Відео

I had no idea just how many Panthers they built near the end of the war, I always thought that Panzer IIIs and IVs were much more common! Eye-opening statistics.

Never knew of this. Thankyou.

Using the interlocking plates allows you to shave off some weight while retaining the same kind of protection.

It's because the Germans armor was Sloppy Second's!

Square armour like the Panzer 3/4/Tiger can still be angled by positioning the tank and shooting over one of the front track wheels. If you have pike nose, or sloped armour that is angled for frontal deflection, if you are caught from the 45 degree angle to the hull, these plates are more or less flat. Early German tank doctrine also had more emphasis on mobility than protection against tank guns, which meant the square designs were adequate for that doctrine, while also remaining feasible for production as Germany were coming from a very low technical and industrial base compared to their opponents in the post Versailles treaty era.

There is no mystery here, german engineers were masters of overcomplicating basic engineering concepts.

T-34 was already used in 1939 during Soviet attack on Finnland

Interlocking I guees make the assembly more easý because parts hold in place before welding and also the weld is a bit weaker (tension and applied heat) so if ist start to rupture, than it stops in next corner. I mean fox example by hit with HE, or stoping AP the plates wirk and could split in welding line. sloped armor probably also spare some weight - corners are cut. About benefits of increase of effective thicknes must know all sides in that time.

There's a good documentary on tank development on the history Channel. From it learned that the Soviets and Germans developed their early tanks together to circumvent the Versailles Treaty. Nazis taking full power put an end to this joint effort on tank development. It was pretty much the Nazis ideology of superiority in every way that had them disregard things "Soviet" in design or manufacturing. Figure the sloped amor tanks was just casualty of all that until it bit em in the rear.

You are wrong. There are existing photos from poland 1939 operation, germans soldiers meets t-34 personally and are speaking with t-34 crew. Look it up. Edit: to be specific. Your opinion, germans didnt met t-34 before barbarosa is wrong. I like your work and videos. Anyway there are couple of photos from poland 1939 from end of septemeber 1939, group of german soldiers literally 1 meter next to t-34 chatting friendly with its crew. T-34 looks like micky mouse because both hatches are open up. That nickname actually coming from this time.

Fuc**n dummies. Attacked warships instead of supply ships. Warships are damn near useless without supplies. 😂

Interesting to hear about the backstory to the Volvo 240 series.

Some 30 years ago on a combined military exercise there were 3 Gepards i was attached to, that in turn were supposed to protect tanks and other vehicles that were also in the column. 2 of them broke down in the first hours leaving their depots. Then on an open stretch an American A10 got sight of the column and started attacking runs. The 3rd Gepard went into action tracking it, it's barrels swooped up aiming and....it broke down too. Were it real everything would have been in ashes. I really wonder if the mechanical reliability ever became less shameful then that.....

Could you explain the Austrian Law that requires you to state that you were invited to a museum?

Am Ende war der Tiger viel bedeutender für die Gefechte der Wehrmacht als der Tiger 2

I believe it was a matter of metallurgy (in addition to other considerations such as increasing gun calibers on both sides). For example, the Tiger 1 and Mark IV armor had extremely high nickel and tungsten content with case-hardened faces that could shatter any Allied round...thus preventing penetration...with a milder steal core that absorbed the impact. Whereas the King Tiger and Panther factories could no longer obtain such high quality plates due to shortages of imported raw materials, and time constraints and the need for higher production, made multi-layer tempering impracticle...and therefore they had to switch to single-layer hardened but thicker armour that required sloping in lue of the earlier "samurai sword" multi-layered hardness tempering. This later armour (1943 on) was so thick and heavy that interlocking helped prevent shattering. In other words...German armour got thicker and sloped because the quality of the metal diminished as the war progressed...and the Panther often cracked at the seams after a few hits even with interlocking plates…

A related question: German tanks all had that cement coating intended to foil magnetic explosives; despite the fact that the Allies never used them.

Sloped armor reduces the size of the crew compartment for any given length of chassis. That was also a factor in using vertical armor.

