The Complete Evolution Of World War Tanks In 4 Hours

[Music] [Music] though it seems common place in the armies of today the tank is a surprisingly new invention they first saw action less than a century ago during the first World War but it was in the Maelstrom of World War II that this devastating invention was defined its Destiny as the biggest tank Battles of History Ranged tanks came of age in the second world war they also developed quicker and changed more in a short 6-year period than at any time before or since the catalyst was the demands of a technological War like Darwin's theory of

evolution gone mad World War II accelerated the pace of design fast responses to a constantly changing situation were urgently needed and new designs had to be engineered tested and Built in an incredibly short time scale the average car takes 10 years to design develop and manufacture in World War II new designs were being produced in as many mon mons the Great Leap in tank design was even more astonishing given the restrictions of the Treaty of versailes imposed on the defeated Germans by the Allies after World War I it was designed to prevent Germany developing a

tank Capability in 1936 only 3 years before the outbreak of World War III Germany was heavily reliant on the small and ineffective Panza 1 it was little bigger than a modern family saloon car but in 1939 1200 were in Frontline service and they formed the bulk of Germany's tank forces the Panza 1 is really hardly worth considering as a fighting tank it was designed originally for training it just had a couple of machine guns in its turret and apart from reconnaissance you Wouldn't dare descended out against other tanks the majority of them were therefore converted

to the sort of command tank role and the purpose of a command tank is really just to provide transport for a battalion commander in the field in other words he can go out with his troops in their tanks he can keep contact with them on the radio but he's in a vehicle that will match theirs across country and gives him roughly the same sort of protection the things fited With the machine gun if he really gets into a sticky situation but he's not meant to be fighting he's meant to be keeping an eye on the

situation and an ear and commanding his troops in action in the space of three short years German tank technology would progress from the lightweight and inefficient Panza 1 to the mighty Panza 6 the tiger the most complete Fighting Vehicle of the war as an example of evolution the transformation from the Panza 1 to this Made the Animal Kingdom look positively static Adolf Hitler was The Man Who provided the impetus to develop the tanks of Germany's ver Market Hitler was a gambler and he gambled upon bluffing his enemies into believing his tank forces were far stronger

than they actually were when Hitler precipitated the second world war with his invasion of Poland in 1939 his tank forces were questionable at best but the gamble succeeded by the Application of a new Tactical Doctrine Blitz Creek championed by General hin garan against Poland the German command discovered a number of things which are very important a it didn't have the right kind of Tanks Mark 1es and Mark 2s were undergunned and the second thing they discovered was you can let the tanks run as fast as you like but it runs out of fuel and also

tanks uh need maintenance the other thing they discovered was that their artillery Support was hor drawn well obviously the rate of Advance between a horse and a tank is rather different the other thing that discovered was that the motorized division was really much much too cumbersome so the Germans learned a great deal from Poland and the final lesson they learned was this do not use tanks in a city at the end of the 19th century when he proposed his theory of evolution Charles Darwin noted that there were many branches which led to Unsuccessful species and

hence to extinction of course Darwin was talking about animals but tanks it would seem followed exactly the same rules in 1939 it was understood that tanks in the coming War would need to be able to deal with two kinds of different situations the first was tank versus tank actions tanks are designed to survive explosions even very close or directly Apos on the vehicle faced with the armor of a tank explosive power alone is of little value to destroy a tank it is necessary to fire a shell fast enough to penetrate the hull and kill the

men inside provided the target was close enough the armor of most tanks of 1939 and 1940 vintage could be penetrated by relatively small caliber anti-tank weapons such as the 50 mm gun which equipped these Panza 3s but armor piercing weapons were only useful in combat against other tanks in action against infantry in buildings and artillery targets tanks needed to fire a high explosive round to kill the unprotected men and disable the [Music] guns the velocity the speed of the shell was relatively unimportant but the bigger the shell the bigger the explosion so large caliber guns

were Preferable in this rare piece of footage we can see how slowly high explosive shells actually traveled in slow motion we can clearly see the shell leaving this German self-propelled gun as it flies towards its Target the explosion is no less impressive for the slow speed of the projectile to achieve this destructive power and a tank killing capability a balanced tank force needed a mix of both anti-tank tank and high explosive Capability in the opposing armies of 1939 two different solutions were [Music] found the Germans developed two separate types of Tanks each specialized for a

particular job the first were the tank Killers equipped with a high velocity anti-tank gun with a longer barrel of smaller caliber most of the Panza 3's of 1939 were mainly equipped with this gun designed to deal with enemy tanks all of the heavier Panza 4S and Even some Panza 3s were designed as infantry support tanks they were equipped with a short barreled gun of higher caliber ideal for firing High explosives the Panza 4 when it first arrived in North Africa and the Panza 3 lat had a short 75 mm gun in the turret this gun

was designed to far High explosive and it therefore served in what's known as the close support role that means the tank stays close to the Infantry and uses the gun to deal with The kind of opposition they've got to face machine gun positions block houses and light artillery it is not really to be judged as an anti-tank weapon in the same way as say The British two pounder or the American 75 but it's a question really of the use a tank is meant to be put to and this tank was designed specifically to deal with

those targets that a high velocity anti-tank gun can't cope with in contrast to the Germans who had Two types of Tanks one solution Tried by the armies of both France America and Russia was to house two types of gun in the same tank this produced the massive multi-turreted tanks like the Char B and the Lee Grant tank the Dual turret idea was a failure an evolutionary blind alley which was cruy exposed on the battlefield the two turrets made the tank difficult to operate it was impossible to coordinate the guns and the sheer size of the

Machines presented a huge Target that was difficult to miss with the figure of her commander perched some 15 ft above the ground it is easy to see why this the grant could not be successfully hidden on the battlefield the main gun on the General Grant is a 75mm weapon which not only fir solid armor piercing shot but can also fire high explosive round and this was the answer to Ral tactics of mixing tanks and anti-tank guns you've got solid shot for dealing With the Enemy tanks and you can fire high explosive rounds and lob them

near to the enemy anti-tank gun which will disable the crew or put them off their stroke for a while the disadvantage on this particular tank design is that the main gun is down here in the hull you can see there's a conventional anti-tank gun in it but this is the gun that does the business and having it low down in the hull is a handicap it is quite clear from the height of this tank and the Position of this gun that there'll be a lot of Tanks sticking up in the in the air when it's

trying to hide behind a ridge and shell an enemy position compare the large and ungainly Grant with the Sleek form of this late War German tank killer and the advantages soon become apparent a low silhouette which presented a squat Target was difficult to hit and sloping armor deflected shots away from the vehicle as the war progressed the same Course was ultimately adopted by all sides which was to combine both anti-tank capability and an infantry support role in one vehicle by mounting the largest possible High Velocity gun the larger caliber effectively gave it a good high

explosive firing capability as well as a deadly killing power against other tanks in the Polish campaign of September 1939 the German generals would have Loved to have such excellent tanks nonetheless they were still able to provide a quick and complete victory for Hitler despite extreme reservations about the suitability of the available tank designs and the limitation of the new tactics despite the concerns of the generals Hitler had triumphed in Poland now his gambling instincts ran unchecked Hitler turned his attentions to the invasion of France and his Generals grew nervous they knew that this time there

would surely be no repeat of the easy Victory won in [Music] Poland Hitler's combination of political brinkmanship and calculated gambl had disguised the fact the German Army at this time could deploy only 2,000 tanks the British and French could count on 4,500 not only were their numbers inferior but many of the tanks deployed By the Germans were of limited fighting value as we have seen one of the main offenders in this respect was the tiny Panza 1 light tank seen here in bovington this machine still Bears the evidence of the shells fired through the hull

which disabled it the ease with which the thin armor of the Panza 1 could be penetrated had been cruy exposed in Poland but some 520 machines still had to be engaged for the coming invas of France there was simply No alternative a far greater military value was the Panza 4 then one of the best tanks in the world but in 1940 only 200 of these machines were available which meant that the best and most heavily armored tank available to the ver Market accounted for less than 10% of the tank force it was an oversight which

could potentially have been disastrous as throughout its long career the Panza 4 Was to prove a remarkably versatile design there are those who say that if the Germans had stuck to the Panza 4 and built large numbers of them they'd done a lot better than messing about with tanks like the Tigers and Panthers the reason is that this was a superb allround design it was in service when the war broke out it was still an effective Frontline tank at the end and the reason is that the Germans built expandability into the design its armor Thickness

increases two or three times over the wartime period and that does not affect the Tank's performance at all although it's getting heavier and the gun although it doesn't increase in caliber certainly increases in size from a short barreled 75 to this long 75 which enabled it to keep Pace with developments on the other side taken together with the Mark I and four the German tank force on the eve of the decisive battle in France deployed 500 Panza 1es 1,000 Panza 2s 350 Panza 3s 200 Panza 4S and 400 of the Czech manufactured Panza 38 T's

this very high proportion of light tanks would have proved hopelessly inadequate later in the war but in 194 40 evolutionary forces had not yet begun to work and the light tanks were still capable of doing the job but only just but as the history books testify Hitler was to Triumph as completely in France as he had done in Poland he did So for two reasons firstly there were the poor French and British tank tactics although some pioneering work had been done in Britain it was the Germans who had develop Blitz Creek to its fullest extent

with the help of their future adversary the Russians as the Germans began to be very well aware it was the Red Army under tokachi under halpy and others who were developing the theory of what is called Deep battle in other words operations for deep penetration using a combination of tank troops and airborne troops and if you like motorized infantry it was in many respects uh the Practical experience which the Germans acquired in Russia which I would regard as being perhaps the most decisive and even more important the Russians at the same time were working out

very very complex theoretical backgrounds to this so there Was a CO coincidence if you like of the German interest and commitment and and Soviet practice one other significant factor which led to the German victory in 1940 was that the superior French tanks were distributed in small contingents throughout the army the German tanks on the other hand were concentrated together in the new Panza divisions superbly led by able commanders the combination of efficient Battlefield tactics and inspired leadership made the difference for Hitler but it served to disguise the many weaknesses which existed in the tank designs

themselves by the time these flaws were discovered mercifully for the rest of humanity it would be too late the German Army in 3940 was not particularly more mechanized than say the French army but they made great use of being able to concentrate their Forces much of the logistics was H drawn they could range far and wide but whenever they had to move their bases forward much of their supplies including the fuel had to come in by horse uh the result is that uh the the pace of their ability to move their operation Eastward was much

diminished during 1941 the real weaknesses of the German tank designs were still not discovered several false conclusions were drawn from the conquest Of the Balkans and Greece these easy victories supported the continued German belief that their tanks were the best in the world although the design work that was to lead to the tiger had begun there was little real urgency up to the summer of 1941 Germany's main adversary had been Britain and British tank design lagged behind Germany's in the North African campaign the poor performance of the British Crusader tanks only gave fresh Support to

the German view that the Panza 3 and fours were at least equal to anything the Allies could throw at them the Crusader was particularly badly designed and it was plagued by a host of mechanical failures eventually the British army lost faith in their own tanks altogether and in 1943 when the Victorious British and American forces embarked from Africa for the invasion of Italy all of the British tanks were left behind the Crusader is arguably one of The worst tanks but never produced it was a cruiser tank that means it was designed to travel fast and

relied on its speed far rather than its armor thickness for protection the drawback was it was also chronically unreliable and breakdowns became almost pmic I am quite convinced that one of the reasons the British army only took American tanks to Italy in 1943 was that the standard of reliability of the British machines they used in the desert Particularly as personified by the Crusader had really actually put them off and therefore tanks like the Grant and the Sherman which followed it were reliable and therefore far more acceptable to British troops despite the limitations of machines like

the Crusader in North Africa the signs were there of the dangerous flaws in Germany's tank capability in the relative Backwater of the Desert War even the unspectacular British Matilda tank was considered a success against the Italian forces and frequently held its own against the Germans the gun on the Matilda which is typical in most tanks of this period is the two pounder a 40 mm weapon but it only fired solid shot in other words it was only any use firing against enemy tanks this was fine under those circumstances but once the Germans came to the

desert and started mixing tanks and anti-tank guns in the attack you Needed a dual purpose gun something that not only find solid shot to take out enemy tanks but could also so far high explosive shells and that sort of Advantage comes in at last when we get the American tanks over notably the general ground once again Superior German Battlefield tactics were overcoming the limitations of her armored forces but these successes also reinforced a leisurely attitude towards the Development of new types in 1941 the evolution of German tank design was proceeding much too slowly and it

was to have deadly consequences from which Germany would never recover the shock was to be delivered in Russia when Hitler ordered the conquest of Russia in the in the summer of 1941 confidence among the Panza force was at an alltime High the Desert War was progressing well and the German Tactics of mixing tank and anti-tank forces together concealed deficiencies in tank design from the Germans themselves despite the understandable Cockiness of the German High command a few lessons from earlier campaigns had been absorbed and the makeup of the tank force which shook stal into the core

had a much higher proportion of the heavier markk 3 and four tanks instead of the lightweight Panza 1 and twos this trend Illustrated the steadily Increasing Reliance on heavier armor which was to continue throughout the war it was just as well because the vermar was about to meet with a very nasty surprise after a few weeks of the campaign in which the German armor had faced only obsolete Russian tanks such as the lumbering te 28 in the outdated bt7 the German forces suddenly encountered two of the new Russian tanks which were to change the course

of the War the first was a heavy kv1 a 46 ton monster with Superior heavy armor and a vicious 76 mm gun capable of destroying any German tank from most ranges on the battlefield in 1941 it it was a deadly adversary the Soviet kv1 is a fine example of a tank made for specific conditions broad tracks for dealing with mud and snow and a diesel engine for operating in the coldest possible weather in 1941 when it first appeared it was a superb design and Absolutely dominated the battlefield but by the time kers came it was

beginning to get outclassed the Tigers and the Panthers with their thicker armor and enormous guns could take it out at ranges Beyond which it simply couldn't fight back the other unpleasant surprise for Germans was the arrival of the t34 a medium tank far better armed and equipped than the German markv it was also better equipped to deal with the extreme Russian weather conditions its Wide tracks made it equally at home in the dry in mud or in snow in addition the sloping armor presented an angled front to German fire designed to cause shells to glance

off the armor the t34 was to become the real Nemesis of the German Army it was built for Mass assembly and the crude welding lines could be clearly seen it was no Beauty but it was tough and it possessed a superb inbuilt ability to be upgraded the t-34 was probably one of The finest tank designs of the second world war you have for a start one of the first tanks to be fitted with sloped armor which in defensive terms is excellent but the great thing about t-34 was the way it was capable of improvement when

the t-34 first appeared in service it was fitted with a 76 mm gun and had a Twan crew in the turret by 1944 they had not only upgunned it to take an 885mm weapon they' increased the turret size to enable it to take three Men and that makes it a far more efficient tank on the battlefield nobody else achieved that throughout the war and that alone would single the T3 before out as one of the most outstanding tanks of all time although the Germans would devise better tanks they could never hope to compete in terms

of the sheer numbers of t-34s the t34 was the most prolific tank of the second world war and when you consider that the Soviets achieved that And moved their tank producing facilities right across the country under German pressure it really is remarkable just inspect the tank closely and you'll see how crude it is the workmanship would make the average British or American factory worker weep but that doesn't worry the Russians at all they are out to produce as many crude hard tough fighting tanks as possible and in the t34 they achieved it no doubt about

that at all it was by no Means the best tank to emerge from World War I but it was more than adequate for the task and the huge numbers manufactured would ultimately tip the balance of the whole War it was now almost too late that the German High command began to urgently request new tanks with Superior armor and more effective guns to combat the kv1 and t34 a new heavy tank was needed urgently but it wouldn't be available for at least a Year to compound matters mistaken assessments based on experience in France had led to

even the heaviest ger tank the markv being equipped with short barreled 75 mm guns while Germany scrambled to produce the new heavy tanks the marvs were urgently re-equipped with long barreled 75mm guns extra welded steel skirts were also added as a defense against the new Russian Hollow charge weapons measures like these helped to Keep up the momentum of the German advance in 1942 but the Panza divisions were increasingly hard pressed by the growing numbers of t-34s and kv1s what the Russians had uh tried to do was to bring in two new tanks the t34 which

actually was the tank which had been tested in 39 and the rather heavier tank at the climar Aila but it only produced uh about a thousand of each so therefore these uh t-34s were were Distributed in very small packets and remember the Battlefront is about 2,000 mil well so what do you do with a th tanks on the other hand it did come as an enormous shock the first time the Germans encountered the t34 because the t-34s armor Mobility speed and gun power was something they simply hadn't suspected in the German ranks it was felt

the deadly 88 mm anti-tank gun was the ideal weapon for the task of destroying the hordes of T-34s but the 88 was originally designed as an anti-aircraft gun it was very large and not designed to be carried in the turret of a tank what the Germans now needed was a tank big enough to house such a gun and well armored enough to withstand the punishment which it would receive on the [Music] battlefield it would take time to develop such a machine and in 1941 One Stop Gap measure was to increase the Production of assault guns

or turretless tanks this is a machine called a stor guts it's basically a Panza 3 chassis with the gun fitted into a super structure rather than the turret there's two big advantages one it's quicker and cheaper to produce and secondly you can actually fit a far larger gun than you'd be able to fit into a turret on the same Hull the disadvantage of course is that the thing cannot deal in open battle with its enemies like a tank can it Can't swing a turret round to fire it's got to swing the whole vehicle round in

1941 the puny 50 mm gun was still the standard anti-tank Armament for German tanks the experience of tank Ace Herman Bix was typical of the desperate Straits many German tank commanders now found themselves in pix saw a dozen of his shells bounce off this kv1 even at the closest ranges eventually he managed to silence the steel monster as it swung its turret To take Aim against him by the expedient of a well- aimed shot deliberately fired through the barrel of his opponent's gun men like bicks were part of a new breed of German tank commanders

who achieved incredible victories against Superior Russian forces but these Superior forces were now also armed with better equipment and a deadly race would develop between the Russian capacity to manufacture more tanks against the Germans ability to engineer better Tanks although the German Engineers would prove themselves winners they were let down by their manufacturing capacity the German war effort was being run inefficiently and by 1942 Germany was being targeted by wave after wave of Allied bombers which were reducing her War Industries to Rubble while Stalin had wisely moved his factories back into the interior of Russia

out of Harm's Way they had managed to move out considerable Elements of um tank factories and aircraft factories for example the harof tractor Works which prod used tanks they managed to get that out the workers in that factory walked along the railway line under German gunfire to getting the trains to be moved out they got the equipment out and they took the workers out it was the largest industrial migration in the history of the world well over I think it's about 1,900 Plants were moved eastwards during 1942 the red Army's Armada of t-34s was growing

ominously new Russian tank armies were coming into being and and in the wake of the terrible defeat at Stalingrad the German soldiers prayed for an answer in the winter of 1942 the answer to their prayers was finally ready for delivery it was the paner camp fargon 6 the tiger well the tiger one has got to be Seen as a Quantum Leap in the progress of tank design it appeared in 1942 and in one swoop it doubled in armor thickness doubled in weight and doubled in gunpow the might of any tank on the battlefield it was

really a terrific Leap Forward in tank design of course in doing this the Germans paid a tremendous price the tank is so heavy that it made it difficult to control you've got an engine which really isn't 100% powerful enough for the kind of Weight it was pushing about and they had a lot of technical problems just keeping it on the battlefield so for all their advances and their immense power the tiger was a terrific liability to its crew the Tiger tank had been developed in 1940 and 1941 too late to benefit from all of the

lessons from the Russian war so it had the uncompromisingly flat armor at the front which didn't deflect shots away from the vehicle sloping armor like the t34 would Have been preferable but the tiger was so very heavily armored that even this problem was overcome in fact the tiger was almost impervious to most Russian guns at all but the closest ranges and it carried the deadly 88 mm gun then the best weapon on the battlefield inside his heavily armored turret the Gunner of the tiger lined his Target up on the middle triangle of his gun site

as the motorized turret effortlessly swung the gun into position The maker manual proclaimed that the 88 mm gun was 100% accurate at ranges of up to 1,000 M on the battlefield the tiger soon proved its deadly efficiency but there were never enough machines to equip all of the Panza divisions so the Tigers were organized into special heavy tank battalions called sha apons which could be rushed from place to place on the hard pressed front wherever they were most desperately needed The highly efficient Nazi propaganda trumpeted the arrival of the tiger and for once the results

