank), based on the M14/41 chassis. Featuring a 13,2 mm heavy MG if I remember correctly.
Joke's on you Indy, my pops has a gmail account but never signed into his Shield TV with it. I did and hit subscribe. haha
"Developed with a minimum of political interference" The chieftain about pzVI Tiger - The sarcasm is strong with this one.
In fairness, Tiger -was- developed with a minimum of political interference. That was not necessarily the case for later vehicles, though...
Chieftain collabs, You gotta love it
There has been little discussion about Soviet air power during Barbarossa. It would be nice to see how air power on both sides affected each battle on the Soviet fronts.
I think it's fairly simple, the Luftwaffe caught the VVS with their pants down on the ground in the early hours of Barbarossa and they never recovered from that until 1943, maybe operation Uranus and Mars too? Probably not in the latter case as that failed miserably. For the course of Barbarossa the air war probably resembled that of D-Day and the West-European campaign. A shitload of Lufwaffe sorties dominating the battlefield, only a fraction of that in VVS operations, and which more often then not was of little impact if any at all.
@@chaptermasterpedrokantor1623 You kinda repeated an old myth here. Luftwaffe wasn't large enough to achieve a complete air dominance outside of a limited number of the key areas. So actually Red Army VVS contested or had some sort of air superiority over the large portions of the Eastern front.
Indy and the crew did cover the Red Airforce, it was a special episode. Actually they covered a lot at the beggining of Barbarossa, check out their special episodes.
@@chaptermasterpedrokantor1623 The Luftwaffe simply didn't have the avgas or planes to pull off total air dominance. It was common during Barbarossa for German mobile formations to have to fight off the Red Air Force with their organic FLAK elements. Still, the Reds had to stay away from the BF-109 threat.
Amazingly, the FW-190s were NOT brought to the Eastern Front until the Spring of 1942.
The narrow under carriage of the BF-109 caused most of them to crack up while landing in Russia... eventually.
Early in Barbarossa, the ENTIRE Ju-52 fleet was grounded because they had all lost their landing gear. (!!!)
Udet blew his brains out over this fiasco. Yes, that mystery has been solved.
@@chaptermasterpedrokantor1623 Air superiority attained by German during Barbarossa is not comparable to post-D-Day Western Front in any way. I can't believe such myth still pop up here with so many likes when this have been brought up in numerous videos already. Luftwaffe at it peak could only achieve regional, temporary air superiority. VVS probably couldn't contest where Luftwaffe concentrated their forces, but they could definitely do so elsewhere along the front, or when Luftwaffe's sorties were fewer. Luftwaffe simply didn't have enough planes, pilots or fuel to achieve and maintain the same level of domination that Allies did in Western Front.
Indy needs to go through the 'serious emotional event' in a future video with The Chieftain.
I’m such a nerd that when Chieftan said “Panzer VI” I got goosebumps and thought “he’s about to say Tiger.”
I had forgotten about the Semoventes, and never heard of the Sahariana line, Thanks!
Glad you learned something new!
"Schwerer Panzer Abteilung 501, of which will come back to in a minute."
and this, this is how you learn what is a 老虎
老虎 = means tiger?
Hearing Indy simply say 'meme' is just lovely.
I really like the AS42. From its looks to its weapons it is basically a WW2 Warthog.
it must have been a nightmare supply all the spare parts, ammunition and anything that was needed for the German army in North Africa just because from this list nothing was interchangeable and every had to come from a different production line
The Auto-Sahara was a thing before the LRDG. You got it the other way around, Chiefy-baby. The Brits took inspiration from the Italians and turned it down a notch (or rather, turned it up a notch as a response to the LRDG). Hence how the Italians made the fighting in the desert a bit more competitive when it came to raids - making for many long treks through the desert for stranded Tommys caught in an ambush.
Excellent presentation.
Thank you, Chieftan.
Thank you Time Ghost Army.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Love the chieftain episodes, can't wait for part 2!
Also can't wait for small arms, planes and also maybe ships to be covered like this by specialists as well.
1:30 Discusses innovative Italian raid buggy "These showed up in Africa in August of 1942" 1:47
Chieftan is riding dirty.
“What are those THINGS?”
But seriously, the Sahariana sounds way more bad ass and capable than the kubelwagen.
@@MarcosElMalo2 I mean the Kubelwagen is literally jsut a car that serves the same purpose as a jeep.
And believe me you wwould like the Kubelwagen considering it was a very reliable way tos afe your ass from death if you needed to get away asap.
