America's Unexpected WW2 Panzer Annihilator
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- čas přidán 15. 05. 2024
- South Korea plunged into chaos with the sudden invasion from the North, an unexpected turn that threw the nation and its American allies into a harrowing retreat. Overwhelmed by the Communist onslaught, the Allied forces faced an army of tens of thousands of infantry, artillery, and, critically, tanks led by the Soviet-made T-34s, a tank that epitomized armored dominance on the battlefield.
In stark contrast, the only immediate armored response from the U.S. Far East Command came in the form of the World War 2-era M24 Chaffee. This compact light tank, tipping the scales at just over 18 tons and armed with a mere 75-millimeter gun, stood as the solitary option to confront the enemy's advance. Designed primarily for reconnaissance and infantry support, the Chaffee, with its lighter armor and armament, was not suited for head-on clashes with the Soviet behemoths.
On July 10, 1950, a decisive moment unfolded as a unit of Chaffees encountered the enemy’s T-34 tanks for the first time. Leveraging their agility, the Chaffee crews went on the offensive. The initial exchange of fire saw the Chaffees’ rounds bouncing harmlessly off the T-34s' armor, but the American tanks pressed on, maneuvering to get within effective range.
As the battle heated up, two Chaffees were hit and destroyed, a stark reminder of the risks they were taking. Then, in a moment teetering on the edge of disaster, as a T-34 lined up its shot on another Chaffee, an unexpected explosion changed everything.
When the smoke began to clear, it was revealed that this was the result of a cunning flanking maneuver. The Chaffee's maneuverability and the crew's tactical ingenuity had turned the tables. Emerging from behind the enemy lines, the flanking Chaffees had caught the T-34s off guard.
In the heat of battle, the Chaffee showed that age and power are not the sole determinants of effectiveness, revealing hidden aces through innovative tactics.
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As images and footage of actual events are not always available, Dark Docs sometimes utilizes similar historical images and footage for dramatic effect. I do my best to keep it as visually accurate as possible. All content on Dark Docs is researched, produced, and presented in historical context for educational purposes. We are history enthusiasts and are not always experts in some areas, so please don't hesitate to reach out to us with corrections, additional information, or new ideas. -
The M24 Chaffee was arguably the best _Light_ Tank of WW2. The fact that the Chaffee could find ways to win against the T-34/85, arguably the best _Medium_ tank of WW2, was a testament to the superior skills and esprit de corps of US tankers and the superb design capabilities of the M24. However, the wins for UN armor in Korea were few and far between until the USA was able to get M4A3E8 / M4A3(76)W HVSS Sherman and, especially, the M26 Pershing and UK Cromwells and Centurions in country. At that point, the scales of armored warfare in Korea swung decisively in the UN coalition's favor.
Clickbait thumbnail. The Chafee was a good light tank but it wasn't a "Panzer Annhililator." It wasn't intended to go against enemy armour, and would have been ahililated itself had it tried.
Tank’s real though.
@@blu5021 yeah but you haven't played World of Tanks. You'd understand
@@romanadamenko6111 huh…? Yeah i have but what does that have to do with this
"Played" wtf, have you lived/experienced real combat? If so forgive my question....but real and played cannot be and aren't similar..ask a veteran
@@blu5021 yeah but that’s catfishing. Like going out with a good looking lady, and later in the night when you go to get it on, she takes off a wig, takes the fake Bs and lets her corset way out.
Big disappointment.
As a Paratrooper with 17 years on jump status I can say I’d never want to be a tanker. I’d feel like I was in a giant coffin.
Heh, but we in the armored units used to say it was better than your OD greens
Cv9030 Gunner here. Drones get used against both inf and tanks equally effective.
But at the same time everyone trains to kill tanks because nothing is scarier, especially when lacking anti-tank weapons.
I loved my M113...not a tank of course. It was like bringing your house around with you.....and a heater. I imagine most people loved their armored vehicles. It's like a member of your squad.
Ive always wanted to be a tanker but I would probably have been a mp or infantry
North Korean T-34s sported 85 mm guns, not 76 mm ones, hence their designation, T-34/85s.