Justified the rhetoric although only 80 tigers have been delivered by the end of January 1943 already they were credited with over 400 kills in the spring of that year the Germans extended their use to North Africa and the Western allies grew nervous in the space of just two short years it seemed that Germans had evolved the ultimate Battlefield weapon to Compound matters no tiger had yet been captured that situation was to change early in 1943 when British forces fighting in Tunisia knocked out and captured this machine which is currently undergoing Restoration in the tank museum

at bovington the particular history of this one is that it was issued to the 51st heavy tank Battalion of the German Army and shipped to unia early in 1943 it came up against 48 th tank Regiment and 48th th tanks were then in Churchills armed with a 57 mm gun which is against an 88 on this thing but some fluke shot from one of the Churchill tanks actually struck the tiger underneath its Gun Barrel embedded itself in the turret ring caused the crew to panic leap out and abandon the tank now that really is exceptional

those tanks were so powerful they could have dealt with ch churches without any problem at all way out of the range the Churches could fight back and that way this perfect example of one of the strongest tanks of the second world war falls into British hands in 1943 this object of Fascination was studied by no less than Winston Churchill and King George V 6 the tank was the subject of an urgent British Army study every inch of the tiger was inspected and a very concerned study team presented their findings it was noted that the tiger

With its heavy armor Dual Purpose Armament and first class fighting ability was basically an excellent tank and constituted a considerable Advance on any Allied tank the study revealed its only real weaknesses were the limits imposed on Mobility due to its weight width and limited range of action but the study concluded that overall the tiger presented a very viable fighting machine which could not be Underrated there was more bad news for the Allies in tandem with the tiger the German armaments industry had also been developing a new medium tank to match the t34 it would be

ready in 1943 although they would not admit it many of the features of the new paner camp fargon 5 or Panther were copied directly from the t34 the pan Panther had the same sloping armor wide tracks and a similar 75 mm Gun developed with brake neck speed and rushed into production the panther made its debut at the Battle of kers before they were really proven engine and transmission problems abounded engine fires were commonplace dozens broke down and some Vehicles went into their first action pouring fire from the exhaust [Music] pipes not surprisingly the panther was

was a disappointment at KK but once it had overcome its initial teething Problems the panther would prove itself the best medium tank of the war indeed it was a far better vehicle than the t34 but again the problem of short supply remained it was never to be available in the quantities which the war in the East demanded although 6,000 would be built that was never enough as the numbers destroyed always kept pace with Supply the Advent of the Panther and the tiger represented almost the end of The evolutionary Trail in World War II German tank

sizes had steadily increased from the 6 tonon Panza 1 through the 22 ton Panza 3 and now onto the 62 ton tiger it would reach a peak with the 70 ton tiger b or King Tiger the weight and Superior armor certainly made the difference but quality had been achieved at the expense of of quantity and it was quantity which Germany needed it has been estimated that from May 1944 until the end of the war on any Given day on average only 400 tanks were available for action in the entire German Army the Allies could call

on some 20,000 with this tremendous disparity in numbers it has been estimated that in the East the German tank divisions would have had to destroy 10 Russian tanks for every one of their own which was lost in fact by the end of the war it is estimated that five Russian tanks were destroyed for every German tank but it Was never enough to affect the huge numerical superiority enjoyed by the Allies even on the Western Front four Allied tanks were being destroyed for every German machine lost for the Western allies the solution was very much the

same as the Russians it was to abandon the search for radical advances take a simple workable design and manufacture it in vast quantities while the Russians had the t34 the Allied option was the Sherman This was the main battle tank of the western allies it had numerous flaws Chief among them its very high profile which made an easy target but it was available in huge numbers so many Shermans were manufactured that they were even shipped to the east to help the Russian war effort the Russian response was politely muted as the Sherman never matched the

standards of the t34 even when it was up graded to Include a high velocity 85 mm weapon the tank was really no match for the tiger as further proof of the Sherman's weakness it is interesting to note that only a small proportion of German tanks were actually destroyed by the Sherman the vast majority either fell victim to Allied fighter bombers or had to be abandoned and destroyed by their Crews when they experienced mechanical difficulties or more frequently ran out of fuel From 1944 the Allied bombing campaigns were really beginning to bite the shortage of fuel

and spare parts was killing the Panza formations as effectively as the Allied armies one thing the Panza divisions did have on their side was experience and before they were Swept Away the small groups of tigers performed heroically one man will always be associated with the tiger he was Michael vitman of the first SS paner division Vitman was responsible for a huge number of Allied tank kills by June 1944 vitman and his tiger had been responsible for more than 130 Russian tanks when he was transferred to the Western Front despite the skills of men like these

the Tigers were still being destroyed as fast as they were being delivered and vitman himself fell in action in August 194 44 his machine totally Destroyed such losses were simply [Music] unsustainable in 1944 despite the pressures of the Allied bombing raids some 20,000 German armored fighting Vehicles were manufactured but Battlefield losses were running at some 23,000 machines so the number of German tanks available in 1944 at the front line actually fell during during 1944 on average there were never more than 70 Tigers available For Action at any given time on the whole of the Russian

front the remaining machines were under short or long-term repair it was this tiny Force which forged a legend on the Western Front the Allies by now enjoyed total Air Supremacy and the Allied Air Force was able to Rove at will destroying German aircraft on the ground the high rate of attrition on their armored Force caused the Germans to cast Around desperately for a solution one successful expedient was to dispose with the turret of the new Panther tanks to produce turretless vehicles with less flexibility but with heavier Firepower they were also easier and quicker to manufacture

three could be made for every two tanks these tank killers were known by the German name yaged Panther by the stage of the war German armor was Fighting almost exclusively defensive battles for which the yared Panthers were perfectly suited they could lie in wait firing from fixed positions the yed panther shown here is from the Imperial War Museum it has had the side removed to permit the public to view the inside but the sense of military efficiency Still Remains it too Bears the scars of the armor piercing shells which disabled it in 1945 as with

the turretless tanks there Was also a steady increase in size and Armament in the tank Hunters which evolved from the simple ma one based on the Panza 1 to the ultimate tank killing machine the yag tiger based on the upgraded tiger 2 massive armor and a superb High Caliber gun made these machines deadly but once again the design and Engineering effort took valuable resources away from producing simpler designs in the volume the Germans Needed the last Panza to see active service was the moving Fortress which was the upgraded tiger b or King Tiger it carried

the huge 88 mm High Velocity gun which was deadly at almost any range on the battlefield but only 470 of these machines were ever manufactured never enough to seriously affect the tidal wave of armor now encroaching gery on every side but the tiger and tiger B still made a large impact in the closing months of the war now the tiger 2 is a Remarkable tank by any standards a bigger and more powerful gun than the Tiger 1 and the armor is thicker and sloped giving it a tremendous advantage and when you think this tank came

into service in 1944 it really looks almost good enough to used today it's a considerable tribute to the German designers the trouble is it's getting near the limit of weight that the engine and transmission can stand and of course Producing a tank like this under wartime conditions is a tremendous strain especially when the industry is being heavily bombed therefore although you could say that in terms of gunpow and armor it way outclasses tanks such as the t34 it was never available in enough numbers and it certainly wasn't easy to ship around the country in a

hurry to get to trouble spot and in that sense has to be regarded as a failure in terms of tank Desire the tiger B was a largest practical tank to see action in the Panza divisions already its huge size was giving enormous difficulty in negotiating narrow roads and moving across Bridges few of which could carry its huge weight it also needed huge stocks of the vital fuel supplies which Germany could no longer provide but in 1945 when the war ended Germany was developing the super heavy Panza 7 a huge metal monster massively armored and Sporting

a huge main gun in an untypically humorous moment this machine designed to lead the Nazi war machine was given the joking nickname the mouse the mouse was never to see action and only four prototypes were built but it seemed that the crazed minds of the third R would never give up the quest to be the best and the biggest whatever the cost but as the humble t34 had proved in evolution sometimes quantity matters as much as quality [Music] [Music] [Music] good the enduring images of the Panza formations of World War II are the famous battle

tanks the legendary Panthers and tigers which have become synonymous with the vermar while they are undoubtedly the best known they were by no means the most numerous fighting vehicles in the Panza divisions every bit as important As these true tanks were their less celebrated cousins of the assault gun and tank destroyer formations in many respects they were similar machines to True tanks and frequently did the same job but they sacrificed the benefits of the turret for the ability to mount a bigger gun which was carried on a fixed mounting pointing Straight Ahead at the enemy

in 1944 during the Battle of the Bulge the Allies captured this powerful monster the Sturm tiger the the troops who knocked out this giant adversary must have breathed a huge sigh of relief because this devastating machine was so powerfully armed it had outgrown mere artillery power and was equipped with a rocket launcher of ferocious attacking force it was designed to attack even the strongest fortification due to the range Limitations of its rocket launcher the stern tiger had to get very close to its Target to fire its payload but it was so heavily armored that it

was nearly impervious to any anti-tank gun on the battlefield the Sturm Tiger's role was to rumble right up to infantry bunkers or strong points and fire the rocket at almost Point Blank Range obviously the chances of survival for its Target were slim indeed the enormous Rockets it carried Were so heavy the vehicle needed its own crane to be able to load the shells once loaded the inside of the tank was so cramped it carried enough rounds for only 13 shots but when it did fire the results were devastating the Sturm tiger was the last in

a line of turretless Tanks which the German Army had produced in increasing quantities since the outbreak of World War II but this highly specialized vehicle vehicle was produced so late in The war that only 19 were manufactured before Germany finally surrendered the idea was to fire an enormous shell with a sort of plunging round that would come whistling down out of Heaven [ __ ] whatever was underneath it good and hard but really a thing like that is a very specialist weapon and was probably again like many of the German developments of this time more

troubl than it was actually Were the number of Sturm Tigers may have been very limited but other turretless tanks were used in huge numbers by the Germans like all successful inventions they had been adapted and improved over the N9 years since their introduction in that time their numbers had grown so that by 1945 they were among the most numerous fighting vehicles in the German Army and with good reason many German Crews didn't like Some of their own Vehicles which were too heavy too slow difficult to handle had bad accommodation problems had too low ammunition stores

you can have lists and lists of this kind of thing it's it's almost a darwinian process you know the survival of the fittest as it were the survival of the most suitable for the battlefield the survival of that equipment which uh which is workable and handleable and and can be profitably and successfully used by the Crews unfortunately the first attempts to produce a specialist tank Hunter favored the simple expedient of mounting a 4.7 CM anti-tank gun on the chassis of the tiny Panza 1 it was a failure although the 4.7 was more effective than the

puny 3.7 which originally equipped the Panza 3 it was still feeble compared to the 75 mm gun of a Russian t34 in addition the open figh Compartment gave only limited protection to the crew another problem was the instability of the top heavy assembly frequently these tank Hunters simply toppled them during 1942 frustrating attempts were made to improve upon the Panza one in the form of the ma 2 and three tank destroyers these strange hybrids use the Panza 2 chassis the Czech 38t chassis and sometimes even mounted a captured Russian 76 mm anti-tank gun they proved

To be little more than an improvised stop Gap in a steadily worsening situation on the Eastern front but they did go some way towards holding the advancing tide of Russian armor while real tank Killers could be developed they discovered very early in 1941 that they didn't have have anti-tank capability they just didn't so what they did they they they improvised and they took as you know the Czech 38t tank was a Czech tank built by Shod uh and stuck a captured Russian anti-tank guns on top of it that became you know the murder the Mur

Drive the first murder was actually an anti-tank gun stuck on a French line chassis well that wasn't much good but you really had to do something very quick and the strange thing is that that whole series of German vehicles produced on the chass of of the Czech 38t and the 38D became really very successful partly because the chass and the suspension was very Good and partly because they put the right guns on it and so when you've got machines like that which in fact perform very well whatever their hybrid Origins if they work in the

field that's fine but that's an extraordinary story I think of the marriage between chech tank design Russian anti-tank guns and and if I may put it this way German adaptive engineering and you you get V virtually a different weapon system and a very successful one uh and which in fact even Outlasted the end of the second world war the first two specialized tank hunting machines proved to be almost as disappointing as the martys the massive elephant looked good on paper it was based on the 880 Porsche chassis which had been built for a proposed rival

to the tiger this gave the fiveman crew the same all round protection as the stuts in addition the elephant was massively armored and sported the deadly 88 mm gun it made a much heralded debut At the Battle of KK despite all the portents the elephant proved to be an unmitigated disaster they needed vehicles to get out to the to the Eastern front and so what the German Army did was they welded on the back end of this big chassis a um a citadel armored uh it and put a big 88 mm gun what they failed

to do however was put a machine gun on it and so you had Russian infantry climbing aboard and and burning the Cruise so Soviet tank hunting teams had a field day the hapless Crews inside the elephant had no means of effective resistance against infantry and 40 of the 80 elephants deployed at KK were destroyed in the first 2 days of fighting wasn't everybody's favorite it was very difficult to handle it was a huge Target itself I mean who wanted to be burned alive or blown to pieces in one of these things so very rapidly the

German ordinance Corps develops a Machine gun that all you had to do was pop the hatch stick this thing out and it had a curved barrel and you could hose the vehicle off with this curved Barrel weapon so a very Innovative way to do things the remaining machines were ignominiously withdrawn to be refitted with machine guns before being sent to Italy where the survivors were destroyed in the battles following The anzio Landings more effective in battle than The elephant was the horn or rhinoceros it also featured the Fearsome 88 mm gun but inexplicably left the

crew unprotected in an open fighting compartment the high silhouette of the nashorn made it an easy target but nonetheless nearly 500 were issued between 1943 and 1944 the nashorn was the chassis of the Panzer 4 that uh they took the turret off of and put Um not so well armored but a a citadel on the back of that and they also put an 88mm gun on that and the idea was of course to pick off the the Russian tanks at long ranges so that they couldn't close down on your position the nashorn was phased out

with the introduction of the first really successful purpose designed German tank Hunter the yaged Panza 4 manufactured by vomag this Sleek machine boasted low silhouette a machine Gun for close defense and gave its crew the all round protection of thick well sloped armor the first really effective purpose designed Tank Killer had arrived but in 1944 it had arrived too late to tip the balance this the yag Panzer 4 long carries the L70 gun Sims a panther 75 mm this is a early 44 model it's abanded late 44 captured by the Allies brought back to This

country for test and evaluation stad who ever since it's had a f man crew very cramped very noisy very dirty the Allied bombing campaigns now paralyzing Germany's industry limited the numbers produced to just under 1800 by this stage of the war that was never going to be enough to stem the tide of armor flooding in against Germany from every [Music] side to complement the pan Yaga 4 in These last ditch battles the Czech manufacturers praga finally managed to produce a first class tank destroyer this was the heter much smaller than the Panza Yaga 4 it

nonetheless packed a highly effective 76 mm gun coupled with very good sloping armor excellent mobility and a very low silhouette this small vehicle which resembled a miniature Panza Yaga was deceptively powerful and was much loved by its [Music] Crews fortunately for the hardpressed Germans the Czech tank works were reasonably efficient manufacturers and some 2,500 machines reached the hard pressed front lines this is the herzer and one of the things about it is it it's a marked improvement over some of the earlier German anti-tank guns uh a lot of the earlier German anti-tank guns were open

and as you can see this vehicle is completely enclosed it has a very high Velocity 75 mm gun it's made of Czechoslovakia very good supension system a very good engine and the crews liked it very very very much these knocked out hetzers from The Archives of the tank museum at bovington show just how common they were in the Normandy [Music] battles supplied in even more limited numbers was the next machine to emerge from the German Armament industry the Yaged panther based on the successful chassis tank design for the Panther Tank by following the principle of

dispensing with the turret the yaged panther could carry a high velocity 88 mm gun as opposed to the 76 mm gun of the ordinary Panther its superb sloped armor gave the yag Panther enormous defensive advantages a relatively low silhouette and a fearsome attacking power however production difficulties meant Only 350 of this the best tank destroyer of the war ever reached the front this rare footage shows a transporter train moving these precious machines to the hardpressed Russian [Music] front this is the uh yag Panther it's been called the best tank destroyer of World War II and

that's probably the case it has a very very good gun it's an 88 mm gun the uh the panther itself had a 75mm gun but by doing away with the Turret uh you can lower the profile of the vehicle you can armor up the front of this uh very very well and um it became a a very very effective anti-tank weapon uh the crews liked it uh but uh it does have some deficiencies not the least of which is the running gear now if you notice the the running gear here is shaped very oddly you

have a single wheel here two road wheels here a single here two here and so on and so forth well one of the things that happens with This vehicle is mud gets up in here and would freeze so you get up the next morning you have a pill box that's one fault the other problem though is notice that if this road wheel back in here the one back in here uh fails and you need to replace it you need to take off five road wheels this one that one this one this one and this one

to get to it so there's a lot of maintenance involved in this vehicle and to back up here on the back deck if you have to work on this Thing if it broke down there are a lot of places where you have to work upside down and blind on it and if you drop your tools they're gone in even shorter Supply than the yaged panther was the cumbersome yaged tiger a veritable fortress on tracks in keeping with the German practice of mounting larger guns into turretless tanks the yaged tiger mounted a massive High Velocity 128

mm gun which was so Powerful it could destroy any Allied tank on the battlefield at almost any range fortunately for the Allies only 48 were produced and these so late in the war that even their massive Firepower could not hope to thwart the inevitable tide of defeat most most were destroyed by their own Crews when they ran out of fuel broke down or had fired the last of their ammunition this is the Y tiger and this is a really bad idea it's the Chassis of the tiger 2 tank it has 128 mm gun in it

it's the largest anti-tank gun mounted on a chassis in World War II uh but the vehicle is just huge uh combat loaded weight of about 85 tons so no Bridge could support it in in Europe there's a major river what every 50 mi in Europe so no Bridge could take it you had to to Raft it across uh uh Rivers uh and two it gets about 8 gallons to the mile this when uh the German Army had very little fuel uh when you fill this Thing up with a fuel browser you're looking around for another

one right away uh these are the fueld tracks and um when this thing moved by railroad track you had to put on smaller tracks so the two trains could pass each other on Parallel tracks so the crews did not like this vehicle it was sort of meat on the table for Rocket firing typhoon and t51 [Music] aircraft the stalemate of the trenches During the Great War had a lasting effect on all the participants in that appalling conflict Germany had suffered more than any other Nation from the Grim years of the Great War but it was

the British who had found the potential means to unlock the [Music] stalemate the introduction of the tank in 1916 could well have revolutionized the course of the Great War and broken the Deadlock but the potential of this new innovation was stifled by a lack of strategic Vision in the British High command and the possibility of an early return to open Warfare was thrown away by poor British [Music] tactics by 1917 the first British tanks had fallen into German hands and these captured British machines were soon copied and adapted to produce the first German Machines this

is an a7v Sturm panagen the first German tank to go into battle it was knocked out by the British in 1918 these early tanks were produced too late to make an impact in the first world war but the lessons were not forgotten by the German military men in 1939 the scars which came from long years of attritional warfare during the Great War were still fresh for the defeated their Mark in consequence Germany's new breed of commanders were determined not to repeat the mistakes of 1918 they saw the tank as a key element in that vision

and they embraced the new Tactical doctrine of Blitz Greg or lightning War Blitz GRE tactics relied upon the possibility of fast mobile operations spearheaded by large concentrations of fast well armored battle tanks under Blitz Greek tactics all of the Tanks of the army were concentrated into the fast moving Panza divisions which were thrust deep into the rear positions of an enemy Force spreading panic and confusion as they Advanced from the narrow point of penetration the shock of the advance required a high level of artillery support at the point of attack and also harnessed the extra

power of air interdiction [Music] But in the 1930s the bulk of Germany's Heavy Artillery forces was still horr what this meant was that the advancing tanks and motorized infantry would rapidly outstrip the artillery support even mechanized Prime movers like the these half tracks have their disadvantages time taken to move into position and deploy the guns for Action under Battlefield conditions meant vital time was lost in battle split seconds literally Meant the difference between life and [Music] death the blitz cre depended on several elements working in conjunction with each other one was air support given by

the Luft wafa in the form of things like die bombers the ju87 and the other thing was artillery support but one of the things about artillery in the German army during the blitz C era was that that was mainly direct fire artillery that they were Going after Point targets because the the air force was taking out also Point targets so they they didn't have the communications equipment down on the lower levels to bring in massive amounts of artillery in fact the Germans never do develop that during World War II uh nor do any other armies

except for the American Army if artillery was to play a real role in the new mobile Warfare it needed to be able to operate as close to the Battle Zone as possible but the closer artillery pieces got to the action the more vulnerable the Gunners were to enemy fire what was needed was an assault gun a mobile artillery piece which could keep Pace with the mechanized infantry afford the Gunners a measure of protection and provide support on the battlefield at short notice where it really mattered in the very front line a fully armored and fully

tracked Mobile gun platform therefore had great appeal from the point of view of both mobility and crew protection it also provided a means of providing close artillery support fire right in the very front line orders were dispatched for Prototype Vehicles the successful prototype was produced in 1936 by the Alat company the final vehicle was actually constructed from two separate elements and it mounted a heavy 75mm gun On a Panza 3 tank [Music] chassis the 75 mm was a heavier weapon than could normally be carried on the Panza 3 but the extra space for the heavier

gun was achieved by dispensing with the turret and setting the gun on a fixed mount with a limited Traverse the STM gutz was born these are the vehicles called stug um they're the chassis of the Panzer comp wagen Mark III and uh when The Germans realized that the the Panza 3 was obsolete on the battlefield they took the turrets off and installed uh these uh weapons upon the on on the chassis the one here in the foreground has a 105 mm gun and is mobile artillery in effect and the one in the background has a