Those googly-eyes keep staring into my soul.
Very interesting revelations in today's episode! There is going to be fighting in Sicily!? But more importantly, Chieftain is a good dancer and is fun at parties. I'm glad I signed for the TimeGhost Army!!
A note regarding German recce units. The Germans had developed a 4x4 armoured car for use in the desert. However that theatre of the war closed before it could go into production. A very similar looking vehicle would later come along as the sd.kfz 234 "Puma" - seemingly just a lengthened version of this earlier 4x4.
Whilst the Germans were short on armoured half tracks through the war, they did go so far as to improvise SPGs based on the .250 and 251 - indicating that the armoured hulls were considered more useful as direct combat vehicles, rather than primarily as APCs. Of all the theatres the desert didn't seem to have quite so many improvised armoured personnel carriers being built either (certainly not compared to as in the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia). Perhaps due to the need for trucks as supply vehicles, or the long supply lines making taxed chassis from all the extra armour not desirable.
The Italians too would develop further armoured cars, being that their main theatre of the war was Africa, that aren't mentioned here. However they too mostly came too late, and instead the short production runs were used for the fighting in Italy (and eventually found their way into the hands of the Italian Social Republic or Partisans). These vehicles seemingly intended at providing more firepower whilst using existing chassis, or modified derivatives.
The Chieftain seems to know what he's talking about. How nice. I already subscribed to him.
This is awesome, as always, when the chieftain speaks we all learn something amazing and brutal. All shows in this channel got this power, always amazing and brutal.
Thank you!
Great vid. Very worried for the safety of the Chief, as I see the Rabbit of Caerbannog lurking in the background.
"Would be encountered in Sicily....spoiler alert by the way" got to love Chieftain's dry sense of humour.
This is the type of geeky info I love about UA-cam. History matched with technical data satisfies my inner nerd. Props to whoever invited Cheiftan to splatter us with specs!
I'm still a fan of the socio-economic / political histories as well.
The sad He177 in the background of Indy left its left 4blade prop at home :(
Wow! Turns out there were more German half tracks in the movie's and on TV than Germany ever had, at least in the desert. German SS jumping out of their half tracks with Grease Guns has become Iconic.
One point of interest concerning Tigers in Africa, according to T Jentz, Rommel was at one point promised a certain number of Tiger (P) - the Porsche designed version of the Tiger which was later converted to the famous Ferdinand Panzerjäger. Photos exist showing a Tiger (P) undergoing testing with a special heavy-duty air filtration system and engine deck cowlings for Tropen environments (though it should be added that South Russia was also considered 'Tropen'). However, with the constant delays and problems experienced by the Tiger (P) project, none of these tanks were ever delivered to Africa, and late in 1942 the decision was made to re-purpose the production run of 100 Tiger (P) for other uses (predominantly the aforementioned Panzerjäger)
Love The Chieftain’s polo shirt “ Fear Naught”.
Ik it’s a bit late for this stage of the war but what about a video on armoured vehicles and tanks of the Benalux countries, Poland, Norway and Denmark. Basically nations that got kicked out early on. Idk if such video would make sense to make but if u lack ideas well here’s one. Great work guys as always
*sees a Tiger tank*
"FUCKING TIGER!!!!!!!!!!!"
Great program. Great models too
Another great video!
Thank you!
Thanks to all of you .
I KNEW that there was Tiger 1's in North Africa in WW 2 .
I know that I've seen that information some where before .
Thanks for this episode .
Good to see the Chieftan again on this channel. It has been a while.
14:55 I like how there is a Marder in the background. Why do I get the sense that this is the unit of misfit tank destroyers?
I love it when my patron'd channels get together 😁
Well done. A great overview.
Thank you for your kind words!
Heh, "semovente" is the legal name for property that moves by itself, like cattle, in Portuguese
Thanks a lot to both of you.
I really enjoy your work and your love to details, same with the chieftain.
May the algorithm be with you and your team, stay healthy!
Thank you so much!
NICE explaining Characteristics of Axis Armors Vehicles in Northern Africa operations during 2WW..Thanks For Sharing.....
Surprising to learn that the german armoured cars didn't all have short range radios from the start
Yeah, especially since they were logically tasked with carrying out reconnaissance. I reckon Germany being tight with radios and electronics was probably the reason that they Germans chose to stick what they had into tanks first and foremost. And in that regard they chose wisely. The Red Army had even less radios and as a result Red Army tank units were very ineffective for the 1st half of the war. Being able to coordinate every tank in the heat of the battle was a war winner for the Germans. Until the Allies and Red Army got their shit together that is.