According to wiki those numbers dont check out at all... en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_armored_fighting_vehicle_production_during_World_War_II

I think in this, there are three different points which are getting caught up in the same topic, being: 1. Sloped armor 2. Heavier armor. 3. Effective welding of sensitive armor plate. the interlocking joins are not exclusively related to sloping armor but are more a factor relating to effectively joining the ever increasing thickness of armor. In the case of the deflected shot being turned away (action/reaction) there is also an increase in stress that must be effectively distributed through the welds . These gargantuan thickness plates cannot possibly be fully welded so the strength must be achieved by other means. Keep in mind any welded structure achieves the required strength not through the welds themselves but through correct weld placement and correct fit up before welding. With all that said, in my own opinion all the sloped side armor was largely a waste of effort, a pointy nose and vertical sides seems to have stood the test of time.

Because slope refers to Asians and is racist. That's why nationalist can't adopt😂

Both the British and Germans where well aware of sloped armour and the benefits of it but took the decision the same benefits weren't worth the extra hassle during the design and build phase. This decision changed as the war progressed and the need for improved armour increased.

I really liked the video and highly appreciate your honesty on the level of understanding you have. I was a little bit surprised to see the first part of the video and i think it is rather interesting to think about the connecting mechanisms of armor plates. I personally think it were the drivers vision and the crews and engineers being used to the layout. It is not completely neglecting sloping, it just tries to minimize the size of the visory hatch. Also it might have been an influence that the tank would effectively become a little shorter. As soon as more communication was inteoduced and also no more direct vision was required it was possible to drive without that weakspot. I really wonder if the big hatches of sloped vehicles or the vertically closing hatches of german tanks were seen as a weakspot by the soldiers of that time or as a necessary thing because driving blindly was seen as more dangerous than having a thin weakspot.

General Montgomery who saw the plans for the Dieppe raid is said to have written as follows this operation should be postponed forever. The Canadian Lord Beaverbrook said to Lord Mountbatten, you have murdered my countrymen, and the Canadians never forgave him for Dieppe.

So the Nazis are in Ukraine again.... The Russians are telling the truth

the most successfull tank of WW2 is the T-34...it won the war sure it didn't have much space inside but large inside space doesnt win wars the germans learned from the T34 and they feared it and was built in numbers sufficient numbers to win the war the Tiger/king tiger didn't do much as they were way too few of them.

I think you have it right. Boxy was easy and it worked given their welding abilities. Evidently, this equation changed for them fire power increased. Really interesting video and topic in general.

Is sloped armour really all that important?

Sloped Shmoped!

Panzer 3 and 4 are 'old designs' rooting in the mid 30s and even the Tiger is a pre Barbarossa design. The biggest weakness of Germany for the entire war was production and - Design Changes were complicated to adopt in the running assembly line: the Panther was the First wartime Design - and it adopted sloped Armor then

Panther tanks were awesome and the T34 was junk.

Loved your disclaimer at the beginning

The Tiger and its siblings were a product of old war doctrine and a need for a fast production. The armor on the tiger was more than sufficient at the time to deal with the current land scape of weaponry when it was developed. When the Allied weapons began to catch up the flat armor showed its weakness and sloped armor is a very cheap force multiplier for dealing with such things. A sloped armor piece has more effective thickness than the same piece turned vertically along with the benefit of being able to redirect some glancing shells. Though Sloped armor in certain german armor such as the Hetzer and Jagdpanzer was a product of re-cycling chassis of other tanks and only using the bottom half with no turret.

Its funny that the myth of the russians inventing sloped armor when literally the first tanks ever used in WW1 had sloped armor as well. Not to mention ship designers knew about sloped armor for ages before then

What a great name!

The difference between sloping armor and flat armor is the level of air superiority. If you believe that you will have air superiority during war, that makes your biggest threat anti tank guns - then go for flat armor. If you have enemy anti tank planes in the air, then sloped armor is advice.

5:18 cool, Finnish captured T-34

Excellent presentation, thanks

With interlocking plates there is more surface area to weld. Which makes it a lot stronger.