75mm gun and is an anti-tank weapon both of them were were very effective vehicles on the battlefield naturally the grenadiers fighting in the front lines welcome this Development with open arms here was an artillery piece which could fight with the Infantry at The crucial point of the battlefield and move at their Pace throughout the long years of World War II the Sturm gut's Crews never came to regard themselves as tankmen they wore different uniforms and still considered themselves to be artillery men who happened to man mobile assault guns but they were still Gunners at Heart

who commands them the tank Crews tank traps there are guns and the artillery said no there are guns and I think and I rather know that each side in each Army each one had their favorite sessor were but it depended what the Tactical task was the vermar had to discover the relationship between their their um self-propelled anti-tank artillery their armor and and then specialized self-propelled artillery doing various kinds of Jobs from the Gunner's point of view they quickly grew to love the stuts after all they were not protected against direct infantry fire and felt themselves

impervious to anything but direct artillery fire the powerful 75 mm gun meant they packed a real punch in the attack the Sturm guts had a crew of four the commander driver loader and Gunner it soon became the proud boast of the STM gush's Crews that their men were all Volunteers always ready to answer the infantryman's call to bring up the guns the new assault Gunners took to the role with great enthusiasm although the cramped interior of each gutz officially had room for only 44 rounds the crew soon found that they could carry 90 rounds of

ammunition by stacking extra rounds in layers on the floor of the vehicle this meant the guns could stay in action for longer and continue to give their support to the Infantry for Longer periods in the coming years that would be a great Advantage one of the things about the German Army in World War II is that they're they're elastic and their tactics and they're elastic in their Doctrine as to how they do things for instance in the stug uh I forget how many rounds the thing carries right now but but they would stick as many

rounds as they could get into the thing and they would be a wash in in in rounds uh Inside that vehicle and the vehicle is not very roomy to start with but they found very very innovative ways to stick rounds into the vehicle despite the early signs of Promise these first machines were produced in small numbers and only 30 gutes were available for the French campaign of 1940 but they acquitted themselves well in their first actions orders were immediately given for the production of A further 500 machines these machines equipped the first STM gutz batteries

which served in the blitz greed campaigns through the Balkans and into Russia it's not going to fight like a tank in the normal sense it's not going to get into direct assault action it's going to support the tank by bringing in wider Natures of Firepower more high explosive and that kind of thing the great advantage of a self-propelled gun Is that you can get a larger gun onto a given chassis then you could if it was in a turret and you do that as in the case of the machine behind me by putting a 75

mm gun into a fixed super structure on the tank where in a gun tank you'd probably get no more than a 50 mm gun onto the same chassis initially STM gutes were organized into independent battalions each Battalion was composed of three troops which originally had six guns Each the commander of the Battalion also had his own vehicle in later years the number of vehicles in each troop was raised to 10 and the battalions were renamed as brigades which in theory fielded 31 Sturm guts in practice these ideals were hardly ever achieved and then only highly

favored formations received the full compliment in battle these independent brigades were then allocated to support inventory formations for a specific Action and came under the command of the Infantry they were ordered to support as the war grew the STM guts commanders naturally gained a wealth of battle experience gained from almost constant exposure to action so in practice it was frequently the Infantry commanders who took the lead from the more experienced assault gun leaders the official regulations stressed that the Sturm guts should be Employed on maps but the constant demands of a terrible War meant that

they were more often employed as single battalions or even single machines one shortcoming of the early STM guts was the lack of a machine gun for close support against enemy infantry a number of STM guts had been lost to Russian infantry which could have been avoided if the crew had had the means to fire back at close range one of the things that both uh Tanks and assault guns need is a machine gun and uh in fact one of the big mistakes the Germans make in World War II they don't put a uh machine gun

on it now if you think about that for a little bit uh Russian infantry learns real quick that they can climb on top of this vehicle for gasoline into the top and torch the crew detrimental to health and morale but but a machine gun is vital for the close defense of your vehicle and to protect other Vehicles the lack of close defense capability was rectified in 1941 with the introduction of the machine gun mounted on the model e of which a further 272 were produced the STM guts made a valuable contribution to the success of

operation Barbarosa but despite the initial successes by late 1941 it was apparent that the German Armed Force as a whole was seriously undergone the armored forces of the Vermar were in danger of being swamped by the new Russian t34 tanks the waves of Russian tanks armed with the high velocity 76 mm gun were far more deadly at longer ranges than the 50 mm gun which equipped most of the Panza 3s which was then Germany's main battle attack the short 75 mm gun gun of the St guts was really designed to fire low velocity high explosive

shells in support of infantry formations and Although it used the relatively small chassis of the Panza 3 the fact that it had no turret allowed the stug to be upgunned to incorporate the deadly long barreled 75 mm gun which could not be fitted to a Panza 3 with this gun the STM guts was more than a match for the t34 the addition of such a powerful l43 anti-tank gun made the STM guts much more than an infantry support weapon it was now apparent that with its low Silhouette the stug was a much harder Target to

hit than the Russian t34 the sloped armor also helped to deflect shots away from the vehicle and the scales gradually began to tip back in Germany's favor during the fierce tank battles of 1942 this much needed upgrade was first incorporated into the STM guts Model F in 1942 the long barreled l43 gun gave the armor-piercing shells fired by the guts A much higher muzzle velocity and therefore a far greater tank killing capability than the 50 mm gun of the Panza 3 it was now obvious that the Panza 3 had evolved as far as it could

and the model was faced out from 1943 the Panza 3 chassis we used exclusively for the manufacturer of Sturm guts production of which continued right up to the last days of the war the pressure of battle on the Eastern Front meant that almost by Accident the German forces had evolved a very successful example of a new breed of fighting Vehicles which were to emerge in World War II the Panza Yaga or tank Hunters it was in this role that most STM guts were to be employed for the rest of the war it was a role

for which they were eminently suitable 20,000 enemy tank kills were claimed by assault gun Crews up to the early months of 1943 the only major disadvantage of the Guts was the lack of a turret this meant that instead of Simply swinging the motorized turret round to face an enemy threat to the side or rear the the whole vehicle had to be moved round on its tracks the STM gut's manual stress time and time again the need for the gun to be stationary when firing in this way the highest level of accuracy was achieved when the

commanders heeded this request the results were devastating in a mobile battle where Every second counts the lack of a turret was a very real disadvantage but STM gut's Crews learned to adopt defensive tactics designed to lure Russian tanks into carefully constructed Killing Grounds with an assault gun such as say the yag Panther or struts one of the problems with it is that it has no turret and the gun is fixed into the hull now they have a certain amount of um deflection that you can get with that gun but not a lot now if you're

fighting A defensive fight that's not altogether a bad thing because you can lower the profile of the vehicle by not having a turret and you can get into these defensive positions and you can then in effect aim the vehicle down armored Avenues of approach into your position so while you're fighting a defensive fight that's not altogether a bad thing however if you go over to the offensive where you do not know where the enemy is going to pop up the lack of a turret is A very very serious drawback the new tactics certainly worked and

in early 1943 there was another increase in gun power with the introduction of the long 48 gun which gave extra velocity and hence extra killing power it was this new gun which equipped the definitive stuts the model G of which 7,720 were eventually manufactured the sheer numbers produced Used is a reflection of just how effective and popular the STM gards was in battle by comparison to the 11,500 STM gushard manufactured only 4,500 pan of 3s 6,800 Panza fours and 6,000 Panthers were manufactured in the same period while the turreted tanks took on the role of

the battlefield Rovers designed to forge ahead of the Infantry in wide- ranging strategic advances it was the Sturm guts who accompanied the Grenadiers during the dogged fighting on the ground as the war dragged on they became the infantry's Rock in defense and his armored fist in Attack by 1943 the STM gutz was an indispensable part of both the Panza Division and the ordinary Infantry Division the Infantry soon came to know that as long as the guts were in the line things were in control extraordinary results were achieved by skilled crews in Russia who Sometimes accounted

for dozens of Russian machines in a single action in those actions a major issue for the stuts commanders was The Limited Fuel and ammunition capacity of their cramped Vehicles this produced a constant need to leave the battlefield to refuel the vehicles and reload with ammunition as the war progressed the soldiers in the front line increasingly took strength from the presence of the guts so the Tactical manual for their Employment went to Great Lengths to stress the importance of the shurm guts commander in keeping his infantry commanders informed that his guns were leaving the line only

to rearm and refuel it was a standard rule of gut's tactical doctrine that if possible not all machines would be withdrawn from the line at the same time but that they should leave the field in relays otherwise there was a real danger that the morale of the Infantry might Collapse if they saw their beloved guts withdrawing from the [Music] field despite its undoubted success as a tank killer there was still an infantry support role for the St Kuts the low trajectory 7.5 M gun was an excellent anti-tank gun but to reach inventory hiding behind obstacles

or other terrain features a high trajectory Howitzer was still required a further 1100 St guts were therefore manufactured with the 10.5 Howitzer which packed a deadly high explosive punch which could be used in support of the Infantry either in attack or more usually desperate defense the theory was that for every two troops of 75 mm armored guts to deal with enemy tanks there would be one troop of Howitzer armed guts to deal with the Infantry problems with supplies of vehicles meant that this situation was very rarely achieved in practice the tactics set down for Cooperation

between the two types of assault guns was that the guns armed with 7.5 guns would Target any enemy armor while the Howitzer armored vehicles would concentrate on the Infantry who accompanied the tanks in this way countless Russian attacks came to grief on the bull provided by the St guts pattal by 1943 the obvious success of the St guts in the field led the Allies to Target The Alat Factory responsible for the production of stoke 3s for priority bombing the resultant saturation bombing severely damaged the production factories during the period of rebuilding production was switched from

Alit to crups tank works but KBS made Panza 4S not Panza 3s during 1943 the 1500 STM guts which were manufactured by Kooks used the Panza 4 tank chassis combined with the highly successful L48 gun these machines Were known as guts fours but were no less successful than the old stug 3 the welded steel skirt were added to all stug threes and fours from 1943 onwards as a protection against the New Hollow charge infantry weapons which had wreaked so much damage since their introduction In late 1943 well each tank had its own characteristics and for

for particular operational tasks uh and you can see in the German evolution of German you know The German assault guns some had very long wartime lives which was astonishing they proved to be sturdy they proved to be reliable and they proved to do their job quite well and they were to the satisfaction both of their Crews and they fitted well into the Tactical scene by the end of the war no less than 30,000 enemy tanks had been destroyed by the gut's crews a ratio of approximately three enemy vehicles to every St Deployed it was a

mark of the achievement of the guns and the crews that Russian orders forbade their tank commanders from entering into artillery Jewels with the guts ordering them instead to maneuver to find the weaker side and rear armor one famous variant of the stok four was a real heavyweight the Forerunner of the Sturm tiger this was the mighty broom bar the grizzly bear or grumbler which carried a powerful 15 cm Hozer the bromar had sloping frontal armor 100 mm thick and it was designed to rumble up to infantry fortifications before firing its massive Shell at Point Blank

Range the bromar was originally developed to cope with the close quarter street fighting at Stalingrad but delays in production meant that they did not see active service until the Battle of KK in 1943 after K Germany was largely Fighting a defensive War but on the few occasions when the bromar saw action they acquitted themselves well and over 300 were produced by the end of the war the um bromar that you see behind me is nothing more than the chassis of the Panzer comp wagen markv with a big gun on it mounted in the Citadel as

you can see and uh the reason this vehicle came about was the Germans learned very quickly in the Battle of Stalingrad that they had problems of taking out Defensive positions in towns and also defense positions uh one and all so this came about as to take out those type of positions so you have a 150mm gun uh very short little Barrel gun but it was uh very good for firing like plastic charger es up against uh fortifications and knocking them out the eventual production of St guts totaled some 11,500 more than any other Mark of

German fighting vehicle there were sound Reasons for this as Not only was STM gut successful on the battlefield they were also far less expensive quicker and easier to manufacture than fully turreted tanks built on the same chassis this was a vital consideration for Germany's hardpressed manufacturing industry German armies on all fronts were desperate for armored fighting vehicles to stem the flood of Russian and Allied armor so production resources were increasingly switched to the Production of stuts which were well suited to fighting a defensive war in 1943 the role of St gut's Protectors of the Infantry

was reversed when each increasingly precious gun was given its own dedicated Squad of grenadiers to protect these valuable machines against the increasingly sophisticated weapons carried by Allied tank hunting teams although it was not purpose designed as a tank killer the stug had Provided a solid solution to the tank destroyer role almost by accident German attempts to produce a dedicated Tank Killer By Design were f far more [Music] trouble the STM gut's experience had shown that by dispensing with a tank turret it was possible to mount a much heavier gun on the existing tank chassis despite

the inevitability of the final defeat the men of the sh gutz and Hanay Yaga formations fought like lions to the bitter losses grew to frightening proportions and many Panza divisions fought until literally the last machine rumbled into its final battle even by the last day of fighting the ranks of the St gish's Crews were still filled mainly with volunteers who did their Duty in the face of almost certain death in later years it was to become the proud boast That when the cry went up from the hardpressed grenadiers they were always there to answer their

call to bring up the guns [Music] [Music] they say necessity is the mother of invention time and time again the forces Unleashed by Modern Warfare have been been shown to be the Catalyst for massive change these changes are often achieved In very short time scales under peacetime conditions normally a new Fighting Vehicle would be designed built and tested over a period of something like 5 years between 1941 and 1945 some very successful designs were produced in as many months they had to be the war in the East was a demanding and remorseless Taskmaster which consumed

every new offering as soon as it was ready for action the price of Failure was Unthinkable from 1943 onwards German Engineers were driven by the desperate demands of a voracious front line which threatened to consume their very Homeland if they did not supply exactly the right technology in the shortest possible time scales [Music] despite the vile excesses of the regime under which they toiled German factories produced an outstanding variety of Armored fighting vehicles in an incredibly short period of time it has often been said that the German armaments industry placed the best possible weapons in

the worst possible hands that is certainly true of the armored fighting vehicles obviously there were many failures but against the odds there were also a large number of successful Vehicles which shaped the face of armored Warfare for Years to come during uh the second world war what happens with the German Army is that they have a lot of vehicles that rapidly become obsolete like the penser 2 the pener 3 and what they do is they take the ch of those vehicles and they marry it up with a gun and turn them into assault weapons and

uh they also take a lot of captured weapons that they have and turn them into Mobile artillery like the Czechoslovakian t35 that sort of Thing so it's an evolutionary type of thing that the German Army does STM artillery is nothing more than tracked artillery that was designed to keep up with the panzers to give them ready and quick fire [Music] sport one successful New Breed born out of desperation by the demands of the Russian front were the self-propelled artillery Vehicles which were rushed into production from the war ravaged German factories to shore up the desperate

defensive battles of that terrible comp a mobile artillery Force which could be rushed from place to place on the crumbling front they were to supply the needs of a military situation which was declining on an almost daily [Music] basis only two short years earlier no one in their right Minds would have believed such a situation could Prevail So [Music] soon in the Glory Days of 1941 Adolf Hitler had appeared Invincible Hitler was a gambler for 9 years he was also a highly successful Gambler he made the right calls in the Cutthroat political world of the

viar rep Republic and Nazi Germany he gambled on the annexation of Austria and of Czechoslovakia and he called The Bluff of Britain and France over the Treaty of Versailes and his inspired combination of guesswork and aggression precipitated the spectacular fall of France in 1940 but like all gamblers eventually the lucky streak Runs Out Hitler's luck ran out when he began to believe in his own invincibility and to ignore the lessons of history in the 18th century the Invincible Swedish army of Charles the Bold had been destroyed in Russia in the 19th century Napoleon had seen

his Grand Army wither and die at the infamous campaign of 1812 and even the allc Conquering British Army of the Victorian era had received one of its few reverses with an unsuccessful dismal campaign in the Crimea marked by disease hardship and despair but spurred on by the great successes in the west during May 1940 Hitler drove his forces on into Russia they were to come unstuck on Almost exactly the same battlefields as Napoleon had before Moscow and in 1944 the Crimea was to spell disaster for German troops with losses on a scale which the British

army could not have believed possible [Music] in late 1941 operation typhoon ground to a halt on the very outskirts of the great city of Moscow near the sight of Napoleon's battlefield of borino and in 1944 a Whole German Army was lost in the same Crimea which the British had failed to take during its own campaign the lessons of military history were there for all to see but hit chose to ignore them one of the reasons for his arrogance was his irrational belief in the power of particular new weapons to achieve decisive results where others had

failed this was a trait which was to take on a Fantastical quality later in The war where there was a tiny element of rationality in his thinking he had certainly been proved right when the new Panza divisions had sliced through the ardan to capture France and who could blame him for believing the same thing was possible in Russia especially with weapons like the mighty Carl super mortar at his disposal in 1855 the British and French forces fighting in the Crimea had laid Siege to Sevastopol 90 years later the German forces fighting in the Crimea were

to do exactly the same thing The Siege mortars fired in the 1854 campaign by the British troops were later echoed in the mighty Carl series monsters deployed by Hitler's forces in 1942 at the time of Hitler's Siege of sevastopol six of these enormous self-propelled guns could be called up this time there would be no protracted Siege or stalemate the massive artillery Support from the Carls helped shatter the Russian defenses and sevastopol fell into German hands in 1942 these Monster Machines rolled around on fully tracked chassis with 11 road wheels on each side and their massive