Its that tall fella again.
Sdkfz 251 is somewhat mythical in that on paper the entire regiment (whether of a panzer or panzergrenadier division) should be kitted out with them. In reality only a battalion or even only a company would get them. In practice: 1 regiment on trucks, the other on half tracks but with only a battalion or company actually issued them. The half tracks issued were prioritized to the assault company and pioneers (combat engineers). Unlike mounted infantry the pioneers just about always had the halftracks issued to them. Part of this is because there was a tendancy to upgun halftracks in the field and use them as fighting vehicles. By 1943 mounted infantry were in fact fighting while mounted. So e.g. the halftrack mortar combos could dismount, the halftrack 37mm combo also carried infantry, the anti-aircraft and rocket armed half tracks do not appear also to have carried soldiers into combat. Flammenwerfer units were also carrying mounted troops. Doctrine was, where possible, to fight mounted, hence all the firing slots and pintles. 75mm armed half tracks appeoar only to have been used as support vehicles and not as transports. This is certainly true of the 75mm pak 40 AT, i presume is also true of the SiG version.
And yeah Sdkfz 251 doesn't appear to have gone to Afrika, unlike the unarmored half track schlepper and the smaller command halftrack. This may have been due to sinkings but is likelier due to prioritizing Russia. Most of the Afrika Korps was leavings from other units, make-shift.
Source for "Most of the Afrika Korps was leavings from other units" ?
The British chiefs of staff, spurred by Churchill, had proposed October 7, 1942, as the target date for the operation, but U.S. planners recommended November 7 as “the earliest reasonable date for landing of the forces based on availability of combat loaders.” On the question of the landing site, the respective views were even wider apart: the British urged that the landings should be made in North Africa, on the Mediterranean coast,
FDR wanted the landing before the November elections but the American generals told him NO. The Democrats took a battering in the 1942 congressional elections losing 9 Senators and 47 House seats and 3 Governors to the Republicans. It is one of the worst results for congressional democrats since the Great Depression. Americans were frustrated that we had not struck back yet in the war and Guadalcanal seemed to be a quagmire.
@@genericyoutubeaccount579 Politics always dominates military decisions and choice of operations, just as much in a democracy as it does in dictatorships.
@@genericyoutubeaccount579 Later in 1943, Congress is now worried about the 1944 elections due to the press getting the general public worked up over the US Army's M4's getting blown to pieces by the German's superior AT guns and their heavy Tiger tanks. People were thinking that Congress was too cheap to fund the production of a heavy tank after the Army cancelled production of the M6 heavy tank in 1942 so Congress began to pressure Ordnance and the War Department to come up with a heavy tank before the November elections in 1944. Ordnance had started work on a replacement for the M4 in 1942 so had developed several prototypes of a heavier armored and up-gunned medium tank. The demands by Congress had the armor commanders in Europe telling Ordnance that they had no need for a heavy tank while their superiors in D.C. insisted that they needed one and went ahead to order the now overweight T26 into production in December of 1943. That took a while since they had to build a plant, get the machinery and line up subcontractors to make various components. The T26 went into production in November of '44 with 10 produced, 30 in December, 70 in January and 132 in February. Congress had their hair on fire over getting the T26 into combat ASAP so 20 arrived in Antwerp in January of 1945 without trained crews and mechanics. The armor commanders refused to use them due to that and not have undergone the usual rigorous field testing to find and fix their flaws. They relented and divided the 20 between their units to Ike out of hot water with the politicians and General George C. Marshall.
The T26 turned out to be a waste of tax dollars since it had little effect on the battlefield. If they weren't being repaired then they were at the end of the advancing columns due to their slow speed and were only called up when needed. They managed to destroy 6 or 7 German tanks while having three disabled by German tanks. One was the single Super Pershing sent to Europe and had 5 tons of additional armor added under the supervision of the infamous Belton Cooper. The added weight made the tank almost too heavy to consider using yet off it went to take on the remaining German tanks. It managed to bag two tanks of unknown models from 1500 yards before being knocked out by a German medium Pz 4 with a shot thru the side. It was last seen at a vehicle dump after the war so probably was cut up for scrap.
Just a minor thing: singular nominative is "das Sturmgeschütz", plural nominative is "die Sturmgeschütze", "Sturmgeschützen" is plural accusative. Chieftain's German pronunciation is pretty good though.