They had both t34 76.2mm and t34/85
Interesting, I do not know where you got the idea that the M5 was removed from combat, my Uncle was a tanker in Patton's army and drove his all the way to the end of the war. On the front line, they were used as mostly recon and small unit actions. Your right that they were told to avoid the German tanks in general, but they were used up to the very end.
It’s not often that these vids are actually accurate fact wise.
okay is it me or his content and thumbnail, Title been falling off.
Wait. The Chaffee crews complained about their 75 mm gun? Every Sherman tanker is rolling over in their grave right now. If you were an American tanker in WW2 with a 75 mm gun you were living the good life. Everyone else was throwing rocks at the German tanks.
Most Shermans had the 75. You’re thinking of the 76
Just because the Chaffe had a 75mm gun doesn't meant that it was necessarily the same 75mm gun that a was armed on the Sherman, and for that matter, the 75mm gun on the Shermans were not the same as the 75mm gun that armed late model PzKpfw IVs and Panthers. There's more to a gun, any gun, than just its bore diameter, the size of ammunition can differ, as can the length of the barrel, both of which can affect the power of the gun. An example of this is the 88mm gun that the Germans used during WWII on Tigers and King Tigers. Despite both being 88mm guns, they were not the same gun with the King Tiger's gun firing a larger shell than the Tiger's, The gun used on the Tiger I was the 8.8 cm KwK 36 L/56 and the gun on the King Tiger was the 8.8 cm KwK 43 L/71 with L/X referring to the caliber, or barrel length, of the gun. Something that is still used by the US, UK, & Germany for tank guns and is used for naval guns as well.
After a doing a quick search, the Sherman and the Chaffe were not using the same model of 75mm gun. The Sherman mounted the 75mm M3 gun while the Chaffe had the 75mm M6. How their performance might have differed I can't say but the point is that they're not he same gun and one might have been more powerful than the other, either because of a longer barrel (more velocity) or a different and more powerful shell.
@GhilleGhille @Davivd2 basically, in ww2 Sherman tanks preferred the 75 over the 76 due to the HE shrapnel. 75 produced more due to lower velocity, 76 did not do to the higher velocity. US tank crews in ww2 didn't face German tanks all that much, so the actual need for the 76mm was not all that high. Tho, everyone would prefer a 76mm when facing a tiger or panther, not so much a panzer 4. Oh, and if you didn't know, the Sherman also could mount a 105mm howitzer. It was a rare find, but all tank crews would want that due to its performance against infantry over the other 2 guns
@@Riceball01 The main difference between the M3 and M6 was weight. The M6 was a lighter variant.
Everyone else was throwing rocks lol shit they ran outta rocks while ago
The Russians had sloped armor before the Germans did.
everyone did
The germans already knew about sloped armour .They had it on their amoured cars and on the personnel carriers.
Interesting video. My understanding is that the Tigers were rarely encountered by Allied forces in the west. They were mostly deployed on the Eastern front for obvious desperate reasons.
I think that you are misinformed. There were enough Tigers in Normandy to cause a lot of trouble - Michael Wittman's exploit at Villers Bocage being an example.
@@DrivermanO This is true. He didn't say no Tigers were deployed in the West. Most Tigers were deployed in the East and it was rare to see a Tiger in Western Europe. Note that number of Tigers available for operations is different to number of Tigers in the theatre. Often less than 50% of tigers were operational. Everybody references Wittman, show me how many other incident reports involving Tigers were there?
Incidents where allied troops said there were Tigers present, or incidents where Tigers were actually present? Quiet a few Panzer IV's were mis-identified as Tigers in combat.
@@DrivermanO The entire Normandy campaign saw less than 100 tigers deployed. The whole western front only saw something like 200 in total, most of which were during the Battle of the Bulge.
You are correct. Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge were where the majority of the tigers were encountered. A few were were encountered after the Allies crossed the Rhine, but they were few and far between.
Most of the time, troops would encounter a Panzer IV and misidentify it as a Tiger.
There is an artillery museum in St Joe Texas just west of Gainesville that is well worth the travel to go and visit
Thanks!🤗
The Stuart tanks were used in the Pacific along side with the Sherman. Japanese tanks were less robust than German tanks
Less robust is quite the understatement. They were like toys.
@@rg20322 Agreed. I actually saw a Stuart in a Central American museum…..so small
Aweful image selection and lots of bad data.
No one will care, but...