54 cm guns fired a shell which weighed an astonishing 1577 s kg only six were ever built but these six were enough to secure sevastopol for Hitler where the British had Failed each of these massive guns were given a name the first four were called after the Norse gods of Mythology Thor Odin Loki zuie and the last two rather bizarrely after the biblical figures Adam and Eve the kungel was a gigantic 60 cm mortar mounted on tracks self-propelled mounting it weighed 124 tons and really was completely out of court as far as a fighting vehicle

is concerned and you'd have to consider it more or less a piece Of fixed artillery that could just about move rather than self-propelled artillery in the conventional sense what had happened was that in the first world war the austrians had demolished some enormous Belgian fortresses by using horse drawn and tractor drawn arery and mortars of a very heavy caliber and the Germans were clearly trying to emulate this and they started it about 1937 by developing this massive mortar building a track carriage for it and then using It I think only in Russia against some of

the fortresses at Sebastapol and this sort of thing and there are cases during the assault on Sebastapol where it blew open some enormous concrete defenses but really a thing like that is a very specialist weapon it had to be taken to bits in order to be moved anywhere on special barers and was probably in more trouble than it was actually worth in many respects the summer campaign of 1942 was the high watermark For the verar after the siege of sevastopol there was little work for the Carls to do as it was now the turn of

the German armies to come under siege but the car class of self-propelled Siege gun had proved itself successful in action unfortunately the same could not always be said for Hitler's other Innovations the Carl represented the very large end of weapons development these men are training with the Other Extreme both in size and success this was Goliath one of three of the so-called demolition tanks made by Germany in the war it was a miniature remote control tank which was designed to be guided up to enemy tanks or pill boxes then detonated although this footage shows troops

training with these weapons it is obvious even from this that the operators had to expose themselves to hostile enemy positions in order to have Any Prospect of guiding the suicide weapon onto its [Music] Target in consequence casualties were very high and this job was very unpopular among the troops operating machines such as the Borg vard B4 or or the Goliath nonetheless over 7,500 remote control demolition tanks were built and used by the troops in the field their success rate is not recorded But the ratio of failures to successes was high the Carl and the Goliath

represented very much the unconventional end of the military Spectrum now the Goliath here was another rather fancy idea it's basically a tiny track vehicle packed with high EXP explosive which is directed onto its Target by remote control the Germans actually built a number of these things either worked by radio or in this case by wire reeling out from the vehicle like a little Child's toy with a battery box at the back and the men would guide it onto its Target again you could only really expect to use a thing like this against fixed defenses and

it was the very nature of German Warfare to keep mobile so one wonders where they anticipated using it half the time I've seen film of Goliath in which the thing is virtually incapable of staying the right way up on anything but dead level ground and of course the further away it is from the Operator the more difficult it is for him to aim and once the opposition figure out what it is they're going to do all in their power to stop it it only requires a shot cutting the wire to finish it we developed similar

things in Great Britain they were all considered to be a completely useless effort none of them ever worked properly and I would say the same must be said for poal Goliath there is a famous photograph I think take in Italy of a US Army soldier Standing on a mountain of the DN things and I can imagine the German Army saying to hell with it these things are simply not worth bothering with all the trouble of carrying to the site setting them up probably to wasted the minute the thing breaks down halfway to Target today the

rusting hulks of the armored fighting vehicles of the verar lie still and Silent under a summer sun this is the US Army Ordinance Museum found foundation in Maryland USA final Resting place for many of the survivors of the Titanic struggle on the Russian front the white winter camouflage contrasts in congruously with the green summer grass and blue skies these machines which once brought Terror to the continent of Europe now lie rusting silently away among the well-known tanks such as the Panther and the tiger are a few familiar names the hmel the vasp and the grasshopper

but in their day when these Drab white color schemes served a real purpose on the snow covered steps of Russia their contribution was every bit as vital as the famous tanks in the [Music] spearhead the use of tracked vehicles to support the objectives of the vermark had grown exponentially since the start of World War II in 1939 even in 1941 only 19 of the 140 German divisions deployed for the invasion of Russia were Panza Divisions the army of 1942 was much more mobile Panza grenadiers moving swiftly around the battlefield in armored half tracks were much

more numerous but but even mobile infantry still required artillery support to achieve many of their objectives that artillery support needed to be as mobile as they were the STM guts assault gun had originally been designed to provide the support but by 1942 Battlefield Necessities meant that they were often hijack into the role of tank destroyers this deprived the troops of close artillery support which the guts were originally designed to provide it left a gap which could not be filled by the medium or heavy artillery these heavier guns often lagged behind the motorized troops across the

huge distances which had to be covered in Russia in Europe during the campaigns of 1939 40 and 41 where roads were good it was found that conventional artillery could be moved and deployed reasonably easily but in Russia the dirt roads turned to rivers of mud with the arrival of spring and Autumn rains and they were frequently covered in deep snow during the winter months the best possible solution for the provision of heavy artillery support for the mobile battles now being fought in Russia was the deployment of large Caliber self-propelled guns on fully tracked carriages these

vehicles could stick reasonably close to the fast moving Panza divisions and provide them with the same Heavy Artillery support which would normally require horse drawn or motorized transport they were collectively known as Sturm artillery or self-propelled [Music] guns these troops seen here during the German Advance into the Caucasus in 1942 are Towing their gun into action but to get into action the gun has to be first unlimbered at this point the crew will be exposed to enemy fire the heavy 15 cm infantry gun could be mounted on a tracked chassis to produce a vehicle which

was always ready for action and which gave the crew a measure of protection against artillery fire and which could keep Pace with the spearheads over the worst possible Terrain the self-propelled artillery units had been born the first self-propelled guns proved effective but as the war wore on and Germany's situation grew increasingly desperate her hardpressed armies found themselves facing Superior Firepower from increasingly heavy enemy artillery to combat this the vermar needed a variety of mobile gun platforms capable of moving Heavy Artillery to hard pressed sections over the vast Battlefields of Russia ultimately thousands of self-propelled guns

in a bewildering variety of variations would see action although it was the insistent demands of the Russian front which provide the real Catalyst for the development of self-propelled guns there were a number of earlier precedents limited numbers of self-propelled guns called share infantry guts or s for short had been Success successfully deployed in the 1940 campaign in France initially these vehicles used the ridiculously light Panza 1 chassis to carry the heavy 15 cm infantry gun the troops advancing here are using the gun to blast infantry from buildings and strong points and despite the obvious limitations

of these first self-repelling mobile heavy artillery carried on a tracked [Music] Chassis the Panza 1 was Germany's first and smallest tank secretly developed as an agricultural tractor during the years when Germany was prevented from developing tanks by the Treaty of versailes it was very much a starting point it was a Twan machine smaller than many modern saloons cars it soon proved to be hopelessly inadequate under combat conditions the armor was too thin and the two machine gun Armament was ineffective but the chassis itself was a Good one and German Engineers immediately set to work to

produce specialist variants for other Battlefield tasks the Germans as a race have long been famous for the quality of their engineering work they are also justifiably renowned for their their meticulousness a demonstration of this can be seen in the thorough manner in which every tank chassis manufactured during World War II was methodically Exploited with uniform thoroughness and regularity to produce a wide array of specialist vehicles to cater for every need on the battlefield each of the tank chassis produced by German manufacturers or by her Czechoslovakian satellite suppliers was systematically altered to produce not just the

main battle tanks themselves but in almost every case there was also a tank destroyer variant and a self-propelled artillery variant In most cases there were also command tanks armored ammunition tanks armored recovery vehicles and even flame-throwing tanks in the case of self-propelled artillery this systematic approach to the design possibilities of each model was first seen in the Panza 1 as we have seen it was the successful adaptation of the Panza 1 chassis which allowed the Sig 33 to carry a heavy 15 cm gun to give a heavy self-propelled Artillery piece which could be moved right

up to the front line however there was one major drawback in the arrangement of such a big gun on such a small chassis it was so topheavy that the gun was very liable to topple over this undignified trait led to the search for a better alternative naturally the first step was to examine the larger chassis of the other German light tank in service the Panza 2 like the Panza 1 the Panza 2 battle tank was found to be woefully inadequate under combat conditions and like the Panza 1 the outdated Panza 2 chassis was successfully developed

as a self-propelled gun carriage in an attempt to extend the life of the design in this respect the Panza 2 worked only a little better than the Panza 1 although it gave a slightly lower profile and hence better stability and a greater measure of protection to the Crew it was only manufactured in tiny quantities only 12 were made and all appear to have been dispatched to Africa to equip the Africa core in practice neither the Panza 1 or the Panza 2 chassis could really deal with the requirement of the heavy 15 cm gun which they

were being adapted to carry the lateral solution to the problem was found by reducing the weight of the gun from 15 cm to 10.5 CM this produced the vasp or wasp which combined The lighter 10.5 CM gun on a Panza 2 chassis the vasp was an excellent design which was light enough to keep up with the troops but heavy enough to produce an effective barrage 682 of these machines were produced from 1942 and 1944 they were welcomed with open arms by the hardpressed troops one thing which did not find favor was the name it did

not suggest power and presence and was dropped on The personal orders of Hitler in 1944 however they continued to be known as wasps to the Troops who did value their considerable sting in battle it was the most important of the German self-propelled armored artillery types it was a very neat looking piece of equipment and the strange thing is that although they utilized the chassis by the time the German Army used the chass it was obsolete the unfortunate thing about this there was not Sufficient accommodation space in this vehicle and this is I think as most

soldiers will tell you this is very important you have to have places where you can put things and this is one of the great drawbacks of this particular vehicle it operated with the light batteries you know the smaller batteries of armored artillery battalions of armored artillery regiment so these are quite versatile vehicles and really quite important ones but that's a good Example as to say of a really of an obsolete piece of equipment being brought back into service and uh yes more or less performing the role but with all obsolete Vehicles as I've said there

you've got crew complaint about lack of accommodation so so although you may get it rapidly into service you have the disadvantage of of its shortcomings it has to be improved or [Music] adapted with the introduction of the Vasp the possibilities for the Panza 2 chassis appeared to have been exhausted the ceaseless demands of the Russian front P for heavier and heavier [Music] guns so German Engineers moved on to examine the possibilities inherent in the Panza 3 which was Germany's main battle tank in the early years of the war this proved to be a much more

fertile hunting [Music] Ground the main variant produced using the Panza 3 chassis was the famous Sturm gutz the assault gun variant which went on to become one of the most successful designs of the war by dispensing with the turret to mount a long 75 cm gun the resultant vehicle was efficient both in the role of assault gun and tank destroyer but the St gutz was a compromised machine it was not really designed as a specialist tank Hunter although it could do the job nor was it Capable of supplying a heavy artillery barrage both of these

demands took the Sturm guts away from its role supplying close artillery support to the Troops in the front line to supplement the assault guns it was now obvious that the vermark needed both a dedicated purpose designed Tank Killer and a separate vehicle purpose designed for heavy artillery support and mounted on the mobile tra chassis the solution was to adapt the Pan a four chassis to produce two specialist machines in the tank Hunter role came the nashorn or rhinoceros produced from 1943 onwards its 8.8 CM gun was what was needed to deal with Russian tanks at

longer ranges there was a German assault piece called nasorn the Rhino I mean this this was this was an extraordinary Beast literally welln named I must Admit uh it it had a short life it had a very limited function I don't know but looking at it it must have been very difficult to handle and above all what you don't want to be on the battlefield is a target for other enemy projectiles you have to think about that as well the German side developed very good standard stable designs and the German tank program continued to be

extremely cost effective with a deadly punch the nashorn was clearly a major step in the Right direction although its high profile and lack of crew protection did give severe grounds for reservation but its main gun was sufficiently powerful and some 500 of these excellent tank destroyers were manufactured the vehicle behind me is the uh the nashorn the the rhinoceros and it's also the uh chassis of the Panzer 4 but it has an 88 mm gun and this is the anti-tank uh hunting version of the Vehicle the vehicle was also used as the chassis for a

a gun uh a regular fuel artillery piece which was also used uh by the German Army these experiments yielded the hmel or Bumblebee the hmel used the Panza for chassis to carry a heavy 15 cm gun for mobile artillery bombardment this vehicle overcame all the drawbacks of the previous self-propelled guns it carried a much Heavier punch could be very rapidly deployed and of course it could be easily moved to avoid counter barges by enemy guns 666 machines eventually entered service there was a huge demand for the front line units and there were never enough to

go around now once again I mean this is an example of the Germans using their chesses you know the the chassis of you know the Panza the panzas three and four Which is a very good idea you've got a basically good chassis why why not get on with it and that uh uh what happened with the HL which is the Bumblebee it proved to be and I think most German soldiers will tell you this was an extremely uh both a very powerful weapon and actually a very successful weapon and it was actually brought into full

service in 1943 and was used largely by Tank battalions but it's scan this business I Think of having very particular capability on the battlefield and and really the homel seems to have fitted very very well into German paner divisions and if I think altogether the German Army took delivery of over more than 600 of them which is really quite good and really had a very good record indeed it was a very useful piece of of field artillery to be used uh in close proximity with with the um the tank divisions as such a very successful

Piece of equipment the hmel and the VP were to prove highly successful under Battlefield conditions both could give mobile artillery support to the hard pressed Panza divisions then quickly move location before they could be targeted by the superior numbers of Allied artillery in total some 1,300 of these two types of self-propelled guns were made from 1942 to 1945 during which time they provided Essential artillery support to the great advances of 1942 and covering fire for the desperate verar divisions during their headlong Retreat into Germany during 1944 [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] the only major drawback of

these self-propelled guns was the lack of storage space for stocks of Ammunition in the case of the hmel there was only enough room for 18 rounds a constant round of resupplying was therefore required during any significant [Music] bombardments however by 1944 ammunition supplies were strictly Limited in the German forces and unlike the Glory Days of 1941 even these limited stocks had to be shepherded very carefully indeed in line with the German factories The tank producing scoda Works in Czechoslovakia also produced self-propelled artillery using the chassis from the Czech manufactured tanks the Czech made Panza 38t

equipped many German units during the early years of the war and when the tanks were withdrawn from Frontline service it made sense to convert the highly serviceable chassis into a self-propelled artillery role the resultant machine which Combined a 10.5 CM Howitzer with the 38t chassis was known to the Germans as the grill or Cricket never as popular as the vesp or the hmel nevertheless 282 machines were manufactured and they saw action mainly in Russia [Music] a few were also used in the campaign in the West after the Allied [Music] Landings by this stage of the

war time Was beginning to run against the Germans and in the limited time available the late War Panza and six chassis did not produce as many conver versions as previous vehicles but the Panza 4 produced one of the most successful designs in the form of the Panza Yaga 4 a superb tank Hunter unlike the Panza 1 2 and three the Panza 4 remained in service throughout the war so there was never likely to be a surplus of redundant Vehicles for conversion in any case the successful introduction of the vasp and hmel solved the technical problem

problems of mobile Heavy Artillery support in consequence further attempts to use the Panza 4 chassis for self-propelled artillery were limited to a few experiments which produced this machine nicknamed the [Music] grasshopper this is the grasshopper it is undoubtedly one of the Worst ideas ever what it is it's the chassis of the Panzer Kagen Mark I uh but you see that it has this turret and a gun but you notice that it has a superstructure on the back of the vehicle the idea was this you dig a hole the engineers would come and line it with

concrete then you would use the superstructure on the back to Dismount the turret and put the turret in the hole now This makes no sense for a mobile weapon to be fixed into position it's dumb with regard to the grasshopper what the Germans did they took the chassis of the Panza 4 which was a very good chass and which lasted by the way throughout the length of the war and they exploited it this time in a very different manner what they did as you know they they had a system whereby the turret was removable if

you look at the side of the turret you see the two uh bolt holding Positions where this vehicle if you like self-propelled artillery piece it really was basically a weapon carrier it was carrying a weapon that was the idea the weapon being the turret itself which because of the capability of the tank which had really its own lifting equipment removed the turret could be removed from the tank you could do one of two things with that you could either apply two wheels to the turret which you had Removed and move it to whichever position you

wanted or in fact you could then imp place it as a fixed firing Point as a if you like an immediately impliable strong point this is a very rare machine indeed of which only a very few were produced some sources put the figure as low as two machines others say 14 were made with the Warped logic which led to its creation that's no great surprise in order to allow for the Turret to give the protection the crew needed the gun size had to be reduced to 10.5 CM when what was actually demanded were heavier caliber

guns by 1944 the Allied air forces in the west enjoyed almost total air superiority in Russia the Air Force had recovered from its early defeats and was now almost as effective as the British and Americans vehicle losses reached catastrophic proportions as the fighter Bombers rolled over the front looking for targets [Music] now the real priority was for anti-aircraft protection which could move with the tanks and give some cover against the Relentless attacks of the Allied fighter bonds it was in this role that more Panza 4 conversions were made these self self-propelled anti-aircraft guns were produced

in three Forms firstly there was the mobile bargain which the troops nicknamed the furniture van because of its resemblance to a peacetime removals truck it was followed by two later machines the verbal vind or Whirlwind and OST vind or East Wind in the case of the mobile vargon this was very much a wartime contingency measure rather than a purpose designed vehicle as damaged Panza fours were brought back For repair from the Eastern Front they were converted to an anti-aircraft rooll by the simple expedient of taking off the turret and replacing it with a 20 mm

flank gun which was protected when in transit by four collapsible sides which were lowered when the flank gun was in action to say this was an unsuccessful design is an understatement the 20 mm gun was soon found to be woefully inadequate for the job of anti-aircraft Defense of even greater concern was the fact that the sides of the mobile bargain had to be lowered to allow the gun to fire this left the crew with no protection whatsoever and defeated the whole purpose of mounting the gun on a tank chassis in the first place the Frontline

troops were quick to point out that in action the same result could have been achieved by placing an anti-aircraft gun on the back of a truck [Music] [Music] here miraculously 240 conversions had been made before this glaring design floor came to light effectively 240 precious tanks have been wasted a measure of Effectiveness was achieved by increasing the size of gun from 20 mm to 37 mm but the mobile vargon was defeat it was obvious that what was required was an anti-aircraft vehicle that gave the crew the benefits of armor Protection while they were in action

the solution was a specialist vehicle known as the verbal vind it used the Panza 4 chassis and used four 20 mm flank guns in a quad Arrangement now mounted on a fully rotating turret which gave the crew some measure of protection the wble wind was nothing more than uh anti-aircraft artillery it had four 20 mm cannon on it and because the Allies had air superiority uh the Germans had to have a Way to keep mobile anti-aircraft artillery up with their tanks H to protect not only their tanks but things like their trains the the logistics

trains that any army has and this was a very very effective way to do it because we had four very fast firing Cannon uh that were used on anti-aircraft mode and could take out um low-flying uh Allied aircraft like the typhoon which was a rocket firing aircraft used Against tanks very difficult to take out German tanks using our equipment on the ground the American enfor Sherman being a perfectly awful tank but uh a rocket firing typhoon could certainly take out a tiger no problem so the worble wind the the Whirlwind was a way to keep

the Allied aircraft off your tanks even mounted in groups of four the 20 mm gun was still ineffectual so the verbal vind was discontinued after 100 Had been built the successor to to the verbal vind was known as the OST vind but the end was now in sight and only 43 machines were made to combat an Allied Air Force which was flying 20,000 aircraft in the Skies over Germany [Music] despite the Revolutionary quality of many of the machines produced for Hitler's armies they could never hope to match the sheer weight of numbers ranged Against them

given the depraved nature of the regime which brought them into existence every civilized person should give thanks for that [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] on the morning of 13th of June 1944 during the fierce battles in Normandy SS Ober sterm furo vitman and the crew of His heavy Tiger tank were standing ready for action they were about to take part in one of the most famous tank actions in military history vidman had left his company to rec anointer the battlefield when he became aware of the presence of an entire British armored Battalion halted on the road

nearby undaunted vitman drove his single tiger at the column firing on the move the tiger gained the element of Surprise and quickly destroyed 12 half tracks three light tanks and six medium tanks one of the most striking examples of course not so much of tank warfare but of the handling of an individual tank indeed what it could do and its capability was demonstrated in 1944 by hman vitman in in his tiger tank here you've got an accomplished tank commander which he clearly was with perhaps an expert eye for the Tactical Situation and I think it's

probably a record in uh maybe in in tank warfare history that he was able with one tank to disable what was virtually uh a British tank column vitman calmly Departed the scene of Carnage to report rearm and gather reinforcements 2 hours later he returned to battle this time he destroyed a further 12 medium tanks four heavy tanks and 14 Bren gun carriers all in a day's work for the most successful tank Commander in History Michael vitman was really probably the most successful Junior tank commander of the entire second world war not only did he achieve