YEEEEEESS CHIEFTAIN
Just in case Chieftain hasn't already recorded the 2nd video (unlikely, I know) here are some things I wish he would cover. Since armored warfare in WW2 has more to do with doctrine than vehicles (most of the time) and since the UK army has been so resistant, through 1941, to learn the lessons the Germans keep so generously teaching them, HAVE THEY FINALLY learned about combined arms warfare?
Possibly the biggest mistake the Brits made on the equipment side was going all-in with the 2-pounder gun on both their infantry and cruiser tanks. By 1942 this failing SHOULD have been mitigated by the addition of US M3 light and medium tanks with the more versatile 37mm gun and the additional 75mm gun on the M3 medium. But DID the UK mix these American tanks in with their domestic 2-pounder equipped tanks? The Churchill could also play this role on the infantry side.
On 7.05 that 8x8 is rolling down Marmont street in Split, modern day Croatia.
This is great, I love it
Thank you for watching
damnit, everytime this channel mentions Operation Torch, I feel a need to start up Medal of Honor again.....
who dislike votes history?
considering the condensed run time i think the episodes are well balanced, neutral and informative.
i have been following along since The Great War, and am still fascinated by the visual documentation that is included. yes, it is true history is (mostly) written by the victors, Indy and company have been very balanced in the presentations now and in the past.
perhaps the down votes are a response to your choice of tie?😀
Don't worry, thanks to youtube turning youtube into a safespace for special snowflakes no one can see anymore how many dislikes anyone gets.
Where is Sturmpanzer ll? Exclusively built for use in North Africa...
The "spoiler alert" jokes are funny every time.
Please do more like this really enjoyed it
Tiger 1: I have a specific set of skills....
Every fricking video Indy does is special…. No need to classify it as such!
Interesting topic 👍
Thanks!
@ 13.50... there were NO Australian troops in all of North Africa after Jan '43. They were all sent to the Pacific theater to fight the Japanese. No Tigers were lost in combat prior to Jan '43 either. These troops are most likely Kiwis who sometimes wore similar hats to the Aussies. Unless its 'Monty' himself, inspecting the Tiger? Coz he often wore an Aussie slouch hat...
Those semeventes do look good. And Im ok w/ rivets... long as Im not in it
The Tigers are here! THE TIGERS ARE HERE!
"One away!"
7:11 - probably Croatian street scene.
16:33 👀 Umm... OK...
The Panzer IV, the workhorse of the Wehrmacht.
I would assume that part of the popularity of the semovente was that it was one of the few things effective against the Allied tanks in the italian arsenal. If they had had more and better equipment the negative sides would likely have stood out more.
Italian general misconduct of the war created a false impression that their entire army was worthless. While in reality Italian weapons of all kinds (and industry in general) were on par with those of other nations. Even today Italian industry is often horribly underappreciated.
That is Erwin's Sdkfz 250/3 at 16:19
Were engineering vehicles a thing to help troops dig in or was mobility and dead ground used to hide trucks with 90mm guns on top?
I'am a simple man, I see Chieftan I click on like
Heeeeeyyyy that's pretty good I ask yesterday on one of the two videos about, if there was gonna be any videos on hardware such as tanks or planes and look what we have here
Lucky!
Match made in heaven!
In Speer's self-serving war bio he specifically brought up the intense hostility that German manufacturers had towards sharing blue prints with their Italian allies. That's why the Italians never seemed to get on track with tank designs -- not even producing clones of the quite dated panzer III -- which would've been a logical thing to do for the Italian 8th Army serving in Army Group South.
This is THE common theme of the Axis powers: they didn't co-operate with each other.
Note how the Italians stuck with riveted hull construction long after the other nations had moved on to welding.
(Riveting is actually slower to work with and it requires much higher labor skills. Drilling or punching the required holes is pretty slow going.)
If the Italians were cranking out an (extra) five PIII long barrels per day, the Italian 8th Army would've totally fouled up Operation Uranus.
I do not believe that welding, as the Germans used in most all tanks designs, would have been less time consuming than the Italian's native riveting methods, when accounting for the time it would take to train skilled Italian welders - Italy would have had to accept a loss in production output while those workers were trained in a new method, and while factory tooling was set up to accommodate production of different designs. This would cause a loss in overall production output for multiple months, with no guarantee of total output recovery, which was simply unacceptable at a political level.