2:32 I found the 37mm Stuart main gun to be fast, accurate and highly lethal in War Thunder. Was happy with the 75mm Sherman cannon, too.
That is because fighting distances in WT for low tier is too low compared with IRL. Low tier maps are mostly in town areas in WT, where infantry should fight, and tanks support from behind.
I think your pictures show Pershings when you mean to show Chaffees. Pershings probably stood a good chance against the Russian tanks.
Pretty random collection of footage
Most of the footage is not of the Chaffee but of T-26's and M-4's LOL
man showed m3 lee footage for m3 stuarts
Yep, they did!
That made my brain screech to a halt as well.
I find it ironic that Chaffee crews in WW2 complained about its firepower when there were still herds of 75mm Shermans fighting with the same gun. In the last episode of M*A*S*H, an M24 is driven into the camp and hidden under a tent. When tank drives out of the tent later, it's an M4 Sherman. I refer to it as 'the Magic Tent.'
🎖️💪🤗🙏
Thank you for sharing this
I thought the North Koreans had T-34/85 tanks?
Equating the Chafee's 75mm main gun with the Panther's 75mm is uninformed at best. The Chafee's M6 75mm gun had a muzzle velocity of 2031fps, while the Panther's 75 mm Kwk 42 L/70 gun had a muzzle velocity of 3674fps. With the solid AP shells used then, velocity was the difference between penetration or a noisy bounce.
Check the Chieftains Hatch...he takes a turn driving a Chafee in England. IIRC the Chaffee doesnot have reverse gears per se but rather a transfer box so the reverse gears and speed equal the forward.
Plus, it was the "65 Mustang" of tanks. I want one. Good video. Thank You
Whats that Thumbnail pic of??
It's a Japanese M24 Chaffee with 4 Type 64 ATGMs mounted on it
@@cinnamonoa
I think it’s the early wire-guided AT missiles of the 50s, called entac. At the time there were plenty of NATO wire-guided atm designs, the biggest of them the Australian ‘Malkara’, since soviet armour theatened the dangerously exposed Western Europe.
In the 60s the Americans came up with the TOW, a combination of tube-launched & wireguided atm, while the soviets developed the wgatm AT3 ‘Sagger’ that was used widely during the ME October 1973 war.
@@minhthunguyendang9900no that’s definitely the Japanese one, look up M24 ATM
Pretty sure it’s a photoshopped image
@@garys8754 its not, it was a prototype tank for Japan that mounted Type 64 MAT atgms on a chaffee, these can be found on the type 60 MAT, and a Type 73 jeep mounting Type 64s aswell
Its so hard to believe that American tanks of that time were really not vey good including the M4 Sherman. All of the tanks were seriously under gunned. Alot of young Americans were killed in those tin cans.... Very Brave men.....
It just looked like a tank should be kind of sexy and fast
The 65 Mustang of tanks.
someone send this to the war thunder devs 😂
The M24 was the most common tank monument when I was stationed in Germany because so many survived the war. To light to fight.
I don't see anywhere where the Chaffee was a WW@ "Panzer Annihilator"
Bradley's Grandfather?....
There’s no point stating that the Chaffee couldn’t punch through German frontal armour because the Sherman couldn’t either. The crews from both types would know to hit the side or turret armour of the enemy if they wanted a chance of killing the tank. Looking at its size, I’d imagine stealth and surprise were key to the crews survival, rather like the German Weasel though they carry anti tank weapons that weren’t available in WW2
I saw several M-26 Pershings, which could easily knock out a T-34 85. The M-26 had the 90mm gun.
Mitchell in the comments below beat me to the punch. The Germans copied the T-34 sloped armor. So, Russian tank designers used basic math first? Quality a distant second? Love your videos, always a thumbs ^!
Video confusion between the M3 Medium Tank and the M3 Light Tank.
Can you make a video on the ww2 German Leopard tank that looks like a pack-Panther tank ?
Thank you.
Sloped armor is popularized by the Soviets, via T34
What were the heavy tanks sent ???
Correcction: In the war of 1971 between India and Pakistan, the Pakistani M24,s faced Indian PT76, a far advanced and superior light tank. All of the M24 of East Pakistan(Now Bangladesh) were destroyed or captured. A captured M24 is on display near my home in Kolkata, I used to play on it when I was a kid.