a unprecedentedly high kill rate 138 tanks 132 anti-tank guns but he was also the recipient of some of Nazi Germany's highest uh awards for example the knights cross with oak leaves and swords which was effectively the German equivalent of the Victoria Cross so in Sheer statistical terms he was an extremely successful Commander he was also an extremely competent leader an inspirational leader one might say and this I think leads on to something else which is also important which is Michael vman's propaganda value to the Nazi propaganda machine it wasn't simply a question of what he

did on the battlefield it was his influence and his inspiration to other German fighting men and to the factory workers who produced The Tiger tanks with which vitman achieved most of his victories that was also particularly important so regardless of what one thinks of his uh political Viewpoint and of course he was a dedicated National Socialist um in sheer military terms at the Tactical level and in terms of his psycholog iCal impact both upon Germans and indeed upon the Allies uh his impact was immense Michael vidman was born in the Tiny Village of Vogal in

the upper FAL On the 22nd of April 1914 he was the first son of a farmer Johan vidman and his wife [Music] Ursula in 1934 at the age of 21 vidman joined the German army signing up for a 2-year [Music] tour in the first days of the Nazi regime compulsory military service had not yet been reintroduced so vitman was a volunteer when he reported for Military service in frying with the 19th Infantry Regiment as a small standing army comprised exclusively of volunteers the interwar Reich was a highquality force which expected very high standards s vitman

met those exacting standards and after one year in the service he was promoted to G on the 1st of November 1935 1936 was the hean period for the Nazi party in Germany the first flushes of economic successes for Hitler's National socialists impressed the young vidman in the closed world of the military the fervent Nazi beliefs of many of his colleagues also made an impression many of his colleagues planned to join the newly formed vaan SS and vitman decided that he too would join the military wing of the Nazi party after his own Army service on

the 1st of November 1936 vidman applied for admission to the SS And was accepted into what was to become one of the most notorious organizations in history the vafan SS uh or armed SS was essentially the regular armed forces or ideological spearhead of the National Socialist cause composed at least in its early stages of racially pure ideologically utterly committed and extremely physically fit young men uh it eventually grew to a strength by 1945 of almost a million Personnel uh and Provided something like 40 combat divisions for the German Armed Forces the Wen SS actually stands

for armed SS so that they are specifically fighting soldiers and they were unusual in in that they were very Innovative in their tactics and also things like their dress they they were some of the first troops to use camouflage clothing in the case of many exceptional German soldiers such as field Marshall Irwin rml revisionists have subsequently Tried to play Down the enthusiasm they held for Hitler and all he stood for this is not true of Michael vitman in his case there was to be no redeeming conversion or late change of Allegiance he was a simple

man and the seductive Allure of the Nazi party drew his unquestioning obedience sadly he was never to Swerve from that evil path vitman was given the SS number 31623 and proved to be a model National Socialist in his free time he participated in sports recruiting and took part in the mass political demonstrations and rallies of the [Music] [Applause] [Music] period in contrast to the Frantic world of mass political rallies vman's first SS military posting was less than glamorous he was employed as a guard at the large verac Munitions dump vitman Was soon bored with his

routine he wanted to be near the center of this new Force in Germany so he applied to join the SS leandata Adolf Hitler's personal bodyguard already this was the best known and most elite unit in the third [Music] rank the leand arter Adolf Hitler might reasonably be described as Hitler's petorian God formed in 1933 as a bodyguard for the fura personally it Later expanded as the military Vanguard of national socialism if you like and in 1943 eventually became a fully fledged Panza division of the vafan SS with a strength of about 20,000 men both as

a division and earlier as a regiment it participated on the most important fronts of the second world war acting as a armored spearhead for German offensive actions and as a fire brigade that was sent to collapsing sectors of the front in order to prop Them up so an absolutely Elite formation thanks to his rigorous military background vitman met the very strict selection criteria and was accepted he began training with his new unit on the 5th of April 1937 at the main Cadet School in Berlin Lisha [Music] Feld vitman was assigned to the 17th company which

was an armored Scout car platoon as part of an elite formation the men of The armored Scout company received an intensive training course which transformed them into experts these skills were later to stand him in good stead but for the time being the Newfound expertise was not needed Hitler was still achieving his aims by a mixture of bluff and inspired gambles in October 1938 vitman took part in in the entry into the Sudan land the reception he witnessed as waves of excitement swept through the people made A lasting impression on him the storm of Jubilation

eclipsed even the fervent National Socialist rallies which he had [Music] [Applause] attended he was awarded his first of many medals commemorating the reunification of Austria and the Sudan land with a German Reich from now on medals and decorations would occupy a special place in vman's Affections the first moves in Hitler's master plan had been achieved without Bloodshed but as tensions Rose Adolf Hitler's crooked path LED only downwards into chaos the conquest of Poland heralded the coming of the second World War the leandata motorized regiment fought hard in Poland from the first day of the campaign

the 1st of September 1939 on that day the armored Scout platoon was soon in action and vitman Had received his baptism of fire the campaign in Poland was brief only 30 days in duration but nonetheless his experiences had wetted his appetite for combat in the following year V man and his armored car again saw action in the rapid Campaign which saw the fall of [Music] France vitman together with several other ncos and Men was transferred to jorg where the self-propelled assault Battery was being formed there he and his colleagu traded in their black Panza uniforms

for gray assault gun tunics it was to be 2 years before he would see Panza black again this was the start of vman's association with armored fighting Vehicles which was to lead him to fame and infamy throughout the Civilized World there was much to learn the assault guns were armed with a short Barreled 75 mm gun which had little in common with the feeble 20mm Cannon carried by the armored cars but vitman soon showed exceptional promise with a new weapon after training the pledgeling assault gun battery was sent to Garrison Duty in France after the

short burst of activity which had characterized the lightning campaign through France the long months of Barrack's Duty hung heavy on bitman Who was Keen to see action again he was not to get his wish until the 6th of April 1941 when the Balkans campaign began the German forces Advanced through Yugoslavia to Greece where in addition to Greek forces their opponents included English and Commonwealth troops vman's assault gun was involved in the fierce fighting for the cley pass which fell only after heavy resistance next the leandata had to fight its way through the kiswa pass and

onto Corinth And Olympia against Fierce opposition from the Greek army the fighting in Greece ended on the 30th of April 1941 after pausing to rest in falia in May the leandata was sent through Yugoslavia to camp didit near Vishal where awaited the next phase of the war the invasion of Russia [Music] the war in Russia began with operation barbarasa on June the 22nd 1941 but the leap standard wasn't initially committed their war in the Soviet Union began a month later in July 1941 it was like a second baptism of fire for Michael vidman who faced

an attack by 18 Russian tanks on the batter's first day of [Music] action he had encountered nothing like this in Poland or Greece but vitman was a natural fighter and he succeeded in knocking out six enemy tanks in Succession the rest fled the field in disarray this was vman's first striking success and the incident provided the first signs of his Supreme Talent as commander of an armored fighting vehicle on the 12th of July 1941 in recognition of his great feat on his first day in action in Russia vitman was decorated with the Iron Cross second

class but there was little time for celebration as the advance continued the short 75 mm gun of the German Assault gun in the early War years was an inferior weapon to the long 76 mm gun of the Russian t34 tanks but despite this disadvantage vitman proved himself a master of armored Warfare combat in Russia placed terrific demands on the assault gun Crews frequently vitman and his crew were on their own separated from the rest of the assault gun battery in this hostile environment he proved himself to be an individualist And a successful lone fighter nevertheless

he remained popular with his comrades vman's Gunner at that time Otto Schult described him as a modest man Michael was a quiet gifted friendly NCO with firm gold in front of him he knew his tank in a sense he also knew his opponent positioned himself beautifully and every time there was an attempt even to if you like outflank him or or remove him or or in a sense um put the pressure on him that failed as well With 2,000 Mi of front to fight over the German armed forces were spread incredibly thinly it was lucky

for vitman that he was such a good lone Warrior as the assault guns were rarely employed on mass as the standing orders required so his skills were forged in the hard battles of the summer of 1941 unit commanders were always happy to have an assault gun assigned to their sector particularly that commanded by Michael [Music] vitman the German Advance along the Black Sea began in the first weeks of August 1941 vitman fought in Assassin and NOAB from the 10th to the 17th of August and on the 19th captured [Music] Ken in the course of the

fighting for the port city of Kon a bizarre incident took place as the assault guns commanded by vitman and Beck engaged first an Enemy gunboat then a submarine the gunboat was sunk but the effects of the fire directed to the submarine are not recorded [Music] vitman had destroyed 10 enemy tanks by this point in his career but his luck was about to change for the worse as a direct hit on his vehicle which failed to penetrate the armor nonetheless left Witman wounded in the face and back by shell fragments Tank crews in battle faced a

large number of different kinds of danger most obviously there were the dangers posed by similar beasts to themselves enemy tanks assault guns tank destroyers and self-propelled guns in addition of course the enemy would often have anti-tank guns toad anti-tank guns which by virtue of their smaller size were easier to hide and indeed Michael vittman reckon that it was uh more of a coup to destroy enemy anti-tank guns Than to destroy enemy tanks in addition tank Crews fac dangers posed by enemy infantry equipped with short range anti-tank weapons they had to deal with problems caused by

anti-tank ditches by trenches by minefields and so forth and in addition of course there were the simple ergonomic problems of operating in battle tanks tended to be funed inside with all sorts of equipment some of it sharp and over rough ground tank crew could be thrown around and find That they impacted with this equipment which wasn't terribly pleasant but perhaps the Paramount fear for most tank Crews was that of fire because in very small confined spaces this meant that tank crws only had a matter of seconds usually to evacuate a damaged [Music] vehicle in late

August after the capture of Kon vitman rested near binets in recognition of his accomplishments to date on the 8th of September Michael vitman was awarded the Iron Cross First Class by then he was already counted as the best gun commander in the battery and an indispensable member of the leap standard the German Advance continued through the eastern Ukraine igranog was taken on the 17th of [Music] October by this stage Michael vitman who had been wounded a total of three times in 1941 was now promoted to the rank of Ss obasa fura the leap standard had

been bloodied in the constant action of the previous months and the combat strengths of his units had fallen to dangerously low levels despite this the units continued to drive eastwards and on the 17th of November 1941 the attack on rostoff on the dawn began the city was only captured after further Fierce fighting on the 21st of November Michael vitman Was awarded the tank battle badge in silver the leandata moved into the winter positions along the sambeg river the assault gun battery was based in taganrog from there the assault gun carried out armored reconnaissance sorties to

the East and North tank combat was comparatively rare at this period as the Soviets had few tanks left in action by this stage of the war nonetheless vman's tally continued to rise to 25 enemy tanks and 32 Anti-tank guns destroyed but combat losses were not just on the Russian side those on his own side also Rose steadily in February 1942 the depleted assault gun battery was reinforced and brought up to Battalion strength through new additions from Germany and the transfer of a battery from the SS Viking division as a result of this expansion vitman was

made an SS officer candidate In early 1942 he left the Battalion in June in order to attend the candidate training course at the SS Yuna shul in bad tols vidman learned tactical lessons which he combined with his practical Battlefield experience the 28-year-old vidman now served as platoon commander in the second company of the SS Panza replacement Battalion during his time away from Action Michael vitman was promoted to SS UNR fura on Christmas Day 1942 he received his transfer to faring bostel for the formation of the new heavy tank company vitman once again exchanged his gray

assault gun uniform for a black Panza uniform there were rumors of a new Miracle weapon which fired the anticipation of Michael vitman and his colleagues armies are full of rumors but for once these rumors were True the Germans were indeed to be equipped with the mighty tiger tanks but there was also disappointment for vitman each tiger company had a few of the old Panza 3s for scouting and support as he had experience in armored cars and had trained using these machines vitman was assigned to a Panza 3 not a [Music] tiger vitman was anxious for

a tiger of his own but he had a long wait he never missed the opportunity to State that his wish was still to command a heavy tank finally in March 1943 he achieved his aim and stood for the first time in the turret of a tiger as its Commander vitman could afford no time to reflect on his new status the Strategic situation on the Russian front was desperate and the Tigers were pitched straight into action massive tank Jewels the bitter one-to-one combats and tank battles against anti-tank guns were the daily work of Michael vitman His

first great moment of Triumph came in the Titanic Battle of K for sheer scale and intensity of combat K is almost unparalleled in recent military history in particular the engagement around the village of proar rova on the 12th of July 1943 when something like 1,000 tanks of the SS panacor on one side and of the guard's tank Army on the Russian side were concentrated in an area of a few square miles so I think that's what makes the Battle of K particularly [Music] unique on the day that the great battle began vitman destroyed eight tanks

in the following tank battles vitman emerged as an unmatched tank Ace he overran batteries picked out even the most cleverly camouflaged anti-tank gun nests and con stantly outfought enemy tanks he was cautious when he had to be aggressive when it paid off his Keen Hunter Instinct combined with a huge Slice of luck allowed him to emerge unscathed through five Furious days of the biggest tank battles in history over and over again enemy tanks went up like blazing torches before him and when Michael vitman washed his sweaty powder smeared face on the evening of the fifth

day of the battle he knew that he he had left behind him 30 wrecked t-34s 28 Soviet anti-tank guns and two batteries of artillery Destroyed vitman continued his success in late Autumn near brof he ran into a Soviet tank assembly area taking the Enemy by surprise and in that single action blasted 10 tanks from the mass of Soviet armor three more fell prey to his tiger later that afternoon vidman marked every tank destroyed but he rated the anti-tank guns he destroyed twice as high he hated these concealed nests which he called The hiding places of

death he derived special satisfaction when he destroyed an anti-tank gun by this stage of the war vidman professed that enemy tanks had ceased to be a strain on his nerves and only the anti-tank guns still made him uncomfortable he described them as lurking in their layers and so much more difficult to spot than tanks the Keen Nazi propaganda Department were Keen to capitalize on Vman's success and a war writer was sent to join him in his tank he filed this report in an attack against a large Town guarded strongly by tanks and anti-tank guns we

cleared the way rather quickly by destroying several tanks and anti-tank guns and soon reached the town our targets were all to the right of our direction of travel from our 12 to approximately 3:00 positions suddenly to our left behind a Hy stack we sighted A Joseph Stalin 1 with its gun trained on us vidman turn left Target 100 m go and that was it this action resulted in the destruction of 50 15 enemy tanks in a single day vitman frequently maneuvered the tiger based on his experience in assault guns from a static position he would

swing the whole vehicle round rather than waste time moving the turret moving the Tiger in this way was accomplished by one track turning Forward and the other in Reverse this called for Extreme Caution with the tiger however because of the great danger of shedding one of the huge tracks while turning in place the tracks turning in opposite directions caused soil to accumulate under the ID wheels and the tracks to snap unlike most tank Crews vaman's Gunner Bobby V often fired without a Target designation from his Commander for as vitman frequently put it there Was no

time for a conversation and Bobby V often acquired the Target in the few split seconds which meant the difference between life and death the Tiger tank was instrumental I think to Michael vman's success it was a beast of enormous lethality but in Michael vman's hands it really reached its full potential in a manner which very few other German tank commanders ever achieved having said that I think it's also true to say that not only did the Tiger make Michael vitman but Mich vitman made the tiger the uh psychological impact of the Tiger tank which was

already considerable and indeed Justified was uh radically increased by Michael vman's excellence in command of tiger tanks and by the propaganda that the Germans were able to make using his success so it's a rather symbiotic or synergistic relationship I think we're looking at the the tiger is an awesome weapon If you combine that with experienced tank Crews you must remember at the time the Germans had been through the fighting in Poland some of even been in Spain through the Balkans France and they've got a a large core of highly motivated very effective troops that are

able to use any of the new weapons they come out with and they would save the tiger for the best of those troops now vitman had obviously shown himself very well um during the Course of the early part of the war and so the opportunity to fight in in the tiger it seems a very good match on the 15th of January 1944 armored groups of leandata and dasri divisions were ordered to drive further Northwest in the direction of yubar this armored Advance was stopped principally by heavy fire from anti-tank guns and mortars those two days

of intense fighting saw vitman destroy six enemy Tanks 20 anti-tank guns 60 guns 32 trucks and countless other vehicles on the 16th of January 1944 both vitman and Bobby Vol received the knight's cross Vol was the first soldier holding rank as low as Gunner to be awarded such a high decoration there were now two wearers of the knight's cross in vman's tiger as a member of vman's crew V's success surpassed that of every other gunner in the winter battles of 1943 and [Music] 1944 by the 13th of January he had destroyed 80 tanks and 107

anti-tank guns Bobby V played an important part in the success of Michael vidman with his quick reactions and good eye he was a master behind the mighty 88 gun confident of V's ability vitman was not intimidated and would often take on Superior numbers of enemy tanks the two made a fine team and V knew vman's ways to the letter while a Crew's driver radio operator and loader often changed the commander and Gunner stayed together whenever possible the commander of a tiger was closely tied to his Gunner and their actions had to be well coordinated making

up the rest of vman's crew posing here for propaganda photographs in January 1944 were verer ergang radio operator Eugene Smith driver and sep Rober loader as the Gunner V was of decisive Importance the enemy's next shot could mean the end of them all if his aim was poor balazar V Michael pitman's tiger Gunner used a rather idiosyncratic method he preset his sights to 800 M which was the kind of average uh length at which or distance at which uh tiger would engage a Target and he would then correct for targets that were closer or further

away using his great experience and essentially intuition in order to fire the gun either higher or lower than Uh the point which was directed by the site so a very quick and efficient way of firing the gun the rings on the barrel of vman's tiger each represent 10 tanks destroyed the Tigers were feared by the Soviets and the heavy German tanks often Drew heavy anti-tank fire in their attacks they were used as weapons to smash gaps in enemy positions for the grenadiers to move up in support in countless attacks they Breached anti-tank fronts and destroyed

enemy artillery positions with their High rate of fire they could outfight any tank on the battlefield although few number the Tigers performed outstanding Feats in the offensive and defensive roles constantly under a hail of fire from anti-tank rifles anti-tank guns and rocket launchers the Tigers did not get off unscathed however thanks to their strong Frontal armor they were difficult to knock out often shells fired by enemy tanks and anti-tank guns simply bounced off their frontal armor nevertheless the tiger was not invulnerable and losses always kept pace with the slow trickle of new machines arriving at

the front from the hardpressed German factories the incredible achievements of vitman on the battlefield did not go Unnoticed he was fast becoming a national hero on the 2nd of February 1944 he was summoned to Hitler's headquarters Michael vidman received the knight's cross with oak leaves from the hand of Adolf Hitler in the course of his conversation with vitman Hitler noticed that he was missing a front tooth as a result of his wounds he subsequently sent him to his dentist to have the tooth replaced Michael Whitman's success seems To have been based on a number of

of very great abilities he um is notorious for having being able to work out where ambushes were likely to happen he is described as having a sick sense by a number of members of his unit for where enemy Physicians might be uh especially where they might be at night he was able to Define where and when danger might appear but vitman the man was was was very serious about fighting um and about the war and about um the Success he joined the SS because he believed wholeheartedly in Nazi Doctrine which was not uncommon at the

time but he was able to use that belief that Doctrine and and possibly became a some some serious young man one illustration that of that was on frequent occasions he he was brought back from the front having um been successful to train other troops and there's one occasion on a an IC winter morning when he was drilling some troops and he had this habit of Very sharply bringing his heels together um and on on this particular occasion in doing so he completely skittled himself over knocked himself down and naturally the troops he was training laughed

him for this um he had them doing extra duties for a month after that so um you get the impression of slightly humorous but obviously very dedicated t on vitman also took advantage of this brief pause from the fighting to marry His sweetheart Hildegard burm once again it was an unmistakably Nazi event after the wedding ceremony performed by the civil magistrate vitman accepted a gift copy of mine Camp a speech was then given by SS sturban fur Pine who declared that the philosophy of life of the chons still had meaning in their lives vman's period

of calm was to prove shortlived on June the 6th 1944 the Allies landed in Normandy it was here that he would gain lasting Fai conditions for German tank crews in Normandy must have been quite horrific the superiority of the Allied Air Force at the time meant that the any movement out of cover was almost always latched upon straight away if you look at any of the photographs um of tank Crews during the Normy campaign they're frequently looking up at the sky keeping a very good watch out um large amounts of armor Congregating in order to

make an attack which is the only effective way of using armor would almost certainly have been attacked very quickly by any any Allied aircraft must have made the conditions quite horrific on the morning of June the 13th 1944 vitman was positioned near V bokage when he surprised a squadron of the county of London yry the unsuspecting British troops had stopped for breakfast when vman's tiger roared up in no time The lightning reflexes of vitman and Bobby V had claimed 12 half tracks three light tanks and six medium tanks vidman then dashed back and gathered three

other tigers and a Panza four at 8:00 a lookout reported to SS obom fur vitman that a large column of enemy tanks was advancing on the KH vas bokage Road vitman who was in cover with his tiger south of the road saw a British armored Battalion followed by an English Armored Troop Carrier battal advancing for V bage the situation called for immediate action bitman was unable to get orders to his other tanks who had moved off instead he immediately drove at the English column with his single tank firing on the move this rapid intervention initially

split the column from 80 M vitman destroyed four Sherman Firefly tanks positioned his tiger next to the the column and drove 10 to 30 m Beside it firing in his direction of travel along the column he succeeded in knocking out 12 enemy tanks in a very short time the accompanying Battalion in armored troop carriers was almost completely wiped out the following German tanks and infantry company took about 130 prisoners but vitman drove on in advance of his company into the town of V bage it's it's a very interesting scene to Look at when you see

how he positioned himself and basically knocked these things off one by one by one in other words it it was by no means a Turkish shoot but was extremely good tactical handling it's an absolute Masterpiece of of individual tank fighting uh and what could be done by an extremely skilled Commander with obviously an expert crew and a very good tank by the way just before the hotel de bror he destroyed another Sherman and then found Himself facing several enemy tanks at the exit from the town the Jean dark Square he subsequently turned his tiger around

and drove back down the main street as it passed the hu godfroy clothing store the tiger was hit by a shell fired by an anti-tank gun which wrecked one of the drive's sprockets nevertheless he still destroyed all the enemy vehicles in range and Scattered the enemy unit at this point vitman himself takes Up the story I then decided to abandon the tank we took all the weapons we could carry but I didn't destroy the tank as I believed that we could regain possession of it I made my way to the next division about 15 km

away we had to dodge enemy tanks several times could have taken them out but had no close- range anti-tank weapons so with a heavy heart we had to leave them be I reached the division and Immediately reported to it the subsequent Counterattack destroyed the enemy and took the town the bulk of the armored regiment and a rifle Battalion were destroyed sep Dietrich his senior Commander later expressed his admiration in his report vitman had made his Way North on foot approximately 15 km to the headquarters of the panzo division from there he turned about with 15