Considering the PzKpfw III was also showing its age by this point in 1942, I doubt that it specifically would have been worth the trouble of converting over from domestic Italian designs. Note that the Italians did consider producing a domestic version of PzKpfw Panther, a tank much larger and more complex than their own native designs.
I can also understand Germany's unwillingness to trust their Italian allies with such technological developments, when Italy turned out to be the first major Axis power to turn tail and attempt to join the Allies (with the complication, of course, that there ended up being an Allied Italy and an Axis Republic of Salo).
Lastly, I am very skeptical that better equipment of Italian forces would have reversed the outcome of Uranus to begin with, even if they could equip their forces with more powerful weapons or tanks in time.
@@Maus5000 It is a fact of manufacturing life that welding is always faster than riveting unless the material is trivially thin and non-ferrous.
The US was able to train women to weld at production speed within a week. The essence of welding is pre-prep. Once any worker has to weld the exact same welds over and over and over and over -- dang do they get pretty good and fast.
BTW, German welding techniques for their panzers were state-of-the-art. They were the primary hold-up for Guderian's new designs. (PIII and PIV) This technology is exactly what the Nazi industrialists did not want to share. As Speer noted, they were happier with using France as a component supplier. (!)
All Italian tanks were produced in its industrial north -- the Poe River valley. There was no serious risk of such factories falling into enemy hands. The Anglo-Allied forces only reached the Poe in the final days of the war. By that time, the Americans were running riot through industrial Germany, itself.
As for Uranus, the Italians, Romanians and Hungarians had essentially NO anti-tank weapons to hand. The Krauts had stolen or not shipped those that Rome, Budapest and Bucharest had sent east. Even their infantry direct fire support guns were of WWI vintage.
While there were SOME viable anti-tank assets that did make it, six Italian 90mm anti-tank guns on a slow, cheesy chassis were not enough.
Speer had more clout in aero-engines. Thus, he was able to supply DB engines to power (late war) Italian fighters. Italian production numbers were pathetic, though. The Italians kept trying to crank out ultra-labor intensive every-things.
Late war Me-109 ~ 2,000 man-hours/// Italian fighters (in pilot production lots) as high as 15,000 man-hours per plane, never less than 5,000 man-hours per plane!
Thanks Chieftain for another good data-drop for all. Is it too nosy/repeating an old question to ask why other YT channels on key WWII subjects haven't made an appearance in these? I know about the ForgottenWeapons/InRange problems and hoped they woyld be resolved once clear comms were established again - but what about some aviation or navel channels (I know of a few really good ones and you probably know of them too) that would be able to supply this sort of content on their respective arms, self-shot and edited and so no need for the TimeGhost team to do too much to format them for use. I may be asking stupid questions but I'd like to know if I am - otherwise I'd love to see more people (as I love seeing Chieftain) take part.
Do you think you’ll get a chance to go to The Tank Museum Bovington for a special?
Has anyone done up something about British attacks on German & Italian supplies to North Africa? A book or video?
I have always wondered how much the P40 did to axis supplies.
I'm surprised to hear that the Italians had fairly good equipment. By the way, using rivets to build a tank may seem antiquated, but they were used for a reason. The thinking was that is a tank got hit, the section of armor that had been damaged could easily be removed, and the replaced.
It also increased production time and cost along with weight. It also wasn’t that great if you got hit as rivets would now be bouncing around inside your tank as shrapnel.
YES! Please follow up with El Alamein! Crusaders, Stuarts, Churchills :)
You need a good gunner/tank commander to score the hit and a main gun that is sighted in properly. My training as a tank crewman in the American Army in 1968-71 was a joke .
Cool
You should do as the man said and look up Günter Halm.
Isn't the 2 cm tank gun basically a paintball gun by now?
A 2cm gun could still destroy unarmored vehicles, machine gun emplacements, and most armored cars.
"The Panzer III couldn't take a bigger gun" - wasn't there a project to fit a Panzer IV turret to the Panzer III (as the Ausf.K) for that reason? Obviously it went nowhere due to the chassis being overloaded and the effort in modifying the vehicle to account for the new turret not worth the effort.
Ah, which is to say that it "could" take a bigger gun, just nobody thought it was worth the bother. I recall seeing a "what if" model that involved sticking a French 75mm into the III's turret for a similar effect - though that sort of conversion would be likely too obscure for a mainline production vehicle (leave that to the Marder series).
I got too goddamn pumps when he mentioned the tiger. Big surprise.
So the Tiger was actually good
We need that dancing vid.