Were there any interesting upgrades to that tank? Added armor or anything?
@@StutleyConstable Nope, America sold off their obsolete WW2 tanks at dirt cheap price.
Supergood👍👍👍
The 30 caliber browning you point out is actually a 50 caliber browning. The 30 was not popular by later in tue war.
This is Best Light Tank of WW2 - Look Ussr T60-70-80 - Japan Light Tanks - German PZ2
The Chaffee has a 75 mm gun. Putting it on par with a Panzer mark 4 Ausf G. That was the most effective tank that Germany had to offer and the Chaffee was just as powerful and more maneuverable. The Chaffee was a good tank.
@@Davivd2 not true. most effective tank was pz3. most effect armoured fighting victor is the stug iii for the germans
Do the sherman assault tank. Or fatty tons o extra armour.
Was it ever used...
Confusing M3s there bud.
'a tank that eptomized armored dominance on the battlefield'. You mean som old t-34 surplus from ww2? The tank that was so crudely produced they barely even exist today?
Oh, The French used it. BFD.
The loosers can drive a match box more or less push armor. Hence my great appreciation for the frogs starting shit and giving up quickly.
Tell me something they won after Neapolitan...
All else aside, it was a death trap. Thank for reminding us of this death trap.
A Random Inappropriate collection of video - half baked at best.
t34-85 tanks with an 85 mm gun
WW2 US Marines---we dont need a light tank as the Sherman is fine with us
Japan/Korea/Vietnam----perfect tank used for airlift and confined environments/ light enough for bridges
its only downfall was that they kept using it to go against medium tanks when it wasnt supposed to
Why would you do that????? Thats not a mistake you could make on accident. Really pisses me off!
Russians not Germans started the sloped armor and in Korea it was a lot of t34 85 models
I responded to this commercial and it only led to a well known window mfg salesman who tried to sell me windows that cost $3000 apiece . I never received any tools
Bad title for this video. C'mon Dark Docs, the Chaffee was NOT a Panzer Anilihator by any measure.
N. Korea used t34/85.
Make video of M24 vs T55 in indo Pakistan war of 1971
A beutifull tank
isnt there a field full of burnt out chaffees the french used in vietnam?
According to this video the T-34 was a behemoth!
Yeah - just laugh
Bruh… M3 Lee (mt) is not a M3 Stuart (lt) 😂
Wait T-34s? We fought Russia? Or did I miss something? Testing?
South Korea…NVM
And North Korea mainly used T34-85 with 85mm gun
❤
"Dark Docs" reached a new low here when they used this "Clickbait" title. Honesty is the best policy! Perhaps I need to look at who's publishing a video and if it's "Dark Docs" you just know I will seriously consider passing over it. I do know that for the rest of the day I shall studiously avoid any videos from them.- Peter age 74
gawd ... I'd love to have a T55 Russkie tank.
Clickbait gets an automatic thumbs down and middle finger up(should be an option)
👍🏼😎
This video channel is a joke. Talking about M24 against T34/85 and showing M26 Pershings in the video instead. SMH
You said "a T34 lined up on a Chaffee. Isn't the T34 a Russian tank, why would a Russian tank shoot on their allies? or are you just fishing for comments. Most likely the case.
Korea used T34/85s.
IS THAT WHERE THE TERM SANDBAGGING COMES FROM?
Clickbait!
Quality of this channel its content is getting worse...really liked it before
More click bait
man CLICK BAIT TITLE!!! not ww2 or "panzers'!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
America is a continent not a country... They were US army tanks (its even painted in many "US" vehicles), not "American" army tanks.
Second
First
This is BS, like the tales of the Sherman taking on the Tiger and Panther in WW2. The Chaffee was totally out classed by the T-34 even when crewed by rice farmers!. The US rushed Shermans and M-26 to Korea, and the British the formidable Centurion Mk3. Luckily the Chinese did not deploy many tanks to Korea until the later stages of the war.
lmao america and the uk having a cold cold shower now as a result of their actions decades ago. glorious
I don't get that comment
I don't get that comment
Hitler slaughtered more white western Europeans than anyone in history if that's what you're getting at. Get a new hero.
I don't get that comment.
Here comes the gaijin when post. Like they are the only ones who knew about it