Panza 4S of the panel Division and once again Headed for v bage through his determined action vitman and his tiger tank destroyed the greater part of a powerful British offensive column and acting solely on his own initiative and displaying the highest personal bravery he averted a threat to the entire front of the first SS Panza core at that time there were no reserves available to the core with today's action vidman has Destroyed 138 enemy tanks and 132 anti-tank guns with his tank signed diatri SS Opa grou and fura Panza General de vafan SS quite clearly

the engagement of villa bage was important it prevented uh one of a series of British attempts to outflank the important communications center in city of K from the West however to argue that Michael vitman or indeed any other individual could seriously have influenced the course of The campaign in the Normandy area is nonsensical quite clearly no individual could have made a substantial difference to a campaign that was determined at much higher levels in response to this incredible feat the highest tally of armor destroyed by a single tank in a single day's fighting the furer awarded

the knight's Cross of the iron cross with oak leaves and swords to SS oberm fura Michael vitman commander of a heavy Panza company vitman was the 71st soldier of the German Armed Forces to be so honored Hitler knew the value of vitman as a national hero and pressed him to accept a post as a tank instructor where he could pass on his hard one kn knowledge vitman instead rejoined his Battalion at the front he felt he was needed there and his deep rooted sense of Duty would not let him accept a cushy job vidman knew

that the war had entered Its decisive phase in spite of the material superiority of the enemy which he had seen and experienced firsthand in Normandy vitman was optimistic as he drove back to the front he had only been able to spend a very short time with his young wife the before he said goodbye and set out for Normandy it was to be his last assignment on August the 8th 1944 vitman rode into his last battle in otherwise unremarkable Encounter his borrowed tank bearing the number 007 was targeted by Superior British forces a direct hit blew

the turret from the tank vitman and his crew died instantly the greatest tank hunter in the history of warfare was dead Michael vman's uh credited with destroying 140 enemy tanks um and I'm afraid this comes under the scope of lied analy and statistics the whilst I Wouldn't dispute that vitman scored a high number it's fairly evident from uh events like Villa bage where he um is credited with destroying 25 tanks the evidence recent evidence seems to suggest it was much nearer a half a dozen to a dozen tanks um and an awful lot of armed

personnel carriers which have no effective defense or method of attack um on on the tiger relating why this came about um during the Russian campaign an awful lot of cricket scores Were run up by successful tank commanders um and under under this guys it was very good for the media at home the publicity in order to to to keep morale up at home they were the Germans were very proficient at pushing forward uh their tank Aces also their aircraft Aces um during the Russian campaign though frequently they're off against quite inferior um equipment the t34

is is seen as as an excellent piece of equipment but most of the kills would Have been amongst the the much thinner arms light tanks that would have had no response or no no adequate protection from the tiger and no way of destroying it vitman and his crew are buried at LOM military cemetery in Normandy near the sight of his greatest victory at V bokage A fitting resting place for a tireless Warrior [Music] [Music] [Music] the south of England on a sunny Summer's afternoon an exhibition of tanks and armored vehicles draw the crowds these military

vehicle enthusiasts and a fascinated public take great pleasure from the vehicles of 50 years ago fun is had by all rides are given and the tanks once more Rumble through their Paces in this tranquil setting it's easy to forget that these machines were once The harbingers of death in the most terrible conflict known to man the brutal realities of the battlefield can bring out the very worst aspects of human Ingenuity the best mins are used for the worst of purposes as scientists and Engineers strive to dream up new ways to kill maim or terrify their

enemies as any small Advantage is relentlessly exploited in the desperate search for the vital winning Sometimes fear alone is enough to overcome an enemy this was certainly the case with flame-throwing tanks these gruesome weapons had their main tank guns replaced with a flamethrower which could fire a jet of flame for up to 50 yards this was not a particularly accurate or even an effective weapon but both sides used them in World War I they were designed to be used to Winkle infantry out of strong defenses Pill boxes and bunkers but the main weapon was fear

the flame gun fired an inflammable mixture from a 100 L tank which was enough to fire 82 second bursts of flame a flame-throwing tank is nothing more than a tank that should resemble uh a regular tank and the reason they wanted them to resemble uh regular tanks is you just don't want to stand out on the battlefield uh if you stand out particularly with you have a full load Of jellied gasoline on board that's not a good thing to to have I guess the most effective use of flame tanks was that used by the United

States Marine core in the Pacific against the Japanese the Japanese would get into these reverse slope defenses they would not come out you you couldn't get them out by uh any method other than to use a flamethrower and if you can put that flamethrower behind armor so much the better to the infantrymen crouched in Their fox holes even the smallest tanks project an aura of invincibility rolling relentlessly onwards they seem like an Unstoppable armored Jugger not the very essence of armored might they appear so invulnerable and impersonal it's easy to forget that inside the vehicle

there are men just the same as any others with the same fears and emotions which run through every soldier on the Battlefield in many respects these emotions are heightened because the tank gives the protection of its armor but imposes a host of other restrictions on its crew inside the tank visibility is severely limited the interior is cramped and noisy the crew are acutely aware that their vehicle is a prime target for every enemy weapon on the battlefield with their own stocks of Fuel and ammunition aboard they knew that one hit can turn the tank into

a blazing Inferno there is also the danger that infantrymen might get close enough to attack with anti-tank weapons from unseen hiding places the main sources of danger for tank CRS in battle are chiefly the lack of visibility from inside a tank if you can imagine you've got narrow Vision slits that allow you to see a very small Area directly in front of that slit and you've got a number of those around the vehicle but there are always blind spots um for most armor um of the period that they don't move a l of lot quicker

than a man running and a man running with any sort of anti-tank device is going to be able to outmaneuver you at at any phase of the battle under favorable circumstances placed in good positions with their Strong frontal armor facing the enemy the crews of the German tanks of World War too had good cause for confidence these Panthers of the later War years could withstand most guns on the battlefield from all but the closest [Music] ranges this is the massive Jag tiger which saw action in 1945 it still Bears the scars of battle we can

clearly see on this survival vehicle where Allied shells have hit but Failed to penetrate the armor once infantry tank hunting teams got close to the tanks or enemy tanks were able to maneuver into a position to fire at the weaker sides or rear of the tank the picture changed dramatically the all conquering armored Hull could just as soon turn into a steel coppin the drivers of these American tanks also have a good field of vision as long as they keep their heads fully exposed Outside the vehicle when the commander stood in the open hatch of

his tank he too enjoyed an excellent view of the battlefield but when the bullets started to fly the commander and driver had to retreat inside the vehicle closing their hatches behind them once the tank was battened down the crew had only a very limited view of the outside world with their diesel engines roaring and weapons firing the heat Generated inside the tanks was oppressive in battle the noise the smell of sweat smoke fear and cordite Can Only Be Imagined not only is it a claustrophobic World unbearably noisy and uncomfortably cramped but the severely restricted view

made it difficult to spot targets or to defend against enemy tank hunting teams the tank which is B down for better condition to see anything at hole is Extremely difficult especially for the driver he only got very low set slots to look out and he can see very little he has to rely on the commander to a great deal who is sitting higher and he got Vision slots in his turret to look all around and he could advise them if there's any trouble ahead in World War II these tank hunting teams were trained to move

up close to enemy tanks to disable them occasionally they would climb onto Vehicles themselves and set anti-tank mines or drop grenades into exhaust outlets and any open hatches as it was designed to fire over long ranges the main gun of the tank was useless At Close Quarters to combat against infantrymen who got tooo near the vehicle tanks were equipped with grenade dischargers which could be operated from [Music] inside frequently however teams of Infantry got close enough to climb onto the vehicles themselves in those circumstances the crew of the tank had to either clamber out and

engage the enemy with small arms or rely on supporting infantry and the other tanks in his unit to spray his vehicle with machine gun fire to kill any infantry clambering a ball the turret of a tank is very much like a mobile pillbox with only the minimal openings for weapons the armor Gives protection but severely limits visibility in Desperate situations there was a small opening called a pistol port there are several ways of Defending yourself first of all of course if the Infantry is silly enough to come from the front you just run over them

with your tracks on the other hand normally they would come from behind and from the side and to defend yourself against approaching infantry from the side you got a certain opening in your turret Which is known as a pistol Port you you punch out the plug which opens the hole poke your pistol through or your machine gun and open fire on either side and that should keep them at Bay and of course the early Russian tanks for instance also had a pistol B at the rear against approaching infantry from there tanks of all Nations tended

to mount at least one or two machine guns for Close Quarter defense some tanks in fact mounted as many as six but in Addition to these uh smoke projectors which could lay a smoke screen mine layers grenade launchers and even light mortars could be built onto tanks for Close Quarter protection against infantry or anti-tank gun Crews Germans used a a cement like paste called zimmerit all over the sides of the vehicles that would be um reachable by anyone attacking the tank um and it its purpose was to stop magnetic mines being Attached at longer ranges

there were other d concealed anti-tank guns with a chief Menace one well-placed shot could blast a tank to fragments these guns were difficult to spot and could be camouflaged very easily in order to give tanks protection against enemy guns they need as much armor as possible ideally every inch would be covered in thick steel plate however the crew need to be able to see Out of a tank so Vision slits and hatches had to be allowed for the engines need air intakes and exhaust pipes need to allow the fumes to escape from the engine these

weakly armored parts of the tank are where it is most vulnerable and they were the favorite aiming points for lurking anti-tank guns from the confines of a tank anti-tank guns were often impossible to find until it was too Late as the war progressed the caliber and power of anti-tank guns increased from the relatively weak 37 mm gun seen here which was used in the first years of the war to the awesome power of the high velocity 88 mm the 88 was originally designed as an anti-aircraft gun which needed to generate enormous power to fire a

heavy shell thousands of feet into the air when the German infantry discovered That this powerful gun could also be used to fire over a flat trajectory against tanks a devastating new weapon was born the massive velocity of its armor-piercing shells spelled death for thousands of Russian and Allied tanks during the years from 1939 to 1945 the German 88 as we see here was basically designed as anti-aircraft gun and U during the early days of the war they found out that was Very successful against pinpointed targets bunkers and such alike and of course against TS direct

sides were added which you don't have on on aircraft gun usually were added and several other changes done to the gun and it turned out eventually to be just about the most successful tank and anti-tank gun there ever was throughout the war the 88 was the most feared adversary for all of the Tank men in the Allied armies the only drawback of this awesome weapon was that it was very cumbersome and needed to be towed into action but once it was deployed in concealed and camouflaged positions it was a deadly [Music] M anti-tank guns were

just one of the many hazards faced by the tank men as the war progressed all sides developed lightweight portable anti-tank weapons of steadily increasing killing [Music] power the Allies had the Bazooka and the Germans had the deadly Panza fou and panas Shrek these weapons were only effective at relatively short ranges but they gave infantry teams a tank killing capability which made even the strongest tanks vulnerable these German soldiers are stalking Allied tanks through a French Village they are ready to engage with their paner fasts they first allow the Leading Allied tanks to rumble past before

carefully choosing their victim [Music] the tank is destroyed a huge investment in engineering time and resources has been claimed by a single soldier with a simple [Music] weapon infantry anti-tank weapons worked on the principle of the hollow charge which was designed to melt through the armor of the tanks and explode inside The vehicle in order to defeat these weapons in Allied hands the Germans found steel skirts would use up the energy of the missile in penetrating the steel outers leaving the tank itself unharmed they may have looked cumbersome but they worked in practice and became

standard issue for all medium tanks from 1943 onwards a lot of the the German vehicles especially later on in the war as more Powerful Allied tanks came came about um had thin layered extra armor called Sheron um this well has the double advantage of of maybe deflecting an armor pissing round but more particularly it would dissipate the power of a hollow charge shot it hasn't got great velocity so if it burns a hole in the side of of an armor sheet that's outside the tank um it's very good protection for inside the fivan crew was

the standard For all German medium and heavy [Music] tanks the crew of a tiger consisted of the commander who was in charge of the vehicle and selected targets he also fired the turret machine gun next came the Gunner who sat next to the commander and targeted his enemies through his gun sites in many respects he was the most vital member of the crew in battle every shot had to Count the flight of a shell is affected by many factors including wind direction rain snow and other atmospheric conditions the Gunner had to gauge the range to

the Target allow for any climatic factors and compensate for the speed of any moving targets which were more difficult to hit one miss could allow an enemy tank to get in the first vital shot which spelled death in the T tank of World War II the main 88 mm Armament of a tiger Was aimed and fired really as a result of a team effort it was the job of all members of the Tiger's crew to use their Vision devices to identify potential targets and to report them to the commander the tiger Commander would then prioritize

the Target and would give orders to engage it the Gunner would Traverse the Tiger's turret using a hydraulic uh system controlled by a foot pedal and with that aim the gun using a binocular telescope site and would then Fire the gun using an electrical ignition system the difference between tank guns of the second world war and today is is that frequently today's tank guns are stabilized so that as you driving along you can fire as you go the tank guns of the time wouldn't allow for that you had to stop the tank allowing yourself to

be vulnerable to being shot at and lay the gun on on the Target and Fire positioned on the opposite side of the turret from the Gunner was the loader he did the heavy manual work of loading the gun the loader was responsible for selecting the correct type of ammunition from the ammunition bins which were included in the Tiger's uh structure and using an automatic or semi-automatic loading system to load the gun after each engagement he also had the laborious job of emptying the Shell cases and restocking the tank with the cumbersome rounds for the main

gun inside the hull towards the front of the vehicle sat the driver on his right was the radio operator who fulfilled the vital Communications function he also manned the hull machine gun the US ual practice was for the crew of a tank to paint a white ring around the gun barrel for every enemy tank destroyed some Crews were so successful In this practice that a thick white ring had to be painted representing 10 kills the most successful commanders proudly carried an array of kill Rings like so many strutting [Music] peacocks with the noise inside a

tank communication is very difficult to communicate with other vehicles is almost impossible the German Engineers solved the problem by an internal intercom Which linked the crew and allowed them to communicate via headphones and microphones German practice at the time was to use a throat mic which um had two little microphones up against the side of your throat and you would press those whenever you wanted to speak to the rest of the crew if you then switch the radio set over that also allows you to broadcast to the rest of your unit um the headset has

a a pair of headphones on so it muffles a little bit at the Sound of the engine but it's a very very loud engine anyway for communications between the tanks themselves all German machines were equipped with radios in the early War years there were no such refinements on the Russian side in the t34 strangely enough as good as the tank was even from its very beginning the communication was very poor because it had no radius which is a normal way of doing things the t34 Actually the early ones the commander had to get out of

his turet at least halfway and wave two flags about one red and one green one I believe and give signals like ships at high seas you see that's how they Chang directions or whatever he wanted them to do which was very primitive and it didn't work very well it was only much later for instance the tank behind me the t34 stroke 85 the bigger one had proper radio and radio contact within each crew member and of Course to headquarters as well the superior Communications gave the Germans a great Advantage which compensated for their very real

disadvantage in armor quality during World War II most German tanks started the conflict at a disadvantage the puny 37 mm gun was initially used to equip the Panza 3s which were then Germany's main battle tanks the same 37 mm gun was also carried by All of the checkm made 38t tanks which in 1940 were Germany's most numerous tanks these guns were insufficient to penetrate at all but the shortest range and even the upgrade to a 50mm gun such as those carried by these Panza 3's was still not really sufficient only the 75 mm gun of

the Panza 4 and Sturm gut's battalions were really suited to the demands of the modern battlefield but even then it had its Limitations the short barrel of the 75 mm gave the shells only a limited velocity which was effective against the thinly armored tanks of the early War years but proved to be totally inadequate when the Germans met the superior Russian tanks during 1941 the t34 at its time was by far away the best tank the the world had ever seen it was absolutely Second To None the shape is followed even to this day the

outline of a tank it was a m so To speak of all modern tanks it was just right in every respect the gun the armor the speed the lot to compensate for the low quality of the guns the Germans further extended their techn iCal lead by introducing special command tanks which had the main guns removed to make room for additional radio equipment command tanks are basically Factory or Battlefield conversions of ordinary gun tanks which are used by Relatively senior tank commanders Squadron company Battalion or regiment commanders to observe and to coordinate the actions of their

subordinates on the battlefield command tanks generally Mount extra radios Wireless sets for these purposes and in order to incorporate these extra Wireless sets and sometimes extra Wireless operators something usually has to be removed from the tank generally speaking this is either ammunition which is extremely Bulky or the main Armament of the tank itself obviously removing either in particularly the latter considerably disadvantages a command tank on the battlefield the cohesion which came from a smooth flow of commands was one of the obvious reasons that the inferior German tanks of 1941 and 1942 were able to overcome

the superior t-34s and [Music] kv1s these command tanks soon Drew special attention and attempts were made To disguise them with dummy guns a command tank is frequently without a main gun so that um it was made to look a little bit like it the appropriate tank with a a length of wood or pipe even where a dummy gum was used however usually the extra Wireless antenni which were installed on the tank to make the extra Wireless sets work effectively were another way with which the enemy could identify enemy command tanks and knock them Out this

disconcerting Factor was not mitigated by the rigid German practice of numbering their tanks in sequence starting with the Commander's vehicle which frequently carried the number1 displayed prominently on the turret a sure invitation to enemy [Music] GS by 1943 a command vehicle was no place to be inventory had by now developed extra killing power in the form of magnetic mines B zukas and the Panzera these deadly weapons could all blast through the armor of a tank but the Russians found that the simple expedient of a bottle filled with petrol lighted and thrown onto the engine decks