I will summarize it: Germany's main tank was the Pz III Its successor was the Panther. The problem, however, was that the Panther was badly wired into the Third Reich's warfare system, and on top of that, it was very unreliable. If a commander had 100 Panthers at his disposal, he actually had 60 of them, because 40 did not arrive from the factory, and of those 60 tanks, 40 were broken, or broke down when reaching the front. As a result, of the theoretical 100 Panther, between 20 and 50 tanks actually fought, depending on the period, as later versions eliminated some of the breakdowns and increased tank production. When it was realized that the Panther was too defective to become the new main battle tank, it was decided that temporarily that tank would be the Pz IV. Ironically, however, the Pz III was actually replaced by the StuG III self-propelled gun and in practice became the main "tank" of the Third Reich.

Que nombre tiene el bote?

Why those dissclusures?

A GOOD weld can be just as strong as the surrounding material as any welder can tell you, so in general using interlocking makes no sense and only complicates the production process. That said it's well known that making a GOOD weld was at the end of the war virtually impossible for German manufacturers because the welding sticks were lacking crucial components. It was mentioned "somewhere" in the German sources that they had to use "naked" welding sticks, which means you get bad welds with many inclusions/oxidation etc. So welds became generally awful and interlocking plates was a measure to compensate somewhat for the bad weld quality.

You've got an error in your title. "Why German Sloped Armor was so late" is not a question, its a statement. So it shouldn't have a question mark at the end. To make it a question, it would be "Why was German Armour so late?"

T 34 was much more laid back.

way to long video i skiped through it and dont find the answere

Why is there a bicycle under that t-34-85?

Inclined armor was already used in the Middle Ages. Back then, the armor of knights was specially inclined so that the blows of spears and swords would slide down the armor. Subsequently, this art was applied to the construction of castles, where increasingly sloped walls were built to cope with increasingly accurate artillery weapons. Ships, too, gained sloping armor, although this was originally due to the imposed tax on the deck area, so the sloping sides resulted from the reduction of the deck. It turned out, however, that the inclined side not only allows the ship to pay less tax, but also to deflect cannon shells. The inclined armor continued in the first ironclad ships. First during the Crimean War (at that time such armor was used on floating barges) , and then during the Civil War on monitors Inclined armor can already be found among the first tanks, but there were technological problems to fully incline the tank's armor. The first problem was the visors, as mentioned in the film. The thicker the armor was, the more difficult it was to cut a proper hole. In addition, when cutting the hole, there was a risk of damaging the plate, which was already only suitable for remelting. Another problem was the complexity of the design, this lengthened the production process, production time and production cost. The thicker the armor plate, the more all these costs increased. The very process of fitting and welding the inclined armor plate was complicated. During WWI, inclined armor was not a big problem, as long as it did not exceed 45' of inclination. This was due to the fact that armor plates were riveted to a special framework. An angle less than 45' prevented riveting. It was possible to get around this by creating a more complex shape from more armor plates, but this increased cost, vehicle weight, production time and did not make the armor more resistant to hits at all. Quite the opposite. The revolution came after the war with the use of bent plates, but this worked well with plates no thicker than 15 mm. Bending thicker armor required creating wider bend arcs and special techniques for hardening steel. Even so, bent steel exhibited weakened ballistic capabilities. Even welding was not an immediate solution. Welding in the 1930s was still a fairly new technique and was not perfect. There was the problem of welding sheet metal at unusual angles, large thicknesses, and armor plates that were too heavy. The Americans developed the relevant technology only with later models of the Sherman (although they had already experimented with it with the M3 Lee There was, however, the problem of cracking welds to vibrations and stresses at that time. The Russians did not have to develop welding technology, as they received the appropriate technology from the US, as did the British. The Italians and Japanese received their welding technology quite late from the Germans and did not have time to implement it in series vehicles. The alternative to welding was cast armor. It was cheap and quick to produce, but less hard and, on top of that, without the right technology, emitted numerous fragments inside when hit. That's still not the end of the story, however, as sloped armor complicated access to the gearbox, and placing the gearbox at the rear would create numerous technological problems (the T-34 had huge problems with the gearbox. The last gear had to be put in by hitting the rod with a hammer, while the gearbox itself had a very short lifespan, so there were T-34s carrying a spare gearbox on the engine compartment vault.

Jagdpanzer 38(t),"Hetzer" is nothing but slope

Interlocking might tend to support plates in place during welding, tying up heavy fabrication equipment less. As to flat plate, it seems to me that you don't have to worry so much about shot traps or chaotic deflection. Trying to hit a turret ring would seem to be more challenging.