could disable even the largest tanks their tank hunting teams soon became very Adept at wielding this single improvised tank killing device the tanks which the Russians stalk so effectively were designed to do two jobs on the Battlefield the first was to engage and Destroy other [Music] tanks the second was to attack infantry and artillery Targets in essence the successful engagement and destruction of enemy tanks was a matter of the simple application of Brute Force Elementary physics tells us that Force equals mass time velocity for the job of destroying other tanks the tank Needs to be

able to fire the heaviest practicable Shell at huge speeds this produces enough Force to punch through the armor of an enemy tank explosive power alone has little value against the thick armor of a tank what gives the missile its penetrating power is the enormous velocity which punches through the armor of enemy Vehicles armor piercing rounds very simply tend generally to be solid shot By which I mean a shell which is essentially metal with a very small explosive charge and which relies upon a very high velocity and the enormous pressures and heat created by round impacting

on Armor in order to burn their way or melt their way through uh the armor of say a turret or a tank generally and to Splatter around inside either destroying equipment or killing or injuring the crew very occasionally it was found that armor-piercing shells Were traveling so fast they passed straight through enemy tanks and through the other side without damaging the vehicle or its occup a variety of high explosive anti-tank rounds were therefore developed which were designed to First penetrate the armor of an enemy tank then explode inside the vehicle this fine Balancing Act was

rarely achieved in practice and it is debatable whether the small amount of explosive contained in the shells was Much more effective than the massive kinetic impact of a high velocity round against inventory and field guns the tank needs to be able to fire a high explosive Round Here the speed of the shell is less important what matters is the weight of explosive packed into the Warhead the bigger the shell the bigger the explosion to reach over walls and intervening obstacles a plunging trajectory is the best method of attack Against infantry hiding behind obstacles in buildings

and trenches high explosive shells generally speaking have a hollow uh cone and into which high explosives is inserted and the point of these is to detonate and to throw out a a lethal uh stream of metal splinters which are particularly useful against infantry out in the open of course High explosives are also useful for destroying non targets because of their explosive Force with the space taken up by the main gun the crew and the engines there is surprisingly little room in a tank for the ammunition which was vital to survival on the battlefield most tanks

could hold enough shells for around 90 shots tightly packed into every conceivable space most commanders favored a mix of 40% high explosive and 60% armor piercing but it was often a matter of a personal assessment of the likeliest Target to be faced on a given Mission getting the balance right was a crucial decision armor piercing rounds were useless against infantry and high explosive would not penetrate tank armor having a large stock of the wrong kind of ammunition effectively left the tank impotent these anti-tag Gunners are attempting to clear infantry from a building without the benefit

of high explosive rounds in slow motion we can see the Straight trajectory and high speed of the shell but the effect on the building is minimal a high explosive round would have been [Music] devastating in battle many experienc crews could fire one round every 5 seconds so not surprisingly ammunition supplies could quickly become exhausted rendering the tank helpless at this delicate juncture the tank commander was faced with a crucial Choice either leave the field to rearm and refuel or await resupply in the field the bulky tank ammunition could not be transported on foot and required

a vehicle to resupply the tank [Music] trucks were too vulnerable to be sent into the fighting area so the Germans developed a special turretless tank called am munition schlepper to carry out the dangerous job of ammunition resupply on the Battlefield to ensure that ammunition supplies were used wisely German tanks were forbidden from firing on the move the prescribed tactic was to strict ly engage enemy targets from a static position this made aiming much easier giving the Gunner the best chance as he lined up his Target on the middle triangle of his Gunsite to help him

in his task of judging the flight of his shells they were equipped with a tracer element Which produced a trail of bright light to help pinpoint the path of the shell as it flew towards its Target the tank Crews prayed that their first shot would hit turning the enemy vehicle into a flaming mass as the fuel and ammunition exploded a Miss could mean their own destruction by return the prospect of the awful death of men trapped in a burning tank haunted the tank Crews it was a nightmare Prospect which dogged there every moment in all

of the major tank battles of world World War II from Poland through North Africa and into Russia the black Columns of smoke from burning Vehicles can be seen hanging on the horizon like Gathering storm clouds all too often they marked the funeral PES for their hapless [Music] Crews death or injury could come to the tank Crews from a myriad of sources it Was not always necess Neary to even damage the vehicle one other everpresent danger for tank Crews were metal splinters caused by hits on the outside of a tank as the outside velocity of the

impact was converted into violent internal energy these deadly fragments were blown from the inside of the turret where they would fly around the inside of the tank slicing through the bodies of the crewman packed together in their Claustrophobic world [Music] in many early tanks such as these 38t Czech tanks in German service there was a further danger the rivets used in the construction of the tanks were particularly dangerous the violence of a hit on the outside of the tank would cause the heads of the rivets to Ricochet around inside the vehicle this was also a

major problem for the British tanks of the early years Which were also of riveted construction rather rather than cast steel and many horrific injuries were caused by flying rivets from Shots which had not actually penetrated the tank another everpresent danger for tanks was less spectacular but equally deadly anti-tank mines could be placed in great numbers to protect a defensive position these mines would support the weight of a man without detonating so infantry teams often pass by Unsuspecting but as soon as the weight of a tank was present it exploded with tremendous Force although tanks were

sometimes destroyed by mines the most frequent result was that they lost a track this resulted in Crews having to leave their vehicle to attempt to repair these massive iron tracks in the heat of battle the job of testing for mines and clearing a path through them was the job of the pioneer sections occasionally This ritual task was [Music] overlooked at the vital Battle of K General Hines Garian the inspector of armor in the German Army at the time of the crucial battle was left livid with rage his new tiger tanks had rolled into action through

uncleared minefields with the result that many of his most effective machines the spearhead of the army were rendered immobile by a threat which could easily have been anticipated And cleared as the war continued each surviving tank in the German paner divisions became became an increasingly valuable asset as Battlefield losses Rose the war ravaged German factories which were being pounded Day and Night by Allied bombers could no longer keep increasing the supply of war vehicles to match those [Music] Destroyed although production Rose year on year during The crucial years of 194 43 and 1944 losses of

Tanks Rose even faster but provided it wasn't actually blown apart or completely gutted by fire many battle damaged tanks could actually be repaired and brought back into service for the allies with their Limitless supplies of men and material this was a less pressing issue but for the Germans it was a vital matter it was a source of great Frustration to many German tank Crews that Hitler himself placed a priority on the production of new tanks over the supply of replacement parts and engines in many cases old tanks could easily have been brought back into service

at the front line with a regular supply of spare parts and engines this would have been easier and more efficient than manufacturing then shipping a complete new tank all the way from Germany In the Desert War rummel's tenuous supply line was even more difficult it became essential to recover as many damaged or broken down Vehicles as possible while this was also a factor in British thinking it was a less pressing issue as the eighth Army was comparatively well served with replacements control of the field after the battle was vital for roml it allowed the Africa

core to Salvage Allied and enemy machines alike controlling the battlefield after Attack Battle Battle has finished is vital for either side the chief reason for this is that most of your vehicle casualties are recoverable if you've got a small hole through the middle of your tank it's usually made a mess of whatever's inside but the more common type of tank casualty would be um a missing track link damag tracks D damage suspension that's prevented the tank From moving um most of those tanks very easily recoverable with just half an hour's work in Russia it was

becoming equally vital for the Germans to keep control of the battlefield after an engagement the mechanically simple Russian t-34s could often be salvaged German Crews like these frequently drove captured t34 tanks into action during the course of the war 40,000 t34 tanks were manufactured more Than double the capacity of the entire German tank industry by 1943 in Russia as in North Africa it had become an overriding necessity for the Germans to retain control of the battlefield otherwise tank losses could never be made [Music] up with the huge weight of the later War Tanks such as

these Tigers immobilized tanks could often only be moved by the power of another Tiger the heaviest tractor in the German Army was the 18 ton F3 but it took three of these harnessed together to move one broken down tiger and in the midst of the battlefield the tractors were highly vulnerable to anti-tank rounds high explosive shells and the handheld weapons of the Infantry tiger tanks which each weighed about 60 tons and which were prone to a range of mechanical and electrical failures certainly suffered from Problems in addition they were extremely expensive valuable assets that could

not afford to be wasted because of this recovering tiger tanks was particularly important if they were knocked out there were a range of options available to the SS and the army tank battalions which operated tigers most obviously they could use their own gun tanks to tow other tanks out of trouble the problem was this that it tended to cause electrical or engine or transmission Malfunctions in the Tigers doing the towing alternatively unarmored half tracks could be used but unfortunately several of these needed to be used to tow a single tiger and because they were unarmored

they were vulnerable on the battlefield quite clearly what one required was an armored recovery vehicle that could tow a tiger on its own and which was capable of operating ating in intense combat conditions once again the solution to The problem was to develop a specialist recovery vehicle known as a Bergen paner these machines dispensed with the turret and replaced it with a box-like wooden structure they were designed to run quickly up to disabled tanks and Tow them away from enemy reach every tank carried heavy towing cables ready to be hitched up to a recovery vehicle

or a friendly tank most sens ible commanders went into action with their cables already hooked up just In case tanks look incredibly robust but in many respects they are surprisingly vulnerable they require high maintenance and are prone to break down they also shed their caterpillar tracks with infuriating regularity especially in thick mud when Crossing obstacles or as a result of anti-tank fire and minefields the tank tracks as you might guess are the most important parts on a tank Really to get you along and they have to be changed for instance if a if one link

just breaks one pin has to break and you haven't got the track anymore or enemy action is tracks are often hit by Anye shes damaged and have to be changed eventually it's it's a very hard job and takes a lot of effort to do it the whole crew is involved and how it's I never done it myself on enemy action but I shatter to sing but it will Take these German tank men rushing to replace a heavy track in the thick of the action had ample opportunity to curse their ill luck but it was an

all too commonplace event despite the Myriad of dangers the tank was the queen of the battlefield in the wide open spaces of North Africa and Russia in the first four months of the war the Germans discovered that there was one environment in which tanks should never Be deployed the builtup areas of towns and cities there they became especially vulnerable to lurking infantry and anti-tank guns the Germans learned this lesson as early as the Polish campaign of 1939 in the battle for Warsaw but despite all of their previous experiences these mistakes were repeated at Stalingrad KK

and in Normandy some commanders continued to commit tanks in towns right up to 1945 in 1944 these destroyed German tanks littered the streets of V bage they were destroyed by concealed British anti-tank guns when they grew too confident and rolled into the town after a period of conspicuous success in the Open Fields around the [Music] town this page from the 1945 us handbook on the German Army illustrates how this massive yaged Tiger tank destroyer Unwisely deployed in a town was destroyed by the simple expedient of a Molotov cocktail dropped from the upper window into the

open hatch of the tank below but it was it was not just the Germans who suffered even the mightiest giant it seemed had its limitations in the last month of the war this lone soldier sets out to destroy a Russian tank his smile suggests Elation and Pride or maybe it's just the relief that He has survived and soon it will all be over [Music] [Music] the world holds Adolf Hitler to account for the rearmament program which allowed Germany to precipitate the second world war to a large extent this is certainly true it was Hitler who

gave the priority and impetus to develop the drive for the military power which was Unleashed upon the unwary nations of Europe in 1939 but Hitler only came to power in 1933 and by that time the German Army was already a long way towards rebuilding the Armed Forces which Germany had been denied by the harsh conditions of the Treaty of versailes imposed after her defeat in World War I the Versa treaty specifically forbade Germany from developing Armored Cars tanks or any other form of tracked armored vehicles it was designed to leave the field clear for the

Allies to Continue the development of the descendants of these French light tanks which had shown promise in the closing months of the great M well basically the Treaty of Versa of 1919 which blamed Germany in its entirety for the outbreak of World War I forbad the German Army um to use tanks in any capacity whatsoever however in the late 1920s the German Army uh fully conscious of the increasing technological sophistication And usefulness of of of Tanks got round the restrictions of the Treaty of Versa by um striking a bargain with the Soviet Union Germany and

the Soviet Union were both in in many respects the parias of the International Community of the late 1920s the Soviet Red Army uh wished to tap into the military expertise of the German Army at the same time the German Army wanted to be able to use um Soviet tanks at S at the Soviet tank School in Kazan uh out of the out of sight of the Prying eyes of the western Powers namely France and Great Britain the secret German Soviet experimental station took the first steps in the development of modern battle tanks these tanks would

later equip the Panza divisions of World War II ironically they would be pitched against the Soviet Union as their greatest foe two tanks eventually emerged from this clandestine development program firstly there was the tiny Panza 1 a Small lightly armed and armed machine designed as a training and command vehicle it was armed with two machine guns and had space for a crew of just two men slightly more impressive was the prototype for what would become the Panza 2 the Panza 2 was a light reconnaissance tank it was only marginally more efficient than the Panza 1

but it did at least have a 20 mm gun in its Turret the Panza 1 had been designed uh as the first German tank in the early 1930s and as such it it had actually been designed as a training tank only um and thus it really had never been envisaged as a battle tank uh and you can see this from from the fact it was only armed with two machine guns and had very light armor um so really the Panzer 1 was not an effective battle tank uh at all the Panzer 2 uh was in

some ways a transitional design um and was slightly More battle worthy than a Panza 1 it had a 20 mm Cannon and better armor protection but it really can only be seen as a reconnaissance tank or a light tank uh and really couldn't match um either the Firepower or the armor of most Allied tanks when Hitler came to unfettered power in 1933 these two tanks unexpectedly had to be used to equip the new Panza divisions for Frontline service Thanks to Hitler the next War would arrive far sooner than the generals could have imagined in their

worst nightmares Adolf Hitler was a Driven Man he did not intend to heed the pleas of the high command who knew that a modern war would need the next generation of medium and heavy tanks which were then still in development they would not be ready in numbers before 1940 and a protracted War without them was unthinkable But a long war was exactly the opposite of what Adolf Hitler had in mind in the next War he was determined that Germany would not be brought to her knees by a long drawn out War of Attrition it was

Unthinkable that the horrors of the trenches should ever be repeated so future campaigns would need to be Swift and decisive in this at least he had the support of some sections of the high command who agreed that mechanization Was the answer the r the German Army had been collaborating with the Russians secretly during the 1920s and the early part of the 1930s and it was there in Russia and certainly not in England or in Great Britain that the Germans saw for example for the first time the organization of the first large scale mechanized Brigade then

a mechanized Division and finally a mechanized call and the other thing they were able the Germans were able to do was was actually To exercise with their tanks uh which was it was not possible elsewhere because of the Treaty of veride in parallel with the development of the first tanks came the new Tactical Doctrine which would transform the face of warfare Blitz cream in the 20s and 30s Germany developed a new approach to Battlefield tactics during the Great War the attacking Frontage of the armies during major Offenses could be as wide as 60 miles even

the successful kaija schlock defensives launched by Germany during the last year of the war saw the troops deployed over a 20m long attack sector using Blitz Greek tactics the new armored forces were to be concentrated together for a single thrust through a very narrow sector of the front once they had broken through the opposing front lines the panzas were instructed to keep going further and Further into the enemy rear areas spreading panic and confusion the new tank forces were to be supported by a force of dive bombers to spread fear and panic both at the

point of penetration then further into the rear areas as the tanks Advanced to further facilitate the new tactics the old infantry divisions were augmented by a new formation called a Panza division these divisions had their own Tanks motorized inventory motorized artillery and full support and Logistics it was designed to be a highly mobile miniature Army capable of supporting itself on the move the reason the Panza division was was such an effective fighting formation uh was due to its com the combined arms element contained within it uh a Panza division contained uh yes it had tanks

but it also contained a brigade of infantry um anti-aircraft guns artillery pieces uh Its own Supply columns uh and this uh whole unit was glued together you might say uh with modern voice radio communications uh this made it a very flexible formation and given the fact that uh the entire formation was motorized um it meant it was a very fast formation Blitz grig evolved from a reassessment of War tactics that took place not only in Germany but in Russia and Britain as well two perceptive British military Theorists Major General JC Fuller and Captain B little

Hart understood that the introduction of the tank during World War I had opened up hitherto undram of military possibilities both little har and and Fuller in their writings they described the kind of battle which they had in mind as the play of lightning and the German word for lightning is Blitz of course so that was taken up when considering that the first Time that the term Panza Panza Army Panza division was used was used by an Austrian General called General imberger and um some of Hitler's remarks his own remarks about 1936 he's tending to use

the word Blitz with respect to war and then you get the combination of Blitz Creek so it it slipped in if you like into military parants and general usage round about the mid 1930s there are a number of claimants to the title of the father of Blitz it is generally accepted that little har and Fuller's experiments with the British tank were important but at the same time the Germans had worked on the application of motorization and tanks in breakthrough battles many of these new ideas came from the work of General Hines Garian a man of

acute and perceptive intelligence Garian had devoted much thought to the question of how tanks might best be used in a modern Battle plans and tactics were tried out in war games and Maneuvers which soon convinced Hitler that he had discovered the way to make his dreams of Conquest become a reality Garian was a great publicist of of of the tank he wrote a very famous book called Akon pansa which uh was if you like required reading for all the practitioners of of tank warfare and what later came to be known as The Blitz Creek so

from the point of view of being I think both the protagonist and the publicist uh of of the tank of the armored fighting vehicle and also of of the initial concept of the blitz Creek Garian plays a very important part indeed during the the Great War Garian had worked extensively with wireless and gained invaluable experience in the deployment of infantry artillery and aircraft with the addition of the tanks garan had a Clear Vision of the force he wished to create his tanks would be Solely concentrated in the Panza and Panza grenadiers armored divisions not dispersed

in small numbers throughout the army they would be spearheads of a single large military formation which also included aircraft artillery and mechanized inventory crucially the commanders of these new formations would not be stationed far in the rear but would operate near the front moving forward With the panzas and responding instantly to changing situations and issuing orders by Wireless directly to his units making the most efficient use possible of available technology was only part of garan's work he also had a clear understanding of the value of proper training and that it was vital to encourage drive

and initiative even in the lowest ranks the German Army as a whole had incomparable standards the men of the Tank arm were trained to an even higher pitch and expected to make decisions in action rather than simply waiting for orders with this new system at his fingertips Hitler would plunge Europe into years of barbarity and turmoil on an unprecedented scale in early 1939 Germany's rearmament was still far from complete but Hitler knew if he delayed his plans any longer Germany's enemies might yet grow too strong for Her to be successful he needed easy quick and

decisive victories because the new Panza 3es and fours were only available in small quantities he pressed the Panza 1 and two tanks into service but even then the numbers were far from adequate at this uncertain juncture Hitler had a stroke of luck when Germany annexed Bohemia and Moravia in 1938 it was found that the tanks produced in Czechoslovakia by scoda and CKD were Available in sufficient numbers to bolster the numbers of the Panza divisions I think it's true to say that in May 193 there was a genuine danger of war the czechoslovak armed forces were

properly mobilized and uh threats which appear to have been realistic threats were made by the British and the French in particular that seemed to have deterred Adolf Hitler from ordering the commencement of the operation in September 1938 however It appears as one author has remarked that the uh British and French having looked over the precipice and seen the possibility of War decided for reasons to do with their unpreparedness not to make the same threats that they made in May 1938 and this led of course to the uh rather disastrous agreement made at Munich and indeed

precipitated many historians argue the outbreak of the second world war in September 1939 the Czech light tank the lt35 was renamed the Panza 35t and served alongside their Panza 1 and two tanks in the light companies where it outperformed Med its German counterparts of even greater use was the LT 38 light medium tank which was now taken into German service and renamed as the Panza 38t better still almost 220 of the 35t and 60 of the 38t tanks were immediately available with this windfall addition to His tank forces Hitler was able to carry out his

attack on Poland with great confidence the Czech tanks uh the Panzer 35 and 38t were very very important to the German war effort in 1940 uh over a third of the German tanks used in in the campaign in France were in fact Czech tanks uh which had been uh seized by the Germans after the annexation of Czech Slovakia in 38 and 39 the Pano 35 was a fairly old design uh but relatively battle worthy uh the Panzer 38t on the other hand was an extremely effective light tank in 1940 um and gave much more uh

fighting power to the Panza divisions than either the Panzer ones or twos the Germans liked the the the design so much that in fact the Panzer 38t although it uh was replaced as a battle tank uh after 1940 and 41 it remained in production until 1945 and we was used as the basis for many German fighting Vehicles although the Polish campaign was predominantly a conventional War of encirclement the German battle plan did include some elements of what was to become standard Blitz Creek Doctrine in the case of Poland Hitler made no declaration of war this

flagrant disregard for the usual rule rules of War caught his victims off guard every time he used the same Ploy it gave him the vital advantage of surprise and kept the initiative which Was so vital to the success of Blitz Greg What We Now understand as the classic forms of Blitz Greek was rehearsed against Poland in September 1939 by 26 German infantry divisions six Panza divisions and four light divisions and four motorize divisions the most important supporting element was of course the LT waffer in the initial stages of the attack the Luft waffer pounded the

Polish defenses and destroyed the Polish Air Force on The ground even more importantly it red Havoc with Polish mobilization the cooperation between air and ground which became an essential element of the blitz Greek technique was perfected in Poland although brilliantly conceived and executed the overall German strategy was still largely based on the classic German tradition of encirclement and envelopment which could be carried out by conventional forces but with the Strong influence of the blitz Greek Elements by the 16th day of the campaign Poland's situation was already Beyond hope endeavoring to hold a thin and overextended

front of 2,000 km the poles fought with selfless bravery even in 1939 the elite of the oldfashioned Polish Army was considered to be the mounted Cavalry Galloping fearlessly across the battlefield like ghosts from a lost age these cavalrymen Were committed to the impossible task of charging the German tanks with their lances and sabers in Germany there was Jubilation and a sense of restored national pride the nation's virile leader acquired new Prestige and Laurels from the Fatherland and the Third Reich sensed that it was entering into a glorious new world of its own making when Hitler

visited the tankor soon after the invasion it was the Achievements of the Panza divisions that delighted him most in return for his huge success Garian had lost only 150 men and 700 wounded the blitz Greek elements were falling smoothly into place the success of the Polish campaign fired Hitler's Pride aggression and vanity in the late spring of 1940 it also gave him the confidence for the successful military conquests of Denmark and Norway by May of that year Hitler was ready for his greatest gamble to date The Invasion of France case yellow had been repeatedly postponed

the delays however were put to good use and the Intensive study of the lessons from the Polish campaign were undertaken the role of the armored divisions and the other Blitz Greek components came under particular scrutiny one of the men eager to discover what improvements could be Introduced was Hines Garian one of Hitler's most capable generals in the short polish campaign the Germans had lost a disproportionately high number of the vulnerable Panza one and two tanks which accounted for 172 losses from a total of 217 this was clearly cause for concern but the flow of Replacements

was beginning to speed up with the German and Czech works at full stretch garan now had a larger far more modern tank Force crucially the new Mark II and four tanks were available in good numbers and the first fullscale experiment in Blitz Greek tactics could begin it was to lead to the fall of France early in the morning of the 10th of May 1940 fou Gelb was activated German forces swung down into the low countries and the term Blitz Greg was burned into the pages of History despite the increase in the number number of German

tanks the French Still enjoyed a great superiority in military material the French Air Force was bigger than the German air force and had it been properly deployed it could easily have blunted the German invasion sufficiently for the Germans to run out of fuel the huge number of tanks and support vehicles in the Panza divisions consumed enormous quantities of fuel and the Germans knew that the backup to that First Blitz green thrust would be stretched to its limit the generals also knew that if they were held at Bay for even a couple of weeks they would

run out of both Fuel and ammunition Fuel and not just fuel but uh oils and all the kinds of lubricants which uh motorized vehicles need uh were absolutely essential for um armored divisions and mechanized divisions in the second world war without them they simply could not go anywhere one example Of this uh came from the 19 1940 campaign in France uh when French tanks uh particularly The Shard B uh which actually ran on aviation fuel H kept running out of of of fuel before they could reach the the battlefield and had to be constantly refueled

uh the Germans on the other hand using petrol for their engines were able to actually pull up at French petrol stations and refill their tanks that way um so improvisation could be used to keep an armed division on the Go in certain circumstances but in uh other campaigns such as the desert campaigns or in Russia um fuel could uh could be could become very short very quickly and it needed a great deal of logistic planning uh to enable armored divisions to continue to advance setting aside the supply concerns the strategy that had eventually been settled

upon for the attack was of glittering audacity a surprise offensive was launched Through Holland and Belgium which it was hoped would draw the British forces northwards away from their French allies who would hold their defensive positions in the famous magino line then a powerful concentration of German armor would crash through the weakly defended Arden region without real opposition this arm of the attack would thrust into France to divide the Allied armies in half from the outset the great strategy worked immaculately and when Hitler was Told he almost wept for Joy on the 10th day of

the campaign Garian reached Amon the last link between the Allied Forces to the North and South were severed adding still further to the already dire confusion in the chain of command on the 24th 4 days later Hitler issued one of the most contr IAL orders of the war for 2 days he had halted the German tanks outside the town of Dunkirk where the British army was in Circled this rest bite prevented a massacre taking place and the evacuation of the British from Dunkirk was the result this decision was taken by Hitler mainly because of the

Fright given to rl's 7th pan division on the 21st of May by a British Counterattack at combined with that fact um or with that uh rather frightening episode for the Germans uh was the fact that Hitler did not want to waste his Panza divisions in heavy street fighting which was already Beginning to develop around Cali uh and thus in some ways the decision was rational uh to allow the Air Force to bomb the bef into submission it's also important to remember that Hitler really did not believe that the bef could be SE saved by sea

uh he wasn't a naval man and didn't understand uh what the Royal Navy could actually do because of his love of detail Hitler demanded daily reports from the front line from there it seemed that Hitler Had gained the mistaken impression the German tank losses were higher than they actually were he had it seems mistaken the number of broken down vehicles in the report as total losses he therefore decided to allow the Luft waffer to finish off the British while his precious tank forces were saved for the final attack on France on the 20th of June

after just 6 weeks of war France agreed to sign a demeaning Armistice it was a very successful Blitz campaign yes they broke through in the South they were able to bring great pressure on the Allied armies they forced the withdrawal of the British EXP expeditionary Force to Dunkirk they encircled the French army so from that point of view it was a success and it was a success for two reasons a it was very carefully planned and brilliantly executed but there the logistics problem was not so serious where the German Army Came up against Logistics problem

as it did in Russia then the blitz Creek didn't work it was it was what it was meant to be a short sharp rapid brutal penetration Hitler was overjoyed at this astounding Vindication of the methods of Blitz Greek Germany rejoiced with him the nation's honor had been restored German Prosperity assured by the New Order in Europe and the ignon of versailes was lost in the past under their revered leader this Transformation had been achieved at a cost far below all expectation Germany had every reason to thank its Armed Forces as the posters exhorted them to

do Hitler was pleased but not content he wanted much more a declaration of war against Yugoslavia and Greece simultaneously was the signal that Blitz Greg was about to be Unleashed again it burst over Yugoslavia on the 6th of April 1941 the same day Belgrade was heavily bombed and the Germans tore through the country Zagreb Saro and Scopia fell in quick succession and just 12 Days Later Yugoslavia was completely occupied Greece was now the front line with the Balan flank now secured the unprecedented military buildup in progress all along Germany's Eastern borders continued Hitler had resolved

to invade the Soviet Union this great offensive codenamed Barbarosa had been fed for a long time in Hitler's mind firmly rooted in National Socialist ideology was the conviction that Germany's Destiny lay in the East but Soviet Russia was just too vast to hope that it would fall in 30 days like Poland once more Hitler needed a quick War once more he needed it soon his gamblers instinct told him that Germany would never stand so strong as She stood then and if he delayed even one year year the crowds that cheered so fervently might no longer

be willing to follow him into so hazardous an adventure he gambled that the war would last 3 months it was the biggest and most mistaken assessment of his ramshackle career the coming War would last Almost 4 years and claim 30 million lives at 0300 hours on the morning of June the 22nd 1941 the code word Dortmund crackled down the Wilds 3 million men stood in battle Readiness the ground along the Russian borders vibrated to the Thunder of massed artillery high above hundreds of bombers flew steadily eastwards the theory of Blitz Greg was about to be

tested on a far grander scale than anything yet undertaken and in an arena of frighteningly vast proportions the German forces were Disposed in three great Army groups the topmost Army Group North swung away northwards aiming for Leningrad the third Army group known as Army group South moved sharply down towards the Ukraine with the oil fields of the Caucasus as its ultimate goal Garian was with the principal German offensive in Army group Center their objectives were smolin and beyond that the industrial and administrative heart of Soviet Russia [Music] Moscow as usual The Invasion forces sced through

hopelessly disorganized opposition and moved rapidly onwards the well honed Blitz Greek pattern was being repeated and the Soviet defenses Whirled away like chaff in the wind the number of prisoners taken seemed too immense to be true but it was almost 3 million Russian soldiers fell into German hands in the opening phases Of of Barbarosa and the scale of Destruction was terrifying as the news of Barbarosa reverberated around the stunned and disbelieving world even Germany was or struck despite the successes Garian was at odds with the overall plan he was acutely aware that the one guiding

principle of Blitz Greg the concentration of Maximum Force against a single objective had already been neglected Even worse as the Army groups Advanced they would diverge away from one another instead of coming closer together and in enveloping movement in addition gadarian was not being allowed to develop the technique he' exploited so masterfully in France a short sharp Campaign which kept a close eye on the Practical issues of Supply the Polish campaign took place in 36 Days the campaign in the west lasted 42 days but the campaign in Russia Lasted 1,000 days in the Autumn of

1941 the blitz Greek technique was failing the reasons were the logistical problems which beset the German Army as a whole but were especially severe for the German tank columns there had always been a fear in the German High command that the panzas might run out of fuel or they might run out of ammunition or that they might outstrip the ability of the army to keep Them supplied and in working order at that point Germany would become embroiled in a war of attrition with a bigger adversary this is exactly what happened in Russia and with that

the blitz Creek [Music] floundered the Soviet Union had relatively few roads a very small proportion of the roads that existed were paved this meant that uh the German Army's logistical system which was Heavily dependent upon the roads was going to face severe problems in sustaining any advance into the interior of the Soviet Union once the weather deteriorated incredible numbers of prisoners had been taken and huge quantities of tanks and guns captured or destroyed despite this sustained progress Garian was increasingly conscious of grounds for unease in the development of the campaign the unending immensity of the

Land depressed many soldiers lack of Mobility particularly of tracked Vehicles was a severe drawback there continued to be a huge Hall of prisoners but the German pincers were closing too slowly allowing large numbers of Red Army troops to get away and the Red Army appeared to command endless reserves most roads were of dirt which with the sudden rains turned quick quickly to Mud halting entire columns the terrain itself was not Particularly difficult for the German Army to negotiate when the weather was good once the weather deteriorated in the autumn and winter of 1941 the nature

of the terrain the forest and the swamps and the poor infrastructure of the Soviet Union ensured that the terrain the sheer size of the country would come to work very heavily against the successful advance of the German Army meanwhile Hitler was vacillating having fa fa to annihilate The Red Army his interest turned towards securing the economic prize of the Ukrainian oil worlds to garan's dismay he was diverted from his plan to drive hard and fast from Moscow and ordered South to the Ukraine his divisions performed outstandingly helping to take well over half a million prisoners

and nearly 1,000 tanks but the crucial moment had passed the advance to Moscow was resumed at the End of September but the delay proved to be fatal Fuel and supplies were delivered through a system that had become stretched Beyond its limit and the lines of communication were enormously overextended shortages of every kind impaired the fighting ability of the Frontline forces the vague fears of the generals who had initially harbored doubts were beginning to take the shape of a massive Impending disaster the advance had been over areas so vast that it was impossible for comprehensive mopping

up operations to be undertaken behind the Germans there lay the huge expanses of territory in which tens of thousands of Red Army troops roamed uncaptured the blitz Creek was a very limited technique and it it could not be universally uh or permanently applied And when the blitz Creek in a sense ran out of steam ran out of capability then I think Hitler and the German command faced very serious problems Blitz Greg's lifeblood was rapid movement and the spearheads were now being reduced to a perilously slow crawl the Autumn rains were heavy in France there had

been proper roads here the highways were Vanishing into impossible tracts of mud in which men men vehicles and horses floundered more And more helplessly breakdowns increased and repairs became extremely difficult to carry out the Garian had started Barbarosa with 600 tanks by the middle of November he was left with just 50 that were operational as the temperature continued to fall and the unforgiving Russian winter arrived soldiers now PID dearly for the arrogance that had refused to admit the possibility of anything other Than a quick decisive campaign few men had more than summer clothing and Frostbite

took an agonizing tone towards the end of October 1941 many German troops were praying for the weather to become colder because once the roads froze the ground would Harden and this would enable the German panzas to continue rolling nevertheless most German troops did not anticipate the kind of temperatures they began to encounter in late November 1941 cold of the magnitude of - 20 - 25° Centigrade completely undermined the ability of the German Soldier to fight effectively and the ability of his equipment most German um tanks artillery simply did not have the capacity to withstand temperature

of this kind in the artillery re recoil systems froze some German commanders reported that it took 12 hours of heating simply to throw out the engine of a German tank once a German Army stopped moving it then Became involved in positional fighting positional and defensive fighting against the Russian formations increased to the demand for supplies at a time when the demand for supplies could not be met the mighty offensive in Russia had run its course German armored divisions lay shattered in the Frozen wastes before Moscow together with Hitler's dreams of Glory the golden days of

Blitz Greg were At an end an angry Hitler proclaimed himself Supreme Commander and dismissed many of his highest generals on Christmas Day 1941 Hines gadarian was relieved of his command a shameful way to treat such a committed and successful Soldier another great soldier who would later be treated even worse by Hitler was Field Marshal irn roml while gadarian was in disgrace after the failures in the Snows Of Russia rml had risen to prominence under the beating Sun following a string of remarkable successes in North Africa the Wide Open Spaces of the North African desert would

at first glance appear to have been ideal tank country in practice ice much of this huge Arena was actually impossible to tract Vehicles the soft sand of the deep desert was very difficult to negotiate and played Havoc with the vehicles which were essential for Desert Warfare the war in the desert was therefore fought on a narrow Coastal strip of passible terrain between the desert and the Sea this small area saw the bulk of the fighting as the campaign in the desert seaa backwards and forwards between Egypt and Libya under rummel's inspired leadership the outnumbered German

forces were able to achieve some spectacular victories in many respects these were Classic blit battles like those in which the Germans had enjoyed such spectacular success during the French campaign Ral of course had taken part in that campaign where he had achieved outstanding success as the leader of the seventh Panza division which had gained the nickname the ghost division roml applied his experience from France to the desert theater despite the enormous difficulties of a very tenuous Supply situation he was Able to record some of the most audacious victories of the war but in so doing

he did create the opportunities for later critics to question some of the aspects of his famous Legacy and in particular his habit of leading from the front roml was was much criticized for using one of the most important parts of the blitz Creek technique which was to have the commander very far forward handling the battle not from a co- Headquarters or a division headquarters he was very much criticized for that although roml of course had commanded uh Panza division in 1940 roml was the first to break through in the ardens and get to the MS

so when he is in North Africa you get again virtually classic Blitz C technique adapted to to Desert Warfare conditions but the essence of that was the command and control system highly flexible um movable up with the front up With the troops taking account of the situation eventually even the unexpected victories won by rumel were overcome by the superior weight of Allied arms ranged against him and the Africa core was finally defeated in 1943 in Russia at that time the whole course of the war was about to be decided on the eve of the battle

of K Hitler knew the moment of decision had arrived he had little option but to recall garan who was reappointed to the New position of Inspector of the tank forces in time for that cataclysmic battle with garan back at the front Hitler May well have been trying to to recapture some of the earlier flare which had produced the successes of 1939 and 1940 he sensed that he was playing his last card on the Russian front the Battle of KK was an All or Nothing attempt to win the war in Russia as a gamble the stakes

were enormous and Hitler was conscious of the benefits which a successful Blitz greed campaign had once produced there's a justifiable argument to say that the huge German offensive in 1943 at kskk which was to bite off and destroy the Red Army salian was was a blitz Creek attack was a blitz attack in that sense on the other hand the the Battle of K degenerated in into virtual slugging match which is what the blitz Creek was not supposed to be it was Meant to forall and indeed to eliminate that kind of battle and I and some

of my colleagues have reservations about uh describing that battle as a blitz critic attack in that sense with the defeat at KK the writing was clearly on the wall for the verar the fears of those generals who had opposed the blitz Greek Concept in the first place now proved to be hauntingly correct even Hitler must now have known That any hope of final victory was gone Hitler had wanted to avoid a war on two fronts at all costs he now had a war on three France as the Allies were engaged against the German forces in

Italy France and Russia with the exception of the Italian front which had been stabilized under kessle ring there was a remorseless stream of bad news from both East and West I think it's fair to say it would have taken a miracle for Germany to win In 1944 certainly on the Eastern Front Germany no longer held a strategic initiative and indeed throughout 1944 the red armies to INF was to inflict a series of massive defeats upon the German Army perhaps Germany's only chance of prevailing in World War II 1944 would have been if they had managed

to successfully defeat the Allied invasion Northwest Europe I dday on the 6th of June 1944 dday didn't so much end the war in itself but it ensured that Germany would be defeated because Germany was struggling to contain the Red Army on the Eastern front with 75% of its available resources what dday ensured was that the meing 25% would have to be diverted towards fighting the other enemy namely Britain in the United States this was the task that Germany was simply not capable of these terrible psychological blows Further damaged Hitler's already paranoid personality and serve to

further Cloud his deranged decision-making ability in contrast to the strutting peacock of 1940 he had become a complete fantasist and recluse the effects of of the failed attempt by his own officers to take Hitler's life by the bomb explosion in his headquarters in June 1944 further hampered his ability to make any form of Rational decision might be said that the significance of the failed assassination attempt on Hitler is that in some respects it actually increased the war rather than shortened it because it brought to power some of the more ideologically fanatical members of the German

Reich who ensured that the Allies would have to fight right to the streets of Berlin in order to completely defeat Germany it therefore completely ruled Out the idea of any compromised surrender on Germany's behalf Germany was going to fight to the death and force its opponents to do so one last manifestation of the decline of Hitler's decision making power was his disastrous decision to mount the ill-fated Arden offensive in late 1944 this enormous operation Drew on the last reserves of Manpower available to the verar there is little doubt that the high Command would have preferred

to see these precious forces which were deployed in the ardan thrown against the ominous advances of the Red Army now he really was clutching at straws but once again it seemed Hitler was harking back to the Glory Days of the blitz Greek once again he hoped that a powerful and unexpected thrust through the Arden region which had led to the former victory over France in 1940 would again then bring him glory from the Jewels of defeat this time he was to be disappointed desperately short of both Fuel and ammunition the massive German assault was quickly

brought to a standstill by the superior Allied ground forces and equally quickly it was ground into submission by the everpresent Allied Air Force the German attack in 1944 the so-called Arden's offensive was a meant to be a classic Blitz Creek and Again it ran out of steam if you like for two reasons it ran out of steam because of logistical problems and secondly it ran out not of steam but was pounded to Pieces because it did not have control of the air once the weather cleared and the Allied Air Forces got into action a key

component of the blitz Creek technique was air control and the kind of air superiority that they needed without control of the air this last Blitz Greek did not enjoy the Remotest possibility of success Blitz Greek had been designed as a fast moving surprise attack it was not a Doctrine which could survive the attritional demands of a long drawn out War undaunted Hitler ordered a last offensive in Hungary but by now the writing was on the wall there would never again be a successful Blitz Greek attack given the depraved regime from from which the doctrine sprang

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